Ut pictura poesis (that is, "as is painting, so is poetry"). The Web has helped solve at least one scholarly conundrum: what's the best way to present the work of those artists who took the theory of "the sister arts" to its logical conclusion? Try, for example, The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, hosted by the University of Virginia. Or, if Pre-Raphaelites are not quite your thing, there's the William Blake Archive, which offers multiple versions of the illuminated books. And don't forget the man behind the wallpaper, William Morris. While William Makepeace Thackeray was a rather less successful artist--his ambitions in that line didn't quite pan out--nevertheless his illustrations to Vanity Fair (scroll down) are crucial to the novel (which doesn't stop many publishers from leaving them out...).
posted by thomas j wise on Apr 15, 2003 - 8 comments