Popular Graphic of the Victorian Era




So I got to learn that there was more to the Victorian era, which refers to the reign of Queen Victoria from 1819 to 1901, than amazing dresses and extravagant parties.  Apparently this was a time of strong moral and religious beliefs, proper social conventions and optimism. A popular motto of the society was “God is in heaven, all is right with the world.” This seems to slightly contradict the superficial values portrayed by Oscar Wilde’s drama named The Importance of Being Ernest, which is set in the Victorian age. But it also turns out that the Victorians searched for a design spirit to express their eon.

The surfacing of multiple contradicting designs and philosophies that were mixed together in a dispersed fashion lead to an unfortunate aesthetic confusion. An English architect A.W.N. Pugin nurtured a fondness for the Gothic, which suited the pious Victorians.  There are two dictionary definitions for pious. The first being "Devoutly Religious" and the second "Making a hypocritical display of virtue." I recon the Victorians are a curious combination of both. However, back to Pugin.
He designed the ornamental details of the British Houses of Parliament. His personal definition of design was that it was a moral act that achieved the status of art through the designer’s ideals and attitudes. He believed that the integrity and character of a society were linked to its design.

Owen Jones was an English designer, author and authority on color. He became a major design influence around the 1850s. His travels took him to Spain and the Near East in the 1820s. During these journeys he studied the symmetrical art of Islamic design.  This lead him to add Moorish ornament to Western design.

The book that he published in 1856 was the main influence of his career. The book was called The Grammar of Ornament and showcased large color plates displaying design possibilities from the Eastern and Western tribes’ culture. Natural forms became the 19th century bible of ornament to all designers of the era. The love Victorians had for outrageous complexity was expressed by applying gingerbread woodworks to domestic architecture, ornately extravagant embellishments in manufactured products from silverware to large furniture and elaborate borders and lettering in graphic design.


Owen Jones, color plate from The Grammar of Ornament, 1856. 
This plate shows patterns found in the arts and crafts of Turkey.


In the 1850s the word Victorian gained a new meaning. It was used to express a new consciousness of the industrial era’s spirit, culture and moral standards.  Prince Albert had an idea to create a grand exhibition in 1849. This merely innocent idea turned out to be the Great Exhibition of 1851 that served as an important summation of the progress of the Industrial Revolution and a catalyst for future development.  In modern times this event is referred to as the Crystal Palace Exhibition.

Victorian graphic design captured and conveyed the values of the era. It expressed sentimentality, nostalgia and a canon of idealized beauty.  With this sentimentality, along with piety, the Victorians’ traditional values of home, religion and patriotism were symbolized. Chromolithography, an invention that was inspired by the Industrial Revolution, caused the abundant publication of colorful printed images.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Graphics for Children

Image
Another thing the Victorians were appreciated for was how they developed a more tender attitude towards children. Before the Victorian era, Western cultures had a tendency to treat children as “little adults”. The Victorians expressed their nurturing approach to children with the development of toy books. These were colorful books for pre-school children. A handful of English artist produced books showcasing a restrained use of color. These books represented an approach to children’s graphics that’s still in use today. One of the earliest, and the most influential, designers of children’s books is Walter Crane. As a teenager he apprenticed at a wood-engraving firm. When he was only 20 years of age in 1865 he published his Rail Road Alphabet . His long series of toy books broke away from the conventions of printing material for children. These earlier conventions of graphics supported didactic or moral causes and always sought to teach children a lesson in life. Not Crane. He only soug...
Read more

German Jugendstil and Italian Art Nouveau

Image
When art nouveau arrived in Germany it was also called Jugendstil (Youth Style) after a new magazine, Jugend (Youth). German Art nouveau had strong British and French influences and retained strong links to traditional academic art as well. The Germans had interest in medieval letterforms and it was continued side by side with art nouveau motifs. During the Jugend’s first year its circulation climbed to 30 000 copies per week and the magazine soon attracted the readership of 200 000 per week. Art nouveau ornaments and illustrations were virtually on every editorial page. Full double page illustrations, horizontal illustrations across the top page and decorative art nouveau designs brought rich variety to a format that was about half visual material and half text. One unprecedented editorial policy was to allow each weeks cover designer to design a masthead to go with the cover design. Peter Behrens’s along with Otto Eckmann became widely known for large multicolor wood block prints in...
Read more

Art Nouveau: Alphonse Mucha - The Master of Theatricality

With his a rich body of art work beaming with enchanting women, streaming hair and flowing fabrics, Alphonse Mucha became one of the most fascinating artistic personalities of the turn of the century.  Mucha was, too, a universal artist. He was not solely a painter and a graphic artist,   he also practiced in sculpture, jewelry making, interior decorating and utilitarian art. However, his particular talent lay in decorative graphics, which, to this day, remains the base of his fame.  His name has an everlasting link to the Art Nouveau movement. Between the years of 1879 and 1881, he had a job at a Viennese studio as a junior specializing in stag sets. This revealed his undeniably talented understanding of how to arrange scenic events in an effective manner. The theater became a major source of inspiration for Mucha as it gave him ideas that would form his symbolic gesture-language that he applied to his figures and their spectacularly fantastical costumes. He developed a ...
Read more