"Desire and Excess is rich in ... luminous insights, [and is] beautifully expressed... The strength of [Siegal's book] lies in how vividly [it] evoke[s] a visual life for nineteenth-century Britons that makes us feel as if we see what they saw."
Gillen D'Arcy Wood, The Wordsworth Circle "This is an extensive and ambitious study... Siegel's book is the product of many ... Read moreyears of thought and research... [T]he central argument is compelling. The artists and critics of the nineteenth century are not, as they are sometimes thought to be, of one mind about the nature and role of art, and of the museums that house collections of art. The questions that worried them are complex and testing, and they are still unresolved."
Dinah Birch, Times Literary Supplement "[A] subtly argued, richly textured, and gracefully written study of the interwoven histories of the figure of the artist and museum culture in the nineteenth-century Britain."
Hilary Fraser, Nineteenth-Century Literature Show Less