Empathy, the Aesthetic Emotion, and Expression in the Visual Arts

Matravers, Derek (2025). Empathy, the Aesthetic Emotion, and Expression in the Visual Arts. In: Matravers, Derek and Brassey, Vanessa eds. The Expression of Emotion in the Visual Arts. London: Routledge, pp. 10–24.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003390404-2

Abstract

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a great deal of work by German thinkers (it is not quite clear how to classify them) working on the psychological and physiological bases of our judgements of beauty and ugliness. A key term for them was ‘Einfühlung’ – literally, ‘feeling into’ and later translated as ‘empathy’. This was picked up by Vernon Lee, the pen name of the English writer Violet Paget (now better known for her light Gothic fiction). This chapter follows Lee's development of ‘empathy theory’. This falls into two phases: when our aesthetic judgements are grounded in physical reactions and when they are grounded in psychological reactions. Part of this, it is argued, involves both the attribution of ‘the aesthetic emotion’ to artworks and ‘common or garden’ emotions. Although Lee never developed a full-fledged theory, her work can still be mined for insight, and the problems she faced remain unsolved.

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