The Psychology of an Art Writer

Under the pseudonym Vernon Lee, Violet Paget (1856-1935) published a bewildering variety of work, including historical studies; meditative essays on art, music, gardens, and travel; philosophical dialogues; treatises on aesthetic theory and psychology; and supernatural tales. Born to a cosmopolitan English family, she settled in Florence, where she maintained friendships with artists and intellectuals throughout the world, including John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Edith Wharton, J.A. Symonds, Walter Pater, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and G.B. Shaw. In close collaboration with her partner, the artist Kit Anstruther-Thompson, she was one of the first English thinkers to seriously engage with German empathy theory. Together, they tried to capture the mysterious and complex workings of art on our bodies, our minds, and our social lives; one of the fruits of this investigation was the 1912 volume Beauty and Ugliness, which included and analyzed long excerpts from Lee¿s own Gallery Diaries. Partially as a result of her strong pacifist politics and opposition to World War I, Lee became somewhat estranged from the literary establishment, although she continued to write prolifically until her death. Dylan Kenny is a writer and PhD student in Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. He co-edited the exhibition catalogue Jason Rhoades: PeaRoeFoam (David Zwirner Books, 2015.)