Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894), one of the most eminent stylists and literary art critics of his day, was of a naturally shy and retiring nature. He did not get involved actively in the controversies of the day, but kept on being a scholarly recluse. Though hitherto critics have not found amoral strain in his work, they have praised him, for it was the first time that people had come to realize the logic of emotion which he portrayed; and no one has gone farther than this.
He is little known in the literary field. In the field of art and art Criticism, he occupies a position all his own. Mrs. Nisha Buty has tried to show the strong religious stream that underlies all his work. Pater is commonly known as a hedonist, and she feels it was a strong religious feeling, through which he equated Beauty with Strangeness.
Contents-
1. Initiation
2. His Philosophy, and Initiation in to Art
3. Walter Pater’s “Conclusion”
4. Style
5. Art for Art’s Sake
6. Poetry for Poetry’s Sake
7. The Philosophic Approach
8. Plato’s Platonism
9. Greek Art
10. Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Renaissance
11. Renaissance
12. Painters
13. Painting and Art Criticism
14. Criticism of Greek Myths and Art
15. Architecture
16. Shakespeare Criticism
17. The Romantic Poets and the Last Romantics
18. Romanticism
19. Prose Writers
21. Other Portraits
22. Critic as Reviewer
