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Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
BOOKMen at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Tim Barringer
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23833
For artists of the increasingly mechanized Victorian age, questions about the meaning and value of labour presented a series of urgent problems: Is work a moral obligation or a religious duty? Must labour be the preserve of men alone? Does the amount of work bestowed on a painting affect its value? Should art celebrate wholesome rural work or reveal the degradations of the industrial workplace? In this highly original book, Tim Barringer considers how artists and theorists addressed these questions and what their solutions reveal about Victorian society and culture.

Based on extensive research, Men at Work offers a compelling study of the image as a means of exploring the relationship between labour and art in Victorian Britain. Barringer arrives at a major reinterpretation of the art and culture of nineteenth-century Britain and its empire as well as new readings of such key figures as Ford Madox Brown and John Ruskin.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Print publication date February 2005 (out of print)
Print ISBN 9780300103809
EISBN 9780300276183
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Illustrations 146
Print Status out of print
Publisher (out of print)
WorldCat
Google Books

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List of illustrations

  • The Transept
  • The Pound and the Shilling
  • Tite page of Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations
  • The Machinery Department of the Crystal Palace—Messrs. Hibbert and Platt, and Co.'s Cotton Machines
  • Emblem of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers'
  • Sheffield Hardware
  • The Woodman's Daughter
  • Work
  • Work, detail
  • Work, detail
  • Heath Street, Hampstead (Study For Work)
  • The Sinews of Old England
  • The Last of England
  • Scene of the September Days 1830 on the Grand Place, Brussels
  • Apollo Belvedere
  • Daedalus and Icarus
  • What Our Navvies Are Likely to Do
  • The Body of Harold Brought before William the Conqueror
  • Chaucer at the Court of Edward III
  • The Street Dog-Seller
  • The Groundsel Man
  • Street-Seller of Birds' Nests
  • Cartoon for the Navvy Holding His Emby Hod and Drinking Beer from a Tankard For Work
  • Beer Street
  • Waiting: An English Fireside of 1854–1855
  • Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter’s Shop)
  • The Light of the World
  • Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet
  • The Shadow of Death
  • East Parade Chapel, Leeds
  • Portrait of James Leathart
  • Amateur Navvies at Oxford—Undergraduates Making a Road as Suggested by Mr. Ruskin
  • Rev. F. D. Maurice and Thomas Carlyle, study for Work
  • Work, preparatory study
  • The Hayfield
  • Harvest Time—Painted on Holmbury Hill
  • The Harvesters
  • Agriculture
  • The Mowing of Corn with the Scythe
  • A Lincolnshire Gang
  • The Stonebreaker
  • Harvest
  • The Stonebreaker
  • Title page of Agriculture Ancient and Modern: A Historical Account of Its Principles and Practice Exemplified in Their Rise, Progress and Development
  • Thrashing Machine
  • The Wheat Field
  • The Valleys Stand Thick with Corn
  • Mowers in the Field in Porchester Terrace, Bayswater, June 9, 1830
  • Shepherd Boy Playing a Flute
  • Harvest Moon
  • Landscape Sketchbook, page 114, entry for Harvest Moon
  • Harvest Moon
  • A Finished Study for Reaping
  • Wheat
  • Reapers, Noonday Rest
  • The Keg
  • The Hireling Shepherd
  • Landscape Sketchbook, page 147, entry for Reapers: Noon
  • The Haymakers' Repast
  • The Last Load
  • Labour
  • The Forge
  • The Forge
  • The Forge, detail of the steel engraving plate
  • Portrait of James Crossland with His Wife and Child
  • James Sharples
  • James Sharples
  • James Sharples as an Old Man
  • An Iron Forge
  • The Well
  • Coalbrookdale by Night
  • In the Nineteenth Century the Northumbrians Show the World What Can be Done with Iron and Coal
  • The Foundry
  • Forging the Shaft
  • John Ferguson Weir and Mary French Weir in the studio at West Point
  • The Iron Rolling Mill (Modern Cyclops)
  • Man's Arm, drawing for The Forge
  • Emblem of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
  • Co-operative Emblem
  • Co-operative Emblem, detail
  • Sheffield from the Attercliffe Road
  • The Cyclops Works
  • Aerial View of the Cyclops Works
  • Power Loom Factory of Thomas Robinson, Esquire, Stockport
  • Steel Rolling Mills—Messrs C. Cammell and Co, Cyclops Works
  • Sheffield Scythe Tilters
  • Tilt Forge
  • A Tilt Forge
  • Sheffield Grinder
  • Interior of a Sheffield Grinder's Hull
  • Sputa of a Fork Grinder (Dry), Magnified 250 Diameters
  • Section of the Lung of a Razor Grinder
  • Scythe-Grinding
  • Saw-Grinding
  • The Steel Manufactures of Sheffield: The Hull, or Workshop, of the Razor-Grinder, with the Use of the Fan
  • Fireplace
  • Mechanics' Institute Frieze, details
  • Mechanics' Institute Frieze, section
  • Facade of the Lecture Theatre, South Kensington Museum
  • South Court, South Kensington Museum
  • The Arts of Industry as Applied to War, sketch
  • The Arts of Industry as Applied to War, study
  • Refreshment Room for the South Kensington Museum
  • Original design for the first cover of the Cornhill magazine
  • Design for a panel of the mosaic frieze on the main facade, South Kensington Museum
  • Designs for the South Kensington mosaic frieze
  • Interior of St. George’s Museum, Walkley, Sheffield
  • Bust of John Ruskin
  • View of Sheffield from Derbyshire Lane
  • India (no. 4)
  • Moving Machinery
  • The Mediaeval Court
  • Indian Loom
  • The East Indian Court—North Side—From a Photograph, by Claudet
  • Contrasted Towns
  • Capital of the First Arcade from the Doge's Palace, Venice
  • Oxford Museum: Design for a Window
  • The Oxford University Museum: View in the Court
  • Oxford University Museum—Carved Capitals and Corbel, from Lower Arcade
  • One of the O'Shea brothers at work on the Oxford Museum
  • Sari
  • In a Good Season
  • Arthur Crawford Markets, Bombay, W. Emerson Architect
  • Market Fountain, Bombay, W. Emerson Architect
  • Great Indian Peninsular Railway Terminus (Victoria Terminus), Bombay
  • Peacock window
  • Potter Setting His Wheel in Motion, Simlah, October 26, 1870
  • Potter Throwing a Pot on the Wheel, Simlah, October 26, 1870
  • The Lohar, or blacksmith, hammering, with an assistant working the bellows
  • Blacksmith's Forge and Bellows of Goatskin
  • Gold Embroidery, Delhi
  • A Wood Carver
  • Detail of Old Door, Lahore City
  • The Jeweller
  • Madras Muslin
  • William Morris giving a weaving demonstration
  • Colonial and Indian Exhibition, The Vestibule
  • The Opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition by the Queen—'Twixt East and West
  • Carpet-Weaving (Courtyard of Indian Palace)
  • Three men from Amritsar jail working at a carpet loom
  • Bakshiram
  • The Durbar Room
  • Mahatma Gandhi Demonstrating Cotton-Spinning on His Own Charka in Mirazpur
  • Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket
  • Gold and Brown: Self Portrait
  • The Master Smith of Lyme Regis
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Contents
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Contents
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23834
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Preface
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
To consider the origins of this book is to reveal those autobiographical elements which permeate all scholarship but which are, perhaps, best left unspoken. It is my Ruskinian fantasy that the germ of the book lies in visual experience rather than words or ideas. Unforgettable, on the eve of its extinction in the early 1980s, was the...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23835
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Introduction: An Aesthetic of Labour
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
UNDER THE MOTTO “The workers, of all types, stand forth as the really great...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Related print edition pages: pp.1-19
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23836
Chapter subject tags:Crystal Palace (Great Exhibition, 1851, London, England)Visual culture--History--19th centuryVictoria and Albert MuseumArt and industry--Great Britain--History--19th centuryLabor in art--Great Britain--History--19th centuryPainting, British--19th centuryPainting, Victorian--Great Britain

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I. Art, Religion, and Labour
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
A CHAOS OF BODIES, male and female, young and old, confronts the viewer of Ford Madox Brown’s great secular altarpiece, Work (fig. 8), just as the language of the body permeates the sonnet published to accompany its first exhibition. The setting is the elegant suburban prospect of The Mount,...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Related print edition pages: pp.21-81
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23837
Chapter subject tags:Painting, Victorian--Great BritainBrown, Ford Madox, 1821-1893Pre-RaphaelitesLabor in art--Great Britain--History--19th centuryVisual culture--History--19th centuryPainting, British--19th century

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II. The Harvest Field in the Railway Age
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
JUST AS FORD MADOX BROWN was pressing ahead with Work in the...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Related print edition pages: pp.83-131
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23838
Chapter subject tags:Painting, Victorian--Great BritainPre-RaphaelitesLinnell, John, 1792-1882Labor in art--Great Britain--History--19th centuryPainting, British--19th century

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III. Blacksmith and Artist
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1859, saw the Athenaeum review an image that lays bare the workings of the industrial scene with a directness of utterance unequalled in Victorian visual culture...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Related print edition pages: pp.133-185
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23839
Chapter subject tags:Painting, Victorian--Great BritainSharples, James, 1825-1893Art and industry--Great Britain--History--19th centuryLabor in art--Great Britain--History--19th centuryVisual culture--History--19th centuryPainting, British--19th century

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IV. Art and Industry
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
IN THIS CHAPTER I examine the iconography of labour in relation to the geography of improvement. My central subject is the varied oeuvre of the artist and designer Godfrey Sykes, in which the image of men at work forms a unifying motif. In varied...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Related print edition pages: pp.187-241
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23840
Chapter subject tags:Sykes, Godfrey, 1825-1866Painting, Victorian--Great BritainVictoria and Albert MuseumArt and industry--Great Britain--History--19th centuryPollution in art--19th centuryLabor in art--Great Britain--History--19th centuryPainting, British--19th century

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V. Colonial Gothic
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
TO OPEN THIS FINAL CHAPTER, we return to the scenes with which the book began, the crowded floors beneath the vast, prefabricated iron and glass roof of Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Related print edition pages: pp.243-311
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23841
Chapter subject tags:Painting, Victorian--Great BritainCrystal Palace (Great Exhibition, 1851, London, England)Pugin, Augustus, 1762-1832Gothic revival (Architecture)--Great BritainColonial and Indian Exhibition (1886 : London, England)Ruskin, John, 1819-1900Painting, British--19th century

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Conclusion: Aestheticism and Labour
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
LEAST UNDERSTOOD, but most famous, among Ruskin’s pronouncements must surely be this: “I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence...
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Related print edition pages: pp.313-321
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23842
Chapter subject tags:Painting, Victorian--Great BritainRuskin, John, 1819-1900Art for art's sake (Movement)Grosvenor Gallery (London, England : 1877-1890)Whistler, James McNeill, 1834-1903Painting, British--19th century

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Index
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Index
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23843
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Photo Credits
Tim Barringer
Description: Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
Photo Credits
Author
Tim Barringer
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2005 by Tim Barringer
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23844
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Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain
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