My name is Victoria Jenner. I am the interpretation producer here at the Ashmonian Museum in Oxford,

and I am joined here with Charlotte Ribberold, who is Professor of Victorian Literature at the Sorbonne in Paris,

and guest curator of the Ashmonians recently launched exhibition, colour revolution, Victorian art, fashion and design,

which is open now until the 18th of February 2024. And this exhibition is wonderful. I mean,

it's talking all about how Victorian Britain is usually portrayed as grimy and dark, but this

couldn't be further from the truth. Charlotte, can you

elaborate more for me? Thank you, Vicki. This exhibition is actually the main outcome of a major

EU-funded research project called chromatope, focusing on how attitudes to colour radically changed

across Europe, following a series of major scientific and technical innovations such as

the invention of colour printing, chromolethography, and the discovery of the first coal-tar-based dye

in 1856, a discovery that took place here in Britain. Now, this was a major turning point which

suddenly made colour, something accessible to everyone.

Now, as you said, Victorians during this period is often perceived through the dark filter of bleak working-class slums,

which Dickens described so poignantly.

And yet, what we want to show with this exhibition is that the Industrial Revolution actually transformed colour,

turning coal into a rainbow of dazzling new dyes.

This colour revolution not only affected the way artists and writers thought about colour,

it also had wider-reaching, scientific, political and even religious consequences which the show highlights through a

series of stunning objects ranging from paintings to textile, ceramics to jewellery.

So you mention this distorted vision that we all have of this period and it's partly due to

the Victorians themselves. So Queen Victoria spent 40 years

in mourning the death of her beloved Prince Albert from 1861. And this very much contributed to this

...