ID 2242 Exam 2 - Neoclassicism and Romanticism

Oath of the Horatii

- Neoclassicism

- Jacques-Louis David

-Story of Horance and his children. How to be rational when going to war/solving a conflict between cities.

- moralizing content with middle-class values

- Horace: Father

-Horatii: sons of Horace

-Was used as propaganda for the French Revolution

-Daughters on the right. One of the daughters has children with the enemy

- Didactic: teaching lessons, what are you willing to sacrifice

- Melodramatic, narrative about heroism. Pivotal moment of the hero

- Parallellism = unified

- Cult of Hero = different stories of a good citizen

-all action in foreground

-stage-like setting

-Tenebroso

-Life-size scale, you have the same scale as they do

-” baroque” composite, separateness of the stories

-Pyramidal configurations

-repetition of the same colors, red and blue, patriotic colors, French flag

-Moralizing, rejection of Rococo

The French Revolution 1789-1799

-Overthrow of monarchy

-Establishing a democratic government

-Storming og the Bastile, let all the prisoners out and free

-Rights of Man and Citizen, 1791, idea of democracy

-Reformatted the calendar: Republican Calendar

-1791 was year 1

-Renamed the months and days.

-10 day weeks, with the 10th off

-Abolished the catholic holidays

-Republican time: 10 hours in a day

Death of the Marat, 1793

- Neoclassicism

- Jacques-Louis David

-” cult of the hero”: Jean-Paul Marat: Radical journalist and politician from the French Revolution

-Assassinated by the Charlotte Chorday while he was soaking in a bath as a treatment for his skin condition

-didactic: how to be a good citizen

-” sacrifice for the good of the many”

-propaganda for the French Revolution

-death of a hero = peaceful

-Melodramatic

-all action in foreground

-stage-like setting

-Tenebroso

-pen still in hand, knife was on the floor

-” The pen is mightier than the sword”

Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1800

- Neoclassicism

- Jacques-Louis David

-” cult of the hero”: control of animal

-life size: 9 ft tall, 7 ft wide

-Melodramatic

-Leading France into Italy to expand the empire

-Enagaged Eye

-Hannibal and Charles the Great carved in stone as he follows in their footsteps

Pest House at Jaffa, 1804

- Neoclassicism

- Antoine Jean Gros

-pest house: hospital for those infected with the plague

-Napolean = hero

-life-sized scale

-commissioned by Napeoloean

-” cult of the hero”: touching the Plagued, like he can heal them

Mounted Officer of the Imperial Guard, 1892

-Romanticism

- Theodore Gericault

-leaves the scene, fleeing from battle

-The battle became so much that he doesn’t feel heroic to continue fighting
-tragic story

-anti-hero

-Romance literature: “The Sublime “ by edmond burke, “how do we learn“ - we have to have an extreme experience in learning to be able to absorb it

• tragic story, victim, fear, ugliness, irrationality

• proposed that we have a sublime experience when we intensely learn something

• awe inspiring

• intense

• emolitonal

Raft of the Medusa, 1819

-Romanticism

- Theodore Gericault

-real life event

-after their rescue, originally celebrated as heroes

-after journalists' interviews, society knew they survived by cannibalism, and now turned into anti-heroes

-built a full-scale raft in the studio and had other artists pose as victims

-brought in body parts from a morgue as references and studied those corpses

-also did a preparatory painting with the rescue boat in the background to show a positive outcome

-final painting makes the outcome more sublime by not including the rescue boat

-life-scale painting

“Envy“, 1823

-Romanticism

- Theodore Gericault

-French psychartist, Etienne-Jean Georget, asked for Gericault to come in and paint some of the patients

• believed in psychopathology, classified several types of monomania (obsessions), and believed you could recognize it in their faces

-woman consumed by envy

-physiognomic measurements: mapping out the mental illness in the face

• distance between eyes

• height of forehead

sublime: portrait of irrationality

• her in the act of obsessing over something on the side

painter having sublime experience

Lion Attacking a Horse, 1763

-Romanticism

- George Stubbs

-sublime

-tragedy

-We can’t prevent these events

-We know that the horse will not survive

-irrational

The Nightmare, 1781

-Romanticism

- Henry Fuseli

-the sublime experience, and seeing her experince

-the incubus sitting on her chest

• taking away her soul

-engaged eye

-The horse to the left is a reference to mere-riding, which people used as an indicator for nightmares

Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1801

-Romanticism

• French translation = “novel with a key”

• tragic twists in the plot

-J.A.D. Ingres

-sublime subject matter

-Oedipus had a tragic life

• abandoned at birth

• kill his father, marry his father

• Comes in contact with a Sphinx when traveling to Thebes

• Sphinx asks a riddle, if answered correctly, they can move forward, else eaten by the sphinx

• A baby crawls, an adult walks, and the elderly uses a stick to walk

• Odepius answered the question correctly

• continues through and kills his father and marries his mother

• Disgusted and blinds himself

-planimetric separation

• foreground, present: sphinx riddle

• middle ground: witness warning his not to go to Thebes

• Background: Where the tragedy continues

-implied lines

Saturn Devouring His Children, 1823

-Goya

-Romanticism

-Saturn/Cronos: Roman God

• prophesied that he would lose his power to his children

• made a plan to eat the child every time the wife delivered

• wife figured out and hid her 6th child and defeated his father

-tragic sublime

-out of focus: irrationality

-tenebroso

-engaged eye: wide-eyed and irrational

Third of May 1808, 1814

-Goya

-Romanticism

-Real tragic life event

• Spanish peasants rose up against Napoolean’s squad The

• next day, French soldiers came and killed them

-tenebroso

-sublime moment: tragic

-don’t see soldiers’ faces, united machine

-viewer’s vantage point: parallel

• either apart of the firing squad or the peasants

-man brightly spotly lit in a crucifix position

Death of Sardanapalus, 1826

-Romanticism

-Eugene Delacroix

-Drew from an ancient story

-Sardanapalus: last king of Assyria

• facing his defeat by an invading enemy

• seeing wives being slain

• decided to set the palace on fire and then took his life

-sublime tragic stories

-moment: murder

-shadows, smoke: tenebroso

-we watch him have this sublime experience

-red: absence of blood

• drapery

• cloth

• ribbons

-life-scale painting

-viewers’ points look like we could dragged in to be killed

Medea, 1838

-Romanticism

-Eugene Delacroix

-Medea

• abandoned by her husband and becomes irrational

• decided to kill their children as revenge

-sublime, tragic story: irrationality

-shadow on face:insmae

-moments before the act

-foreground, moving towards us

-red: absence of blood

• drapery

Cloister in the Snow, 1810

-Romanticism

-Caspar David Friedrich

-trees huge

-humans small

-contrast of scale: humans vs.nature

-the landscape becomes the sublime

-architeccure in ruins

-Romanticism

-Caspar David Friedrich

-Looking over Alphs

-nature as sublime

-we watch him having a sublime experience

-deep background space

-vanishing point

Wanderer, 1818

Wreck of the Hope, 1824

-Romanticism

-Caspar David Friedrich

-power of nature

-historical event

-How dangerous the icebergs look
-often used as the cover of Frankenstein

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1835

-Romanticism

-JMW Turner

-Houses of Parliament along the Thames River caught on fire and burned down

-Attracted crowds, and Turner was in the crowd and painted the event

-sublime: monumental scale of fire

-reflection of fire in the water

Slave Ship, 1840

-Romanticism

-JMW Turner

-Ship: Zong

• Sailing thru a storm. The captain wanted to lighten the boat

• threw slaves overboard

-Involved in the British anti-slavery society

Rain, Steam, and Speed, 1844

-Romanticism

-JMW Turner

-the sublime: nature vs. technology

-storm vs, himan made: bridge, locomotive

-Great Western Railway

-hints at the Industrial Revolution

Wivenhoe Park, 1817

-Romanticism

-John Constable

-focus on nature as awe-inspiring in a positive way

-Pantheism

-god created the world in happy coexistence with the human-made world

-tree in clouds

-clouds in trees

-birds in leaves

-nature as beautiful

Pantheism

God is present in everything

The Haywain, 1821

-Romanticism

-John Constable

-haywain: wagon for hay

-human inventions: wheel, mill, wagon, architecture

-Pantheism

--god created the world in happy coexistence with the human-made world

Morning on the Hudson, 1827

-Romanticism

-John Kensett

-The Hudson River School: embraced Romanticism through American landscape

-the beauty of the landscape where humans peacefully coexist

-monumental scale

-background focus

-vanish point

-human inventions: sailboat and bridge

-pastroal: happy coesxitence

-small human figure watching landscape

American Progress, 1872

-Romanticism

-John Kensett

-Manifest Destiny: Westward Expansion

-Sequence of technological advances over time

Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 1868

-Romanticism

-Albert Bierstadt

-The Hudson River School

-Used propaganda for the westward expansion

-Show how beautiful the landscape is

-They will have plenty of resources

-Nothing dangerous

-manifest destiny

Niagara Falls, 1877

-Romanticism

-Frederic Church

-no humans

-power of nature

-sublime nature

-monumental scale

-propaganda of the westward expansion

Neoclassicism

-influence: politics (French Revolution)

-didactic; propagandistic

-”cult of the hero”

Romanticism

-influence: french literature about sublime

-the sublime: irrationality, tragedy