James McNeill Whistler is mainly known these days as a painter, albeit one sometimes found in books of witty quotations reprimanding Oscar Wilde for plagiarism, but at the time of his death he was arguably better known for this scandalous book in which he recounts in biting, sarcastic detail his libel case against John Ruskin …
James McNeill Whistler – The Gentle Art of Making Enemies Read More »
Morris & Co – Adoration of the Magi Henri Rousseau – Self-portrait Vincent Van Gogh – Wheatfield With Crows Claude Monet – Boating on the River Epte Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – At the Moulin Rouge
1890 is very much a landmark year in the psychological development of fictional characters. So specious is the dramatist, so subtle is his skill in misrepresentations, so fatal is his power of persuasion that for a moment we believe Hedda Gabler is a noble heroine, and not a fiend, and that Lovborg is deserving of …
I first read The Picture of Dorian Gray aged 18 and found it to be life-changing. Not for the witticisms which Wilde is so famous for, but for the philosophy of art and morality which it expressed. When I got to university I enlarged the preface and put it up on the wall of my …
Better known these days for his artistic contributions to the Arts & Crafts movement, William Morris was also a prolific author and prominent socialist thinker. News From Nowhere is a glimpse at a utopian future – or rather it is a novel-length thesis on how things should be, presented in novel format, with the convenient …
“”The Great God Pan” is, I have no hesitation in saying, a perfectly abominable story”… …Why should he be allowed, for the sake of a few miserable pounds, to cast into our midst these monstrous creations of his diseased brain?” – Harry Quilter “No one could begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror …
Hunger is a novel about a man, not fully in charge of his faculties or decisions, attempting to survive on the most basic of levels in a city that has nothing but contempt for his entire existence. With a psychologically complex and highly unreliable protagonist, a proto-Kafkaesque city full of unknown unknowns and a complete …
This is the best documentary I can find online about the life of Vincent van Gogh. It’s still not great, but it will do.
The second Sherlock Holmes novel, and one of the most well-known stories now, The Sign of Four was still only moderately successful in its day, the more well-known short stories yet to be written, but it still holds an important place in Holmes folklore as it introduces Dr Watson’s wife and frames his later, more …
