During the Victorian era, artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton, and G.F. Watts shared not only their creative work with the public but their homes and gardens, too. As members of the Aesthetic Movement, they believed their domestic spaces were as essential to understanding their overall aesthetic sense as any of the works they sent forth from it. As manufacturers, homeowners, designers, and consumers, these artists had a significant influence on Victorian architecture and interior decoration. In this captivating book, Charlotte Gere explores Aestheticism from a social perspective, revealing how the art movement made domestic building, homemaking, and gardening central elements in the burgeoning culture of the Victorian middle-class professional.
