Talk:Victorian painting

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Great start[edit]

This is a tremendous effort! Things that might be added, some by scavenging:

  • Economics and the market
    • Repro rights
    • Growth of public commissions and museums

Johnbod (talk) 21:21, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You left out fairy painting, which if you were following my sandbox draft you'll know I did make a brief start on before deciding I'd hit my tweeness threshold for the day when I reached His Master's Voice. It also needs more on Scotland and Ireland, both of which were completely bypassed by Pre-Raphaelitism and mostly bypassed by aestheticism (those people like William Dyce and Oscar Wilde who did become involved, came to London and got involved there); it's complicated by the fact that while this was the golden age of Scottish architecture and literature, it was the absolute nadir of Scottish painting, so doing it justice will mean intentionally including a load of mawkish history paintings and ropey portraits of minor nobility in Highland dress. It also needs something on collectors and commissioning—their impact on the market is implied, but needs to be spelled out. It probably needs more on Richard Dadd and Augustus Egg, too—I dismiss them in a couple of sentences as neither had any impact on the broad trends. It certainly needs something on the impact of photography, and on the negotiations which led to the formation of the National Portrait Gallery—as I'm fairly well known for writing on Watts, I didn't want to give the impression I was pushing him unduly. (Besides, if we're to have one Watts image, I'd much rather it be the extraordinary Sower of the System than one of his dreary NPG portraits of the Great And Good.)
Regarding the growth of museums, I think any more than the couple of lines about the V&A and the Tate, and maybe a sentence about the Museums Act 1845, would possibly be giving it undue weight. I struggle to think of any 19th century museum other than the Sheepshanks Bequest and the Tate which was specifically about contemporary painting, rather than a more general museum which happened to have contemporary paintings, and even the Sheepshanks Bequest fairly quickly got booted up to the third floor of the V&A and left to moulder. – iridescent 22:14, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Checklist of things which probably need their own section[edit]

Things I can think of which probably need their own sections - [User:Johnbod|]], Victoriaearle, anyone else feel free to add:

  • Genres
    • Orientalism (and "exotic foreign countries" in general, particularly the obsession with Egypt
    • Problem picture
    • Historical painting
    • Landscapes
    • Portraits
    • Watercolours
    • Fairy painting (I can do Dadd, but probably not the field in general)
    • Nudity and the impact of the Obscene Publications Act (which for the first time created a distinction between Art and Porn and removed the threat of prosecution from the painters and distributors - this will basically be an executive summary of the catalogue for the Tate's 2002 The Victorian Nude exhibition, with the addition of a couple of sentences on Ruskin and a couple more on Leverhulme's and Prince Albert's patronage preventing the genre dying out
    • The Victorian cult of mortality
    • Paintings of children
  • Economics and the market
    • Repro rights
    • Growth of public commissions and museums
    • The invention of visual advertising and its impact on the market (easily forgotten, but even now some of the most recognisable paintings of the period are those used in adverts, particularly Pears and Sunlight Soap). If the Lady Lever Gallery haven't published a book on this topic at some point, they've missed a trick.
  • The impact of technology - I think I've adequately covered how the new respectability of engineering led (via the PRB) to an increased respect for accuracy, and how the negative aspects of life in mill towns created a market for escapism and pastoral scenes, but something still needs to be said about the impact of photography. The impact of cheap and quick travel and the end of war in Europe, and the consequent fact that it became practical for someone (for instance) wanting to paint a biblical scene to go to Jerusalem to do it, also needs to be covered in more detail.

More as/when I think of them, anyone else feel free to add. – iridescent 20:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's a bit on repro rights at Landseer, but yes. A section on social welfare concerns in painting? I'll be able to copy some from Orientalism, and there are bits of Art_of_the_United_Kingdom#Victorian_art that aren't here yet. John Frederick Lewis is about to hit DYK btw, & could be further expanded. Johnbod (talk) 00:37, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe some few bits can be copied in from Edmund Evans re children's pictures? Or perhaps Toy book or Chromoxylography? I've just done a bit of sprucing up at Evans, and have recently downloaded files from Wikipedia:Project MUSE which hosts journals about Victorian art in children's books to work up the other two. This page should have a very general overview though - I'll see what I can find. Thanks for the ping btw - I haven't looked closely at the article, but will in the next few days. I might be able to help with the fairy paintings too. Victoria (tk) 01:12, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Remember it's "Victorian painting" - if we went to "Victorian art" some rather dismal warehouses-full of sculpture & decorative arts would need some sort of coverage.... Johnbod (talk) 03:26, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you're right, I got carried away! I was tidying in that area and came here to respond to the ping and there you go. Victoria (tk) 20:33, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A couple more:

  • The 1843 competition for the new Houses of Parliament and the adrenaline-to-the-heart its strict conditions (scenes from British history, Spenser, Milton or Shakespeare only) gave to moribund genres of English history and literary painting (this will be a pain to source since its main impact was via the PRB whose fanclub hate acknowledging any earlier influences other than Van Dyck).
  • The impact of modern pigments and changing attitude to colour schemes—Burne-Jones refusing to use mummy brown is fairly well documented, but there's probably an entire article to be written just on the impact of the invention of cheap and colour-fast green paint.

The balance between paintings in different collections also needs to be addressed (I've been trying not to use more than one painting by any artist, and to avoid as much as possible using more than one painting in any genre). At the moment we have:

Institution Number of works
Detroit 1
National Gallery 2
Nat'l Portrait Gallery 1
Nat'l Museum of Scotland 1
Nottingham Castle 1
Ponce 2
Royal Academy 1
Royal Collection 1
Russell-Cotes 2
Tate 2
Watts Gallery 1
private collectors 2

That's a reasonable spread, but it completely leaves out the great northern collections. I have Etty's Triumph of Cleopatra earmarked for the section on the nude which is in Lady Lever, and When Did You Last See Your Father? (Walker Gallery) will probably need to go in somewhere just because readers will expect it, but we still have nothing from Manchester, York etc. (If I manage to whip advertising into a section of its own, His Turn Next probably needs to go in there as well—I'm loath to use Bubbles as that would either mean two Millais's or ditching Ophelia.) – iridescent 19:39, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Art of the UK has a para on the HoP, not entirely making that point. The British Institution#Patronage might be worked in in that context, though mainly pre-Victorian. Johnbod (talk) 19:51, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Palace of Westminster has this section, but nobody has seen fit to bother with something as trivial as a source for the last three years. (Well, it's not as if the PoW has had much written about it…) There's probably something in Ruskin about the impact of the competition, but the thought of wading through Ruskin's bilge in search of it isn't one that appeals to me. – iridescent 20:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More[edit]

Sunderland v Aston Villa, 1895
  • Find some pretext to work Sunderland v Aston Villa 1895 in—all these variations on "morose woman with flowers", classical temples, people in to-the-modern-eye insanely formal clothing and impossibly attractive people make the whole culture seem detached from the present day, but things like this drive home the point that 21st century British culture is the direct descendant of the Victorian age.
  • Scotland, Ireland & Wales—the topic is unavoidably anglocentric since London is where almost everything of importance in the arts happened in this period, but they at least need to be mentioned, particularly the Glasgow Boys and the more general Celtic Revival. Scottish art in the nineteenth century is probably steal-from-able. Per my comments above it's going to be tricky as what was happening in England in this period was much more important than what was happening in the Celtic nations, and most the significant figures of the Scottish and Irish arts (William Dyce, Oscar Wilde, Francis Grant…) ended up in England. Wales is probably a lost cause, if List of Welsh artists#Born 1800–1899 is anything to go by.
  • Seascapes and ship paintings, particularly the new field of hyper-detailed paintings of ships which shipping lines liked to hang on their walls
  • Industrial paintings—both paintings with factories etc as their subject, and the specialist field of painting detailed painting/drawing hybrids ("An accurate depiction of the waterfront of the Port of Middlesbrough") for corporate and municipal clients. Could probably be rolled into a broader "impact of technology on culture" section
  • War artists—this was before the golden age of British war art that began with WW1, but people like Jerry Barrett and Charles Edwin Fripp at least need a mention, probably in conjunction with the emergence of lithographs illustrations in newspapers. – iridescent 10:57, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There's a bit at Welsh art, but it was more "Art in Wales" throughout the century. And there's Ireland of course.... Johnbod (talk) 16:51, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As best I can tell, Wales in this period was somewhere the English went to paint quaint locals, rather than something with a painting scene in its own right. Ireland is a difficult kettle of fish, as you have the unstable mix of Ascendancy fops and earnest Celtic Revival types. (I don't think it's unfair to say very little actually happened in Ireland in terms of the arts in the 19th century—there were major Irish artists, but I struggle to think of one who wasn't following one or another English trend. Augustus Nicholas Burke is the only one I can think of who wouldn't just be a footnote to a section on England.) – iridescent 17:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Please dont go there with Burke; ugg ;) Ceoil (talk) 21:20, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be inclined not to mention Ireland at all (aside from indirectly via references to Oscar Wilde and pals), but if it's included Burke's going to have to be there for better or worse given that he's just about the only Irish-resident painter of the time anyone nowadays has heard of aside from John Butler Yeats, and Yeats is only famous because of his kids. The existing article has a Maclise slipped in intentionally for tokenism value—it serves a legitimate purpose in both providing an example of portraiture and illustrating a mention of Dickens, but I very much had "find something Irish that isn't either a peasant girl, a battle scene or a ruined abbey" in mind when I chose it. – iridescent 21:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly I find Burke as a chocolate book representation of 19th century Irish misery; iconic for all the wrong reasons. Burke is reductive and romantic in a well, first world problems way, and the current article has an attractive air of kitch, which should prob not be spolied by being linked to the Irish thing (and I'm about as far from nationalism as you can find). Its thorny and complicated from that POV, but this article facinates and horrifies me in equal measures. Carry on. Ceoil (talk) 01:01, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Cymon & Iphigenia
Etty's Andromeda
"Iconic for all the wrong reasons" pretty much goes without saying on a page which includes the word "Rossetti" as often as this one does. One of the key themes I've been trying to get across is just how earnest these painters were in thinking they were addressing Great Social Issues, even though they ended up as student wallpaper and bad album covers a century later, and Burke was nothing if not earnest. (One of my long-term aims is to get Millais's Cymon & Iphigenia onto the Main Page; it has a good claim to be the most unintentionally kitsch piece of Earnestly Symbolic Social Commentary I've ever seen, and I'm the one who wrote List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice.) The problem with Irish art at this time is that there were painters imitating English and French trends, and there were painters painting tat with titles like "Donegal Peasant Girl With Shillelagh", and not a lot in between. (Scotland has the same problem to some extent.)
In defence of (some of) these artists, when looked at in the context of what they were trying to do they don't seem quite as kitsch, aside from those I've selected especially for kitsch value (the Winterhalter in particular looks like something Nigel Farage would sacrifice goats to). If you want real kitsch, wait until I get around to writing the article on Etty's Andromeda; I started this series firmly disliking Etty, but the more I see of his lunatic worldview the more he's growing on me—he went to his grave convinced he was producing great moral lessons and unable to see why anyone could think his works were a bit pervy. – iridescent 16:19, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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