#aesthetic movement

Hans Makart (1840–1884, Austria)

Oil paintings2

Makart was an Austrianacademichistory painter, designer, and decorator. He is most well known for his influence on Gustav Klimt and other artists of the Vienna Secession, but in his own era considered an important artist himself and a celebrity figure in the high culture of Vienna, attended with almost cult-like adulation. The appeal of this ‘Makartstil’ is in its aestheticism, a movement that was also experiencing popularity in EnglandandFrance. Nowadays he is widely considered one of Austria’s finest artists, and has historically been compared to Rubens within his home country.

Thomas Dewing (1851–1938, United States)

Oil paintings3

Thomas Dewing was an American painter working at the turn of the 20th century. His style was influenced by the Englishaesthetic movement, which prioritised beauty and sensual qualities opposed to traditional moral or narrative considerations. His art became known for an extreme refinement of style, as well as its characteristic dream-like haze and detachment.

John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893, England)

Landscapes

Grimshaw was an EnglishVictorian-era artist, popular both during his time and in the present for his night-time depictions of British cities.

Grimshaw’s earliest influence was the Pre-Raphaelites. True to the Pre-Raphaelite style, he created landscapes of accurate colour and lighting, vivid detail and realism, often typifying seasons or a type of weather. Moonlit viewsofcity and suburban streets and of the docks in London, Leeds, Liverpool and Glasgow also figured largely in his art. The focus on atmosphere, and lack of moral message or historical reference allies his work to some extent with the Aesthetic Movement.

His careful painting and his skill in lighting effects meant that he captured both the appearance and the mood of a scene in minute detail. His “paintings of dampened gas-lit streets and misty waterfronts conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation in the urban scene.” Later in life his colour palette shifted from dark blues to golden yellows, and towards the end of his life were hints of a change in artistic direction, with looser brushwork influenced by his friend James Abbott McNeill Whistler, who was quoted saying “I considered myself the inventor of Nocturnes until I saw Grimmy’s moonlit pictures.”

Liberty Aesthetic dress, 1906

From the Irma G. Bowen Historic Clothing Collection at the University of New Hampshire