Art History Notes Week 1: Welcome to France, Hop in the Bathtub

Anonymous, School of Fontainebleau

Portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrée and One of Her Sisters

-Depicts Gabrielle (mistress of the King of France) and her sister in a bathtub

-Historical Context: Unknown as to why this portrait was made, but looking at the painting offers insight without knowing the historical context.

-Bright colors, stylized and posed women

Jacques-Louis David, Marat at his Last Breath (1793) oil on canvas, 165 x 128 cm

-contrasts with “Portrait of Gabrielle d'Estrée and One of Her Sisters” bc= displays wealth vs poverty, life vs death, different use of light, hands still emphasized like contrasting painting is

-HC: middle of the french revolution, Marat was a deputy to the national assembly, far-left radical journalist, assasinated by woman who wrote the letter he’s holding, became martyr for The French Revolution, work was paraded through the streets of Paris had skin condition alleviated by baths

-David idolized Marat, painted this almost like a religious dedication to the man

Jean Leone Gerome, Moorish Bath 1870

Oil on canvas 50.8 x 40.6cm

HC: the French were obsessed with what they thought of as “oriental culture," meaning the near east and Mediterranean, obsessed with the idea of harems, painted portraits of imagined fantasies of what the French believed “moorish” culture to be

- French artists obsessed with depicting women and different races and different kinds of nudity in a strange alien setting

Berthe Morisot, The Bath: A Girl Arranging Her Hair (ca. 1885-1886)

oil on canvas

-female artist creates an impressionist effect (a 19th-century painting style that focuses on capturing the fleeting effects of natural light, everyday life, and spontaneous moments using visible, loose brushstrokes)

-contemporary depiction, opposite of Gerome’s Moorish bath that transports to an imaginary realm

hc-showcases difference between women who paint women vs men painting women

Pablo Picasso, Bather Winter 1908-1909

HC- Spanish artist who moved to France and spent the majority of his artistic career there

-Picasso took a familiar topic of someone bathing and made it abstract

-Interested not in depicting beauty but with what is the minimum amount of elements that still communicate a particular scene

What do these 5 sequences of paintings tell us?

1) Artists pay attention to tradition, often art historians themselves, either engage or disengage with these traditions by either stepping into or pushing back against the tradition. Art is constantly a reaction to the past

2) Nudity, gender, and sexuality are constant, important themes in French art

3) Art production changes lots over time: the 1st painter is a court artist doing what the patron tells him to do, but Picasso paints for a contemporary art market with deals and a capitalist economy

4) Artistic style can change drastically