ABSTRACT
Visual culture was deeply rooted in Ford Madox Ford’s personal history. This chapter discusses a variety of ways in which Ford engages with vision and visual culture. It considers how, in turn, visual artists have engaged with Ford and his work. At the core of his Impressionist poetics is the phenomenology of the visual in its broadest sense, which includes sensory perception as well as mental imagery Adaptations will certainly offer fruitful ground for critical explorations of Ford, vision and intermediality. Ford remained deeply interested in the arts beyond the influence of his Pre-Raphaelite milieu and the art monographs it inspired. Ford’s fascination with Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and other pictorial avant-gardes is documented in It Was the Nightingale and Provence. In his numerous memoirs and reminiscences, from Ancient Lights to Portraits from Life, Ford engaged with portraiture as a literary form, outlining the personalities and works of writers and artists he admired.
