ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the once immensely successful but now all but forgotten marbelous paintings of late Victorian England. Numerous works by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John William Godward, and Sir Edward John Poynter exhibit an awareness of the intrinsic qualities of marble such as veining, breccia, glister, and glow. Their marble contains a power of presence that complicates notions of the mundane through its empathetic engagement with the audience. Considering both the agency of the material within the artistic process and the dialogue it can bring to the larger work of art, one can explore how the marbles depicted by these painters act as the main subject. These works are expositions of material consciousness that emphasize the nature of marble and treat the stone as the visual protagonist of the composition. By adopting a materiality-centric approach, this chapter redefines the position of the Victorian marbelous painters within global modern art and points to the development of marble’s abstraction and eventual dematerialization as the 20th century progressed.
