Introduction to the 19th century.

Romanticism to Fin-de-Siècle, Week 1

Background:

• The Industrial Revolution began in England in the late 18^th century and quickly spread across Europe. It transformed economic and social relationships, offered an increasing number of cheaper consumer goods, and changed concepts of education.

• Urban culture replaced Agrarian culture as industrialisation and cities grew. Cities were the sites of new wealth and opportunity (factories and manufacturing potential).

• Modernity is characterised by increasing secularism and reduced religious authority. Religion was not abandoned but less attention was paid to it.

• Rise of the Bourgeoisie - The middle class audience had lot of money, made through industrialisation and manufacturing, and wanted to fill their houses with paintings. They did not want complex religious references; instead they wanted landscapes, genre scenes, and still lifes; and thus there was a progressive abandonment of traditional artistic genres. Artists embraced modernity and content and form were revolutionised. 

The Hierarchy of Genres: 

1.     History Painting was thought to be the highest form of painting as it was a culmination of all skills learned within the academy system. It contains in itself all the intellectual aspects of art. The paintings were usually large and intended for display in public places (e.g. churches, gallery walls etc.) The subject matter of History Painting included classical, mythological, literary and religious events throughout history. The highest title went to allegorical paintings, which carried symbolic messages about good and evil. These paintings often have a moral, and serve as a powerful tool of communicating. The principle of why history painting is so important = EXEMPLUM VIRTUTIS (An ennobling example or model of virtue). 

David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784, Louvre, Paris

Caravaggio, The Death of the Virgin, 1604-06, Louvre, Paris

2.     Portraiture was the second highest genre in the hierarchy. Portrait paintings could be small-scale or large, full-length portraits. These full-length portraits were often completed in the Grand Manner, which was composed of a classical pose designed to show the sitter as heroic.

Peter Paul Rubens, Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, 1606, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

3.     Genre Paintings were scenes from everyday life. These paintings contained people, animals, interiors etc. there was not usually a moral to these paintings, they were a less intellectual form of painting.

Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid, c. 1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Pieter de Hooch, The Mother, 1659-60, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin 

4.     Landscape Painting requires no human figures and so are considered to require less technical ability to produce than the first three genres. Types of Landscape Paintings also include seascapes, waterscapes and cityscapes.

John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, National Gallery, London

J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps, 1812, Tate, London

5.     Still Lifes are usually small-scale, affordable paintings. They contain no living objects, but are often a metaphor for life. Still Life paintings do not deploy as much skill as other genres.

Willem Claesz Heda, Banquet Piece with Mince Pie, 1635, National Gallery of Art, Washington 

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ROMANTICISM:     c. 1790 - 1850

• Cultivation of feeling as opposed to constrained classicism.

• Instead of depicting classical history, paintings told a feeling.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818

Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819

REALISM:     c. 1850 - 1870

• Rise of the working class.

• Gustave Courbet was a very famous and influential artist in the 19^th century. He painted secular moral paintings and was the inventor of Realism. His painting The Stone Breakers, shows the horror of the human condition, it’s subject is two workers in ripped clothes and dirtied hands etc. This style was the opposite of idealism and made a huge impact. Courbet was the first great modern artist.

William Bell Scott, Iron and Coal, 1855–60    

IMPRESSIONISM: c. 1870 - 1890

• Developed by Monet and Degas.

• This style was freer and quicker. An expression of the subject.

• The medium was clearly expressed.

• The perfection of the earlier periods was abandoned, no longer a slave of nature. 

• Art now spoke it’s own language.

• High and low life depicted.

• New subject matter, e.g. Monet’s Gare Saint Lazare, a train station - a new type of landscape.

Claude Monet, Gare Saint Lazare, 1878

•       Academic Art vs. Modern Art and the birth of the Avant-Garde. Classical nudes (of Gods and Goddesses) were accepted, but liberated nudes of courtesans were considered scandalous. These paintings were refused and received heavy criticism. Techniques as rough as the subject.