The viewer viewed: Art's public in Victorian England

During the nineteenth century, England witnessed a proliferation of new museums and exhibiting societies. These new venues included the foundation of the National Gallery in 1824 and the great public exhibitions of mid-century such as the Crystal Palace of 1851 as well as the creation of numerous municipal museums in the 1870s and 1880s, in addition to the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy, which had been founded in 1768. This dissertation examines the representation of the art public, in paintings, prints, periodical illustrations, and cartoons during this period of art mania. Such images provide information not only about the public's experience of visiting art exhibitions in the Victorian era but also about the issues surrounding the formation of public art institutions.; Chapter One examines the origins of exhibition culture in England and its earliest representation in prints and cartoons. These images, derived from seventeenth-century Flemish gallery pictures and eighteenth-century conversation pieces, are considered in light of eighteenth-century aesthetics and the changing identity of the public. The foundation of the National Gallery and the attendant exploration of its audience in contemporary imagery, parliament, and the press forms the basis for Chapter Two. Chapter Three focuses upon the iconography of education in the representations of the art public. Images of women with children, the frequent inclusion of exhibition catalogues, and the mixing of the classes are discussed within the context of the rhetoric of self-improvement and contemporary cultural theories. After the democratization of the art public at mid-century, the end of the nineteenth century witnesses the separation of the art public by class. Chapter Four contrasts the rarified art public of the Grosvenor Gallery and the Private View with the working-class art audiences of the East End.; The representations of the art public in the Victorian era constitute a coherent discourse on the role of both the museum and art in society. This convergence of ideas—education, leisure, nationalism, class, aesthetics—within the discourse of the museum ensures that an examination of the discourse sheds much light on society and culture in England in the nineteenth century.