Art

Abstract

Where previous periods are notable for maintaining sharp distinctions between the visual and literary arts, the Victorian period is remarkable for the number, diversity, and success of its efforts to bring literature and art into a seamless union. Early in the period, visual artists came to play a central role in the genesis of Victorian literature: the period's dominant literary form, the novel, owed much to its illustrators, while poets, especially women, became increasingly reliant on the art gift book. Victorian poets, essayists, and novelists of both sexes frequently took the visual arts as models, while painters, sculptors and photographers took inspiration from literature. This symbiosis was especially pronounced in the Pre‐Raphaelite and aesthetic movements, which were movements in both literature and art. Such was the resulting expansion in the concept of art that by the Victorian period's end, novelists and poets no less than painters and illustrators could speak unhesitatingly of themselves as artists.