Word: victorians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...because other Academy members failed to come to the defense of controversial Sculptor Jacob Epstein. In his last years, he changed his signature (from Walter to his middle name, Richard, because it seemed more euphonious), grew a sprawling beard and even changed his style. He painted oil versions of Victorian engravings by such artists as Cruikshank and Sir John Gilbert which were as highly colored and gay as his earlier paintings were low-keyed and grim. "It's such a good arrangement," he explained fliply. "Cruikshank and Gilbert do all the work and I get all the money...
Heavy, cluttered Victorian interiors relentlessly submerged anything as prosaic as a human being. Their glass, like their furniture and fabrics, was designed to bemuse the eye as a Henry James novel bemuses the mind. Moderns prefer to see and be seen...
...railroad, it would probably look like the "Far Twittering and Oysterperch," which for years has been chuffing through the pages of Punch. Under the management of its founder, Cartoonist Rowland Emett, its carriages are apt to be outhouses, its locomotives are overgrown with vines and their mechanism recalls Victorian bathroom fixtures. The Emett Railway is driven by elderly gentlemen with droopy mustaches, cobwebs in their ears, and a quiet contempt for the world about them. When the managers of the Festival of Britain were making plans for a London Pleasure Garden in which fun & games might sprout freely, they decided...
Gentlemanly Crook. By far the best chapter in The Pinkerton Story is a report on Adam Worth, the "most remarkable" criminal of the Victorian era. In 35 years, he stole $4,000,000, never once resorted to violence. He forged checks on a Turkish bank, grabbed ?70,000 worth of rough diamonds in South Africa, stole 700,000 francs worth of bonds from the Calais-Paris express, and once took a famous Gainsborough painting from its frame in a London dealer's gallery. Operating mainly in Europe, he stayed out of reach of the Pinkertons, was imprisoned only twice...
...Crystal Palace and opened it with a mighty singing of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. Crammed with inventions and works of art, the Crystal Palace managed to impress the contemporary world, and eventually inspire a traditional lecture at Harvard, Professor Owen's on the oddities of mid-Victorian taste. This year the British have an exhibition going again but it's unlikely that there'll be much fun making at its expense...