Introduction to Victorian Vision

John Payne Jennings, The Dargle Rock, c. 1869, albumen print, approx. 9×11″

Orlando Parry, A London Street Scene, 1834, Watercolor, 71.1 x 101.6cm (approx. 2.5 x 3 feet)

Art of James McNeill Whistler

Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, 1864

Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen, 1864

Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland, 1870-73

Arrangement in White and Black, 1876

Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander, 1872-74

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871 (aka, Whistler’s Mother)

Nocturne: Blue and Gold-Old Battersea Bridge, 1872-75

Nocturne: Blue and Silver-Chelsea, 1871

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875

The Peacock Room, 1876-77

Salome at the fin de siecle

Gustave Moreau, Salome Dancing before Herod (1876), oil, 144 x 103.5 cm

Gustave Moreau, The Apparition (1876), watercolor, 105 x 72 cm

Maud Allan in Salome costume, 1908. Allan danced in over 250 performances as Salome at London’s Palace Theatre, a music hall

Allan as Salome with John the Baptist’s head

Marie Wittich, first Salome in Richard Strauss’s opera Salome, which premiered in Dresden in 1905 and was based on Wilde’s play. Wittich refused to dance “The Dance of the Seven Veils” and a stand-in was used

Poster for 1923 US film Salome, starring and produced by Alla Nazimova

Publicity still for Salome with Nazimova (note the Beardsley-inspired artwork)

Aesthetic Cartoons

The Aesthete as Caricatured by Punch Magazine

The Six-Mark Teapot. Aesthetic Bridegroom. “It is quite consummate, is it not?” Intense Bride. “It is, indeed! Oh, Algernon, let us live up to it!”

An Aesthetic Midday Meal. At the luncheon hour Jellaby Postlethwaite enters a pastrycook’s and calls for a glass of water, into which he puts a freshly-cut lily, and loses himself in contemplation thereof. Waiter. “Shall I bring you anything else, sir?” Jellaby Postlethwaite. “Thanks, no! I have all I require, and shall soon have done!”

Aesthetic Pride. Fond Mother. “You live too much alone, Algernon!” Young Genius (Poet, Painter, Sculptor, etc.) “‘Tis better so, Mother! Besides I only care for the society of my equals, and – a – such being the case – a – my circle is necessarily rather limited.” Fond Mother. “But surely the society of your superiors___” Young Genius. “My what, Mother! My Superiors! WHERE ARE THEY!!!”

An Infelicitous Question. Aesthetic Youth. “I hope by degrees to have this room filled with nothing but the most perfectly beautiful things. . .” Simple-Minded Guardsman. “And what are you going to do with these, then?”

Photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron

Photographs from Cameron’s years in England

The Double Star (1864)

William Holman Hunt in Eastern Dress (1864)

The Whisper of the Muse (1865); model is George F. Watts

Spring (1865)

Red and White Roses (1865)

Alfred Tennyson, “The Dirty Monk” (1865)

King Lear allotting his kingdom to his three daughters (1872)

I Wait (Rachel Gurney) (1872)

Pomona (1872); model is Alice Liddell

Florence, Study of John the Baptist (1872)

“The parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere” (1874); for Tennyson’s poem Idylls of the King

“So like a shatter’d Column lay the King” (1874); for Tennyson’s poem Idylls of the King                                         

Photographs from her Years in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka)

Estate Workers, Ceylon (1875)

Untitled (Ceylon), (1875/79)

Untitled (Ceylon), (1875/79)

Untitled (Ceylon), (1875/79)

Untitled (Ceylon), (1875)

Marianne North in Mrs Cameron’s house in Ceylon (1877)

Marianne North, Bombay Pedlars in Mrs Cameron’s Verandah, Kalutera, Ceylon (oil painting; 1876)

Photographs by Lewis Carroll

Alice Liddell (1858)

Alice Liddell as “The Beggar Child” (1858)

Edith, Lorina, and Alice Liddell in “Open Your Mouth and Shut your Eyes” (1860)

Agnes Grace Weld as Little Red Riding Hood (1857)

Irene MacDonald in “It Won’t Come Smooth” (1863)

Irene MacDonald (1863)

Amy Hughes (1863)

Arthur Hughes and His Daughter Agnes (1863)

The Rev. Thomas Childe Barker and his daughter May (1864)

St. George and the Dragon (1875)

Xie Kitchen with parasol (1876)

Xie Kitchen as Tea Merchant (1873)

Xie Kitchen as “Penelope Boothby” (1876)

Beatrice Hatch (1873)

Portrait of Evelyn Hatch (c. 1878)

 

Victorian Photography: Art or Science?

Photograph as Evidentiary Record

Hugh Welch Diamond was appointed superintendent of the female department of the Surrey County Asylum, and he made many portrait studies of patients in the early 1850s, which he attempted to use as therapeutic tools.

 

John Thompson, images from Street Life in London, 1877. The aim of this book was stated as: ‘to bring before the public some account of the present condition of the London street folk, and to supply a series of faithful pictures of the people themselves’.

Covent Garden Flower Women

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Crawlers

Workers on the “Silent Highway” (River Thames)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The London Boardmen

 

Mugshots from the Tyne & Wear Archives in Newcastle, England; taken between 1903-1905

 

Photograph as Artistic Expression

Henry Peach Robinson

 

(L) “She Never Told Her Love” (1857) and (R) “Fading Away” (1858). Both photographs were staged death scenes.

(L) “Sleep” (1867) and (R) “The Lady of Shallot” (1861) — additional examples of “composite photography”

 

Oscar Rejlander

“Two Ways of Life” (1857) — allegory of the choice between vice and virtue, represented by a bearded sage leading two young men from the countryside onto the stage of life; more than 30 negatives were combined into this single print

 

“Hard Times” (1854) — composite photograph shows an unemployed carpenter sitting hunched while his wife and child sleep behind him; in a second image, the man places his hand on his wife’s head as the child prays at their feet

 

“The Bachelor’s Dream” (1860) — a reclined man sleeps with a woman’s hoop skirt frame, which miniature artist’s forms climb

 

 

“New Woman” Cartoons

Cartoons from Punch Magazine 

 

 The New Woman. “You’re not leaving us, Jack? Tea will be here directly!” “Oh, I’m going for a cup of tea in the servants’ hall. I can’t get on without female society, you know!”

What it will soon come to.  Miss Simpson. “Pray let me carry your bag, Mr Smithereen!”

Passionate Female Literary Types. The NEW School. Mrs Blyth (newly married). “I wonder YOU never married, Miss Quilpson!” Miss Quilpson (author of “Caliban Dethroned,” &c., &c.). “WHAT? I MARRY! I be A MAN’S PLAYTHING! No, thank you!”

Introduction to Victorian Photography

A Sampling of Victorian Photographs — for further exploration, visit http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/0-9/19th-century-photography/

By Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)

Annie; My First Success (1864)

Mariana (c. 1874-75)

Spring (1865)

The Double Star (1864)

The parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere (1874); for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King

Pomona (1872); model is Alice Liddell

 

By Roger Fenton (1819-1869)

Two Sergeants of the 4th Light Dragoons (1855; Crimea)

Encampment of 71st Regiment (1855; Crimea)

The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855; Crimea)

Lieutenant General Sir George Brown G.C.B. & officers of his staff (1855; Crimea)

Fruit and Flowers, (1860)

The Cloisters, Tintern Abbey, (1854)

 

Examples of Post-mortem Photography

 

By Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822-1865)

Clementina Maude (1862)

Clementina Maude (1863)

Photographic Study (1860s)

Isabella and Florence (1863)

 

By Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

Alice Liddell (1858)

The Cherry Group, Edith, Lorina, and Alice Liddell (1860)

Reginald Southey with skeletons (1857)

Xie Kitchen with parasol (1876)

It Won’t Come Smooth (1863)

Irene MacDonald (1863)

 

 

William Morris, part 2

Exterior of Morris & Co., Oxford Street, London

Interior, Morris & Co., from 1907

D.G. Rossetti’s cartoon, “The M’s at Ems,” 1869

Photograph of Morris and Burne-Jones families, 1874

William Morris and the Changing Victorian Interior

To see more, browse the V&A’s web sites on William Morris
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/w/william-morris/
and the Arts and Crafts Movement
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/a/arts-and-crafts/

 

“Typical” Victorian drawing room (before influence of Arts & Crafts design)

Arts & Crafts inspired drawing room, c. 1890 (at the Geffrye Museum)

Kelmscott Manor, Morris’s country home

Drawing room of Kelmscott Manor

Early Morris Chair, produced beginning in 1865

Typical Morris Chair seen in homes today

Sussex chairs, designed by Philip Webb, c.1860, made by Morris & Co., 1870-1890

Merton Abbey workshops — textile printing

Holy Grail series tapestry: The Arming and Departure of the Knights, designed by Morris & Co., c. 1890

The Kelmscott Chaucer, designed and printed at Morris’s Kelmscott Press

Stained glass at Church of St. Margaret, Lewknor — designed by Morris

Original design for “Tulip and Willow,” watercolor and pencil on paper; designed by Morris in 1873 and produced in 1883

“Willow Boughs” wallpaper, designed by Morris in 1887

“Strawberry Thief,” fabric made by Morris & Co., 1883

“Compton,” wallpaper made by Morris & Co., 1896