The Arts and Crafts: An Exhibition at William Morris’s

Abstract

The movement most characteristic of the literature and art and to some small extent of the thoughts, too, of our century has been romanticism.1 We all know the old formal classicism† gave battle to it and was defeated when Hernani’s horn rang out on the French stage.2 That horn has been ringing through the world ever since. There is hardly a movement in which we do not hear its echo. It marked the regained freedom of the spirit and imagination of man in literature. Since then painting in its turn has flung aside the old conventions. The arts of decoration are now making the same struggle. They have been making it for some years under the leadership of William Morris, poet, Socialist, romance writer, artist and upholsterer, and in all ways the most many-sided man of our times.3 But for these “arts and crafts” exhibitions, of which this is the third year, the outer public would hardly be able to judge of the immense change that is going on in all kinds of decorative art and how completely it is dominated by one man of genius. Last Saturday was the private view. The handsome rooms#x2020; of the new art gallery with their white pillars and leaping fountain were crowded by much that is best and most thoughtful of London society — above all with whatever is “advanced” in any direction — literature, politics, art.KeywordsOuter PublicPrivate ViewArtistic BookBook CoverRomance WriterThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.