Pater and Contemporary Visual Art

Some critics have been sceptical about Pater’s interest in contemporary visual art. He never wrote at any length about nineteenth century painters or painting and seems to have confined his interest to literature. This paper suggests that in reality Pater had a strong and well developed interest. Not only were some of his closest friends painters, particularly Simeon Solomon, he was also on very good terms with Swinburne and through him to the Rossetti circle. In the 1870s, however, visual art was a site of considerable controversy, and Pater was aware of the damage such association would do to him. The attacks on Burne-Jones, on Solomon and later, on Whistler, made him cautious of speaking his mind openly. Several unpublished documents deal with his views on centrality of the visual arts in modern culture, his book reviews display a knowledge of the subject not seen elsewhere, and his ‘School of Giorgione’ was almost certainly a statement in support of the modern Aesthetic school of painting at the recently opened Grosvenor Gallery.