Nineteenth century culture

Looking at the table of contents of 'Twelve types', I immediately notice several names that I do not recognize at all. Just as I never heard about G.F. Watts, I seem to be ignorant of these people that Chesterton takes the trouble to write about.
For me, it is a moment of realization of the cultural divide that separates me from Chesterton. The interesting thing, though, is that these pieces about unknown people can still have some interest to me. This includes, but is not limited to, his discussion about the (lack of) aesthetics of every-day objects, such as the English pillar box (which I personally find quite characteristic, if not beautiful):

In all created nature there is not, perhaps, anything so completely ugly as a pillar-box. Its shape is the most unmeaning of shapes, its height and thickness just neutralizing each other; its colour is the most repulsive of colours - a fat and soulless red, a red without a touch of blood or fire, like the scarlet of dead men's sins. Yet there is no reason whatever why such hideousness should possess an object full of civic dignity, the treasure-house of a thousand secrets, the fortress of a thousand souls. If the old Greeks had had such an institution, we may be sure that it would have been surmounted by the severe, but graceful, figure of the god of letter-writing. If the mediaeval Christians had possessed it, it would have had a niche filled with the golden aureole of St Rowland of the Postage Stamps. As it is, there it stands at all our street-corners, disguising one of the most beautiful of ideas under one of the most preposterous of forms.