Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity

(Leighton, Frederic) Tim Barringer (Editor), Elizabeth Prettejohn (Editor)

ISBN 10: 0300079370 / ISBN 13: 9780300079371

Published by -Yale University Press 1 Feb -, 1999

About this Item

First edition. xxxii+332 pages. Illustrated in colour and black and white. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Cloth. Fine in dustjacket. A collection of writings reinterpreting the art of Frederic Leighton, challenging the view that limits him to the category of "Victorian artist". It extends the discussion beyond Leighton's life and addresses issues such as gender and sexuality, and the artist's identity and self-positioning.

Seller Inventory # 21597

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity
• Publisher: -Yale University Press 1 Feb -
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300079370
• ISBN 13: 9780300079371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Seller catalogs:
  • Artists: Pre 20th Century

About this title

Synopsis

Liberated from the constraints of tradition, the Pre-Raphaelites of mid-Victorian England produced distinctive representations of nature and society in paintings remarkable for their compositional vitality and hallucinatory effects of color. This lavishly illustrated book provides a fresh appraisal of the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their radical departure from artistic conventions. Tim Barringer explores the meanings so richly encoded in Pre-Raphaelite paintings and analyzes key pictures and their significance within the complex social and cultural matrix of nineteenth-century Britain. In chapters devoted to core themes, the author discusses such artists as John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Ford Madox Brown and their engagement with medieval revivalism, nature worship, issues of class and gender, and the reconciliation of the religious image and realism.

Barringer draws on an imaginative selection of paintings, drawings, and contemporary photographs to suggest that the dynamic energy of Pre-Raphael-ism arose from paradoxes at its heart. Past and present, historicism and modernity, symbolism and realism, as well as tensions between city and country, man and woman, worker and capitalist, colonizer and colonized―all appear within Pre-Raphaelite art. Focusing on these issues, the author casts new light on the Pre-Raphaelites and their innovative work.



Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

About the Author

Tim Barringer is assistant professor in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. Elizabeth Prettejohn is a lecturer at the University of Plymouth in England.