The website of Bob Speel

This website is dedicated mainly to 19th century British art, mostly Victorian, including sculpture, painting, illustration, some architecture, mainly to support the decorative sculpture pages, and a bit of pottery and so forth. The most useful part is the list of artists, which leads in to the artists' biographies. Also useful, perhaps, are the pages to see art in London (sketchy) and elsewhere in England (less sketchy).

Below on this page are some links to longer notes on particular areas of interest, to me at least. Here is some background information sweeping up odd snippets elsewhere on these pages, and more on various movements, institutions, etc is available from the pages of individual artists. Pictures are scattered throughout, mostly my own photos or engravings from out of copyright works, and are as clickable thumbnails for speed of use for those with dial up connections.

Recent additions to the site include a page on Piccadilly Circus.

Thoughts/comments/other regarding this site are welcome, though I am unable to write back to everyone. If you do wish to write, please put some sensible title as anything that looks like it might be spam I generally delete without opening. Please also note that this is not a commercial site, and I neither buy nor sell artworks or prints, nor speculate on values of artworks. Just art appreciation. Address below, which you will need to type in if you want to contact me, as I've scanned it in to reduce spam.

Egyptian Style: The scope of this distinctive and fairly widespread architectural and artistic style in and around the 19th Century.
Victorians - and Water: Mainly sculptural fountains, plus horse troughs and the odd statue.
A Walk along Kingsway and Aldwych: A sculptural walk, perhaps for after the British Museum.
Decorated book pages: Examples of combined text and pictures, 1880s-1901.
Women Painters and Illustrators: Notes on female artists and link to full list of those on these pages.
Australian Art and Britain: Notes on art from Britain in Australia, and artists from Australia in Britain.
Alexander Fisher: A section on the most important Arts and Crafts enameller.
The Great Exhibition of 1851: Lots of pictures and details of the most important industrial art exhibition in the world.
Illustrations by Millais: Progress or otherwise by the one-time Pre-Raphaelite.
Illustrations from Willmott's Poets of the 19th Century: Pre-Raphaelite and other Victorian images from an important illustrated volume.
Illustrations by Frederick Leighton: Shows pictures Leighton drew for George Elliot's Romola in the 1860s.
London and Victorian Art: Very brief info on some places to go if you are visiting London and want to see the Victorian art.
Victorian Art in Britain: Hyperlinked list of other places round Britain to see Victorian art.
List of Artists: Hyperlinked list of the artists featured on this site. There are around 350 artists, including painters, illustrators, engravers, sculptors, architects, and a few other art workers.

Annoyingly, I don't think I can do a webcounter any more with my new service provider - this site was on about 4-6k visitors a month, and was just short of 400k visitors when I changed.

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