This highly informative book surveys the personalities and careers of Victorian artists in their social and intellectual context, revealing how they blended foreign influences with the rich native British tradition. The range of artistic production in the Victorian age included history painting ; topographical landscapes of the Continent and the Middle East ; Landseer's royal portraits and heroic animal pictures ; Pre-Raphaelite painting with its combination of naturalism and symbolism ; Leighton's luxurious classical mythologies, and Frith's hugely successful depictions of the leisured middle classes. Amidst this great variety of styles and emphasis, influential critics such as Ruskin dictated that art should be morally uplifting, an orthodoxy challenged by Whistler, Sickert, Steer and their fellows among the 'London Impressionists'. Such diversity typifies this endlessly fascinating period, whose immense popularity has persisted up to the present day. 'Treuherz has done an admirable job... very useful to students' (The Times Literary Supplement) 'The most important general survey on the subject' (The Tablet).
