STREET OF WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES

This beautifully illustrated art history and cultural biography tells the fascinating story of Tite Street where artistic talents including James Whistler, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent lived and thrived. Tite Street in Chelsea, West London was one of the most influential artistic quarters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This little riverside street was home to painters, writers and musicians and throughout its existence has mirrored the world around it. From the Aesthetic movement and its challenge to Victorian values, through the Edwardian struggle for women's suffrage, to the bombs of the Blitz in the 1940s, it has remained home to innumerable artists and writers, socialites and suffragettes, musicians and mavericks. For Oscar Wilde the street was full of 'wonderful possibilities', while for Whistler it was the 'birthplace of art', where a new brand of Aestheticism was nurtured in his controversial White House. Modern masterpieces in art and literature flowed from the studios and houses, but this bohemian enclave had a dark side. Here Whistler was bankrupted, Frank Miles was sent to an asylum, Wilde was imprisoned, and Peter Warlock was gassed to death. 320pp, colour illus.