Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> The reign of Queen Victoria witnessed a spectacular rise in the visibility wealth and prestige of English artists and designers. Leading this resurgence was a group of artists who established their studios in and around the new fashionable district of London’s Holland Park. This book – the first major study of the Holland Park Circle of artists architects and their patrons is both an engrossing narrative of their lives works and influence and a perceptive analysis of the subtle relationships between high Victorian taste and mercantile values. The circle was formed around G.F. Watts who lived at Little Holland House; the handsome and accomplished Frederic Leighton whose home Leighton House is today open to the public; and their friend Valentine Prinsep. The artists who followed included Luke Fildes Hamo Thornycroft William Burges Marcus Stone and Holman Hunt. Their distinctive red brick studio-houses designed by prominent architects of the era with exotic interiors characterised by delicately painted friezes gesso-work and sumptuous collections of paintings came to influence the external and internal appearance of London’s buildings. At a time when art in England in the words of Henry James had become ‘a great fashion’ Caroline Dakers also describes how the artists posed ‘at home’ for society photographs and how their ‘Show Sundays’ when the public was invited into the studios became part of the London Season. Illustrated throughout. (MP)