The Fin de Siècle: 1890s & Late Victorian Culture

(fuckyeahvictorians:my-ear-trumpet:turnofthecentury)

A peacock-color-saturated image by Russian symbolist artist Mikhail Vrubel ~Morning, 1897. So very fin-de-siecle!

(image via: turnofthecentury:Swann Galleries)

Florence Lundborg ~The Lark for May,1896

Lundborg was a San Francisco illustrator and muralist associated with the bohemian group of California writers and artists who called themselves ”Les Jeunes.” The group published The Lark, an artistic and literary periodical edited by Gelett Burgess and Bruce Porter between 1895 and 1897. Lundborg regularly contributed her prints to the publication.

You can see a full text version of issues 13-24 of The Lark here.

Cover of Kate Greenaway’s almanack for 1892.

“Kate Greenaway (Catherine Greenaway) (London, 17 March 1846 – 6 November 1901) was an English children’s book illustrator and writer. Her first book, Under The Window (1879), a collection of simple, perfectly idyllic verses about children, was a best-seller.

The Kate Greenaway Medal, established in her honour in 1955, is awarded annually by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the UK to an illustrator of children’s books. Her paintings were reproduced by chromoxylography, by which the colours were printed from hand-engraved wood blocks by the firm of Edmund Evans. Through the 1880s and 90s, in popularity her only rivals in the field of children’s book illustration were Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott, himself also the eponym of a highly-regarded prize medal.

“Kate Greenaway” children, all of them little girls and boys too young to be put in trousers, according to the conventions of the time, were dressed in her own versions of late eighteenth century and Regency fashions: smock-frocks and skeleton suits for boys, high-waisted pinafores and dresses with mobcaps and straw bonnets for girls. The influence of children’s clothes in portraits by British painter John Hoppner (1758–1810) may have provided her some inspiration.

Liberty’s of London adapted Kate Greenaway’s drawings as designs for actual children’s clothes. A full generation of mothers in the liberal-minded “artistic” British circles who called themselves “The Souls” and embraced the Arts and Crafts movement dressed their daughters in Kate Greenaway pantaloons and bonnets in the 1880s and ’90s.” (via)

(via:turnofthecentury)

Elbert Hubbard was a true American original: proponent and disseminator of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the U.S., a printer, publisher, artist, salesman, socialist, lecturer, and self-proclaimed philosopher. Hubbard started the Roycrofters in 1894, an artisan community in East Aurora, New York. His contoversial (and often paradoxical) opinions garnered much criticism and scandal throughout his life. PBS released a documentary in 2009 entitled Elbert Hubbard: An American Original.

~Books to Burn!! William Wallace Denslow

William Wallace Denslow, who would later go on to illustrate The Wizard of Oz series for L. Frank Baum in the early 1900’s, worked in the Roycroft Arts and Crafts artisan shop in East Aurora, New York under Elbert Hubbard. You can see more examples of his work here.

(via)

(via: bygoneyears)

Stieglitz, “Sun Rays, Paula, Berlin” ,1889.

A question for all of my wonderful new readers/followers...

Who is your favorite author (or literary work) from the late nineteenth century? I would love to know!

decadence
1540s, from M.Fr. decadence (early 15c.), from M.L. decadentia “decay,” from decadentem (nom. decadens) “decaying,” prp. of decadere “to decay,”from L. de- “apart, down” + cadere “to fall” (see case (1)). Used of periods in art since 1852, on French model.

Online Etymology Dictionary (via fuzzyperhaps)

Since my post on Rippl-Ronai I’ve been reading more about Les Nabis, and I wanted to share some interesting tid-bits on another artist associated with that group of French avant-gardists: Odilon Redon. Redon gained recognition after the publication of Karl Huysmans’ controversial novel Au Rebours (1884); the novel featured a decadent, aristocratic character who collected Redon’s art work (just a side note: Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is said to have been inspired by Huysman’s novel).

Huysmans was a fan of Redon’s work, and he recounted his impressions of the artist’s surreal imaginings: “These drawings defied classification; unheeding, for the most part, of the limitations of painting, they ushered in a very special type of the fantastic, one born of sickness and delirium.” After the publication of Huysmans’ novel, Redon became closely associated with the Decadent movement in Europe.

Initially, Redon worked only in black charcoal, which gave his pieces a macabre, nightmarish quality. In his early career, he depicted bizarre creatures with large heads and black, penetrating eyes. His style changed dramatically in the 1890’s when he turned to bright pastels and began to favor still-lifes and portraits. Despite the change in style, Redon’s work remained innovative, and many of the early twentieth century surrealists counted Redon among their precursors.

There are several excellent books out there on Redon’s work, including: Beyond The Visible: The Art Of Odilon Redon and The Graphic Works of Odilon Redon (Dover Pictorial Archive Series). Huysman’s novel is also a definite must-read for those interested in decadent literature: Against Nature (A Rebours) (Penguin Classics).