Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity (Volume 5) (Studies in British Art) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300079370 ISBN 13: 9780300079371

Publisher: Paul Mellon Centre, 1999

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 this title

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.

Reviews

This volume comprises 14 scholarly papers, many of which are an outgrowth of a conference convened by the editors at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Leighton (1830-96), a president of the Royal Academy of Arts, is a difficult artist to assess and a highly controversial one; during his lifetime reviewers attacked his work as flamboyant and effeminate and as "empty pomp." The contributors attempt to examine his work from a variety of angles under three main headings: his use of aesthetic elements from antiquity; his use of Renaissance elements, notably costumes and settings; and his relation to modernity in his many activities. The last of these headings seems to be the most difficult perspective to assess. The volume does provide a very useful and extremely important examination of Leighton's work in the context of his age and some interesting sidelights into his home, his interest in music, and his promotion of new painting. This beautiful volume will necessarily appeal to the specialist.AMartin Chasin, Adult Inst., Bridgeport, CT
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Paul Mellon Centre
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300079370
• ISBN 13: 9780300079371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Prettejohn Professor Elizabeth