Art and the Victorian Middle Class Money and the Making of Cultural Identity

This is the first study of middle-class collection practices in nineteenth-century England. It examines the Victorian art world from the perspective of the businessmen whose successes during the Industrial Revolution caused them to turn to art as a means of carving out an identity of their own that was distinct from the leisured existence of the aristocracy and gentry. Such patrons created a market for early-Victorian narrative paintings which nostalgically perpetuated the oral traditions of village life, mid-Victorian scenes which glorified the accomplishments and moral probity of urban dwellers, and late-Victorian eroto-religious subjects which promised escapist pleasures to the world-weary buyer. Macleod's analysis of class, motivations and patterns of consumption among patrons is supplemented by an indispensable appendix of collectors, making this an essential work of reference. Awarded the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History for 1997 by the American Philosophical Society and the Historians of British Art Book Prize for best book in nineteenth-century studies.