Full Description
Contrary to the monochrome vision of Queen Victoria's mourning dresses and the coal-polluted streets of Charles Dickens' London, Victorian Britain was, in fact, a period of new and vivid colours. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the Victorians' perception of colour and, over the course of the second half of the 19th century, it became the key signifier of modern life. Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design charts the Victorians' new attitudes to colour through a multi-disciplinary exploration of culture, technology, art and literature. The catalogue explores key 'chromatic' moments that inspired Victorian artists and writers to think anew about the materiality of colour. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, these figures learned from the sacred colours of the past, the sumptuous colours of the Middle East and Japan and looked forward towards the decadent colours that defined the end of the century.
Contents
Foreword 7
Acknowledgements 9
Preface 11
Elizabeth Prettejohn
1. glowing colour
'The Age of Colour': Victorian Britain (1837-1901) 17
Matthew Winterbottom and Charlotte Ribeyrol
Colour in Ruskin's Teachings 31
Colin Harrison
Turner's Paintings of Venice 37
Colin Harrison
'The Gothic school of colour': Reviving the Hues of the Middle Ages 43
Charlotte Ribeyrol
Unweaving the Rainbow: Nature's Colours in Art, 59
Fashion and Design
Madeline Hewitson
Pretty Plant Photographers or Pioneers? Anna Atkins and 71
Sarah Angelina Acland
Lena Fritsch
Object in Focus: Harry Emanuel, 'Hummingbird Necklace' (1865) 78
Madeline Hewitson
2. colour for all
'The Triumph of Colour': the Synthetic Colour Revolution 87
Matthew Winterbottom
'More brilliant tints than fancy could conceive' - Exhibiting 103
Colour: The 1862 International Exhibition
Matthew Winterbottom
Object in Focus: The Great Bookcase: Between Medieval and 116
Victorian Colour
Tea Ghigo
Surface Matters: Skin Colour, Race and Materiality 123
Madeline Hewitson
'Wedding archaeology with art': the Rediscovery of 131
Ancient Polychromy
Charlotte Ribeyrol
Journeys for Colour: Artist-Travellers and British Orientalism 143
Madeline Hewitson
Object in Focus: Owen Jones, The History of Joseph and His 156
Brethren (1865)
Madeline Hewitson
'The gorgeous contributions of India': Sourcing Colour 163
in the British Empire
Matthew Winterbottom and Madeline Hewitson
3. colour for colour's sake
Colour for Colour's Sake 173
Stefano Evangelista and Charlotte Ribeyrol
Object in Focus: James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and 192
Gold, St Mark's Venice (1880)
Madeline Hewitson
Queer Colours 197
Stefano Evangelista
Object in Focus: Fin-de-siècle Tanagras 204
Charlotte Ribeyrol
Object in Focus: Japanese Board Game 212
Clare Pollard
The Electric Fairy: Loïe Fuller (1862-1928) 217
Matthew Winterbottom
Object List 222
Notes 228
Bibliography 232
Image Credits 238
