Artistic Circles: Design & Decoration in the Aesthetic Movement

Artists' houses and their gardens formed a distinct and influential strand in Victorian architecture and decoration, eliciting public interest and coverage in the popular press of the day. The artist's home and its contents were essential components of the Aesthetic Movement, in which artists, as home-owners, interior designers, producers and consumers, drove the movement into the mainstream. Artistic Circles takes the unique approach of examining Aestheticism from a social perspective and reveals how the art movement influenced the development of domestic building and homemaking for an emerging section of Victorian society, the educated middle-class professional. Includes George Frederic Watts, Frederic Leighton, William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler and Edward Burne-Jones. ' Artistic Circles sets out the topography of artistic London, so we can see who were neighbours, in and out of each others' houses.There is talent- the Pre-Raphaelites and the next generation of Aesthetic painters were uniquely skilled and original painters. There is beauty- the 'Three Graces', Greek 'stunners', the cousins Aglaia Coronio, Maria Zambaco and Marie Spartali. There is money, because Victorian artists commanded huge prices and paid their architect-designer friends lavishly to showcase them, and all this talent, beauty and money worked closely together in a hothouse dynamic. The houses of Victorian artists became the acme of taste throughout the world, and we are still living with their legacy.' From the Foreword by Rupert Maas