Liverpool Academy and Other exhibitions of Contemporary Art in Liverpool, 1774-1867: A History and Index of Artists and works Exhibited - Hardcover

Morris, Edward; Roberts, Emma

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0853236720 ISBN 13: 9780853236726

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Liverpool was the first English provincial city in the eighteenth century to hold art exhibitions. Its mid-nineteenth-century exhibitions were notable for attracting Pre-Raphaelite and foreign artists who both had difficulty in showing their works in London. Their development and eventual collapse reveal the importance of municipal enterprise and official subsidy, of the free market and cash flow, of artistic feuds and the battle of styles in the growth of provincial culture. In 1871 art exhibitions were revived in Liverpool under the control of the City Council, but the new Liverpool Autumn Exhibitions were dominated by the Royal Academy and by the other major London exhibiting societies; they no longer needed to be responsive to the local artistic climate and in fact they were a national and not a local institution. This volume makes available to a wider public a remarkable aspect of Liverpool culture. The index to some fifty exhibition catalogues is complemented by extensive essays by Edward Morris and Emma Roberts and six informative appendices.

About this title

Synopsis:

Exhibitions were influential in the shaping not only of patronage but also of style and subject matter in late-18th-century and 19th-century British art. By the end of the 19th century Britain was possibly artistically the most centralized state in western Europe, but earlier in the century the provincial patronage and artistic aspirations of the vast new populations and wealth in northern Britain were highly significant in British culture. Liverpool was the first English provincial city in the 18th century to hold art exhibitions. Its mid-19th-century exhibitions were notable for attracting Pre-Raphaelite and foreign artists, who had difficulty in showing their works in London. The development and eventual collapse of those exhibitions reveal the importance of municipal enterprise and official subsidy, of the free market and cash flow, of artistic feuds and the battle of styles in the growth of provincial culture.

In 1871 art exhibitions were revived in Liverpool under the control of the City Council, but the new Liverpool Autumn Exhibitions were dominated by the Royal Academy and by the other major London exhibiting societies; they no longer needed to be responsive to the local artistic climate, and in fact were a national and not a local institution. Only one set of the exhibition catalogues of 1774-1867 survives, and it is in the Liverpool City Libraries. The records of the Liverpool Academy and of the Liverpool Society of Fine Arts are preserved in the Walker Art Gallery. This volume therefore makes available to a wider public a remarkable aspect of Liverpool culture. In addition to the index to some 50 exhibition catalogues, there are extensive essays by Edward Morris and Emma Roberts, and six appendices.

About this edition

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0853236720
• ISBN 13: 9780853236726
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 600