Dreamers of Decadence: Symbolist Painters of the 1890s

by Philippe Jullian

Book Overview

There have been few movements in the history of Western art as strange as that of the Decadents of the last quarter of the 19th Century. While public attention was preoccupied with the Impressionists,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0011ZZA1W
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Excellent selection of artworks, and forward thinking topic

Dreamers of the Decadence covers art from Pre-Rapaelite to the begginings of Art Nouveau. It isn't that broad a topic, but that seems to be the time span. Basically Jullian was trying to define a trend in art at the time - The Decadence. One of the trends that he saw in art that he was dealing with was the interest in magic and arcane subjects. So subject matter was important to his definition of Decadence. I do recommend looking up this book and skimming it, just to find new art to admire. I found several paintings that I hadn't seen before and went on to find more about the artists and more by them. However, the reproductions in the book are mostly there to give you the gist of what Jullian was saying in the text. Many of them are small black and white reproductions that take up half of an already not too big page. The color reproductions are adquate, but not the best quality. (Please don't take this as negative. This book was published in the 1970's when Pre-Raphaelite art was not getting respect. So just to have it published was a very good thing for the artists, and shows progressive thinking on the part of Jullian.) Subsequent books on the topic, and probably influenced by this one have more bigger and better visuals. If you are interested in this book because you are curious about art, then I recommend inter-library loan. If you are just curious about the art you can go through this book in about a week, then later find good quality pics of what you liked. If you know you will want to read and study the writing then buy it. The art criticism is the focus of the book and its main use. University libraries should have a copy archived for researchers to access.

A Window to Our Dreams

As a reference work, I think this book compares well with the Oxford or Cambridge guides to literature. There are other larger books about the Pre-Raphaelites with probably more colour plates; you can find those with little trouble on your local supermarket shelves. But while many of those are excellent, Philippe Jullian's book, with its numerous two-tone illustrations (many of them pencil sketches anyway), its 'Short Anthology of Symbolist Themes' (from Poe on Angels to Tolstoy on The Enemies of the Dream), poetry, music, photography, sculpture, and anecdotes about the famous and not-so-famous, is for me the more fascinating. The colour plates are there, too (W Holman Hunt's The Lady of Shalott and De Feure's Les Fleurs du Mal to mention only two). And they're not split annoyingly across two pages. It's a book that's more often on my bedside table, within easy reach, than the coffee table. It rarely stays long on a shelf. My only regret about writing this little piece is that someone more knowledgeable about the subject had not beaten me to it.