Victorian Painters

by Jeremy Maas

The extraordinary richness and variety of English painting during the reign of Queen Victoria is only now, after years of neglect, beginning to be appreciated. If the period produced few British artists of world stature, this was more than balanced by the cumulative effect of sheer quantity and diversity of talent. Encouraged by new sources of patronage, painting broadened its subject matter and swelled its output.

It was a period in which painters achieved great fame and often great wealth. It was also a turbulent period for painting, a period of movements and counter-movements. of schisms and rivalries. It produced not just the glories of the PreRaphaelite movement but the academic though frequently brilliant works of the Neo-classical school, and many fine landscapes, genre paintings, nudes, still lifes, sporting, animal and fairy paintings. As a period of feverish activity, it is without parallel in the history of English painting.

But it was also the era in which the very foundations of painting were shaken by the arrival of a new art-form, photography, which brought into question many of the traditional ideas of painting. As a specialist dealer, Jeremy Maas has become familiar with a remarkably wide range of paintings of the period. Never before has Victorian painting received such extensive coverage in a single volume. The 300 illustrations, 45 of them in color, include many pictures never before reproduced.

Although all the main movements are followed through, Mr. Maas does not neglect important but isolated artists. The work of some previously Iittle-known painters is here revealed and shown to be of considerable merit. Much new material has been brought to light in Mr. Maas's study of the influence of the camera on painting and of the genre of fairy painting, which he isolates and considers as a whole for the first time. 

Genres: Art, Art History

257 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 1987

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive review, lots of examples of the artists' work (though some were in black and white rather than color), overall very interesting. One of my favorite anecdotes concerned the story behind Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat (http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwo...). Apparently, Hunt was repeatedly under attack from Arab bandits while he painted the background by the Dead Sea. He resorted to brandishing his gun while painting. He also required three goat models, as two died of exhaustion. I also learned that painter Richard Dadd stabbed his father to death and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital suffering from schizophrenia, where he painted such pictures as The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke (http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwo...). I saw this painting when I was at the Tate Britain art gallery and I always thought there was something creepy and captivating about it.

[Lucinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is more of a 2,5 really