Could the self-interested pursuit of beauty actually help to establish the moral and political norms that enable democratic society to flourish? In this book, Lucy Hartley identifies a new language for speaking about beauty, which begins to be articulated from the 1830s in a climate of political reform and becomes linked to emerging ideals of equality, liberty, and individuality. Examining British art and art writing by Charles Lock Eastlake, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Edward Poynter, William Morris, and John Addington Symonds, Hartley traces a debate about what it means to be interested in beauty and whether this preoccupation is necessary to public political life. Drawing together political history, art history, and theories of society, and supplemented by numerous illustrations, Democratising Beauty in Nineteenth-Century Britain offers a fresh interdisciplinary understanding of the relation of art to its publics.

In Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture, first published in 2001, Lucy Hartley examines the emergence of physiognomy as a form of popular science. Physiognomy posited an understanding of the inner meaning of human character from observations of physical appearances, usually facial expressions. Taking the physiognomical teachings of Johann Caspar Lavater as a starting-point, Hartley considers the extent to which attempts to read the mind and judge character through expression can provide descriptions of human nature. She argues that the writings of Charles Bell, and the Pre-Raphaelites establish the significance of the physiognomical tradition for the study of expression whilst also preparing the ground for the rise of new doctrines for the expression of emotion by Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer. She then demonstrates how the evolutionary explanation of expression proposed by Spencer and Charles Darwin is both the outcome of the physiognomical tradition and the reason for its dissolution.

In Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Lucy Hartley examines the emergence of physiognomy as a form of popular science. Physiognomy posited an understanding of the inner meaning of human character from observations of physical appearances, usually facial expressions. Taking the physiognomical teachings of Johann Caspar Lavater as a starting-point, Hartley considers the extent to which attempts to read the mind and judge the character through expression can provide descriptions of human nature. She argues that the writings of Charles Bell, and the Pre-Raphaelites establish the significance of the physiognomical tradition for the study of expression whilst also preparing the ground for the rise of new doctrines for the expression of emotion by Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer. She then demonstrates how the evolutionary explanation of expression proposed by Spencer and Charles Darwin is both the outcome of the physiognomical tradition and the reason for its dissolution.

Could the self-interested pursuit of beauty actually help to establish the moral and political norms that enable democratic society to flourish? In this book, Lucy Hartley identifies a new language for speaking about beauty, which begins to be articulated from the 1830s in a climate of political reform and becomes linked to emerging ideals of equality, liberty, and individuality. Examining British art and art writing by Charles Lock Eastlake, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Edward Poynter, William Morris, and John Addington Symonds, Hartley traces a debate about what it means to be interested in beauty and whether this preoccupation is necessary to public political life. Drawing together political history, art history, and theories of society, and supplemented by numerous illustrations, Democratising Beauty in Nineteenth-Century Britain offers a fresh interdisciplinary understanding of the relation of art to its publics.