Exhibition view
On December 23rd, the special exhibition "Echoes of the Steam Age - Victorian Art", co-sponsored by the National Centre for the Performing Arts and the National Museum of Liverpool, and co-organized by Youxiang Yizhong (Beijing) Cultural Development Co., Ltd., officially opened at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (East Hall).
The Victorian era was the heyday of British history and the golden age of its development in the field of fine arts. During this period, under the nourishment of social prosperity and development, new artistic trends emerged one after another, making the British painting scene show a flourishing appearance.
William Turner, Shipwreck Buoy, oil on canvas, painted in 1807 and repainted in 1849
This special exhibition focuses on the development of local art in Victorian Britain, and displays nearly 100 exhibits such as oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, sculptures and exquisite fabrics and utensils by many influential landscape painters, such as William Turner, the pioneer of the Pre-Raphaelites, and many other art masters. The exhibition is divided into three themes: "Natural Scenery", "Worship of Beauty" and "All Living Beings", leading everyone to approach the multi-dimensional Victorian era.
"Nature's Scenes" exhibits landscape works created by 19th-century British painters. British landscape painting is not only a national school of painting in Britain, but also a vital force in promoting the development of Western painting. The Victorian British landscape painters not only depicted the vast and magnificent seascapes and quiet and beautiful countryside of their country with their brushes to express their love for their homeland and arouse the national feelings of the public, but also recorded exotic scenery by traveling around Europe and even enriching the content of landscape paintings with scenes from the Oriental world under the continued influence of the "Great Travel" era. The practice of light and color in the artistic creation of the British Romantic landscape painters represented by William Turner provided an important inspiration for the birth of Impressionism at the end of the 19th century.
Exhibition view
"The Cult of Beauty" exhibits works by artists such as Pre-Raphaelite, Aestheticism, Symbolism and Classicism that emerged in the mid-to-late Victorian era. After entering the middle of the 19th century, Britain entered a period of full prosperity after completing the Industrial Revolution, and various artistic schools emerged. However, behind industrialization and urban prosperity lies the destruction of the natural environment and the lack of moral beliefs of social groups under the value of "money first". Artists discovered the shortcomings of the rapid development of society, so they created art or carried out moral education, or carried out retro nostalgia, or pursued the form of beauty, or brought symbolic metaphors, in short, the pursuit and worship of "beauty" became the theme of continuous contact and inquiry by artists with a reflective and innovative spirit in the Victorian era.
Most of the works on display in "Vientiane Beings" are created during the Victorian period in England on the theme of social reality, as well as the Queen's costumes and exquisite utensils. In these exhibits, we can see not only the richness and refinement of the life of the upper class and the daily life of the middle class, but also the existential difficulties and sorrows faced by the common people at the bottom.
Exhibition view
In this exhibition, the audience can immerse themselves in 19th-century Britain, as Charles Dickens, the realist novelist of the time, expressed in the opening chapter of A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times". Victorian Britain was the first to complete the industrial revolution and won the unparalleled glory and wealth in history, creating the brilliance and glory of the development of British art, but behind the social prosperity there is also darkness and sorrow.
It is believed that the holding of this exhibition will open a window for Chinese audiences to understand Victorian Britain in a diverse and three-dimensional way, and thus allow everyone to experience the stars of the golden age of British art up close.
Exhibition poster
It is reported that the exhibition will last until March 25, 2024. (Courtesy of National Centre for the Performing Arts)