Review by Choice Review
Though slim, this volume is packed with useful information about 19th-century British art. Published for the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool, UK) and its parent organization, National Museums Liverpool, the volume catalogs an exhibition at the Walker on the contributions the Liverpool Academy of Arts and private patrons made, in the 19th century, in embracing the new style and subjects of the young Pre-Raphaelite painters. Liverpool was a prosperous commercial and manufacturing center in Victorian England, and as community leaders established Liverpool's cultural institutions, the city gained a degree of independence from London in the development of artistic tastes and support for art that was not at the center of the Victorian art world. The hyperrealistic details and the serious, moralizing subject matter of the young Pre-Raphaelites appealed to the mercantile character of the denizens of Liverpool, and their support for the young artists in the 1850s provided the movement with creative energy and financial resources at a critical stage. The presence of the Pre-Raphaelites in Liverpool in turn spawned a significant local school of landscape and genre painters, and Newall also examines this group. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --William Steven Bradley, Colorado Mesa University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
