Final 5th Exam ARTH 102

The American and French Revolutions-relationship between these events and art

Art became a vehicle for civic virtue, propaganda, and emotional rebellion

Neoclassicism- characteristics + themes

It is a blend of ancient classical antiquity (Greek and Roman) and 18th-century Enlightenment philosophy

Characteristics: Straight lines, geometric order, Edges are sharp, figures are clearly defined, the surface of a painting is smooth (you can’t see brush strokes), minimal composition, somber colors

Themes: Civic Virtue and Patriotism, Self-Sacrifice, Logic and Order (Roman forums, temples, battlefields, serious, heroic, moralistic)

Architecture: “Greek Revival” → Columns, Pediments, and Domes

St. Martin-in-the-Fields

• Created by James Gibbs

• Located in London (England)

• Classical style with a steeple design (more Baroque) coming out of a Roman temple

• Called Neoclassic style

• Rounded windows and pillars in a “rhythm”

• Mix of a classical-temple-inspired body with a pediment-capped porch of Corinthian columns and an Italian Baroque bell tower

Chiswick House

• Created by William Kent and Richard Boyle

• England

• Variation of the Villa Rotunda

• Borrowed from the Renaissance and Roman architecture

• Simple symmetry, unadorned planes, right angles, and precise proportions

• Chiswick House looks very classical and rational

Which archaeological discoveries at this time influenced the Neoclassical style?

The excavations of Roman cities Pompeii (1748) and Herculaneum (1738)

• They yielded well-preserved paintings, sculptures, vases, and other household objects, and provided rich evidence for reconstructing Roman art and life.

• European ideas about and interest in ancient Rome expanded tremendously

Osterley Park House (Etruscan Room)

• Created by Robert Adam

• He was inspired by the excavations of Pompeii

• They yielded well-preserved paintings, sculptures, vases, and other household objects, and provided rich evidence for reconstructing Roman art and life.

• European ideas about and interest in ancient Rome expanded tremendously

• Etruscan Room’s wall paintings were inspired by Roman frescoes of the Third and early Fourth Styles of Roman mural painting

• Adam took decorative motifs (medallions, urns, vine scrolls, sphinxes, and tripods) from Roman art and arranged them sparsely

Oath of Horatii

• Created by Jaques Louis David

• David’s earlier art was inspired by the Baroque/Rococo Era and he then turned to being more archeologically correct (Pre-imperial Roman times)

• According to the story, the leaders of the warring cities of Rome and Alba decided to resolve their conflicts in a series of encounters waged by three representatives from each side. The Romans chose as their champions the three Horatius brothers, who had to face the three sons of the Curatius family from Alba

• A sister of the Horatii, Camilla, was the bride-to-be of one of the Curatius sons, and the wife of the youngest Horatius was the sister of the Curatii

• The painting shows the Horatii as they swear on their swords, held high by their father, to win or die for Rome, oblivious to the anguish and sorrow of the Horatius women.

• Oath of the Horatii exemplifies the Neoclassical style

• The subject was a narrative of patriotism and sacrifice excerpted from Roman history, but the painter depicted the story according to the principles of classical art

• Although David had painted it under royal patronage and did not intend the painting as a revolutionary statement, Oath of the Horatii aroused his audience to patriotic zeal

Death of Marat

• Created by Jaques Louis David (He became a painter of propaganda)

• David believed that art could play an important role in educating the public and that dramatic paintings emphasizing patriotism and civic virtue would prove effective as rallying calls

• The painting commemorates the assassination that year of Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793), an influential writer and minster who was David’s friend

• David depicted the martyred revolutionary still holding a quill pen in his right hand after Charlotte Corday (He signed a death warrant of her brother- she wanted revenge), a member of a rival political faction, stabbed him to death while Marat was immersed in a bathtub

• Marat suffered from a painful skin disease and required frequent medicinal baths so he did a lot of work there

• David was called to the house and he sketched the scene

• Martyr painting (“Hero of the revolution”) —> spotlight is quasi religious (Invokes religious atmosphere)

• Displayed at his funeral

Napoleon

• Painted by David (friend of his)

• Emperor of the French from 18 May 1804 until his first abdication in 1814

• Napoleon commanded the French army in over 80 battles and won 75, displaying unmatched strategic and tactical abilities

• After David had gotten out of prison Napoleon approached David after his coronation and offered him the position of First painter of the Empire

Pantheon

• Created by Jaques Germain Souffot

• Located in Paris (France)

• Originally dedicated to St. Genevieve

• The dome copies St. Paul’s Cathedral

• Baroque and neoclassical style (very simplistic)

• Monument to revolutionary era

• Testament to the Enlightenment admiration for Greece and Rome

• Combines a portico based on an ancient Roman temple with a colonnaded dome and a Greek-cross plan.

Thomas Jefferson

• He was an economist, educational theorist, and gifted amateur architect, as well as statesman

• He admired the Palladio and read the Four Books of Architecture

Monticello

• Designed and built by Thomas Jefferson

• Located in Charlottesville, Virginia

• Jefferson had made trips to Italy and France and was influenced by the classical and renaissance architecture

• He led the movement to adopt Neoclassicism as the architectural style of the United States

• Single-story structure has an octagonal dome set above the central drawing room behind a pediment-capped columnar porch

• Recalls the Chiswick House and Villa Rotunda

University of Virginia (Rotunda and Lawn)

• Created and founded by Thomas Jefferson

• Jefferson loved Domes

• Jefferson’s Neoclassical Rotunda sits like a temple in a Roman forum on an elevated platform overlooking the colonnaded Lawn of the University of Virginia

George Washington, 1788-92

• Created by Jean Antoine Houdon- he was a well-known French sculptor (Previously sculpted Benjamin Franklin)

• The sculpture was designed to honor Washington for his service and emulate his spirit

• Houdon portrayed Washington in contemporary garb

• He incorporated the Roman fasces (emblem of authority) and Cincinnatus’s plow in the statue, because Washington similarly had returned to his farm after his war service

• It was a life-size sculpture and a testament to his character

George Washington, 1840

• Created by Horatio Greenough

• Commissioned to create a statue for the Capitol

• Washington gradually took on almost godlike stature as the “father of his country”

• Greenough used Houdon’s portrait as his model for the head, but he portrayed Washington as seminude and enthroned,

• Washington is being portrayed as a Greek God

• He is more than 11 feet tall, seated, and is a supreme example of the Neoclassical style

• It did not win favor (mostly because it did not reflect his true character) with either the public or the Congress that commissioned it (one congressman suggested throwing the statue into the Potomac River)

• It is now in the Smithsonian

Napoleon at the Plague House at Jaffa

• Created by Jean Antoine Gros (Student of David)

• Recorded an incident during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the course of the general’s Syrian campaign of 1799 (When he invaded Egypt and the Middle East)

• Gros depicted Napoleon’s staff officers covering their noses against the stench of the place, whereas Napoleon, amid the dead and dying, is fearless and in control. He comforts those still alive, who are clearly awed by his presence and authority.

• By depicting the French leader having removed his glove to touch the sores of a French plague victim, Gros implied that Napoleon possessed the miraculous power to heal (definitely not accurate)

Pauline Borghese as Venus

• Created by Antonio Canova

• Canova was Napoleon’s favorite sculptor

• Napoleon’s sister—at her insistence—is being depicted as the nude Roman goddess of love in a marble statue inspired by classical models

• Canova had suggested depicting Pauline clothed as Diana, goddess of the hunt, but she demanded to be portrayed nude as Venus, the goddess of love

• Pauline (who had numerous affairs and scandals) appears seminude and reclining on a divan, gracefully holding the golden apple

Romanticism

Focused on imagination, feelings, emotion rather than reason

Inspired by current events, and literature, poetry, music

Revived the Baroque dramatic style.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

• Created by Francisco Goya

• Goya depicted an artist, probably himself, asleep, slumped onto a desk, while threatening creatures converge on him, at least in his dream

• Seemingly poised to attack the artist are owls (symbols of folly) and bats (symbols of ignorance)

• The viewer might read this as a portrayal of what emerges when reason is suppressed and, therefore, as advocating Enlightenment ideals

• Revealing his embrace of the Romantic spirit—the unleashing of imagination, emotions, and nightmares.

Third of May

• Created by Francisco Goya

• Spaniards attacked Napoleon’s soldiers in a chaotic and violent clash. In retaliation and as a show of force, the French responded the next day by rounding up and executing Spanish citizens. This tragic event is the subject of Goya’s painting

• It was commissioned in 1814 by Ferdinand VII

• Goya depicted the anonymous murderous wall of Napoleonic soldiers ruthlessly executing the unarmed and terrified Spanish peasants

• He encouraged empathy for the Spaniards by portraying horrified expressions and anguish on their faces, endowing them with a humanity lacking in the faceless French firing squad in the shadows

• The peasant about to be shot throws his arms out in a cruciform gesture reminiscent of Christ’s position on the cross

• Goya enhanced the emotional drama of the massacre by sharply contrasting the darkness of the night with the focused illumination of the French squad’s lantern and by extending the time frame depicted

Raft of the Medusa

• Created by Théodore Géricault

• This panting depicts the shipwreck off the Mauritanian coast of the French frigate Medusa, which ran aground on a reef due to the incompetence of its inexperienced captain (he was not a real captain he was a political appointee)

• The captain and his officers safely abandoned the ship on all the lifeboats

• In an attempt to survive, the ship’s carpenter built a makeshift raft for himself and the 147 passengers from pieces of the disintegrating frigate

• The raft drifted for 13 days, and the starving survivors dwindled to 15, in part because of cannibalism. Finally, the ship Argus spotted the raft and rescued those still alive

• Géricault chose to represent the moment when some of those still alive summon what little strength they have left to flag down the Argus far on the horizon

• He sought to capture accurately the horror, chaos, and emotion of the tragedy yet invoke the grandeur and impact of Neoclassical history painting

• During the eight months he worked on the painting, Géricault visited hospitals and morgues to study the bodies of the dying and dead, interviewed survivors, and had a model of the raft constructed in his studio

• Raft of the Medusa is also the artist’s commentary on the practice of slavery (Géricault was a member of an abolitionist group that sought ways to end the slave trade in the colonies)

Insane Woman

• Created by Théodore Géricault

• He examined the influence of mental states on the human face (first kind of look into the human mind)

• He was the first artists in history to depict patients in an insane asylum → depicted mental states

• The woman portrayed here looks away from the viewer, her mouth tense and her eyes red-rimmed with suffering (she killed children)

Death of Sardanapalus

• Created by Eugène Delacroix

• Inspired by Lord Byron’s 1821 poem

• The richly colored and emotionally charged canvas is filled with exotic figures

• Delacroix depicted the last hour of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, whom the Greeks called Sardanapalus. The king has just received news of his army’s defeat and the enemy’s entry into his city

• Sardanapalus reclines on his funeral pyre, soon to be set alight. He gloomily watches the carrying out of his order to destroy all of his most precious possessions—his women, slaves, horses, and treasure. The king’s favorite concubine throws herself on the bed, determined to go up in flames with her master

• Delacroix filled this awful spectacle of suffering and death with the most daringly difficult and tortuous poses

Liberty Leading the People

• Created by Eugène Delacroix

• Delacroix captured the passion and energy of the 1830 revolution in this painting of Liberty personified leading the Parisian uprising against King Charles X

• Liberty (who is bare breasted) is defiantly thrusting forth the republic’s tricolor banner (flag) as she urges the masses to fight on

• She wears a scarlet Phrygian cap (the symbol of a freed slave in antiquity)

• Around Liberty are bold Parisian types—the street boy brandishing his pistols, the menacing worker with a cutlass, and the university student in top hat armed with a musk

• There are dead bodies all around

• In the background, the towers of Notre-Dame rise through the smoke and haze. (The painter’s inclusion of this recognizable Parisian landmark specifies the locale and event, balancing allegory with historical fact)

The Haywain

• Created by John Constable (England)

• It immortalizes the disappearing English countryside during the Industrial Revolution

• He devoted his career to painting the English countryside

• The artist’s father was a successful miller and flour merchant and a rural landowner of considerable wealth

• Many of the scenes Constable painted depict his family’s property near East Bergholt in Suffolk, East Anglia

• In his quest for the authentic landscape, Constable studied nature as a meteorologist (he was an accomplished amateur “weatherman”)

• He was one of the first to make his sketches outdoors using oil paints instead of watercolors or pencil drawings

• He was one of the first artists to make detailed studies of clouds and the atmosphere (weather)

• His paintings were considered “nostalgic”

The Slave Ship

• Created by J.M.W. Turner

• Depicts a 1781 incident reported in the widely read History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade by Thomas Clarkson

• The incident involved the slave ship Zong, en route from Africa to Liverpool. The ship’s captain, on realizing that his insurance would reimburse him only for slaves lost at sea but not for those who died en route, ordered more than 50 sick and dying slaves to be thrown overboard

• Slavery had been a powerful political issue in England for some time

• The essence of Turner’s innovative style is the emotive power of color. He released color from any defining outlines to express both the forces of nature and the painter’s emotional response to them

• Almost lost in the boiling colors of Turner’s painting are the event’s particulars, but on close inspection, the viewer can discern the iron shackles and manacles around the wrists and ankles of the drowning slaves, cruelly denying them any chance of saving themselves from the predatory fish circling about them.

London, Houses of Parliament

• Designed by William Barry and Augustus Pugin, 1835

• The buildings replaced those that were destroyed by a fire in 1832

• The style is Gothic Revival, popular in England

Crystal Palace

• Created by Joseph Daxton, 1850-1851

• Located in London, England

• Daxton designed greenhouses and this was an expansion of his skills

• It was a combination of glass and metal construction with cast iron columns

• It was prefabricated (use of structural elements manufactured in advance and transported to the construction site ready for assembly.) so construction only took 6 months (rapid)

• It burned down in 1936

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève

• Created by Henri Labrouste

• Located in Paris, France

• It has a stone exterior → old fashion/classical with a very modern interior that is cast-ironed curved

• Mix of Renaissance revival style and modern cast-iron construction

• Successful blending of older style with new technology

• The exterior of this Parisian library looks like a Renaissance palace, but the interior has an exposed cast-iron skeleton, which still incorporates classical Corinthian capitals and Renaissance scrolls.

The Oxbow

• Created by Thomas Cole

• Landscape of the Hudson River Valley

• Expressing the awesome power of nature

• He contrasted dark wilderness on the left and sunlit civilization on the right

• In America, landscape painting was the specialty of a group of artists known as the Hudson River School, so named because its members drew their subjects primarily from the uncultivated regions of New York’s Hudson River Valley

• He is the tiny figure working at his easel at the bottom center of the canvas

• Gives off the idea of Manifest Destiny: the belief that the U.S. was divinely ordained to expand across North America to the Pacific Ocean

Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains

• Created by Albert Bierstadt

• Bierstadt’s panoramic landscape presents the breathtaking natural beauty of the American West, reinforcing the 19th-century doctrine of Manifest Destiny

• Deer and waterfowl appear at the edge of a placid lake, and steep and rugged mountains soar skyward on the left and in the distance.

• A stand of trees, uncultivated and wild, frames the lake on the right.

• To underscore the transcendental nature of this scene, Bierstadt depicted the sun’s rays breaking through the clouds overhead, suggesting a heavenly consecration of the land

• Romantic style → Raw Power of Nature

Twilight in the Wilderness

• Created by Frederic Edwin Church

• Presents a panoramic view of the sun setting over the majestic landscape

• Church’s paintings eloquently express the Romantic notion of the sublime

• Trees may be a reference to the Civil War

Realism

• Championed the honest, unidealized depiction of contemporary life, focusing on ordinary people and working-class struggles

• Rejected artificiality and emotionalism, opting for direct observation, earthy tones, and social critique

• By depicting these subjects on a scale and with a seriousness previously reserved for historical, mythological, and religious painting, Realist artists sought to establish parity between contemporary subject matter and the traditional themes of “high art.”

Gustave Courbet

• The leading figure of the Realist movement in 19th-century art

• Courbet used the term “Realism” when exhibiting his own works

• The Realists’ sincerity about scrutinizing their environment led them to paint mundane and trivial subjects that artists had traditionally deemed unworthy of depiction—for example, working-class laborers and peasants, and similar “low” themes

Stone Breakers

• Created by Gustave Courbet

• He presented a glimpse into the life of rural menial laborers

• There are two men—one about 70, the other quite young—in the decidedly nonheroic act of breaking stones to provide paving for provincial roads. Traditionally, this backbreaking, poorly paid work fell to the lowest members of French society, as the stone breakers’ tattered garments and utensils for a modest meal of soup

• By juxtaposing youth and age, Courbet suggested that those born to poverty will remain poor their entire lives

• The artist neither romanticized nor idealized the men’s work but depicted their thankless toil with directness and accuracy

• Courbet’s palette of dirty browns and grays further conveys the dreary and dismal nature of the task

Burial at Ornans

• Created by Gustave Courbet

• Depicts a funeral set in a bleak provincial landscape outside the artist’s hometown near Besançon in eastern France

• Although the painting has the imposing scale of a traditional history painting, the subject’s ordinariness and the starkly antiheroic composition horrified critics.

• Burial at Ornans is not a record of the burial of a Christian martyr or a heroic soldier, instead it commemorates a recurring event involving common folk, and it does not ennoble or romanticize death.

• Courbet submitted Burial at Ornans to the 1851 Salon in the category of history painting, but declined to identify the deceased

Lithography

The lithographer uses a greasy, oil-based crayon to draw directly on a stone plate and then wipes water onto the stone, which clings only to the areas that the drawing does not cover. Next, the printmaker rolls oil-based ink onto the stone, which adheres to the drawing but is repelled by the water. When the artist presses the stone against paper, only the inked area—the drawing—transfers to the paper.

Rue Trasonoia

• Created Honoré Daumier

• The title refers to the day when, on that street in Paris, an unknown sniper killed a civil guard, part of a government force trying to repress a worker demonstration. Because the fatal shot had come from a workers’ housing block, the remaining guards immediately stormed the building and massacred all of its inhabitants.

• The lithograph had the same shocking impact as Goya’s Third of May, 1808, but in Rue Transnonain, Daumier depicted not the dramatic moment of execution but the terrible, quiet aftermath.

• The limp bodies of the workers—and of a child crushed beneath his father’s corpse—lie amid violent disorder

Rosa Bonheur

• She was the most famous female artist of the 19th century

• She won the gold medal at the Salon of 1848 and became the director of France’s state-sponsored drawing school for women the same year

• Bonheur became the first woman to be awarded the Grand Cross of the French Legion of Honor

• Bonheur received her artistic training from her father, Oscar-Raymond Bonheur (1796–1849), who was a proponent of Saint-Simonianism, an early-19th-century utopian socialist movement that championed the education and enfranchisement of women

• She was not admitted to the École des Beaux-Art academy but was successful despite

• She focused on animals common in the French countryside, especially horses, but also rabbits, cows, and sheep

The Horse Fair

• Created by Rosa Bonheur

• She filled her broad canvas with the sturdy farm Percherons of Normandy and their grooms on parade

• The dramatic lighting, loose brushwork, and rolling sky also reveal her admiration of Géricault’s style

• Bonheur’s masterful depiction of horses at life size and seen from multiple angles captivated viewers, who eagerly bought engraved reproductions of The Horse Fair, making it one of the most popular artworks of the century.

The Gross Clinic

• Created by Thomas Eakins (United States)

• The painting portrays the renowned surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross in the operating amphitheater of the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia (hung there for 130 years)

• . Eakins’s decision to depict an operation in progress reflects the public’s increasing faith that scientific and medical advances could enhance—and preserve—lives

• Dr. Gross, with bloody fingers and scalpel, lectures about his surgery on a young man’s leg.

• Watching the surgeon, acclaimed for his skill in this specific operation, are several colleagues—all of whom historians have identified—and the patient’s mother, who covers her face.

• Eakins, who considered becoming a physician and studied at the college, included his self-portrait (in the doorway at the right)

“Still Life in the Studio”

• Created by Louis Daguerre

• First photographed images (took 2 hours to take the picture)

• One of the first plates Daguerre produced after perfecting his new photographic process was this still life, in which he was able to capture amazing detail and finely graduated tones of light and shadow.

• A photograph made by an early method on a plate of chemically treated metal; developed by Louis J. M. Daguerre

• The inspiration for Daguerre’s composition came from 17th-century Dutch vanitas still lifes

• Daguerre arranged his objects to reveal their textures and shapes clearly. Unlike a painter, Daguerre could not alter anything within his arrangement to create a stronger image. However, he could suggest a symbolic meaning through his choice of objects.

Daguerreotype

• A photograph made by an early method on a plate of chemically treated metal; developed by Louis J. M. Daguerre

• Plates were painted with light-sensitive coating

• Technology/art directly challenged painting

A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

• Photographed by Timothy O’sullivan

• Although viewers could regard this image as simple reportage, it also functions to impress on people the high price of war. Corpses litter the battlefield as far and wide as the eye can see

• Wet-plate technology enabled photographers to record historical events on the spot

• Though it was years before photolithography could reproduce photographs such as this one in newspapers, photographers exhibited them publicly. They made an impression that newsprint engravings never could.

Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)

• Created by Édouard Manet (Paris) - one of the first modern artists

• This painting was rejected by the jury for the 1863 Salon for being to vulgar and incomprehensible

• Depicts two clothed men and one naked and one clothed woman at a picnic. Consistent with Realist principles, Manet painted a contemporary genre scene and based all four figures on real people, including his brother and Victorine Meurent (his favorite model)

• The naked woman—she has undressed in the park and tossed her clothes on the grass—is a distressingly unidealized figure who also seems completely unfazed by her nakedness. She gazes directly at the viewer without shame or flirtatiousness. Her companion looks in the same direction. Neither pays any attention to what the second man is saying to them.

• Nor is it clear what relationship, if any, the second woman has to the trio “at lunch.”

• No one has any interest in the picnic food. This is no luncheon on the grass, although it may be the aftermath of a meal. Nor is this truly Realism, because the subject is incomprehensible

• It was supposed to be a tribute + highlight of technique of painting

Olympia

• Created by Édouard Manet

• Recreation of Venus of Urbino

• Surprisingly was excepted to the Exhibition

• Olympia was a common “professional” name for prostitutes in 19th-century Paris

• She reclines on a bed that extends across the full width of the painting (and beyond) and is naked except for a thin black ribbon tied around her neck, a bracelet on her arm, an orchid in her hair, and fashionable slippers on her feet

• Like the seated woman in Le Déjeuner, Olympia (Victorine Meurent served again as Manet’s model) meets the viewer’s eye

• Olympia is being presented with a bouquet of flowers from the man who has just entered her bedroom

• Critics also faulted the painter’s rough brushstrokes and abruptly shifting tonalities.

Impressionism

A late-19th-century art movement that sought to capture a fleeting moment, thereby conveying the elusiveness and impermanence of images and conditions.

Impressionist paintings represent an attempt to capture a fleeting moment—not in the absolutely fixed, precise sense of a Realist painting

Impression: Sunrise

• Created by Claude Monet

• This painting is a view of that harbor, represented a sharp break from traditional landscape painting. In recording the boats, water, and sky en plein air—that is, outdoors

• Monet made no attempt to disguise the brushstrokes or blend the pigment to create smooth tonal gradations, as traditional painters did

• Effected by the pace of modern life

• Fascinated by reflected sunlight on water, Monet broke with traditional studio practice and painted his “impression”

Gare Saint Lazare

• Created by Claude Monet

• Depicts a characteristic aspect of the contemporary urban scene. The expanding railway network had made travel more convenient, bringing large numbers of people into Paris and enabling city dwellers to reach suburban area

• Monet captured the energy and vitality of Paris’s modern transportation hub. The train, emerging from the steam and smoke it emits, rumbles into the station. In the background haze are the tall buildings that were becoming a major component of the Parisian landscape.

• Artist liked stuffed/crowded scenes → showed modernity

• Monet’s agitated application of paint contributes to the sense of energy in this railway terminal (lighter colors)

Claude Monet in His Studio Boat

• Created by Édouard Manet

• In summer 1874, Manet recorded Monet painting—en plein air directly on canvas without any preliminary sketch—in his floating studio on the Seine

• In the distance are the factories and smokestacks of Argenteuil

• In this painting, Manet adopted not only Monet’s Impressionist subject matter but also the younger artist’s short brushstrokes and fascination with the reflection of sunlight on water