Annals Of The Fine Arts

Focusing on an era that both inherited and irretrievably altered the form and the content of earlier art production, The Art-Journal and Fine Art Publishing in Victorian England, 1850-1880 argues that fine art practices and the audiences and markets for them were influenced by the media culture of art publishing and journalism in substantial and formative ways, perhaps more than at any other time in the history of English art. The study centers on forms of Victorian picture-making and the art knowledge systems defining them, and draws on the histories of art, literature, journalism, and publishing. The historical example employed in the book is that of the more than 800 steel-plate prints after paintings published in the London-based Art-Journal between 1850 and 1880. The cultural phenomenon of the Art Journal print is shown to be a key connector in mid-Victorian art appreciation by drawing out specific tropes of likeness. This study also examines the important links between paint and print; the aesthetic values and domestic aspirations of the Victorian middle class; and the inextricable intertwining of fine art and 'trade' publishing.

Although Coleridge's thinking and writing about the fine arts was both considerable and interesting, this has not been the subject of a book before. Coleridge owed his initiation into art to Sir George Beaumont. In 1803-4 he had frequent opportunities to learn from Beaumont, to study Beaumont's small but elegant collection and to visit private collections. Before leaving for Malta in April 1804, Coleridge wrote 'I have learnt as much fr[om] Sir George Beaumont respecting Pictures & Painting and Paint[ers as] I ever learnt on any subject from any man in the same Space of Time.' In Italy in 1806, Coleridge's experience of art deepened, thanks to the American artist Washington Allston, who taught him to see the artistic sights of Rome with a painter's eye. Coleridge also visited Florence and Pisa, and later said of the frescoes in Pisa's Camp Santo: 'The impression was greater, I may say, than that any poem ever made upon me.' Back in England, Coleridge visited London exhibitions, country house collections, and even artists' studios. In 1814, both Coleridge and Allston were in Bristol - Coleridge lecturing, Allston exhibiting. Coleridge's 'On the Principles of Genial Criticism' began as a defense of Allston's paintings but became a statement about all the arts. This book, an important contribution to Coleridge's intellectual biography, will make readers aware of a dimension of his thinking that has been largely ignored until now.