Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Plates bright and vivid.. Softcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> This exhibition of paintings drawings and sculpture by George Frederic Watts Freeders Leighton Albert Moore and Alfred Gilbert is an attempt to illustrate and explore the “classical movement in later Victorian English art. It is however not a survey of that ins portant development; rather we have chosen to focus attention un four major artists who had great reputations in their lifetimes but who have been relatively out of fashion or forgotten for most of this century. Although Watts and Moore have recently been the subjects of exhibitions in London and Newcastle there has not been an exhibition of Leighton’s works since 1897 nor of Gilbert’s since 1936; in the United States Watts is the only one of the four artists ever to have been the focus of an exhibition: a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1884. Now as scholars and collectors begin once again to acknowledge this period in art history and as numerous artists in England and the United States express a renewed interest in rendering the human figure on a monumental scale the time appears to be appropriate for a reassessment of the works of these four artists all of whom turned to the figurative art of ancient Greece and Rome and of Renaissance Italy for inspiration. We should like to express our deep appreciation to all those who have so generously agreed to lend to the exhibition. Long neglected Victorian paintings often present conserva tion problems which create intense difficulties for a lender. Almost all of the requests for loans were granted however and for that we are indeed grateful to the private collectors museum directors and curators who have made some of their most important works available The exhibition was initiated and assembled by Gregory Hedberg Curator of Paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The suggestion that the exhibition be devoted to these four artists came from Allen Staley Professor of Art History at Columbia University. Professor Staley; Richard Dorment former Assistant Curator of European Paintings at the Phila delphia Museum of Art Leonce Ormond Lecturer in the Department of English King’s College University of London: Richard Ormond Deputy Keeper National Portrait Gallery London; and Gregory Hedberg then determined the specific works to be included. It is to these same five individuals that we owe our thanks for the catalogue accompanying the exhibition. (SP)