Darley

George Darley (1795-1846) was born in Dublin. A poet and mathematician, he had been a contributor to the London Magazine, before becoming art and literary critic for the Athenaeum in 1835. Basing his art criticism on Reynolds's Discourses (1769-90), he joined his fellow-critic, John Eagles, of Blackwood's Magazine, in interpreting Ruskin's emphasis on detail as the encouragement of unimaginative realism (See dispute between Ruskin and the critics). He reviewed A.F. Rio's De la poesie chretienne (1836) in 1837 at the suggestion of Richard Monckton Milnes. Influenced by German Romanticism, Darley stressed the moral and spiritual powers of art, particularly that of the early Italian religious painters, and urged the National Gallery to purchase works from this school from 1841.

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