Save
Save chapter to my Bookmarks
Cite
Cite this book
Share
Share a link to this chapter
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
BOOKArt for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31923
In the London circles of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Frederic Leighton, the notion of “art for art's sake” became a shared concern: if art is not created for the sake of preaching a moral lesson, or supporting a political cause, or making a fortune, or any other objective, what might art be? Art historian Elizabeth Prettejohn traces the emergence of the debates over this issue in the 1860s and 1870s, focusing especially on the Rossetti, Whistler, Leighton, and other protagonists of the Aesthetic Movement and their paintings—some of the most haunting and memorable images in modern art. The English painters' search for the formula to best express the idea of “art for art's sake” was a unified and powerful artistic undertaking, Prettejohn demonstrates, and the Aesthetic Movement made important contributions to the history of modern art.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Print publication date May 2007 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300135497
EISBN 9780300278590
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Illustrations 128
Print Status in print
Publisher (in print)
WorldCat
Google Books

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access

List of illustrations

  • Autumn Leaves
  • The Blue Closet
  • Four Musical Angels, fragment
  • The Awakening Conscience
  • Bocca Baciata (Lips That Have Been Kissed)
  • The Source
  • Study (Young Male Nude Seated beside the Sea)
  • The Wife of Pygmalion
  • Azaleas
  • Medea
  • The White Symphony: Three Girls
  • Variations in Blue and Green
  • Symphony in White and Red
  • Lady Lilith
  • Sibylla Palmifera
  • Amoris Sacramentum
  • A Prelude by Bach
  • A Saint of the Eastern Church (formerly called A Greek Acolyte)
  • Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun, 118–122 AD
  • The Mystery of Faith
  • Love in Autumn
  • Carrying the Scrolls of the Law
  • Golden Hours
  • Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene
  • The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love
  • The Bride, Bridegroom and the Friend of the Bridegroom
  • Dawn
  • Bacchus
  • Bacchus
  • Testa di giobanotto coronato d'alloro
  • Saint Jean Baptiste
  • Saint Jean Baptiste
  • Antinous relief
  • Bacchus
  • The Winged and Poppied Sleep
  • Dreamers
  • Yellow Marguerites
  • Nude Figure Study for Birds of the Air
  • Elijah's Sacrifice
  • The Shulamite
  • Apricots
  • Pomegranates
  • A Musician
  • Spanish Dancing Girl: Cadiz in the Old Times
  • Symphony in White, No. III
  • Study for Helios and Rhodos
  • Study for A Venus
  • Crouching Figure. Study for The White Symphony: Three Girls
  • Venus
  • Symphony in Blue and Pink
  • Seagulls
  • Greek Girls Picking up Pebbles by the Sea
  • A Venus
  • A Quartet; A Painter's Tribute to the Arts of Music, A.D. 1868
  • Reading Aloud
  • Venus de Milo
  • Study for Mr. Frederic Leighton, A.R.A.
  • The Triumph of Music
  • Lieder Ohne Worte
  • A Girl with a Basket of Fruit
  • Venus Disrobing for the Bath
  • Jonathan's Token to David
  • St. Jerome
  • Elijah in the Wilderness
  • Helen of Troy
  • The Bath of Psyche
  • Summer Moon
  • Danaë
  • Flaming June
  • Psamanthe
  • Daedalus and Icarus
  • The Daphnephoria
  • Clytie
  • Clytie
  • Helios and Rhodos
  • Thomas
  • Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl
  • The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables
  • Pierrot
  • The Little White Girl (No. 2)
  • Variations in Flesh Colour and Green - The Balcony
  • Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea
  • Variations in Violet and Green
  • Eternity
  • Nocturne in Blue and Silver
  • Nocturne in Blue and Silver
  • Nocturne: The River at Battersea
  • Nocturne in Blue and Silver - Cremorne Lights
  • Nocturne
  • Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Southampton Water
  • Nocturne in Blue and Silver: The Lagoon, Venice
  • The Little White Girl (No. 2)
  • Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge
  • Nocturne in Grey and Gold: Chelsea Snow
  • Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother
  • The Blessed Damozel
  • The Blessed Damozel
  • La Damoiselle élue
  • The Salutation of Beatrice
  • The Blue Bower
  • Olympia
  • The Beloved (The Bride)
  • Woman at her Toilet
  • Aurelia (Fazio’s Mistress)
  • Astarte Syriaca
  • Silence
  • Proserpine
  • Ideal Head of a Woman
  • Portrait of a Lady known as Smeralda Bandinelli
  • La Donna della Finestra
  • The Artist Attempting to Join the World of Art with Disastrous Results
  • The Artist Attempting to Join the World of Art with Disastrous Results
  • The Artist Attempting to Join the World of Art with Disastrous Results
  • The Artist Attempting to Join the World of Art with Disastrous Results
  • The Artist Attempting to Join the World of Art with Disastrous Results
  • Phyllis and Demophoon
  • The Beguiling of Merlin
  • The Days of Creation, in its original frame
  • The Fifth Day
  • Saint George
  • The Mill: Girls Dancing to Music by a River
  • The Wheel of Fortune
  • Pygmalion and the Image: The Hand Refrains
  • The Wedding of Psyche
  • The Golden Stairs
  • King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
  • Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket
  • Venus' Mirror
Free
Contents
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Contents
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31924
Read
Free
Acknowledgements
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
This book has been in progress for more than a decade – so long that I cannot hope to record all of its debts; I thank the innumerable friends and colleagues who have influenced my thinking over many years. In its earliest stages the research benefited from the encouragement and advice of John House, from the support of Nicholas Prettejohn, and from numerous...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31925
Read
Free
Abbreviations and Conventions
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Abbreviations and Conventions
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31926
Read
Introduction
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Many attempts have been made to identify an artistic movement that would...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.1-9
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31927
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Painting, British--19th centuryPainting, Victorian--Great BritainBritish literature--19th centuryArt for art's sake (Movement)

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 1: Two Early Aesthetic Pictures
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
According to the usual procedures for the periodization of artistic movements, Aestheticism should follow...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.11-35
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31928
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Pre-RaphaelitesPainting, British--19th centuryPainting, Victorian--Great BritainArt for art's sake (Movement)Millais, John Everett, 1829-1896Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882Art criticism--England--19th centuryMorris, William, 1834-1896Colvin, Sidney, 1845-1927Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) in art

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 2: Algernon Charles Swinburne
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Among Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads of 1866 are extravagant fantasies of lesbian love, necrophilia, revolutionary politics, blasphemous neo-paganism and the strange beauty of the...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.37-69
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31929
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 1837-1909Painting, British--19th centuryPainting, Victorian--Great BritainArt for art's sake (Movement)Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867Blake, William, 1757-1827Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882Feminine beauty (Aesthetics) in artArt criticism--England--19th centuryWhistler, James McNeill, 1834-1903

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 3: Simeon Solomon
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
In 1876 Walter Pater made one of his exceedingly rare references to a work of contemporary art when he alluded briefly, in an essay on the myth of Dionysus, to ‘a Bacchus by a young Hebrew painter’ (fig. 33 or 34).Walter H. Pater, ‘A Study of Dionysus’, Fortnightly Review n.s. 20...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.71-99
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31930
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Solomon, Simeon, 1840-1905Pre-RaphaelitesArt for art's sake (Movement)Pater, Walter, 1839-1894Painting, British--19th centuryPainting, Victorian--Great BritainQueer culture--Great Britain--19th centuryRossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 1837-1909Art criticism--England--19th centuryLeighton of Stretton, Frederic Leighton, Baron, 1830-1896

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 4: Albert Moore
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
In a hasty glance, we might glimpse four figures rhythmically arrayed across the surface of Albert Moore’s Dreamers of 1882 (fig. 42). Closer inspection reveals that the area of brown pigment on the right, curved...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.101-127
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31931
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Moore, Albert Joseph, 1841-1893Painting, British--19th centuryArt for art's sake (Movement)Painting, Victorian--Great BritainFeminine beauty (Aesthetics) in artColvin, Sidney, 1845-1927Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain)Pre-RaphaelitesLeighton of Stretton, Frederic Leighton, Baron, 1830-1896Whistler, James McNeill, 1834-1903

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 5: The Classicism of Frederic Leighton
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
In a letter of 1852 to his mother, Frederic Leighton made a brief reference to the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.129-161
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31932
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Leighton of Stretton, Frederic Leighton, Baron, 1830-1896Pre-RaphaelitesArt for art's sake (Movement)Painting, British--19th centuryPainting, Victorian--Great BritainRoyal Academy of Arts (Great Britain)Art criticism--England--19th century

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 6: James McNeill Whistler
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
For his contemporaries as for recent scholars, the primary fact about Whistler is his singularity. It may be said that he and his critics, in a strange collusion born of antipathy and adulation in equal measure, have made of Whistler himself an object of aesthetic judgement...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.163-199
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31933
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Whistler, James McNeill, 1834-1903Art for art's sake (Movement)Painting, American--19th centuryRuskin, John, 1819-1900Painting, British--19th century

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 7: Rossetti and the Fleshly School
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Rossetti’s most obvious distinction – that he was both a painter and a poet – also proves to be the most persistent critical problem in discussion of his work in either medium. At an extreme it becomes a gauge of his failure in both: he is too ‘literary’ a painter, or too ‘pictorial’ a poet; or his attempt to unite the two arts only hastens their division in...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.201-231
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31934
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882Pre-RaphaelitesArt for art's sake (Movement)Painting, British--19th centuryPainting, Victorian--Great BritainMorris, William, 1834-1896Morris, Jane, 1839-1914

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 8: Edward Burne-Jones
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Since the 1960s, we have tended to see Burne-Jones’s paintings as if they were illustrations to J. R. R. Tolkien: nostalgic evocations of a Middle Earth that never was, a ‘dreamworld’ or...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.233-253
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31935
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Burne-Jones, Edward Coley, 1833-1898Pre-RaphaelitesPainting, Victorian--Great BritainArt for art's sake (Movement)Morris, William, 1834-1896

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Chapter 9: Walter Pater
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Several recent scholars have...
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Related print edition pages: pp.255-281
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31936
Chapter subject tags:Aesthetic movement (Art)Pater, Walter, 1839-1894Art for art's sake (Movement)Art criticism--England--19th centuryPainting, British--19th centuryWinckelmann, Johann Joachim, 1717-1768Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831Morris, William, 1834-1896Pre-Raphaelites

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

Get access
Free
Selected Bibliography
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Selected Bibliography
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31937
Read
Free
Index
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Description: Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Index
Author
Elizabeth Prettejohn
PublisherPaul Mellon Centre
Copyright© 2007 by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31938
Read
Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting
Next chapter