Richard Doyle’s strange Moonlit Landscape with an Apparition typifies the fantasy subjects so enjoyed by the Victorians. The world of medieval legend and literature exerted an even stronger pull on the Victorian imagination. Daniel Maclise’s superb pen and ink drawing depicts a scene from Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, a cycle of poems set in the time of King Arthur. It depicts Enid kissing her husband Geraint as they prepare to ride away from the scene of the Welsh knight’s victory over a wicked adversary.
Fuelled by the public demand for illustrated books and new popular magazines, many of the major Victorian artists, particularly the Pre-Raphaelite painters, tried their hand at illustration. John Everett Millais’s jewel-like The Parting of Ulysses depicts a scene from Homer’s Odyssey and shows the sorceress Circe waving farewell to the Greek hero Ulysses. This is a copy by Millais of his own wood-engraved illustration from 1862 and appears to have been made in order to meet the art market’s demand for fine small-scale watercolours. Servant Carrying Slippers (fig. 9) is one of two small works in the exhibition drawn by the young Aubrey Beardsley in the early 1890s as illustrations for Bons Mots, a series of pocket-size books of the sayings of English wits. Beardsley wrote of these delightful and irreverent inventions: ‘The subjects were quite mad and a little indecent … a new world of my own creation.’
The exhibition concludes with Charles Conder’s Les Incroyables (The Incredibles). Painted on silk, this fine example of the Aesthetic style of the 1890s shows a ballroom with figures dressed in the decadent costume of Paris’s gilded youth in the years after the French Revolution. Conder had been part of the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s circle in Paris and this highly accomplished and previously unexhibited work typifies an exhibition which is full of surprises and unexpected pleasures.
Life, Legend, Landscape: Victorian Drawings and Watercolours by Courtauld Gallery is the first exhibition to be organised as part of The Courtauld’s IMAF Centre for the Study and Conservation of Drawings, to promote research and conservation of their collection of over 7,000 drawings and watercolours. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition has been developed by The Courtauld Gallery in collaboration with the University of Bristol. the exhibit ends May 15, 2011.
Leaflet to print: Drawing on the Past:Victorian Innovation and Tradition in Life, Legend and Landscape; Victorian Drawings and Watercolours
Images:
1. Partial painting view of Frederick Walker's (1840-1875), The Old Farm Garden, 1871. Watercolour and gouache over graphite on paper, 273 x 405 mm, (c) The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London
2. William Henry Hunt (1790-1864), Chaffinch Nest and May Blossom, c.1845. Watercolour on paper, 241 x 375 mm, (c) The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London
3. John Everett Millais (1829-1896), The Parting of Ulysses, c.1862. Watercolour and gouache on paper 118 x 103 mm, (c) The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- The Beige Book Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions By Federal Reserve District Wednesday November 30, 2022
- A la Frank Sinatra: "Come Fly With Me", U.S. Department of Transportation Airline Customer Service Dashboard
- Adrienne G. Cannon Writes: Those Lonely Days
- From the CDC: When You've Been Fully Vaccinated You Can ........For the 30,000,000 Who Have Been Vaccinated
- Jill Norgren Reviews a New Inspector Gamache Mystery: All the Devils Are Here
- And Now For Something Completely Different: Daddy Long-Legs — A Weird and Wonderful Railway
- FactCheck Post: The Facts on Trump’s Travel Restrictions: "We Don't Have a Travel Ban; We Have a Travel Band-Aid Right Now"
- Heard of the Novel Corona Virus Before? The New England Journal of Medicine's Free Reading Lists and the W.H.O.'s Statement
- Horse, Horse, Tiger, Tiger; It's the Tone of the Character That Makes the Word
- Although the Summer Travel Season is Drawing to a Close, A Worldwide Caution is Still in Effect From the State Department; Hong Kong Update