Home  |  Up  |  Info  |  Search  |  View basket  |  Checkout  |  Email us  |  Login

Architecture Decorative Arts Fine Art Forthcoming Titles Instruments and Technology Oriental Art Exclusive Titles

Catalogue >Fine Art >  General >  From Victorian to Modern From Victorian to Modern Innovation and tradition in the work of Vanessa Bell, Gwen John and Laura Knight Pamela Gerrish Nunn The book examines the impact of modernism on the work of three women artists Gwen John (b. 1876), Vanessa Bell (b. 1879) and Laura Knight (b. 1877), whose training and early artistic careers were rooted in the Victorian tradition. The book ranges them alongside one other to examine and compare their development, their work and the positions they took in the crucial years of their careers between 1890 and 1920. Pamela Gerrish Nunn casts a new light on each artist, putting their works into a comparative context and other neglected works into a critical conversation which illuminates women’s participation in the important question of how British art negotiated the challenge posed by Post- Impressionism, abstraction, significant form and the demise of narrative anecdote at the beginning of the twentieth century. 112 pages 260 x 220 mm, 79 colour illustrations hardback ISBN 0 85667 623 3 EAN 978085667 6239  Online price: £19.95 / €29.93 This book examines the impact of modernism on the work of three female artists - Vanessa Bell (b.1879), Gwen John (b.1876) and Laura Knight (b.1877) - whose training and early artistic careers were firmly rooted in the Victorian tradition. The book ranges them alongside one another in order to examine and compare their respective development, work, and the positions they adopted in the crucial years of their careers between 1890 and 1920. During these years Vanessa Bell, Gwen John and Laura Knight all reacted to the emergence of modernist trends in pictorial art in a way which found expression in their own art. Yet the reactions displayed by these three were far from identical, and their diversity of response indicates the more general spectrum of the response among British artists provoked by the proliferation of such novel ideas and techniques. The reaction to and incorporation of modernist ideas amongst female artists has remained more or less unexamined, despite the improvements for female artists over the previous half-century, as the analysis of modernism has been confined mainly to the work of male artists. Gerrish Nunn, therefore, casts a new light on each artist, putting both known and lesser known works into dialogue with one another in a way that illuminates women's participation in the important question of how British art negotiated the challenge posed by Post-Impressionism, abstraction, significant form and the demise of narrative at the beginning of the twentieth century. Pamela Gerrish Nunn is Associate Professor in Art History at the School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand