Discussion Post: The Greek Interpreter
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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Greek Interpreter and the chosen topic is Victorian Artists.
A few facts (unless otherwise stated, they’re taken from the excellent article on Wikipedia):
🖌 Painting in the early years of [Victoria’s] reign was dominated by the Royal Academy of Arts and by the theories of its first president, Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds and the academy were strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, and believed that it was the role of an artist to make the subject of their work appear as noble and idealised as possible.
🖌 In 1848 three young students at the Royal Academy art schools, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB). The PRB rejected the ideas of Joshua Reynolds, and had a philosophy based on working from nature as accurately as possible wherever possible, and when it was necessary to paint from imagination to strive to show the event as it most likely would have happened, not in the way that would appear most attractive or noble… By 1854 the PRB had collapsed as an organisation, but their style continued to dominate British painting.
🖌 ...despite impressions to the contrary, it was really not all that difficult for women to receive formal instruction in painting, usually in the form of private classes, or with small groups of other like-minded girls…. And from the 1850s on, women could receive a free art education at a government school of design...learning to design and decorate ceramics, textiles, and other household industrial products. [Art Now and Then blog]
🖌 In 1859 a petition by 38 female artists was circulated to all Royal Academicians requesting the opening of the Academy to women. Later that year Laura Herford submitted a qualifying drawing to the Academy signed simply "A. L. Herford"; when the Academy accepted it, the Academy accepted her as its first female student in 1860. The Slade School of Fine Art, founded in 1871, actively recruited female students.
🖌 After the 1860s, women were admitted to Royal Academy schools, but it wasn't until 1893 that they were permitted to sit in on classes drawing the nude male figure. The model [had] to wear bathing drawers, and a cloth… wound around the loins over the drawers, passed between the legs, and tucked in over the waistband… Though in Victorian England, there was little, if any, market for paintings depicting the male nude… regardless of the sex of the artist. [Art Now and Then blog]
🖌 The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 caused large numbers of French artists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro to relocate to London, bringing with them new styles of painting. ...a new generation of painters such as Frederic Leighton and James Abbott McNeill Whistler departed from the traditions of storytelling and moralising, painting works designed for aesthetic appeal rather than for their narrative or subject.
🖌 As the quality of life in Britain continued to deteriorate, many artists turned to painting scenes from the pre-industrial past, while many artists within the aesthetic movement, regardless of their own religious beliefs, painted religious art as it gave them a reason to paint idealised scenes and portraits and to ignore the ugliness and uncertainty of reality.
🖌 The opening of the Tate Gallery in 1897, opened to display sugar merchant Sir Henry Tate's collection of Victorian art, proved the last triumph of Victorian painting. In the 1910s, Victorian styles of art and literature fell dramatically out of fashion in Britain, and by 1915 the word "Victorian" had become a derogatory term.
Some useful resources:
Victorian painting On Wikipedia
Victorian Artists Index of links for Victorian Artists on The Victorian Web
Victorian Women and the Visual Arts Index of links on The Victorian Web
Victorian Painting Index of links on The Victorian Web
Victorian Index of links on the Tate website.
Victorian Female Artists On the Art Now and Then blog
Sex, opium and bizarre outfits: How Victorian artists invented celebrity On the Telegraph website
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts (unless otherwise stated, they’re taken from the excellent article on Wikipedia):
🖌 Painting in the early years of [Victoria’s] reign was dominated by the Royal Academy of Arts and by the theories of its first president, Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds and the academy were strongly influenced by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael, and believed that it was the role of an artist to make the subject of their work appear as noble and idealised as possible.
🖌 In 1848 three young students at the Royal Academy art schools, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB). The PRB rejected the ideas of Joshua Reynolds, and had a philosophy based on working from nature as accurately as possible wherever possible, and when it was necessary to paint from imagination to strive to show the event as it most likely would have happened, not in the way that would appear most attractive or noble… By 1854 the PRB had collapsed as an organisation, but their style continued to dominate British painting.
🖌 ...despite impressions to the contrary, it was really not all that difficult for women to receive formal instruction in painting, usually in the form of private classes, or with small groups of other like-minded girls…. And from the 1850s on, women could receive a free art education at a government school of design...learning to design and decorate ceramics, textiles, and other household industrial products. [Art Now and Then blog]
🖌 In 1859 a petition by 38 female artists was circulated to all Royal Academicians requesting the opening of the Academy to women. Later that year Laura Herford submitted a qualifying drawing to the Academy signed simply "A. L. Herford"; when the Academy accepted it, the Academy accepted her as its first female student in 1860. The Slade School of Fine Art, founded in 1871, actively recruited female students.
🖌 After the 1860s, women were admitted to Royal Academy schools, but it wasn't until 1893 that they were permitted to sit in on classes drawing the nude male figure. The model [had] to wear bathing drawers, and a cloth… wound around the loins over the drawers, passed between the legs, and tucked in over the waistband… Though in Victorian England, there was little, if any, market for paintings depicting the male nude… regardless of the sex of the artist. [Art Now and Then blog]
🖌 The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 caused large numbers of French artists such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro to relocate to London, bringing with them new styles of painting. ...a new generation of painters such as Frederic Leighton and James Abbott McNeill Whistler departed from the traditions of storytelling and moralising, painting works designed for aesthetic appeal rather than for their narrative or subject.
🖌 As the quality of life in Britain continued to deteriorate, many artists turned to painting scenes from the pre-industrial past, while many artists within the aesthetic movement, regardless of their own religious beliefs, painted religious art as it gave them a reason to paint idealised scenes and portraits and to ignore the ugliness and uncertainty of reality.
🖌 The opening of the Tate Gallery in 1897, opened to display sugar merchant Sir Henry Tate's collection of Victorian art, proved the last triumph of Victorian painting. In the 1910s, Victorian styles of art and literature fell dramatically out of fashion in Britain, and by 1915 the word "Victorian" had become a derogatory term.
Some useful resources:
Victorian painting On Wikipedia
Victorian Artists Index of links for Victorian Artists on The Victorian Web
Victorian Women and the Visual Arts Index of links on The Victorian Web
Victorian Painting Index of links on The Victorian Web
Victorian Index of links on the Tate website.
Victorian Female Artists On the Art Now and Then blog
Sex, opium and bizarre outfits: How Victorian artists invented celebrity On the Telegraph website
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
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