Men at Work

Art and Labour in Mid-Victorian Britain

Barringer Tim

For artists of the increasingly mechanized Victorian age, questions about the meaning and value of labour presented a series of urgent problems: Is work a moral obligation or a religious duty? Must labour be the preserve of men alone? Does the amount of work bestowed on a painting affect its value? Should art celebrate wholesome rural work or reveal the degradations of the industrial workplace? In this highly original book, Tim Barringer considers how artists and theorists addressed these questions and what their solutions reveal about Victorian society and culture. Based on extensive new research, "Men at Work" offers a compelling study of the image as a means of exploring the relationship between labour and art in Victorian Britain. Barringer arrives at a major reinterpretation of the art and culture of nineteenth-century Britain and its empire as well as new readings of such key figures as Ford Madox Brown and John Ruskin.

About the Author

Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. His books include "Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain" (Yale) and the exhibition catalogues "American Sublime", "Art and Emancipation in Jamaica" (Yale), "Opulence and Anxiety", and "Before and After Modernism".

Reviews

"Complimenting the exceptional scholarship is the usual high production standards, with its handsome design and superb illustrations, of Yale University Press" – Arlis News-Sheet

"Barringer's lively prose and ability to bring lines of argument back to the images that are at the heart of his enquiry make for compelling and often exhilirating reading. His methodological sophistication also makes this a book of enormous richness and one that is certain to provide stimulus for further work" – Peter Funnell, Burlington Magazine

"Tim Barringer has written an impressively erudite and subtle book... [It] is certain to be important, not only for its precise, informative account of its subject, but also as a model for the value, complexity and range of works made in England at this period" – Visual Culture

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