With the rise of museums in the 19th century, including the formation in 1824 of the National Gallery in London, as well as the proliferation of widely available published reproductions, the art of the past became visible and accessible in Victorian England as never before. Inspired by the work of Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Diego Velazquez, and others, British artists elevated contemporary art to new heights through a creative process that emphasized...

In the Victorian era, England - swept along by the Industrial Revolution, the Pre-Raphaelite fold, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts movement - aspired to return to traditional values. Wishing to resurrect the pure and noble forms of the Italian Renaissance, a group of painters including John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones, favoured Realism and Biblical themes. This work, with its informed text and rich illustrations,...

"Following his 'obsessive, intricate, intimate, and brilliant' (Washington Post) work in Posthumous Keats and The Immortal Evening, renowned poet Stanley Plumly further explores immortality in art through the work of two impressive landscape artists: John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. How is it that this disparate pair will come to be regarded as Britain's supreme landscape painters, precursors to Impressionism and Modernism? How did each painter's...

Exploring the development, variety, and innovation of the landscape oil sketch, this book is generously illustrated with many masterpieces of 19th-century British landscape painting.

The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s has never before been told before as a single narrative. R. B. Kitaj's proposal, made in 1976, that there was a 'substantial School of London' was essentially correct but it caused confusion because it implied that there was a movement or stylistic group at work, when in reality no one style could cover the likes of Francis Bacon and also Bridget Riley.

"Explores the range, power, and beauty of Shakespearean art, from the great illustrated editions of the 18th and 19th centuries to the impact of the romantic movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, art nouveau, modern art, and animated film"--Dust jacket flap.