England and its Aesthetes

First Published in 1999. John Ruskin (1819-1900), Walter Pater (1839-1894), and Adrian Stokes (1902-1972) represent three generations of English aesthetes whose writings have transformed art history and the formations of museums as we know them. They are three great writers in a distinctively English tradition. Concerned with the nature of aesthetic experience, and with the interpretation of visual art, they offer approaches that are dramatically different, in challenging ways, from those of pro