Description:
Walter Pater's enduring work, The Renaissance, ignited impassioned debates and earned profound admiration for its critique of renowned artists from the French and Italian Renaissance.
Brief description: Walter Pater (1839-1894), was an English critic, essayist, and humanist who argued that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose. "Art for art's sake" is a core principle of Aestheticism, the movement he helped found. Pater's exquisite writing style and bold ideas exerted a powerful influence on such writers as Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Paul Valéry, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens and has had lasting influence on the field of art criticism.
Review Quotes:
"The golden book of spirit and sense, the holy writ of beauty."
-Oscar Wilde