The Aesthetic Movement in Britain (1860 – 1900) aimed to escape the Industrial Age by focusing on creating art that was beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning --  'Art for Art's sake'. The movement itself was characterizied by its denoucing of morality and middle-class values. The influence of the Victorian Age was waning and being replaced by Aesthetic values partly because Britain’s political and economic supremacy faced new challenges in the form of emerging world powers. Simply, the "glory days" of Britain’s empire were coming to an end and resulted in an anti-Victorian method of thought. 

The movement's ending is often associated with Oscar Wilde's trial. The actual movement's figure was the dandy and associated with Wilde's, The Picture of Dorian Gray. According to the Broad View verison of Romance of a Shop, Amy Levy was inspired by aestheticism -- "The buttonhole flower was the chief accessory to  the aesthetic's wardrobe, while 'languishing' became a quality that captured Fin de siècle [end of the century in French] ennui" (78).

This painting, in particular, was created by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836–1893) and called, The Rector's Garden, Queen of the Lilies 1877. Some other famous authors or painters and their famous works include Oscar Wilde (author of The Picture of Dorian Gray), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (painter of Proserpine), William Morris (more of a designer), and Algernon Charles Swinburne (known for his poems including Poems and Ballads (1866)).