A Show of Emotion: Victorian Sentiment in Prints & Drawings

A Show of Emotion: Victorian Sentiment in Prints & Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. "...Sentimental subjects span many genres of artistic expression, from highly finished exhibition watercolours to music sheet covers. In Victorian England these scenes of tender feeling became associated with the domestic sphere, as they were ideal for display in family rooms and traditionally female spaces such as the parlour.
The popularity of sentimental pictures coincided with technological innovations in the print trade. This meant that images could be produced quickly and cheaply to maximise profit, thus opening the image market to a greater audience.
Many of the works in this exhibition had mass appeal and were used in periodicals and advertising. This unashamed commercialism contributed to the reputation of sentiment as an expression of insincere emotion, and the popularity of such pictures was bound up in questions of taste."