Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Reading Reynolds with Bentham’: The Idea of the Art School in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
- 2 ‘Prejudice Aside’: Jeremy Bentham's Moral Economy of Taste
- 3 ‘Directing the Art of the Country’: Henry Cole's Laws of Public Taste
- 4 The End of the Experiment
- 5 Taste Between Ethics and Aesthetics
- 6 The Return of Adam Smith
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - ‘Directing the Art of the Country’: Henry Cole's Laws of Public Taste
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Reading Reynolds with Bentham’: The Idea of the Art School in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
- 2 ‘Prejudice Aside’: Jeremy Bentham's Moral Economy of Taste
- 3 ‘Directing the Art of the Country’: Henry Cole's Laws of Public Taste
- 4 The End of the Experiment
- 5 Taste Between Ethics and Aesthetics
- 6 The Return of Adam Smith
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Why is this to be the excepted case, in which a demand for convenience which is at least as old as James the First, is to be voted nugatory and contrary to good taste? There is a taste concerned, but of a more substantial kind. There is some jobbery to be carried out by the powers of darkness … to work into the hands of the enemies of the people.
— Henry Cole, ‘Parliaments of Our Ancestors’, Westminster Review, October 1834Utilitarianism is the order of the day; In pretio pretium. What is it to fetch in the market? Every thing is to be gauged by and sacrificed to the result; and what result? the fine arts are to be encouraged, that the vulgar, the mechanical arts may prosper, and bring wealth; this is the canon by which every thing is elevated, every thing noble, all beauty, all that is excellent is to be measured.
— Second Letter from W. R. Hamilton Esq. to the Earl of Elgin, on the Propriety of Adopting the Greek Style of Architecture in the Construction of the New Houses of Parliament, 1836The previous chapter showed how Bentham's proposals for a utilitarian ‘reform of language’ demonstrated the limits of the ‘language of reform’ employed by John Bowring and William Ewart in establishing the School of Design.
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- Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014