Victorian Caricature and Classicism: Picturing the London Water Crisis.

This study assesses Victorian artistic response to the crisis of the poor quality of Victorian London's water supply - a situation exacerbated by comparison of London to the ancient capitals, most notably Rome, and water's classical associations with beauty, purity, and bounty. Two major and distinct responses emerge: Victorian caricature and Victorian classicism. Artists from both camps summoned the classical tradition to allude to the irony of classical ideal versus contemporary reality. In low Victorian art the truth lay in the caricature of the classical image. In high Victorian art the truth lay in the reality that the classical image could only serve to index. To be sure, the classical tradition furnished ample material through which the artist might allow a myth, for example, to allude subtly to a social problem, and through idealization, to suggest a powerful contrast between myth and reality. Thus the artist could "strike" with the requisite decorum and without appearing resistant to the artistic and sociopolitical establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]