George Stow was a Victorian man of many parts--poet, historian, ethnographer, artist, cartographer, and prolific writer. A geologist by profession, he became acquainted, through his work in the field, with the extraordinary wealth of rock paintings in the caves and shelters of the South African interior. Enchanted and absorbed by them, Stow set out to create a record of this creative work of the people who had tracked and marked the South African landscape decades and centuries before him.
"Unconquerable Spirit "reveals the scope and the beauty of his labors. Stow's paintings are more than just copies of what he found on the rocks. They are interpretations of the art of the San, informed by his own understanding of a particularly turbulent time in South African history and his sense of the tragic demise of the San way of life. This book celebrates his pioneering achievement and reminds us, too, of the richness of the imaginative universe of the San.

This text provides coverage of the history of the Japanese philosophy of art, from its inception in the 1870s to modern day. In addition to the historical information and discussion of aesthetic issues that appear in the introductions to each of the chapters, the book presents English translations of otherwise inaccessible major works on Japanese aesthetics, beginning with a complete and annotated translation of the first work in the field, Nishi Amane's ""Bimyogaku Setsu"" (""The Theory of Aesthetics""). The text is divided into four sections: the subject of aesthetics; aesthetic categories; poetic expression; postmodernism; and aesthetics. It examines the momentous efforts made by Japanese thinkers to master, assimilate and originally transform Western philosophical systems to discuss their own literary and artistic heritage.

Winslow Homer was the antithesis of the unkempt bohemian artist of the nineteenth century. Yet he is ranked as one of America's greatest painters. The reason is not hard to discover, for Winslow Homer's powerful epic statements spoke for America with a breadth that few other artists have achieved. This is a lively, intimate, and immensely readable portrait of the artist that throws a new light on Homer's life and puts it in fresh perspective, concentrating on Homer's years at Prout's Neck on Maine's rugged coast, where he would create his finest paintings, from 1883 until his death in 1920.

Art and literature during the European fin-de-siecle period often manifested themes of degeneration and decay, both of bodies and civilizations, as well as illness, bizarre sexuality, and general morbidity. This collection explores these topics in relation to artists and writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde, August Strindberg, and Aubrey Beardsley.

A guide to 20 glass painting projects inspired by artists of the period 1890 to 1930, including: William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, William de Morgan, Gustav Klimt, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Walter Crane, Charles Annesley Voysey and Clarice Cliff.;It explains in detail basic tools, materials and techniques, the latter being demonstrated through illustrated step-by-step instructions; it also features an extensive motif library, which provides design templates; and includes hints and tips for adapting the motifs to suit any project.

In 1859, the historian Lord John Acton asserted: 'two great principles divide the world, and contend for the mastery, antiquity and the middle ages'. The influence on Victorian culture of the 'Middle Ages' (broadly understood then as the centuries between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance) was both pervasive and multi-faceted. This 'medievalism' led, for instance, to the rituals and ornament of the Medieval Catholic church being reintroduced to Anglicanism. It led to the Saxon Witan being celebrated as a prototypical representative parliament. It resulted in Viking raiders being acclaimed as the forefathers of the British navy. And it encouraged innumerable nineteenth-century men to cultivate the superlative beards we now think of as typically 'Victorian'-in an attempt to emulate their Anglo-Saxon forefathers. Different facets of medieval life, and different periods before the Renaissance, were utilized in nineteenth-century Britain for divergent political and cultural agendas. Medievalism also became a dominant mode in Victorian art and architecture, with 75 per cent of churches in England built on a Gothic rather than a classical model. And it was pervasive in a wide variety of literary forms, from translated sagas to pseudo-medieval devotional verse to triple-decker novels. Medievalism even transformed nineteenth-century domesticity: while only a minority added moats and portcullises to their homes, the medieval-style textiles produced by Morris and Co. decorated many affluent drawing rooms. The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism is the first work to examine in full the fascinating phenomenon of 'medievalism' in Victorian Britain. Covering art, architecture, religion, literature, politics, music, and social reform, the Handbook also surveys earlier forms of antiquarianism that established the groundwork for Victorian movements. In addition, this collection addresses the international context, by mapping the spread of medievalism across Europe, South America, and India, amongst other places.

Neoclassicism refers to the revival of classical art and architecture beginning in Europe in the 1750s and lasting until around 1830, with late Neoclassicism lingering through the 1870s. Neoclassicism is a highly complex movement that brought together seemingly disparate issues into a new and culturally rich era, one that was, however, remarkably unified under the banner of classicism. This movement was born in Italy and France and then spread across Europe to Russia and across the ocean to the United States. The Historical Dictionary of Neoclassical Art and Architecture provides an overview of Neoclassicism, focusing on its major artists, architects, stylistic subcategories, ideas, and historical framework of the 18th century style found mainly in Europe and the United States. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 200 dictionary entries on famous artists, sculptors, architects, patrons, and other historical figures and events.

This book explores images of Venice in the written and visual art of the multitalented American writer, painter, lecturer, and engineer Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). A successful artist and intrepid traveller, F. Hopkinson Smith spent every summer in Venice for almost twenty years: his stays in the Italian city resulted in a large output of watercolours and writings, including his popular travelogue Venice of To-Day (1895), which featured over 200 illustrations by Smith himself. Despite Smith's popularity during his lifetime, his reputation as a writer and painter faded after his death and has occupied only a modest place in the American canon. This is the first scholarly work to examine the life and work of this unique American artist, whose legacy spans two centuries and was grounded in the enduringly popular fin-de-siecle. This book examines Smith's literary and visual perception of Venice while illuminating the life and works of this multifaceted artist, whose works are highly illustrative of the era's mainstream American culture and its perception of foreign spaces.

Literature on domestic interior decoration first emerged as a popular genre in Britain during the 1870s and 1880s, as middle-class readers sought decorating advice from books, household manuals, women's magazines, and professional journals. This intriguing book examines that literature and shows how it was influenced by the widespread liberalism of the middle class. Judith Neiswander explains that during these years liberal values-individuality, cosmopolitanism, scientific rationalism, the progressive role of the elite, and the emancipation of women-informed advice about the desirable appearance of the home. In the period preceding the First World War, these values changed dramatically: advice on decoration became more nationalistic in tone and a new goal was set for the interior-"to raise the British child by the British hearth." Neiswander traces this evolving discourse within the context of current writing on interior decoration, writing that is much more detached from social and political issues of the day. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Among Hawthorne's primary themes, the visual arts have usually been regarded as an afterthought and have only been examined to elucidate his own personal philosophy. Hawthorne's own contemporaries derided him for his 'mediocre' aesthetics and that view has been taken as received wisdom up to the present day. This study reexamines Hawthorne's aesthetics, and suggests that he was much more familiar with the art and artists of the time than has previously been acknowledged by critics. He developed his own eclectic and transatlantic view of art, a view which incorporated decorative arts like embroidery, while maintaining a modest estimation of his own talents. This book examines the full range of visual artists whom Hawthorne portrays. It argues that these portrayals illuminate the artist's dilemma of being fettered by New England Puritanism while at the same time being attracted to the richness and depth of both Victorian aesthetics and the artistic sense of Old World Catholicism. The ambiguous destinies of his artist-characters include misunderstandings and disputes, while at the same time they suggest a reconciliation of the conflicting sentiments and transatlantic perspectives of the writer himself.

Building or rebuilding their houses was one of the main concerns of the English nobility and gentry, some might say their greatest achievement. This is the first book to look at the building of country houses as a whole. Creating Paradise shows why owners embarked on building programmes, often following the Grand Tour or excursions around other houses in England; where they looked for architectural inspiration and assistance; and how the building work was actually done. It deals not only with great houses, including Holkham and Castle Howard, but also the diversity of smaller ones, such as Felbrigg and Dyrham, and shows the cost not only of building but of decorating and furnishing houses and of making their gardens. Creating Paradise is an important and original contribution to its subject and a highly readable account of the attitude of the English ruling class to its most important possession.

Originally published in Dutch and translated to Spanish for the fourth centenary celebration of the death of El Greco in 2014, this book is a comprehensive study of the rediscovery of El Greco -- seen as one of the most important events of its kind in art history. The Nationalization of Culture versus the Rise of Modern Art analyses how changes in artistic taste in the second half of the nineteenth century caused a profound revision of the place of El Greco in the artistic canon. As a result, El Greco was transformed from an extravagant outsider and a secondary painter into the founder of the Spanish School and one of the principle predecessors of modern art, increasingly related to that of the Impressionists -- due primarily to the German critic Julius Meier-Graefe's influential History of Modern Art (1914). This shift in artistic preference has been attributed to the rise of modern art but Eric Storm, a cultural historian, shows that in the case of El Greco nationalist motives were even more important. This study examines the work of painters, art critics, writers, scholars and philosophers from France, Germany and Spain, and the role of exhibitions, auctions, monuments and commemorations. Paintings and associated anecdotes are discussed, and historical debates such as El Greco's supposed astigmatism are addressed in a highly readable and engaging style. This book will be of interest to both specialists and the interested art public.

Rilke's prayerful responses to the french master's beseeching art

For a long time nothing, and then suddenly one has the right eyes.

Virtually every day in the fall of 1907, Rainer Maria Rilke returned to a Paris gallery to view a Cezanne exhibition. Nearly as frequently, he wrote dense and joyful letters to his wife, Clara Westhoff, expressing his dismay before the paintings and his ensuing revelations about art and life.

Rilke was knowledgeable about art and had even published monographs, including a famous study of Rodin that inspired his New Poems. But Cezanne's impact on him could not be conveyed in a traditional essay. Rilke's sense of kinship with Cezanne provides a powerful and prescient undercurrent in these letters -- passages from them appear verbatim in Rilke's great modernist novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Letters on Cezanne is a collection of meaningfully private responses to a radically new art.

Representations of political power play an important role in Western art history from the late Middle Ages up to modern times. This volume by leading experts is a wide-ranging survey of significant trends in the development of political imagery.

The first comprehensive, scholarly sourcebook/research guide/bibliography on the major French Symbolists painters, this work includes nearly 3,000 entries covering a variety of materials. Each artist receives a primary and secondary bibliography with many annotated entries. Art works, personal names, and subject indexes facilitate easy access. The volume is designed for art historians, art students, museum and gallery curators, and others interested in this major art style of the last half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century. Art museums and art libraries in both the United States and abroad were gleaned for sources. This is a unique and substantial research tool. Symbolism is one of the most difficult art movements to define. Its primary meaning is the representation of things by symbols, by the imaginative suggestion of dreams and the subconscious through symbolic allusion and luxuriant decoration. The writings of Charles Baudelaire on the arts powerfully influenced the aesthetic theories of Symbolist artists and critics from 1860-1900, much as Baudelaire's poetics were the root of Symbolist literature. The Symbolist work, be it painting or poem, is above all personal and revelatory, precious not commonplace, reflecting and evoking a journey of the imagination. French Symbolist artists explored this style, attitude, and atmosphere from the 1880s to the early twentieth century. This sourcebook organizes biographical, historical, and critical information on four major French Symbolist artists: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-98), Gustave Moreau (1826-98), Odilon Redon (1840-1916), and Maurice Denis (1870-1943). The first three artists are recognized asoriginators of the movement. Denis is regarded as Symbolist's foremost theorist and profoundly religious practitioner. Although all four artists have been the focus of major retrospective exhibitions since 1990, no comprehensive sourcebook/bibliography exists.

This book is about taking an image- a drawing, painting, digital photograph, computer design or photocopy- and, using simple methods, turning it into a piece of textile art. The author takes you through a variety of techniques for creating the image, such as scanning mixed-media artwork and digital photographs, or using imaging software to create exciting patterns and effects. No technical knowledge is required to use this book, as it offers easy-to-follow instructions, and the materials, technology and equipment are all readily available. But at the centre of the book lies the use of stitch. Having produced the image and transferred it to fabric, the next step is to enhance it with hand or machine embroidery. Innovative methods, both in the image transfer and the stitch, are simplified and broken down into the easy stages. Throughout the book, inspirational ideas are offered to get your creativity going. From books to bangles, panels, bags and vessels, the book offers all textile artists ideas to expand their creative work.

Part of a series of exciting and luxurious Flame Tree Notebooks. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed, then foil stamped. And they're powerfully practical: a pocket at the back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic side flap. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling gift. This example features Vincent van Gogh's 'Starry Night'. Regarded as one of Van Gogh's finest works The Starry Night was painted during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole following a mental breakdown. Based on the view from his window at the asylum as well as his imagination this incredible painting is one of the most recognized in the world.

This title proposes a fundamental revaluation of the central poet of British Romanticism. By looking at the later Wordsworth's ekphrastic writings about visual art and his increased awareness of the printed dimension of his work, and by relating these innovations to Wordsworth's sense that he was writing for posterity, Simonsen calls attention to what is uniquely exciting about this neglected body of work, and argues that it complicates traditional understandings of Wordsworth based on his so-called Great Decade.

This collection of essays on Islamic art and architecture in the nineteenth century covers a wide geographical area and draws together different regional elements. The essays devote much attention to social, political, economic and intellectual issues, including the role of tradition and responses to European aesthetics, among them the appropriation of orientalism and the rise of revivalist movements.

Combining a unique overview of metropolitan visual culture with detailed textual analysis, this interdisciplinary study explores the relationship between the two cities which Londoners inhabited: the physical spaces of the metropolis, whose socially stratified and gendered topography was shaped by consumer culture and unregulated capitalism and an imaginary 'London', an 'Unreal City' which reflected and influenced their understanding of, and actions in, the 'real' environment. MARKET 1: Scholars, graduate and undergraduate student in Literary Studies; Victorian Studies MARKET 2: General reader and students/scholars of Cultural Studies; Art History; Urban and Social History; Visual Culture; Gender Studies; British Histor y

A renowned scholar's reflections on the romantic period, its disparate participants, and our unacknowledged debt to them With his usual wit and elan, esteemed historian Peter Gay enters the contentious, long-standing debates over the romantic period. Here, in this concise and inviting volume, he reformulates the definition of romanticism and provides a fresh account of the immense achievements of romantic writers and artists in all media. Gay's scope is wide, his insights sharp. He takes on the recurring questions about how to interpret romantic figures and their works. Who qualifies to be a romantic? What ties together romantic figures who practice in different countries, employ different media, even live in different centuries? How is modernism indebted to romanticism, if at all? Guiding readers through the history of the romantic movement across Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, Gay argues that the best way to conceptualize romanticism is to accept its complicated nature and acknowledge that there is no "single basket" to contain it. Gay conceives of romantics in "families," whose individual members share fundamental values but retain unique qualities. He concludes by demonstrating that romanticism extends well into the twentieth century, where its deep and lasting impact may be measured in the work of writers such as T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk-the ideal of the "total work of art"-has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk's lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea's evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.

Fuseli's Milton Gallery challenges the antipictorial theories and canons of Romantic period culture. Between 1791 and 1799 Swiss painter Henry Fuseli turned Milton's Paradise Lost into a series of 40 pictures. Fuseli's project and other literary galleries developed within an expanding market for illustrated books and a culture of anthologization used to reading British and other 'classics' in terms of the visualization of key moments in the text. Thus transformed into repositories of virtual pictures literary texts became ideal sources of subjects for painters. Illustrating British literature was a way of inventing a national 'grand style' to fit the needs of a consumer society. Cale calls into question the separation of reading and viewing as autonomous aesthetic practices. To 'turn readers into spectators' meant to place readers and reading within the dizzying world of associations offered by an emerging culture of exhibitions. Attending to the energized reading effects developed by Fuseli's Gallery we rediscover a new side of the Romantic imagination which is not the solitary mentalist experience preferred by Wordsworth and Coleridge, nor divorced from the senses, let alone a refuge from the crowded public spaces of the Revolutionary period. Rather, Fuseli's embodied aesthetic exemplifies the associationist psychology espoused by the radical circle convening around the publisher Joseph Johnson, including Joseph Priestley and Mary Wollstonecraft. This book analyses exhibitions as important sites of Romantic sociability and one of many interrelated mediums for the literature, debates and controversies of the Revolutionary period.