Art Module 6 (Napoleon Bonaparte to Romanticims)

Name: Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass

Artist: Jacques-Louis David

Year: 1800

Material: Oil on canvas

David: painter to First Consul, later Emperor Napoleon. Pass: connecting France to Italy. References Napoleon’s success at turning matters around in Italy, 1796. Previously French soldiers lacked everything (food, clothes, shoes). Now money sent back to France.

Heroic pose on horse; idea of leadership. Ground inscribed w/ names of other great army leaders who famously crossed the Alps: Hannibal, etc.

Name: The Coronation of Napoleon

Artist: Jacques-Louis David

Year: 1805-1808

Material: Oil on canvas

Extra: Scene from, ceremonies of 1804, when Napoleon crowned himself emperor. David selected the moment after, where Napoleon is making his wife Josephine Empress.

Setting: Notre-dame Cathedral, Paris. Political audacity of “self-coronation”. Kidnapped the pope to attend ceremony as a silent witness > humiliation. In attendance: Napoleon & Josephine’s family, his “Marshals” (shadow cabinet of generals & military leaders).

Name: Napoleon in the Pesthouse of Jaffa

Artist: Antoine-Jean Gros

Year: 1804

Material: Oil on canvas

Gigantic 17×24 ft canvas, Lourve Museum, Paris. Episode from Napoleons campaign to the Holy Land (Palestine). Disastrous moment in his career. Strong Arab resistance to French troops, outbreak of the plague in Napoleons defeated army.

Makeshift hospital for French soldiers made in Jaffa (tdy: Tel Aviv) during retreat. Medical reason (flea bites) of plague unknown. French soldiers not heroes but victims; attended by Arabic doctors. Death can be in 48hrs, exotic, contemporary setting.

Name: Napoleon in the Pesthouse of Jaffa

Artist: Antoine-Jean Gros

Year: 1804

Material: Oil on canvas

Above: Dying soldier. Shift towards Romantic aesthetic. No longer flawless, but livid, disfigured, suffering bodies w/ bubonic sores, wasting away. Here: Livid skin color, horrified expressions, decay. Why would Napoleon want this subject painted? Why a work of propaganda art?

Name: Napoleon in the Pesthouse of Jaffa

Artist: Antoine-Jean Gros

Year: 1804

Material: Oil on canvas

Central episode: Napoleon touching the sore of an afflicted soldier. Plague thought to have been disseminated by fear; Napoleon fearless = immune. Napoleon as miracle healer figure (healing touch > Christ-like) & compassionate leader. Visit historically attested, but: propagandistic inaccuracies. Conceived to counter allegations that Napoleon ordered the poisoning of his own (British Press).

Name: The Charging Chasseur

Artist: Théodore Géricault

Year: 1812

Material: Oil on canvas

Extra: Intended as homage to the anonymous citizen soldier of the Napoleonic age. Battle painting or portrait? Artist loved painting horses. Typical for Romanticism: rider dramatically twisting in saddle, loose brushwork, raw, fires in background, violent emotionalism.

Name: The Wounded Cuirassier

Artist: Théodore Géricault

Year: 1814

Material: Oil on canvas

Extra: Follow-up painting to previous one, done 2 years later. Cuirasse = armored breast plate. Reversal of Napoleons military fortunes; by 1814 his army was driven back by Prussia (Germany), Austria, Russia, Great Britain to France. Symbolic representation of defeat: rider dismounted; he’s wounded, on the defensive > like Napoleon & Napoleonic France.

Name: Raft of the Medusa

Artist: Théodore Géricault

Year: 1818-1819

Material: Oil on canvas

Extra: Artists most famous painting, monumental dimensions. Depicts aftermath of disastrous shipwreck blamed on the incompetence of the restored Bourbon political leadership (after Napoleons final ousting in 1815).

Political and psychological dimension fascinated artist. Visual accusation of Restoration governments incompetence. Pyramidal composition, highest pitch of hope at top: signaling to search vessel on horizon. Lowest level: Father mourning dead son > desperation.

Public reception: Shown in Parisian Salon 1819 under “Scene of a Shipwreck”. Audience understood context without detailed title. Artist insisted it be hung high, mistake bc composition reveals full visual at eye level only.

Name: Death of Sardanapalus

Artist: Eugène Delacroix

Year: 1826

Material: Oil on canvas

Sandanapalus: invention of British Romantic poet & dandy Lord Byron (Delacroix’s contemporary). Assyrian king, Oriental “despot” about to be defeated, commit suicide. Dispassionately watches on as his servants fulfill his last order to have his harem women and beautiful horse killed before his eyes, torch his palace. Summary of stereotypes about the Near East that will become the staple of hundreds of 19th century Orientalist painters to follow.

Name: Severed Limbs

Artist: Théodore Géricault

Year: 1818

Material: Oil on canvas

Extra: Medusa subject painstakingly researched. Interviews survivors, ship carpenter. Interest in rotting bodies (antithesis idealized body > Romanticism). Artist believed to have procured body parts from morgue to study decomposition & discoloration, flesh in his studio. Rumors fueled by oil studies of body parts undertaken while he worked on Medusa.

Name: Women of Algiers

Artist: Eugène Delacroix

Year: 1834

Material: Oil on canvas

Political background: Colonialist expansion of France, other European countries. In 1834: France newly acquired Algeria as French colony (1830-1962). Delacroix traveled to Algeria. Depicted real harem women he saw. Not a literary product or figment of imagination (like Ingres). Foundation piece of Orientalist painting in 19th century.

Name: Liberty Leading the People

Artist: Eugène Delacroix

Year: 1830

Material: Oil on canvas

Another Revolution: Paris 1830, corrupt, ultra-conservative Bourbon King Charles X swept away, replaced by more moderate Louis-Philipe from the competing Orléans family, Champaign of the bourgeoisie. Work celebrates both 1830 Revolution and idea of freedom.

Allegorical painting of the Parisian street fights on the barricades in 1830. Center: female personification of France > working-class connotations. Left: bourgeois (middle class) man w/ rifle; right: gun-toting boy from working classes. Composition, style reminiscent of Géricault.

Message: July Revolution United French society across class barriers to attain a common goal. Social triumph of Bourgeoisie, France after 1830. Culmination of Romantic art in France, but long time not shown to public (later 19th century) for political reasons.

Name: Jaguar Devouring a Hare

Artist: Antoine-Louis Barye

Year: 1850-1851

Material: Bronze

Extra: Romanticism not confined to painting. Barye famous for depiction of animals (animalier) in bronze. Ferocity of animal nature: fighting, hunting each other. Struggle for survival.

Name: The Haywain

Artist: John Constable

Year: 1821

Material: Oil on canvas

Location: East Bergholt in Suffolk. Influence Dutch 17th century landscape painting (ex. Van Ruisdael). Importance of the “picturesque” > passion for topographic detail, like the haywain, mills, locks. Counterpart to the advance of industrialization in Britain.

Labor pushed into background. Depicted as leisurely activity. Workers industriousness is portrayed as a passive virtue. Reality of life on British countryside: frequent peasant revolts & great poverty.

Name: Abbey in the Oak Forest

Artist: Caspar David Friedrich

Year: 1810

Material: Oil on canvas

Ruins: archetypical Romantic subject; reminder of human mortality. Merger between nature (oak trees) & religion (ruins of abbey). Figures of monks in foreground > feeling of melancholia. Nationalist symbols: oak trees, Gothic style considered typically German style.

Name: Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway

Artist: Joseph Mallord Turner

Year: 1844

Material: Oil on canvas

Extra: conflict of feelings (fascination/fear) is expressed in Turners work. Maidenhead railway bridge on newly opened Bristol-Exeter extension of railroad network > regarded as masterwork of engineering, tech. Turner depicts moment when train pulled by steam locomotive passes the bridge.

Steam of locomotive merges w/ foggy atmosphere. A hare dashes over the tracks in the foreground. Difficult symbiosis of Industrial Revolution w/ nature. Does machine constitute part of nature or stand apart? Are we meant to be scared or celebrate it?