Aestheticism and “Decadence”

The origins of the Aesthetic Movement ¹ are found in various streams of speculation. At Oxford in the eighteen-sixties the Hegelian evaluation of the various kinds of human experience was expounded by Thomas Hill Green (1836–1882) and was of primary importance for the determination of Walter Pater's point of view. ² At just this time Swinburne, following Gautier and Baudelaire, was controverting the Utilitarian criticism which demanded of art a moral emphasis and declaring that art should serve no religious, moral, or social end, nor any end save itself. Rossetti, while avoiding precept and controversy, was a strong and disturbing example of the artist dedicated wholly to his art. By seeking to make the social order comely, Ruskin, even while insisting upon moral values in art, prepared the way for Pater's doctrine of the comeliness of the individual life as a criterion of right conduct. Behind these and other expressions of dissatisfaction with the dominant Utilitarian creed was the pessimism of the mid-century which was a further stimulus towards hedonism. After the French defeat of 1870 the withdrawal of French artists and men of letters from the political and social arena into aesthetic isolation was a gesture imitated in England.