Victorian art criticism and the woman writer / John Paul M. Kanwit.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kanwit, John Paul M., 1972-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art criticism--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Art criticism.

Women art critics--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Women art critics.

English literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--Women authors.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xii, 180 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [2013]

Summary:

Victorian Art Criticism and the Woman Writer by John Paul M. Kanwit examines the development of specialized art commentary in a period when art education became a national concern in Britain. The explosion of Victorian visual culture-evident in the rapid expansion of galleries and museums, the technological innovations of which photography is only the most famous, the public debates over household design, and the high profile granted to such developments as the Aesthetic Movement-provided art critics unprecedented social power. Scholarship to date, however, has often been restricted to a narrow collection of male writers on art: John Ruskin, Walter Pater, William Morris, and Oscar Wilde. By including then-influential but now lesser-known critics such as Anna Jameson, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Emilia Dilke, and by focusing on critical debates rather than celebrated figures, Victorian Art Criticism and the Woman Writer refines our conception of when and how art criticism became a professional discipline in Britain. Jameson and Eastlake began to professionalize art criticism well before the 1860s, that is, before the date commonly ascribed to the professionalization of the discipline. Moreover, in concentrating on historical facts rather than legends about art, these women critics represent an alternative approach that developed the modern conception of art history. In a parallel development, the novelists under consideration- George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Anne Bronte, and Elizabeth Gas-kell-read a wide range of Victorian art critics and used their lessons in key moments of spectatorship. This more inclusive view of Victorian art criticism provides key insights into Victorian literary and aesthetic culture. The women critics discussed in this book helped to fashion art criticism as itself a literary genre, something almost wholly ascribed to famous male critics. Book jacket.

Contents:

Encouraging visual literacy : early-Victorian state sponsorship of the arts and the growing need for expert art commentary

"Mere outward appearances"? Teaching household taste and social perception in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and south and contemporary art commentary

"My name is the right one" : Lady Elizabeth (Rigby) Eastlake and the story of professional art criticism

"I have often wished in vain for another's judgment" : modeling ideal aesthetic commentary in Anne Brontë's The tenant of Wildfell Hall

A new kind of elitism? Art criticism and mid-Victorian exhibitions

Interpreting Cleopatra : aesthetic guidance in Charlotte Brontë's Villette and George Eliot's Middlemarch

Sensational sentiments : impressionism and the protection of difficulty in late-Victorian art criticism

Conclusion : "An astonishingly tasteless idea"? Artistic value after September 11.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-172) and index.

ISBN:

9780814212189

0814212182

9780814293195

0814293190

OCLC:

816029614