The Essence of Art: Victorian Advice on the Practice of Painting

First published in 1999, this book asks what kind of advice was available to somebody wishing to embark upon oil painting in England between 1850 and 1900.

It is a fascinating collection of Victorian instruction on how and what to paint, linked to crucial advice about art, its meaning and its relation to contemporary life, given by practising artists, important and often popular in their time, but whose lectures and writings are long overdue for reappraisal: Leslie, Hamerton, O'Neil, Poynter...