Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist Aestheticism

This essay foregrounds the work of late nineteenth-century British painter Margaret Murray Cookesley, who may be largely forgotten today, but who in her day exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and, it seems, also managed to sell her art to an interested public. What makes her oeuvre fascinating...

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Main Author: Julia Kuehn
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2011-11-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1375
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author Julia Kuehn
author_facet Julia Kuehn
author_sort Julia Kuehn
collection DOAJ
description This essay foregrounds the work of late nineteenth-century British painter Margaret Murray Cookesley, who may be largely forgotten today, but who in her day exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and, it seems, also managed to sell her art to an interested public. What makes her oeuvre fascinating in the context of British Aestheticism is that she successfully combined artistic principles adopted from the Aesthetic Movement with the Eastern subject matter inherited from the Orientalist painting tradition. By analysing a number of Cookesley’s Orientalist-Aestheticist paintings of harem women this essay thus suggests that Aestheticism was by no means a well-defined or self-contained artistic movement but was open enough to invite often bizarre hybrids like Cookesley’s works into its circle.
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series Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
spelling doaj-art-f9a91243690d4eb88e3acee6fb8ad57b2025-01-30T10:21:30ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492011-11-017416919610.4000/cve.1375Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist AestheticismJulia KuehnThis essay foregrounds the work of late nineteenth-century British painter Margaret Murray Cookesley, who may be largely forgotten today, but who in her day exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and, it seems, also managed to sell her art to an interested public. What makes her oeuvre fascinating in the context of British Aestheticism is that she successfully combined artistic principles adopted from the Aesthetic Movement with the Eastern subject matter inherited from the Orientalist painting tradition. By analysing a number of Cookesley’s Orientalist-Aestheticist paintings of harem women this essay thus suggests that Aestheticism was by no means a well-defined or self-contained artistic movement but was open enough to invite often bizarre hybrids like Cookesley’s works into its circle.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1375
spellingShingle Julia Kuehn
Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist Aestheticism
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
title Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist Aestheticism
title_full Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist Aestheticism
title_fullStr Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist Aestheticism
title_full_unstemmed Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist Aestheticism
title_short Visual Hybridity: Margaret Murray Cookesley’s Orientalist Aestheticism
title_sort visual hybridity margaret murray cookesley s orientalist aestheticism
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1375
work_keys_str_mv AT juliakuehn visualhybriditymargaretmurraycookesleysorientalistaestheticism