About ten years ago London Society was divided into two hostile Camps, one known as the Æsthetes, the other as the Philistines. Neither title was correct, nor very expressive, but each conveyed a certain meaning which even now could not be briefly expressed in more simple language.
The Æsthetes were originally a small body of artists and poets, belonging to what was called the Pre-Raphaelite school, who strove to educate the English people up to a certain standard in art and culture.
All the men who founded this school subsequently became eminent in their professions, but they were, for many years, subjected to the ridicule and criticisms of the Philistines.
Yet it is probable that most of this opposition was directed less against the men of genius who actually created Pre-Raphaelitism, than against those too ardent devotees of the new fashion, who carried all its dictates to the extreme, and frequently turned the true and the beautiful into the absurd and grotesque by their exaggerations in dress, language, and deportment.
On the other hand many of the opponents of Æstheticism were those who having seen Du Maurier’s caricatures in Punch, and witnessed Burnand’s vamped up old comedy The Colonel, or Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience, thought themselves fully qualified to jeer at the “consummate” the “utter” and the “too-too,” without having either read a poem by Swinburne, or Morris, or having seen a painting by Burne-Jones or Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
This opposition did some good in its day, for although Æstheticism eventually triumphed, only the beautiful that it created has survived, the lank and melancholy maidens, and the “Grosvenor-Gallery” young men, have departed, but the revival—the Renaissance in fact—of British Art in Painting, poetry, dress, decoration, and even in house furniture, is an accomplished fact. Much has been written, and remains to be written, on this fascinating topic, but this collection cannot be made the medium for Lectures on Art.
At the risk of appearing egotistical the following little work can be mentioned as conveying useful information on a subject which is certainly worthy of some little study:—
“The Æsthetic Movement in England,” by Walter Hamilton. Third edition—London. Reeves and Turner, 1882.
Without further preface a selection of parodies will be given on the works of Rossetti, who was not only a founder of the school, but also one of its most eminent exponents.