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| Aestheticism Art and The Cult of Beauty |
1860s-1890s
Aestheticism art and the new 'Cult of Beauty' in the 1860s assembled, romantic bohemians like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, maverick figures such as James McNeill Whistler, and from Paris the 'Olympians' - the painters of grand classical subjects who belonged to the circle of Frederic Leighton and G.F.Watts.
Rossetti and friends realized their imaginative world in the creation of 'artistic' furniture and the decoration. At this time, the public was fascinated by the artists' houses and extravagant lifestyles which led to a revolution in the architecture and interior decoration. The need for beauty in everyday life was not a hard thing to recognize.
It was aestheticism art or the cult of beauty.
Collaborative works of James McNeill Whistler and the architect E.W.Godwin showed the mutual influence between the artist and Designer. Godwin designed the painter's studio, The White House,and innovative furniture. Characterized by elegance and eccentricity, Whistler and Godwin's work had similarities between ancient Greek art, the Japanese prints and early arrivals artifacts from Europe.
During this Aestheticism leading Aesthetic artists, Whistler, Leighton, Watts, Albert Moore and Burne-Jones advanced a new kind of painting with the presence of all mood, colour harmony and beauty of form. Subject played no part. The opening of the Grosvenor Gallery gave the Aesthetic painters a fashionable showcase for their art.
The immense success of the Grosvenor Gallery flagged the evolution of a new artistic upper-class whose distinction offered an fantastic challenge to the Royal Academy. Aesthetic painting became an enthusiasm for the wealthy and intellectual. Also the rise of Aestheticism in painting was equal to the interest in the decoration of houses artistically.
Popularity of Aestheticism art and Cult of beauty, attracted many leading firms making furniture, ceramics, metalwork and textiles curated artists such as Walter Crane and Christopher Dresser. With a period of fantastic development of domestic markets, the styles advantaged by Aesthetic designers were the first to be taken advantage through commercial activity.
The first celebrity style-master Oscar Wilde, invented an dazzling attitude of 'poetic intensity', but made his name advertise the idea of 'The House Beautiful'. By the 1880s Britain was in the arm of the 'greenery-yallery' Aesthetic Craze, lovingly satirist by Gilbert and Sullivan in their famous comic opera Patience and by the comic artist George Du Maurier in the pages of Punch.
In the last decade of Queen Victoria's monarchy the Aestheticism Movement entered it's end, appealing depraved chapter, made up by the amazing colorless drawings of Aubrey Beardsley in The Yellow Book.
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