aesthete

Aesthetic literature

Predecessors of the Aesthetes included John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with some of the Pre-Raphaelites, who, themselves, were a legacy of the Romantic spirit. There are a few significant continuities, between the Pre-Raphaelite philosophy and that of the Aesthetes: Dedication to the idea of 'Art for Art's Sake'; admiration of, and constant striving for, beauty; escapism, through visual and literary arts; craftsmanship that is both careful and self-conscious; mutual interest in merging the arts of various media. This final idea is promoted in the poem L'Art by Théophile Gautier, who compared the poet to the sculptor and painter. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones are most strongly associated with Aestheticism. However, their approach to Aestheticism did not share the creed of 'Art for Art's Sake' but rather, "a spirited reassertion of those principles of colour, beauty, love, and cleanness that the drab, agitated, discouraging world of the mid-nineteenth century needed so much." This reassertion of beauty in a drab world also connects to Pre-Raphaelite escapism in art and poetry.