Victorian Web

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All things Victorian: linking scholarship, teaching, and learning since 1994

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Victorian Web@victorianweb· 11d

Died #OnThisDay 1888, the popular artist Frank Holl. He was only 43. His early death seemed to fulfil his own tendency to paint melancholy scenes like this one, "I am the Resurrection and the Life (The Village Funeral),"of 1872. He's buried in Highgate Cemetery. victorianweb.org/painting/hol...

A father with bowed head leads a little girl by the hand at the head of a small family's funeral procession on a earthy path between graves. A woman with bowed head too weeps behind him. An elderly couple bringing up the rear appear to be the grandparents.

An impressive stone grave marker for Holl stands tall in Highgate's Western Cemetery.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 13d

Do take a look at our What's New for the month!! victorianweb.org/misc/whatsne... One new project has been a revamp of our section on #PreRaphaelite Sir Frank Dicksee. Here's his gorgeously-framed Yseult scanning the sea anxiously as Tristram lies dying.... victorianweb.org/painting/dic...

The gilt frame that Dicksee designed is actually shaped like a Celtic lyre . Apparently the decoration in the spandrels was inspired by Viking strap-work. Yseult sits in a throne-like gilded chair with her arms stretched out along the window-sill, wearing a robe of rich red drapery in a medieval style

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 14d

Fabulous ironwork (& some tiles!) in St Thomas's Cathedral, Mumbai victorianweb.org/history/empi... (Photos by Patrick Carson)

View of the white church tower with pinnacles and clock face, amid palm trees, with traffic and people outside

Fantastically scrolled chancel gate with gilded flower-heads, and variously patterned tiles

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 16d

#Sunday—picturesque churches appeal to artists of all kinds. Set against the sunset, Shere Church, Surrey by Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923); and solid against the mist, All Saints, Hastings by Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944) victorianweb.org/painting/lea... and victorianweb.org/painting/pis...

Shere Church in the Surrey countryside with the last of the sunset disappearing past the horizon in the distance.

A brighter scene with mist clearing, and the church in Hastings encircled by its graveyard with white gravestones and mostly bare-branched trees

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 17d

Thanks to changing tastes and greater competition, 25 July 1859 was "Positively The Last Night Forever" at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in London; demolition began the next day. It was the end of an institution. victorianweb.org/history/lond... #OnThisDay #Victorian #entertainment

An advert for it with several illustrations of performances, with fireworks, a performing horse in an arena, musical evenings, acrobatic displays etc.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 19d

Born 23 July 1823, every domestic goddess's favourite poet, Coventry Patmore (author of "The Angel in the House": "Her disposition is devout,/ Her countenance angelical") Three cheers for the New Woman! victorianweb.org/authors/patm...

Portrait photo of Patmore with high collar and bow tie

Engraving of Millais's painting of Patmore's first wife Emily, the inspiration for the "Angel," looking suitably wide-eyed and innocent

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 22d

A seaside scene: "The Carnarvonshire Coast," by Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923). Can you see the rabbits here? victorianweb.org/painting/lea... #seaside #painting #Wales

Blue skies with drifting clouds, blue sea in a bay, rippling with white foam towards the shore, and an expanse of sand with a few lively rabbits close to some thistles.....

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 24d

Born #OnThisDay 1811, William Makepeace Thackeray: the author of "Vanity Fair" wasn't born in England, but In #India, and this is the family church in Kolkata, St John's, where both his parents and grandparents were married victorianweb.org/history/empi...

Portrait of Thackeray with high collar and bow-tie, looking rather austere, as quite a young man

Squarish church with colonnades and steeple, rather on the model of St Martin's at Trafalgar Square (not at all Eastern in style except that the colonnades are cooling)

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 26d

Born #onthisday 1841, Scottish seascape painter Colin Hunter: this appealing one (thanks, @LeightonHouse) entitled "Fishing Boats off the Coast of Cornwall" (1883) shows two fishermen offloading their catch at the rocky shore victorianweb.org/painting/hun... #painting #sea

A cloudy sky, nothing dramatic (no sunset glow), just a quiet sense of work done and safe return, a few boats at anchor nearby and steps up the cliff still to be climbed.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· 28d

Not a football frenzy, but Harry Furniss illustrating the furious mob storming the Bastille in Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities" for Bastille Day today! victorianweb.org/art/illustra...

Chaotic "dark" plate showing men and women scrambling over obstacles and skirmishing with lethal-looking weapons

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jul 11

"The Ardor and the Joy of a Game at Foot-Ball" by Fred Barnard, in Harper's Weekly (10 November 1888): not really football but the excitement is the same! victorianweb.org/art/illustra... #sports

People in the stands excitedly watching a scrum, two men in top hats, a lower class gent reaching forward, a young lady also leaning forward enthusiastically while another peeping across on the right looks rather alarmed!

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jul 9

Kilvert's Diary on 9th July, 1871: "It was sultry hot climbing the hill though there was the blowing of a wind from the west.... the tall brown and purple grasses were all in billows like the sea..." victorianweb.org/authors/kilv...

The countryside in this part of the world, from the photo-gallery of Kilverts, Hay-on-Wye, by kind permission of the inn--blue sky over rolling grassland with hills in the distance

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jul 8

"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines..." Indeed! In Turner's apocalyptic "The Angel Standing in the Sun," sinners flee from the blinding light. This #painting is shown in a discussion of "Turner & Tradition" by Elizabeth Helsinger. victorianweb.org/authors/rusk...

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jul 6

A favourite cooling painting for a hot evening: William McTaggart's "And all the Choral Waters Sang" (1902, in the McManus Dundee's Art Gallery.) The title comes from a Swinburne poem. So many colours in these rippling waves! victorianweb.org/painting/mct...

Gilt-framed painting of waves rippling to the shore under a blue sky, both sea and sky white-flecked, but more colours in the sea — pink and yellow, for instance.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jul 4

Just for fun, one of Ralph Caldecott's drawings used in a colour postcard, "This is the Cat that Killed the Rat," from "This is the House that Jack Built"--poised for its pounce. It captures that tension and intent gaze perfectly! victorianweb.org/art/illustra...

The cat seems to be in a shed, with apples and old wellies and a basket lying around--the ideal setting for foraging for rats

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jul 1

On 1 July 1865, Lewis Carroll was in Windsor, and happened to see the Queen go past in an open carriage. He noted proudly in his journal, "[I] ... got a bow from her all to myself"! victorianweb.org/art/illustra...

John Tenniel's illustration for Alice in Wonderland, showing Alice putting a large crown on her head.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 29

Do check out our What's New for June! There's something for everyone—from technology (e.g. the ill-fated steam yacht Gunilda, & early film—its origins may surprise you!), to women's art (in watercolour & stained glass). New work on Vernon Lee, too! Links here: www.victorianweb.org/misc/whatsne...

SY Gunilda in the Gulf of Naples with Vesuvius in the background

Scene from DeMille's "The Ten Commandments"

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale's watercolour of a mother dandling her baby ("The Last Ride")

Annunciation and Nativity scenes in stained glass oratory window in architect George Ashlin's new house in Dublin Bay area: the figures of the family in the foreground are thought to have been by his wife

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 26

Portrait of Miss Mary Palliser, by Frederick William Burton, 1871. The artist and his sitter fell in love, but sadly Mary died, perhaps of TB, #OTD 26 June 1879, before they were in a position to get married. victorianweb.org/victorian/pa... #painting

The young woman has a book on her lap, perhaps of poetry, and sits by a window, looking lost in thought. She wears a loose, creamy-white gown, unusual for the time.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 23

Worrying about wildfires in the heatwave? During the 19c. #fire insurance became particularly important in the industrial north: here are some different companies' insurance plaques on buildings in York victorianweb.org/places/citie...

A Britannia figure with a lion and shield against a background of flames

a phoenix arising from the flame:"Protection" inscribed below

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 22

Warwick Goble's illustration shows a Martian's heatray wiping out our puny defences in H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds" —science fiction can be uncannily prescient.... #heatwave victorianweb.org/art/illustra...

Powerful monochrome image of a mighty shaft of heat speeding through the air and obliterating an army vehicle or piece of mounted artillery

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 21

For the #summersoltice, this is a ceiling panel in the beautiful chapel of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London: interior decoration by Clayton & Bell victorianweb.org/art/architec...

A gold sunburst on a dark blue background with stars around it, set in a richly decorated and gilded border. This motif is echoed in the apse, which is equally richly decorated, with a central roundel of the Lamb of God and flag.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 19

During his stay in Japan, Mortimer Menpes (1860-1938) was very taken with the attendants at the teahouses--this is called "Butterflies" and catches them off-duty, in a group, enjoying each other's company in an informal moment victorianweb.org/painting/men...

Waiting girls in geisha costumes holding fans and sitting, Japanese style, in the shade around a pool of sunshine

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 18

Definitely the weather for holidays! #Didyouknow that Bournemouth was the resort (called Sandbourne in the novel) where Tess and Alec are living near the end of Hardy's "Tess"? victorianweb.org/technology/p...

Postcard of the wide promenade, leading to a pier with a particularly fine Victorian-style structure at the entrance

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 15

Did you know that Royal Holloway University of London isn't the only spectacular building funded by Thomas Holloway and designed by W.H. Crossland? Here's the other -- the Holloway Sanatorium, not far away, now a gated community of townhouses victorianweb.org/art/architec... Grand, isn't it?!

Engraving of a massive complex in a sort of Franco-Flemish Gothic style with a tall pinnacled central tower and a couple of smaller ones.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 14

Do you all know about the Church Monuments Essay Competition? See if it inspires you! churchmonumentssociety.org/get-involved...

Partial view of a marble effigy from the Church Monuments site

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 11

Enjoying the honeysuckle (even in the rain!): this is how William Morris used it in a fabric design, how Margaret Rebecca Dickinson represented it in a botanical illustration, and how Charles Ricketts used it in a binding for Hardy's "Tess" victorianweb.org/art/design/b...

Morris's design on cotton, the flower like Catherine Wheels among other foliage (in blue!) and flowers (white)

A delicately detailed sprig, one flower out, the other in a tight pink bud

Gold climbing stems with attenuated, stylised flower-heads at intervals, Art Nouveau-ish on a darker, brownish beige background

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 9

Probably the best-known memorial portrait of Dickens, who died #OnThisDay 1870, was by Robert Buss , who, ironically, had long ago lost his job as a Dickens illustrator... victorianweb.org/art/illustra...

Dickens in his study, his characters materialising around him in an ethereal haze

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 9

The Victorian Web @victorianweb Now here's something worthwhile, coming up very soon—full programme at victorianweb.org/painting/whi... And do explore our Whistler section if you need to prepare! We'll be running a review of the exhibition soon, too.

Portrait of Whistler publicising the 2-day conference, with the dates (18/19 June) and venue (Tate Britain) given too.

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 6

Something from #Ireland for a change: St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh, designed by AWN Pugin's son Edward Welby Pugin , and George Coppinger Ashlin, built 1868-1919. The cathedral has a wonderful, commanding position victorianweb.org/art/architec...

Cathedral with slender spire above rows of colourfully painted houses on the harbour

Victorian Web@victorianweb· Jun 4

Delighted to have some new work on Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), thanks to Rita Severi --more to come! victorianweb.org/victorian/au...