The Middle Class and Victorian Art
Krishna Jain
ARTH 205 TR 9
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Professor Rebecca Trittel
2
When Queen Victoria was ten years old, and learned that she would some day be
queen, she is reported to have said “I will be good.” As queen, she portrayed herself to
the public with the morals and virtues of her time during her rule from 1837 to 1901:
middle class values that emphasized dignity and family values.1 Given the social and
economic climate of Britain during the Victorian era, the middle class mentality reigned
supreme, and was the prevailing influence (both direct and reactionary) on the art of
Victorian Britain.
The structure of the middle class had undergone major changes due to the recent
advent of the Industrial Revolution. The economic pyramid that previously consisted of a
large base of powerless peasants, a middle class in the center, and a small, powerful
aristocracy now included a large number of industrial laborers joining the peasants, and
wealthy industrialists competing with the aristocracy. The huge gap between the rich and
the poor was the subject of several artistic and literary works of the time.2
Mass
production made luxury items more affordable. It also allowed merchants to sell their
goods both locally and nationally and the middle class grew. They became the primary
consumers of art, and artists painted subjects that matched their tastes in order to make a
living.
With respect to art, the middle class enjoyed genre (scenes depicting the usual and
familiar) and narrative or anecdotal themes. This interest in the narrative was not new.
Britain had a rich literary history, continued by contemporary writers such as Walter
Scott, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot.3 Fairy paintings and animal
paintings were popular as well. Most of the fairy paintings from the early Victorian
1
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art (NY: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2003), p.311.
Ibid, p.313.
3
Ibid, p.314.
2
3
period were based on Shakespearean scenes, and provided an escape from the industrial
hardships of the time.4 The founder of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, spoke
of a “pecking order” of painting in his lectures
(Discourses) delivered at the Academy which placed
history painting at the top, followed by domestic scenes
and portraiture, then by landscapes, and at the very
bottom, animals, still lifes, and flowers (he argued that
any artwork that lacked man could not be classified as a
higher art).5
Fig 1
By observing the art of the Academy’s
congruency with the popular art of the middle class, and
history painting’s falling popularity within and without the Academy, one can see the
changes in attitude taking place in Victorian art.
Even Queen Victoria preferred to portray herself as upper middle class rather than
flaunting her royalty, so as to be seen as a
mother first and a queen second. This theme
is apparent in such depictions of her as
photographer
Roger
Fenton’s
Queen
Victoria, the Prince and Eight Royal
Children in Buckingham Palace Garden
(1854, Fig 1) and Edwin Landseer’s
Fig 2
painting, Windsor Castle in Modern Times
(1841-5, Fig 2). In the latter, a young Victoria is shown greeting her husband after his
4
5
Chu, p.317.
Lionel Lambourne, Victorian Painting (London: Phaidon Press, 1999), p.10.
4
hunt, again exemplifying the middle class virtues of family and masculine and feminine
roles. As a result of this image, upon Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, the American
novelist Henry James aptly described England as feeling “quite motherless”. 6
In 1837, the year Victoria ascended the throne, the Royal Academy moved from
Somerset House to Trafalgar Square, where more paintings could be accommodated.7 In
his painting, Public Opinion (1863, Fig 3),
George Bernard O’Neill depicts the large
crush of people crowding around the
‘picture of the year’, selected above one to
two thousand exhibits annually. Success
would possibly, through a series of
Fig 3
promotions, eventually lead to election as
a Royal Academician, but crowds were fickle, and once renowned pieces were soon
forgotten.8 As seen in Charles West Cope’s The Council of the Royal Academy Selecting
Pictures for the Exhibition (1876, Fig 4),
members of the Royal Academy decided
which paintings would be shown, and
often flooded the exhibition with their own
work. There were more complaints about
the vertical placement on the walls than of
Fig 4
rejection, though, since larger pieces were
placed higher on the wall, and smaller pieces were placed at eye-level. Because of this,
6
Chu, p.311.
Ibid, p.314.
8
Lambourne, p.32.
7
5
the average size of early Victorian artwork was much smaller, as opposed to the large,
attention-grabbing paintings, or Grande Machines, of the French Salon.9 The exhibitions
of the Royal Academy did offer artists of exposure, but not many sales. Because of this,
art dealers acted as very important middlemen between the artist and the public. Their
galleries often determined much of the art the public was exposed to.10
One Academy piece, Richard Redgrave’s The Poor Teacher (1845, Fig 5), is a
brilliant example of the aforementioned
narrative themes prevalent in many
Victorian
artworks.
Middle
class
women who were unwed were limited in
their career choices, due to Victorian
views of women’s roles in society. In
order to make money, many women
Fig 5
looked for work as governesses (teachers
in private households in which they
would reside).
Two of Redgrave’s sisters were governesses, one of whom died before
she was twenty, lonely and homesick. The Poor Teacher was painted only two years
before the publication of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, about a young female teacher
who was also alone in the world.11
Although the majority of artists followed similar themes to the art of the
Academy, several exceptions began to emerge. The delicacy of watercolor artworks
stood as no competition beside the spectacular oils for placement in the exhibitions, so
9
Lambourne, p.34-35.
Chu, p.314.
11
Lambourne, p.378.
10
6
the Old Water Colour Society was founded to showcase these pieces. Other competing
institutions followed, such as the Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the more
daring Dudley Gallery.12
A more deviant school of thought, the Pre-Raphaelites, embodied the country’s
avant garde movement.13 Disgusted with the Academy’s acquiescence to the middle
class’s cheap sentimental tastes,
Pre-Raphaelites
turned
to
the
serious literary themes of the
Bible, Shakespeare, and Arthurian
legend. Eventually, the movement
dissolved,
and
Aestheticism
followed in its place.14
Frederic
Leighton, who became president of
the Royal Academy in 1878,
voiced the Aesthetic complaint that
artwork
was
only
being
appreciated for its monetary value.
This gave rise to the creed with
Fig 6
which he was identified: “art for
12
Lambourne, p.35-36.
George P. Landow, The Victorian Web. Pre-Raphaelites: An Introduction,
http://victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html (1998).
14
Chu, p326.
13
7
art’s sake”.15 Aesthetic artwork was not meant to entertain or moralize, but to appeal to
the senses. Content was not as important as form.16 In fact, content was almost an
afterthought in pieces such as James Abbot McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and
Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875, Fig 6). These principles are the same as those found in
abstract art in the twentieth century.
Early Victorian artists were influenced heavily by the new middle class, due to
their being the primary consumers of their artwork. In fact, the idea of non-elites being
part of the art-educated public was carried even further in the late Victorian period, with
the rise of the public museum in Britain, which made art education available to the lower
classes.17
With the early Victorian period’s emphasis on the narrative propagating
reactionary ideas that glorified aesthetics, the taste of the middle class called into
question the nature of art: an idea that would be a major theme in many twentieth century
artworks.
David Peters Corbett, The World in Paint: Modern Art and Visuality in England, 1848 – 1914
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004), p.90.
16
Chu, p.333.
17
George P .Landow, The Victorian Web. Victorian Art Criticism and the Rise of a Middle-Class
Audience: Part One of There Began to Be a Great Talking about the Fine Arts,
http://victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/finearts/criticism1.html (2000).
15
8
Works Cited
Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate. Nineteenth-Century European Art. NY: Harry N. Abrams
Inc., 2003.
Corbett, David Peters. The World in Paint: Modern Art and Visuality in England, 1848 –
1914. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004.
Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting. London: Phaidon Press, 1999.
Landow, George P. The Victorian Web. Pre-Raphaelites: An Introduction. [updated
1998; cited April 30, 2006]. Available from
http://victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html.
Landow, George P. The Victorian Web. Victorian Art Criticism and the Rise of a
Middle-Class Audience: Part One of There Began to Be a Great Talking about
the Fine Arts. [updated 2000; cited April 30, 2006]. Available from
http://victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/finearts/criticism1.html.