Muscles, morals, and mongrels help to illustrate the stratification of social class in Victorian England.
Victorian
In The Scapegoat, Hunt created one of the most unusual paintings of the Victorian period.
William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat
Victorian art is often dismissed as overly sentimental and nowhere is this more apparent than in Bubbles.
John Everett Millais, Bubbles
The Shadow of Death is an inspired representation of a youthful Christ who cannot escape his destiny.
William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death
Discover the radical politics of interior design in the Arts & Crafts movement.
William Morris, useful beauty in the home
Although today Atkins’s prints are sold and viewed as art, they were originally made as botanical illustrations.
Anna Atkins and the cyanotype process
Everyone wanted to have a look at the cast of characters Frith created—their variety provides the modern viewer with a fascinating glimpse into Victorian life.
William Powell Frith, Derby Day
The Lady of Shalott is a powerful example of later Pre-Raphaelitism.
William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott
This controversial new movement claimed that art could be divorced from moral or narrative content.
The Aesthetic Movement
In this tragic painting, Rossetti draws a comparison between himself and the medieval poet who shared his name.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix
Visually and politically radical, Work provides a visualization of the English social classes.
Curator’s choice – Ford Madox Brown’s Work
Made when he was nineteen, this painting by Millais was a pictorial manifesto for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Curator’s choice – Millais’s Isabella
Unsettled by industrialization and the ugliness of the modern world, Victorians looked back to the Gothic style.
Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Palace of ...
Fossiliferous stone, many-colored mosaics, and banded bricks: meaning is in the material in this Victorian church.
William Butterfield, All Saints, Margaret Street, London
An epic showdown between man’s moralizing musculature and serpentine sin.
Sir Frederic Leighton, An Athlete Wrestling with ...
Inspired by a campaign to raise the age of consent, Watts harked back to the Athenian version of the Hunger Games.
George Frederic Watts, The Minotaur
This master of texture was wildly popular in the nineteenth century. Why was he forgotten during the twentieth?
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Listening to Homer
Removing nearly all references to myth, Leighton focuses on the beauty of the nude and harmonious colors.
Sir Frederic Leighton, Bath of Psyche
Morris and his friends designed and crafted every inch of his house, including the wallpaper and furniture.
William Morris and Philip Webb, Red House
Cursed by a spell that will kill her if she leaves her castle, this romantic redhead takes a fatal boat ride.
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