The World of the Victorian Naturalist

On pondering Old Fogey's comments on Christina Rossetti's poem in my previous blog, it come to mind of my friend's (Slarky) art work. For her degree, where she "only got a Desmond" as she put it (2:2)- outragous if you ask me!!- she did this piece on the "Victorian Naturalist". It is amazing, and I am duly posting it here.

This is what she says about it:

"THE WORLD OF THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST.

Using the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species as a starting point, I wanted to visually explore the idea of the Victorian Naturalist and the paraphernalia associated with it, to show to what extent Victorian naturalists were harming the environments and species which they sought to learn about with their obsessive collecting for both acedemic and decorative purposes."

Old Fogey says that the poem instructs us what to do, but that Christina may not have followed it herself, which is entirely possible. However, I said that her sentiment in the poem is completely at odds with her time. The Victorians, as Slarky says, were harming the environments around them for knowledge and decoration. Even if Rossetti didn't always avoid squatting the odd fly or squashing the odd spider, she voiced an opinion little held and even less liked.

Check out her website here: http://www.charlotteslark.co.uk/index.html