Victorians decoded: Art and Telegraphy

Strange exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery looking at the effect on art of the coming of the Telegraph and the changes that made on Victorian art.

It marked the 150th anniversary of the first telegraph cable to be maid across the Atlantic and I rather enjoyed the section looking at this. I hadn’t realised the cable was made in Greenwich, near where I live. As the cable was laid across the ocean it was tested all the way. I was also fascinated by the company code books as telegrams could be read by strangers at various stages so firms moved into sending coded messages for confidentiality.

I had assumed the show would be full of art showing people reading telegrams or pictures of cabling work however instead it looked at how people thought in a different way with sections on distance, transmission, coding and resistance. There were lots lovely pictures of beaches, ocean and rocks which were meant to show how people were looking across the seas and how the world was becoming smaller. Transmission was shown by linked figures forming chains with the idea of information shared!

I’m sorry I just wasn’t buying into the idea that the telegraph had influenced any of this however it was a good excuse to show some lovely Victorian pictures which I’d never seen before. I loved a Tissot which was meant to show coded views across rooms however the man in the middle looked like he was looking at his mobile phone! How’s that for influence!

Closes on 22 January 2017

 

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