The Cult of Beauty

This book "focuses on a period in the nineteenth century when a group of artists, architects and designers found themselves united in the search for a new Beauty. The Aesthetic Movement, as it came to be known, sought nothing less than the creation of a new kind of art, an art freed from outworn establishment ideas and Victorian notions of morality. This was to be "Art for Art's sake" -- art that did not tell stories of make moral points,art that dared simply to offer visual delight and hint at sensuous pleasure. This new and exciting "Cult of Beauty" joined, for a while at least, romantic bohemians such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, along with maverick figures such as James McNeill Whistler and painters of grand classical subjects who belonged to the circle of Frederic Leighton. ... The book also reveals how artists' houses, their collections of beautiful things and their extravagant lifestyles became the object of public fascination. the influence of the "Palaces of Art" created by Rossetti and Morris, Lord Leighton and others led to a widespread revolution in architecture and interior decoration. Oscar Wilde made his name promoting the idea of "The House Beautiful" and the styles favoured by Aesthetic designers were among the very first to be widely exploited commercially in Britain."