No one a stranger: everyday Venetian life in Anglo-American visual culture, 1866-1900
Date
2022
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
In late nineteenth-century Britain and the United States, images of Venetian everyday life seemed to be everywhere. They appeared in photographs, as illustrations in books and magazines, and in art exhibitions, where artists such as Robert Frederick Blum, Luke Fildes, Cecil van Haanen, and Charles Frederic Ulrich showcased Venetian imagery. Venetian subjects became so popular that art critics complained about their ubiquity, calling them “over prominent” and “monotonous” and encouraging artists to abandon such foreign topics and instead depict subjects of national relevance. ☐ By exploring the creation, reception, and circulation of images of Venetian life in the United States and Great Britain in the last third of the nineteenth century, this dissertation argues that these images were far more than trivial scenes of foreign subjects. Instead, Venetian subjects provided a means for Anglophone artists and viewers to reckon with important domestic issues in Britain and the United States. Using a transnational approach informed by visual culture studies, this dissertation examines four of the most common Venetian subjects that circulated at the time: gondoliers, flower sellers, glassblowers, and bead stringers. As this dissertation shows, these objects played a role in public discourses surrounding poverty and urban life, labor and labor unrest, and empire in Britain and the United States. Indeed, despite its foreign subject matter, the visual culture of Venetian life was not fundamentally about Venice at all. Instead, it provides insight into the values and concerns that accompanied modern life in the United States and Britain.
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Keywords
Everyday Venetian life, Anglo-American, Visual culture