Charlotte Gere

Lesley Hoskins

Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Interior

The House Beautiful

Judy Rudoe

This book rewrites the history of jewellery in the age of Victoria. The 'age of Victoria' is taken in its widest sense to encompass jewellery made throughout Europe and America, displayed at the great international exhibitions and distributed through foreign trade, illustrated publications and a burgeoning tourist industry. Throughout, links with other disciplines will provide both the specialist and the non-specialist with the information to understand how jewellery permeated all walks and conditions of life in the 19th century. The focus of the book is on the attitudes of owners to their jewellery and the symbolic weight that it was expected to carry. Rather than concentrating on the major figures at the top end of the jewellery trade, or indeed offering a chronological survey of the development of jewellery styles and fashions, it is oriented towards the social aspects of owning, wearing and displaying jewellery. The authors show, for example, how novelists use jewellery to add a moral or metaphorical dimension to a character, while jewels depicted in portraits would often have disclosed multiple messages which could be immediately decoded by the viewer. The achievements of science, the fascination with nature and the Victorian sense of humour are all embodied in jewellery. Topics discussed in depth include the importance of jewellery in the life of the Queen herself, jewellery and dress, the language of jewellery, the cult of novelty, the importance of nationalism in the revival of historical styles, and the contribution of archaeological discoveries. The volume is sumptuously illustrated with contemporary reportage, photographs and portraits as well as examples of jewellery from the British Museum and other collections.

A Mirror to the World

Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria

Christopher Riopelle

Xavier Bray

More than forty years ago, John and Charlotte Gere, both distinguished art historians, pioneered the collecting of small-scale landscape oil sketches created by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists working out of doors in nature. Such paintings, created quickly to capture subtle atmospheric effects and the fleeting play of light, played a vital role in the visual training of generations of European artists. The pictures were not conceived of as finished works of art, were rarely if ever exhibited during the artists' lifetimes, and were often kept in the studio for later consultation. This beautiful book presents the Gere collection, which today numbers some 70 works. These include paintings by Valenciennes, Frederic, Lord Leighton, and Thomas Jones, as well as by less well-known artists such as Gilles Closson and Simon Denis. While the majority were painted in Italy, there are also works by British, French, Italian, German, Belgian, and Scandinavian artists. These intimate and compelling documents of artists at work form what is perhaps the most comprehensive private collection of its kind.

The Gere Collection of Landscape Oil Sketches

A Brush With Nature

Charlotte Gere

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