Victorian paintings

The Victorian era was the period in Great Britain under the long-lived Queen Victoria who reigned from 1837 to 1901. The term is also used to describe later nineteenth century western society in general with its strong moral standards and sharply defined gender roles.

The advance in science and scholarship in the Victorian era and the impact of the publication of writings and engravings about ancient civilisations, in particular the archeaological discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum, gave an enormous stimulus to public interest in historical events, and ability to relate to them. This gave impetus to the historical-antiquarian painters as well as to the revival of neo-classicism. [1]

Victorian painters include Joseph Mallord William Turner, John William Waterhouse, George Frederick Watts, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, Lord Leighton, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, The Pre-Raphaelites artists included William Holman Hunt (founded the group in 1848), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais (1829-1896), and Edward Burne-Jones, E. J. Poynter, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema , Edwin Weeks, Albert Moore and William Stephen Coleman. The Victoria and Albert Museum (UK) is one of the best museums in the world for learning about the Victorians. Unfortunately, there is a lack of any significant collections of Victorian paintings in the United States.

Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema.

May by William Stephen Coleman

Ellen Terry (Choosing) by George Frederick Watts, ca. 1864.

Henry Courtney Selous, The Opening of the Great Exhibition by Queen Victoria on 1 May 1851.

Portrait of Frederic, Lord Leighton by George Frederick Watts.

Frederic, Lord Leighton, Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna, 1853-5.

See also

John Atkinson Grimshaw, Reflections on the Thames, Westminster, 1880.

• English Painting
• Historical Painting
• Still Life Painting

Sources

• The Earth and Its Peoples A Global History, Bulliet et al., 2005.
• Victorian Painting.

Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1851.

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