Magazine of Art

Magazine of Art
Title	Magazine of Art
Category	Art magazine
Frequency	Monthly
Firstdate	1878
Finaldate	1904
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Magazine of Art The Magazine of Art was a British monthly periodical devoted to visual arts, artistic criticism, and cultural commentary during the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. It provided contemporary analyses, exhibition reviews, artist biographies, and illustrated plates that connected readerships across London, Paris, Rome, and New York. Engaging with institutions such as the Royal Academy of Arts, the National Gallery, London, and the British Museum, the periodical became a nexus for debates involving figures associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the emerging modernist circles around Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh.

History

Founded in 1878, the Magazine of Art emerged amid an expanding print culture that included titles like The Art Journal, The Studio, and Blackwood's Magazine. Early issues addressed exhibitions at venues such as the Royal Academy, the Paris Salon, and the Exposition Universelle (1889), reporting on artists connected with John Ruskin, William Morris, and Gustave Courbet. The periodical covered movements spanning Academic art, Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and responses to developments by artists like James McNeill Whistler, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Through the 1880s and 1890s it tracked institutional events such as the Art Workers' Guild meetings, the foundation of the Victoria and Albert Museum collections, and debates sparked by acquisitions at the Tate Gallery. By the turn of the century it engaged dialogues involving Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Cézanne, Gustav Klimt, and collectors like John Ruskin and Samuel Courtauld.

Editorial Leadership and Contributors

Editorial direction involved editors, critics, and scholars who shaped discourse around artists such as George Frederic Watts, Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, and Alfred Sisley. Contributors included art historians and critics familiar with institutions like the British Institution, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Society of Painters in Water Colours. Regular writers compared the oeuvres of Rembrandt van Rijn, Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacques-Louis David, and Ingres with contemporaries such as John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert, and Augustus John. The magazine also featured essays referencing curators and patrons associated with Sir John Soane, Sir George Beaumont, Sir Richard Wallace, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and dealers from galleries including the Goupil Gallery and Léon Pillet.

Content and Thematic Focus

Coverage encompassed exhibition reviews from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Glasgow International Exhibition, and the Paris Salon, along with thematic essays on subjects like iconography in works by Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, Titian, Carlo Crivelli, and Giovanni Bellini. Profiles and monographs treated painters and sculptors such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Auguste Rodin, Antoine Bourdelle, John Flaxman, and Hiram Powers. Articles debated restoration practices used on Giotto frescoes and conservation at institutions like the Uffizi Gallery and the Louvre Museum. The magazine ran studies of printmakers including Albrecht Dürer, Hokusai, and Rembrandt, and of illustrators such as Gustave Doré, Aubrey Beardsley, and Arthur Rackham.

Design, Illustration, and Production

The periodical was noted for its engraved plates, photogravures, and chromolithographs reproducing works by J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, George Romney, and contemporary etchers like Francis Seymour Haden and James McNeill Whistler. Production methods referenced studios and printmaking firms like Day & Son, L. Prang & Company, and Cassell & Co., and intersected with commercial publishers such as Macmillan Publishers, Longmans, Green, and William Heinemann. Layout and typography showed affinities with printers who served William Morris's Kelmscott Press and designers associated with Charles Robert Ashbee and the Doves Press aesthetic. Illustrative commissions included works by sculptors, engravers, and book illustrators linked to Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, and John Tenniel.

Reception and Influence

Contemporaries compared the magazine with The Art Journal and The Studio, and critics from circles around Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and John Ruskin engaged with its essays. It influenced collectors including Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and Samuel Courtauld and shaped acquisitions at museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington), and provincial galleries across Manchester, Bristol, and Birmingham. Debates published within affected academic curricula at institutions like the Royal College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art and informed exhibitions organized by the British Council and the Art Fund.

Publication Details and Circulation

Published monthly, the magazine circulated in the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, and parts of the British Empire including India, Australia, and Canada. Distribution channels included booksellers such as Hatchards, periodical vendors in Bond Street, and subscription lists reaching readers tied to clubs like the Savile Club and the Athenaeum Club. Advertisements and classified notices connected the magazine to auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's, print dealers on Bond Street, and exhibition announcements from the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Society of Portrait Painters.

Legacy and Archival Availability

Back issues survive in institutional collections at the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and university libraries including Cambridge University Library and Oxford's Bodleian. Microfilm, digitized copies, and bound volumes are held by archives such as the Huntington Library, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. Researchers consult its pages for provenance studies involving collections like the Wallace Collection, the Houghton Library holdings, and materials connected to collectors such as John Ruskin and Isabella Stewart Gardner. Its visual reproductions inform catalogues raisonnés for artists including Turner, Constable, Rembrandt, and Whistler and continue to be cited in scholarship at institutions such as the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Smithsonian Institution.

Category:Art magazines published in the United Kingdom