Sir Harold Mario Mitchell Acton was a British writer, scholar, and aesthete who was a prominent member of the Bright Young Things. He wrote fiction, biography, history and autobiography. During his stay in China, he studied the Chinese language, traditional drama, and poetry, some of which he translated.
Robert Byron (left) with Harold Acton at Oxford around 1922
Villa La Pietra
Sala del Crocifisso, Villa La Pietra, Florence, photo by Foto Reali, Foto Reali Archive, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC
Railway Club at Oxford, conceived by John Sutro, dominated by Harold Acton. Left to right, back: Henry Yorke, Roy Harrod, Henry Weymouth, David Plunket Greene, Harry Stavordale, Brian Howard. Middle row: Michael Rosse, John Sutro, Hugh Lygon, Harold Acton, Bryan Guinness, Patrick Balfour, Mark Ogilvie-Grant, Johnny Drury-Lowe; front: porters.
Aestheticism was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment best illustrated by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
The Peacock Room, designed in the Anglo-Japanese style by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Edward Godwin, one of the most famous and comprehensive examples of Aesthetic interior design
Canaries by Albert Joseph Moore, ca. 1875–1880. Moore was among a group of artists whose work was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in London.
“Lady Lilith” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Aesthetic Brass Table by Bradley & Hubbard Company (see A Brass Menagerie, Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement)