The Aesthetic Movement: Beauty For Beauty’s Sake

Championing art for art’s sake, the Aesthetic Movement flourished in glorious color in late 19^th century Britain, as beauty, craftsmanship, and sensory pleasure were prioritized over utility or any moral messaging, as a bunch of beautiful rebels turned Victorian life upside down to burst the gloom of the industrial revolution with a cult of beauty.

What started from the homes and studios of a radical group of artists and designers in 1860s England would prize beauty above all else as they sought to escape the ugliness and materialism of the Industrial Age. This was a rebellion against the constraints of life at the time, but done so in glorious, hedonistic technicolor, as artists and designers, including William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti explored new ways of living in defiance of tradition.

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”

William Morris, 1880

And they did this by focusing on producing beautiful art devoid of any other meaning. There was no other reason to this art, other than the beauty of itself, as painters, designers, and furniture makers championed pure beauty that emphasized the aesthetic qualities of art over practical, moral or narrative considerations.

It was a defiantly rebellious act in Britain’s rigid Victorian society. Britain had undergone a vast societal change in the preceding century, as it transformed from an economy based on agriculture and handicrafts into a society centered on large-scale industry that enlarged the wealth of the middle-class. No longer needing to tend to land, the middle-classes had time to consider beauty in their homes to counter the grey, dreary, coal-fueled environment of daily life.

Decadence was the order of the day. Peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, and blue and white chinoiserie all became symbols of an art movement that shimmered with gorgeous detail and magnificent color. For two decades the cult of Aestheticism bloomed with bright ostentation, as artists created a movement dedicated to pure beauty.

Beautiful Origins

First identified by the critic, Walter Hamilton in The Aesthetic Movement in England in 1882, it was the French poet Théophile Gautier who coined the term, “art for art’s sake”. Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the philosophies of John Ruskin and Walter Pater, the Aesthetic Movement found inspiration in medieval and Renaissance art, Japanese aesthetics, and classical antiquity.

Sweeping artistic and design change from 1860 to 1900 transformed the concept of how the middle-class could live their life. Uninspiring interiors were consigned to the past, as the Aesthetic Movement re-negotiated the relationship between art and society to bring about a modern concept of a decorative middle-class lifestyle – and it’s still in effect today.

Drawing colors and styles from various cultures, artists of the Aesthetic Movement found inspiration in Renaissance painting, ancient Greek sculpture, and East Asian art, especially Japanese prints. In fact, the Far East held a mystic appeal and gave the movement a rich eclecticism that formed one of its most intriguing characteristics across art, design, and furniture.

Key Figures

Rosetti painted it, William Morris decorated it, and Oscar Wilde wrote about. The Aesthetic Movement was broad in its output as hedonistic bohemians created beauty for its own sake.

Painters like James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Rossetti captured ethereal beauty in their art, while designers like William Morris added artistic elegance to people’s homes. Oscar Wilde championed aesthetic ideals in his literature and personal approach to hedonism, while Albert Moore’s harmonious compositions were inspired by classical antiquity, and Frederic Leighton’s classical refinement was combined with sensual beauty.

The Painters

While fans of William Morris’s interior patterns might disagree, the aesthetic movement was predominantly thought of as a painter’s movement. Artists like Whistler, Moore and certain works by Lord Leighton spearheaded the beautification of society.

Japanese art and culture was an important influence on Whistler, who cultivated new concepts of beauty by using unconventional Pre-Raphaelite style models and by incorporating Japanese aesthetics. His Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville (1865) signals his move away from realism toward Aestheticism, as it has no clear meaning or moral message. Instead, it showcases Whistler’s experimentation with color and methods of paint application to promote visual stimulation in the viewer.

The Japanese influence of the Aesthetic Movement can also be seen in the Japanese-inspired floral curtain hanging in Whistler’s 1871 Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, while a Japanese influence is apparent in the compositional similarities of his painting, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge with Under the Mannen Bridge at Fukagawa (1830-34) by Katsushika Hokusai.

A sharp critic of gaudy Victorian illustration, Rossetti’s La Ghirlandata features a softening of line indicative of painters of the Aesthetic movement. Rossetti’s red-haired beauties became an Aesthetic motif and in popular society, as women dying their hair with henna became increasingly fashionable in London at the time.

Similarly, Edward Burne-Jones bridged the gap between Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism, and his The Golden Stairs (1880) most closely fits the ideals of the Aesthetic Movement. The composition is entirely based on aesthetics, as each woman is wearing a similarly classicized gown, and are similarly proportioned to echo the shape of the painting to keep the viewer’s eye interested but not overwhelmed. The same could be said of Reading Aloud (1884) by Albert Moore, as it lacks any narrative momentum, making it purely for art’s sake.

The Designers

In terms of designers who embodied the aesthetic approach, it’s hard to look past William Morris and his beguiling wallpaper and furniture. His influence was a whirlwind revolution in design that replaced bland interiors with natural ornamentation and harmonious color. Seeking to elevate the interiors of the middle-classes, Morris initiated a change in design that still ripples today.

Morris sought to produce furniture worthy of art, and to create textiles and wallpapers unlike any other. This wasn’t art for anyone. This was art for collectors and connoisseurs that pleased the eye of the artist, as he elevated quality-made items that were considerate of color into an artform. Influenced by 16th- and 17th-century Italian silks, Morris used bold, medieval-style figuration to produce some of his famous textiles, like Peacock and Dragon (1878).

His first printed fabrics, Jasmine Trellis (1868–70) and Tulip and Willow (1873), were copies of 1830s white-ground chintzes, and as he experimented with techniques, Morris found his fondness for repeat patterns. In 1883, his complex print method produced the popular Strawberry Thief pattern inspired by fruit-thieving thrushes in his country garden. The crisp outlines allowed Morris to create a series of designs, including Wandle a year later, which was his largest repeat pattern, and Cray, which would be his last significant printed textile design.

Morris would also master tapestries and completed his first piece, Acanthus and Vine, in 1879. Such was the popularity of his tapestries that he appointed John Henry Dearle to manage production, while his flat weave, woolen Kidderminster carpets were also outsourced and machine produced in the mid-1870s. However, his greatest achievement was on a much larger scale. Designed by architect Philip Webb, Morris’s Red House is a house in his own, harmoniously colored image. Described by Rossetti as “more a poem than a house,” it would become Morris’s trademark. “The growth of decorative art in this country… has now reached a point at which it seems desirable that artists of reputation should devote their time to it,” said Morris, as he sparked the idea of ‘The House Beautiful’ that led to a revolution in interior decoration.

Manufacturers responded to this boom in popularity with furniture at price points attractive to modest budgets, as the middle-class home became the aesthetic focus. Furniture was transformed, as sideboards, cupboards, and overmantels created displays for treasured items, with designers like Walter Crane, and Lewis Foreman Day producing designs for all types of furnishings.

The Writers

With a self-proclaimed love of poetry, painting, and design, Oscar Wilde became the living embodiment of the Aesthetic Movement. As the greatest playwright of the Victorian era, an author, and poet, his written style was biting, flamboyant, and for its own pleasure – which was reflected in his approach to life. Wilde’s ideas on art, beauty and expression challenged Victorian puritanism, while his writing liberated English literature from the rigid constraints of Victorian society and aligned British culture with emerging European modernism.

Embodying the cult of beauty at the heart of the Aesthetic Movement, Wilde promoted hedonism as a way to shake off the shackles of the Victorian era in Britain, and is said to have made his first appearance in London in a custom-suit is the shape of a cello. His attitudes were mirrored by the writing of Walter Pater and the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley in The Yellow Book. Not purely flamboyant though, Wilde enthused about interior decoration and even had practical advice, “stained glass can reduce the glare from a large window and fill a room with more subtle lighting”.

Beautiful Legacy

By the late 19^th century, the Aesthetic Movement was in decline. Their influence would endure though, as their pursuit of art for art’s sake re-shaped the artistic landscape and left a lasting legacy on visual arts and design.

Art Nouveau followed in the Aesthetic Movement’s footsteps, as it embraced organic forms and decorative arts, while aesthete’s fondness for abstraction would be at the heart of modern art in the following century. William Morris became a leading proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement, while the notion of an artistic approach to furniture design and crafts was later harnessed by the Bauhaus movement.

The Aesthetic influence is pervasive across a variety of artistic movements, but were it can still be felt today is in the homes of regular people across the world. Its flamboyant rebellion created modern conceptions of interior design, which not only brought color and vibrancy to interiors, but perhaps even more revolutionary was the idea of personal expression and artistic integrity that made artists out of everyone with an inclination to decorate their home.