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L’axe principal de cette thèse intitulée « La pratique du dessin et la cognition » concerne le rapport entre la perception de l’artiste et son geste graphique, tout en limitant la portée de la recherche aux productions picturales réalistes. En ce sens, la thèse pose deux questions fondamentales. Premièrement : Comment l’artiste voit-il le monde ? Et deuxièmement : dans quelle mesure la manière dont l’artiste voit le monde détermine sa pratique et son résultat ? La thèse présente les différentes approches qui ont tenté d’expliquer le regard de l’artiste lors de la réalisation d'œuvres picturales. Englobant ces points de vue dans deux théories générales sur la perception de l’artiste, la thèse présente Gombrich et Ruskin comme les représentants de cette divergence. Trouver des rapports entre ces théories, les observations et les expériences personnelles est une des motivations initiales de cette thèse qui regroupe les différentes expériences de pratique du dessin dans deux approches, une holistique et l’autre régit par le principe de détail. Les caractéristiques principales de ces différents types de pratique sont examinées par une approche expérimentale de la cognition, tout en essayant de redéfinir l’activité du dessin sur le plan cognitif. La thèse se compose de trois parties. La première partie retrace la problématique dans un champ qui intègre l’expérience personnelle ainsi que les idées historiques et esthétiques sur le dessin. La deuxième partie comprend une initialisation du même sujet dans le domaine cognitif, où la question de la perception est détaillée dans ses mécanismes basiques. Ces apports conduisent à la synthèse de la thèse, objet de la troisième partie. / The principal axis of this thesis entitled "The Practice of Drawing and Cognition" refers to the relationship between the perception of the artist and his graphic gesture, limiting the scope of the research to the realistic pictorial productions. In this sense, the thesis poses two fundamental questions. First: How the artist sees? And secondly, to what extent the manner in which the artist sees determines (his) its practice and its result. The thesis presents the different approaches that have attempted to explain the vision of the artist during the execution of pictorial works. Incorporating these viewpoints in two general theories on the perception of the artist, the thesis presents Ruskin and Gombrich as representatives of this divergence. Finding relationships between these theories, personal observations and experiences is one of the initial motivations of this thesis that comprises the various experiments in practice of drawing two approaches- a holistic and the other by the principle of detail. The principal characteristics of these different types of practice are examined by an experimental approach to cognition, trying to redefine the activity of drawing on the cognitive level. The thesis consists of three parts. The first part traces the problematic in a field that integrate personal experience and the historical and a esthetic ideas on drawing. The second part contain initialization of the same subject in the cognitive domain, where the issue of perception is detailed in its basic mechanisms. These efforts lead to the synthesis of the thesis, the subject of the third part.

The thesis explores the work of two disparate figures, John Ruskin (1819-1900) and Albert Smith (1816-1860) who, together, helped transform the way the Alps were perceived in the mid nineteenth century. Both esteemed the Alps in their own way, although Ruskin’s cultural aestheticism contrasting markedly to the popular showmanship of Smith. Nevertheless, both Ruskin’s five-volumed Modern Painters (1843-1860), and Smith’s theatrical shows describing his ascent of Mont Blanc (1852-1858), contributed significantly to the growing popularity of the landscape resulting in the Alpine Club (1857) and the birth of modern tourism in the region. This work examines in detail the work and interests of both characters. This includes Ruskin’s drawings, art theory (especially in relation to his admiration of Turner), geological interests, religious convictions, and poetry. These reveal his desire to centre ideas of the sublime around his scientific interest in the area and the legacy of his Evangelical upbringing. The thesis investigates the tension between these elements. Smith’s climb of Mont Blanc (1851) and his subsequent shows highlighted his desire to thrill and entertain. For him, presentation of the Alps was a matter of showmanship and the thesis investigates his success, tracing its roots in elements of Victorian popular entertainment. Both Smith’s shows, and works like Of Mountain Beauty (Volume IV of Modern Painters (1856)), inspired many to explore the landscape for themselves. For Ruskin, this led to a decline in his interest in the Alps following the development of the rail network and the expansion of popular tourist sites, including his beloved Chamonix. For Smith, the public’s increasing familiarity with the region, and the popularity of other stories of Alpine ascents by members of the Alpine Club, led to a decline in interest in his shows by the end of the 1850s. Due to their interest in the region, the Romantic appreciation of the Alps in the early nineteenth century associated with theories of the sublime became a much more diverse phenomenon illustrating a number of key features of Victorian culture, including: the relationship of ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture; the increasing influence of mass tourism; and the ways in which major figures in Victorian Britain explored and utilised foreign destinations. The thesis will also, from time to time, examine the relationship between cultural and visual forms and key elements in Victorian intellectual controversy, including the relationship of religion and science.

This thesis examines the history of the Manchester Art Museum (Manchester, England), which was founded by Thomas Coglan Horsfall (1841-1932) in 1886. It considers the museum’s permanent collections and its programming from 1886 to 1898 with brief notes on the later years of the institution. While, like previous work on the Manchester Art Museum, the thesis contextualizes the museum within Victorian arts and community institutions, it breaks new ground by highlighting the ways in which it diverged from these institutions. The analysis of the museum’s collections and programming emphasizes the contributions that Horsfall and the Art Museum Committee made to museum education through the museum’s circulating loan collections and school tours.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University College, University of London, 1985. / BLDSC reference no.: DX194568. Includes bibliographical references.

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abstract: This Master's thesis locates four works by William Dyce inspired by Dante Alighieri's Commedia: Francesca da Rimini (1837), Design for the Reverse of the Turner Medal (1858), Beatrice (1859), and Dante and Beatrice (date unknown) in the context of their literary, artistic and personal influences. It will be shown that, far from assimilating the poet to a pantheon of important worthies, Dyce found in Dante contradictions and challenges to his Victorian, Anglican way of thinking. In this thesis these contradictions and challenges are explicated in each of the four works. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2013

Thomas Hardy is the only major English novelist to have been a professional architect. In his essay, “Memories of Church Restoration,” written for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1906), it was clear that, for Hardy, architectural structures preserved the spirit of all those who had created and originally worked and lived within them. By their very presence, then, ancient and medieval buildings were historical artifacts housing the memories of past lives. This intertwining of humans and the built environment became the stuff of Hardy’s novels, short stories, poetry, and essays. Drawing on autobiographical material, including correspondence and notebooks, as well as novels and poetry, this thesis examines the various ways in which Hardy engages with ideas and debates about architecture taking place in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While previous studies have examined the treatment of architecture in Hardy’s fiction, this thesis focuses on key figures in the architectural world and the complex role their ideas play in his work. Hardy explores a combination of ideas from leading architectural thinkers, at times offering an important synthesis to coexisting architectural ideas. I argue that Hardy saw architecture as recording centuries of memory, rooted in an instinctual life that connects humans with the natural world in an intimate way, evoking evolutionary time. In so doing he expanded the meaning of the “architectural” well beyond the confines of medievalist or classical ideas, or debates sparked by architects and critics such as A.W.N. Pugin and John Ruskin and architecture, in its broadest definition, acts as a metaphor for the way the past lives on in the present, undergoing continual processes of change; for destruction and decay; and for the way buildings undergo natural processes. The nexus of architectural ideas also allows Hardy to respond to questions of the role of art in relation to society and social communities.

The theoretical framework of this study is intended to explore the potential Alain Badiou's theory of event, truth, and faithful subject may provide for understanding literature. This study applies this framework to John Ruskin's late and lesser-known work Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1871-1884). Both Ruskin's fragmented style in Fors Clavigera and his notion of historical truth developed therein have been read as madness and as reactionary romanticism. I examine key metanarrative moments in Fors Clavigera where Ruskin reflects on his historiographical choices and methods. Through my analysis, I show how Badiou's theory provides a way of better understanding Ruskin's historiography as deliberately purposeful and philosophically engaging.