Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Explores the ways in which modernism in the visual arts was received in England. She concludes that modernism triumphed not because it repudiated the past in a revolutionary fashion but because it grew from nineteenth-century roots.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book examines the consolidation of progressive aesthetic ideas in Britain from the 1880s to the 1910 and 1911 postimpressionist exhibitions that Roger Fry organized. Tillyard, (English and art history, UCLA) presents a wealth of primary material to indicate the importance of the arts and crafts ideology in the creation of modernist attitudes and to reassess the impact of the exhibitions upon British avant-garde art and sculpture up to 1914, adding to such standard studies as C. Harrison's English Art and Modernism 1900-1939 (CH, Sep '81) and F. Spalding's Roger Fry: Art and Life (CH, Jan '81). The combination of thematic discussion and more specific analyses results in a quite densely written text, but one that generally avoids the discursive and provides new insight about the mosaic of late Victorian and Edwardian taste. Given its didactic purpose and small format, the illustrations are limited; however, the footnotes, bibliographies of contemporary sources, and index are comprehensive; the listing of secondary literature is also thorough despite the omission of D. Farr's English Art 1870-1940 (2nd ed., 1984; 1st ed., CH, Dec '79) and P. Davey's Architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement (CH, May '81). Will prove useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. -R. W. Liscombe, University of British Columbia