Realism

Realism: Introduction:

• Silk workers in city of Leon were on strike

• Textile industry had been at the forefront of modernization in England and France

• this made the textile industry vulnerable to labor criticisms

• Louis and Philippe passed repressive laws limiting the ability to join unions, limiting freedom of press, etc.

• Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People had put Louis Philipe on the throne

• in 1834 Louis Philippe calls out the national guard to put down strikers in Leon and rioters in other cities (those protesting repressive laws)

• A soldier was shot but nobody knew who shot him

• Soldiers sent out a warning to the rioters by singling out a building in paris and massacring the unarmed families inside

• Rue transnonain by Honore Daumier

  • Lithograph

  • shows incident of massacre by soldiers to warn rioters

  • Shows highly fraught, emotional moment

  • family is shown looking asleep, but they are dead in their home

  • Strong lights and darks highlight the bodies

  • small room

  • lots of furniture, chairs, beds, people (young, old), sheets, etc.

  • objects are randomly placed

  • Some are in the dark some are in the light

  • unclear

  • everyday, unheroic seeming, working class man, vulnerable, hurt

  • fallen ungracefully

  • shown tumbled off the bed, with the sheet caught under him, exposing the mattress

  • little detail of the sheet suggests that the artist is depicting what he observed (not making things up)

  • way the sheet is caught parallels to his dead daughter, also crushed under his body

  • the point is to appear how things happened

  • Horrible disaster

  • everything is given the same weight/ importance

  • Comparison to Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People

    • depicts similar scene as Delacroix in 1830 and 1834

    • It is a lithograph and Delacroix’s is not

      • Daumier used lithography to spread his ideas widely and cheaply

      • Especially useful for breaking news (ex. the massacre)

    • Both depict highly emotional moments

    • Different style

      • Delacroix shows corpses piled up on the barricades

      • Deaths show a service of liberty

      • In contrast, Daumiers deaths show no purpose

      • just a brutal killing

• Lithograph:

  • Print making medium

  • invented in the 19th century

  • steps:

    • Draw with a grease crayon on stone

    • Dampen and ink the stone

    • ink adheres to the grease crayon lines

    • press a paper on top to create the print

  • Quickly became popular

  • Doesn’t require much skill

  • Sketchy, rough style was appealing for 19th century

    • suggests immediacy

    • not like the delicate lines of shading or engraving

  • Can be reproduced thousands of times

  • lithographic stone was more durable than wood for a woodcut or for the metal for an engraving

• Anonymous, lithograph of massacre on Rue transnonain

  • lithograph

  • depicts same event as Rue transnonain by Honore Daumier of massacre

  • possibly had the same message

  • Style resembles somebody like Greuze

  • melodramatic

  • Comparison to Daumier’s

    • Daumier’s has a more deadpan approach, while this one is very melodramatic

    • Contrasts with Daumier’s because Daumier doesn’t show clearly who the heros are and villains are

    • Daumier’s doesn’t artificially arrange the composition at all

    • Daumier’s is more realist

  • organized composition shows clearly who is a hero and who is a villain

  • Soldier is shown in the center with a bayonet

  • soldier appears angry and mean and is clearly not a victim

  • soldier is stabbing the hero

  • hero is depicted as an artisan

  • hero is dying in an odd pose

  • Hard to believe he would have died falling like that

  • pose makes him appear a christ-like martyr

  • father raises his hand in protest

  • father is wearing 18th century clothing

  • father is a symbol of rights being violated by the king and Republic

  • behind them, something larger and more terrible is happening

  • another solider is shown pulling aside a curtain to expose a mother and child, implying that they are going to be violated

  • broken furniture on the floor

Realism versus realism:

• Realism dominated Europe and the U.S. from 1830 to the middle of the century

• also after that but in altered forms

• Realists aimed to give a truthful, impartial representation of the real world

• Artists like Constable (pre-realism) looked to science, as many realists would

• wanted to interrupt familiar conventions of art

• Constable would sketch nature and clouds by lookin in the sky for formations that fit scientific categories

• Used clouds to break traditional landscape painting (including Dutch realist landscape painting)

• Ploughing scene in Suffolk by Constable

  • Scientifically precise clouds

  • Clouds give scene sense of reality

  • Realism is partially derived from how the art doesn’t have the conventional pile up of clouds in dutch landscape painting

  • Constable provides early example of strategy taht realists will practice

  • realists looked to science and objectivity

  • Break with tradition of feeling like one is looking at a painting/scene (want viewers to feel as if they are looking that the real thing)

• Realism (capital R)

  • Coventions of this style:

    • emphasizes present day

    • People of a specific place and time

    • ex. specific date and location where event occurred is included in title of Daurmier’s piece

    • emphasizes that the art is an objective record

    • Emphasized quality of contemporarity

      • ex. extreme realists didn’t paint religion

      • Can’t paint what one doesn’t see

      • only what is visible

• Gerome

  • Worked at the same time as realists

  • not a realist

  • famous for his accuracy

• Louis XIV and Moliere by Jean-Leon Gerome

  • Accurate about furniture, clothing, hairstyles, setting, etc.

  • For realists, this accuracy isn’t sufficient

  • Realism also involves recording objectivity, and being detached from the scene (doesn’t imply how the viewer should feel

  • Realists work against composition which highlights things to imply to the viewer what is important

  • realism= uncomposed, unselected, etc.

• Man with a hoe by Jean-Leon Gerome

  • man is depicted as equally important a his surroundings

  • Realist paints low and working class

    • Figures aren’t shown as tiny (like in Constables plowing scene)

    • not idealized into heros

    • Realists goal is to present the undistinguished, common place, as a powerful subject

• Realism came to dominate art during the middle of the 19th century

• around this time voting was extended to white men without property, slavery was being abolished, etc.

• was a period of optimism for the working class

• people felt as if reform was possible

• Reform was created by showing people how bad things really were

• things were un-staged and truthful to create change

England: Pre-Raphaelites:

• Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in England

  • Group of seven artists

  • started in 1848

  • Wrote a manifesto attacking the conventions for painting that had come into place during the Renaissance

  • Attacking artistic convention was a key part of realism

  • To make a piece look factual, one had to attack artistic convention

  • brotherhood celebrated artists like Giottoi and the Trecento

  • They preceded rules for perspective and chiaroscuro

  • Their styles looked more honest, direct

  • Brotherhood was seen as subversive to the royal academy and more mainstream critics

• Annunciation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  • Example of honest appearing work, due to preceding rules for perspective and chiaroscuro

  • painting was submitted to the royal academy of England

  • Painting was harshly criticized

  • Royal academy exhibited art and was also a school for art

• Rossetti

  • leader of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood

  • Father had been exiled from italy

  • Rossetti sympathized with the democratic revolutionaries in italy

  • Revolutionaries= those who were battling the pope and goverment

  • Brotherhood was at times seen as a dangeerously subversive democratic organization

  • not accurate

• Annunciation by Rossetti

  • upsetting and distressing to viewers

  • depicted mary as a contemporary adolescent girl

  • his sister was the model

  • Difficult for the pre-raphaelites because they did historical and religious subjects

    • subjects weren’t part of present day society

    • insisted on using present day models for those subjects

    • everything in their pieces is based on a actual person

  • Thus, mary is seen as small and awkward

  • angel is shown as muscular

  • setting is a bedroom

  • modern day psychology for mary is created

  • makes it harder to see traditional meaning about the birth of christ

  • Golden footprints are left by the angel who seems to float above them

  • the space around the angel seems much flatter than the space around mary

  • Show rossetti trying an artificial device (ex. gold footprints, halo)

  • Seems more honest because of its obviousness

  • simpler, more direct

• William Holman Hunt

  • pre-raphaelite

• Awakening conscience by William Holman Hunt

  • Modern-day version

  • Shows a modern woman awakening to sin, instead of mary awakening to her role as the mother of christ

  • Condemns modern urban life as stunting people

  • based on mid-century concerns regaring city life and poverty

  • at this time england is on the edge of industrialization

  • half the population of england had moved to cities by mid-century

  • urban, working class was poor

  • women struggled with poverty the most

  • women became prostitutes as a result of being in poverty

  • Hunt shows middle-class interior

  • clerk is shown with his mistress

  • She awakes to the idea that she is living in sin

  • he is playing the piano

  • they were doing a duet

  • music awakened the idea of sin

  • mirror is also shown

  • shows that she is looking out the window

  • looking at the trees and nature

  • she is shown as the victim, clerk is shown as the clawed seducer

  • Critic, john Ruskin defended pre-raphaelites

    • explains in the London Times that people find the painting difficult to understand

    • enumerates details

    • States there are two problems for people who don’t understand the picture:

      • Everything in the middle-class room appears perfect and artificial

        • “fatal newness”

        • Nothing has any connection to the past, to social ties, to family, community, tradition, etc.

        • couple is a creation of/ victim to the new, modern industrialized city

        • new, commodified urban world threatened to destroy moral nature

      • Problem of realism

        • Hunt’s style gives the painting an overall attention

        • all objects compete for attention

        • no visual hierarchy

        • no chiaroscuro

        • the items take over

  • In the annunciation mary’s awakening lead to a new life as the mother of christ

  • nowhere for the awakened woman to go

  • popular novels told of women who committed suicide

  • women were transported elsewhere or sent to asylums

  • painting invites sympathy for the woman because she’s aware of whats wrong

  • painting also serves as a warning to women]

• Ford Madox Brown

  • Not a pre-raphaelite

  • was blackballed from the brotherhood by William hunt

  • unclear why

  • not technically a pre-raphaelite, but behaved like one

  • a teacher of rossetti

  • close ally of the brotherhood

  • takes up the other great virtue

    • hunts virtue= chastity

    • browns virtue= industry/ work

    • virtues were worshiped in the 19th century

• Work By Madox Brown

  • comparison to Awakening conscience by William Holman Hunt

    • Both have curved tops and frames like renaissance altar pieces

    • frames have religious inscriptions or quotes on them

    • Hunts frame says “singing to one with a heavy heart”

    • Browns says "See'est thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings."

  • theme of realism

  • Zola (french novelist) said that a carrot is a symbol of revolution

    • carrot, insignificant, worker= crucial subject

    • the real king and possessor of revolutionary potential

  • worker shown is a real worker

  • scene in north london where new sewers are being built

  • modernizing the city

  • increase in population living there

  • why brown chose this motif

    • digging sewers was a low business

    • associated with the body, the physical, cleanup

    • cleaning the city

    • shows part of improving society

  • composition has same quality as hunts

  • all details are vividly recorded

  • details compete with each other

  • different types of workers and non-workers are spread across the foreground

  • left has figure holding flowers

  • flower seller

  • main symbol is yeoman in the center

  • appears muscular with sleeves rolled up

  • hold shovel

  • shown as powerful and brightly lit

  • heroic ditch digger

  • dignified, somewhat artificial pose

  • balanced by unposed men around him

  • other figures make it seem more natural

  • little girl is shown in the foreground

  • wearing a dress that seems too big for her

  • with a baby and yelling at her brother

  • shes an orphan looking to work for the family

  • in the ditch in the shadows a homeless irish family is shown

  • homeless family is included because there was a crop disaster and famine in ireland

  • people from ireland fled to london and the U.S. looking for work

  • way in the back political protesters are shown

  • two men are leaning on the railing in between and watching the sewer diggers and irish family

  • men are included as examples of brain workers

    • Man in the black is Thomas Carlyle and the other man is another famous mid-century reformer and minister

    • Intellectuals whos work is done with their minds

    • they were famous for addressing modern urban issues

    • ex. poverty

    • Carlyle invented the phrase “cash nexus”

    • argued that in modern society, the only thing connecting people was money

    • ex. employee, boss, customer, etc.

    • the past had social relationships binding society together

    • more community

  • traditional triangular composition

  • builds to apex

  • tip of triangle has man and woman on horseback

  • upper class man and daughter

  • only the rich could afford horses

  • top of hierarchy but in the shadows

  • their way forward is blocked by the work going on

  • not workers

  • way forward is also blocked because they can’t see the virtue of work

  • can’t see suffering (orphan or homelessness)

  • part of the problem of urban life

  • indifferent

  • can’t hear carlyle

  • This is a typical pre-raphaelite strategy

  • criticism of modern, urban problems (like hunts awakening of conscience)

  • painting urges rich and middle class to see what wrong

  • pre-raphaelites wanted viewer to sympathize with suffering

  • wanted people to help solve problems

  • Brown leaves out one type of worker

    • the factory worker is left out

    • done in the part of north london where karl marx lived

    • Marx had been writing about labor work at the same time

    • for marx the factory worker was crucial to marx’s idea of a new type of society

    • new society= factory workers were in charge

    • brown leaves out factory worker to go with a more old fashioned image of work

    • references pre-raphaelites type of argument

    • pre-rapphaelites wanted to reform existing society

    • unlike marx, wanted to change the basic structure and hierarchy of society

France: Millet:

• Realism in France occurred in the country not the city

• It was a stronger type of realism

• posed a stronger challenge to the status quo than the pre-raphaelites

• Realism emerged in France in 1848 with the second republic

• King Louis Philippe didn’t live up to promises and was replaced by a republic

• republic was radical for the time

• gave working class men without property voting rights

• annual salon= exhibition of contemporary art

  • occurred under the republic for the first time

  • open with no jury

  • This is why Millet got his paintings in

• Millet

  • called an apostle of the ugly

  • painted the poor at work

  • However, in contrasts to others (ex. brown)

    • Brown made the sewer-digger look noble, powerful, dignified

    • Millets winnower has the qualities of someone who really works

• Winnower by Millet

  • comparison to Work by Brown

    • Brown made the sewer-digger look noble, powerful, dignified

    • Millets winnower has the qualities of someone who really works

    • appears unglamorous an miserable

  • Millet shows this miserable working quality without diminishing his sense of power

  • Millet shows a single figure, not a crowd

  • figure dominates the canvas

  • shown in an interior with man made objects

  • shows he inhabits a man made world

  • man is shown in profile with his face in the shadows

  • the way light strikes his body emphasizes his position

  • half-crouching

  • balancing the weight of a basket

  • winnowing the chaff from the grain

  • shows strain

  • difficult to keep his balance

  • paint appears thick, rough, and textured

  • not smooth and blended (like Brown’s)

  • Paint leave visible evidence of Millet’s labor

  • sense of vigor

  • makes the man look rough

  • shows hes doing unpleasant labor

  • clothing isn’t fancy, fairly dirty, callouses

  • Still appears as a significant figure

  • red, white, blue clothing

  • clothing colors made critics connect man to the republic

  • Republic depended on workers and their votes

  • People wondered if he was a happy worker or perhaps starting a fire

• The Sower by Millet

  • Millets style changed slightly two years later

  • still painted peasants, but they were shown in nature

  • in the fields

  • agriculture, human activity changes with the seasons

  • makes human work seem more natural

  • human work was part of an eternal cycle

  • no risk of changes (ex. the peasant voting for something new)

  • Expression is still difficult to see

  • Is he happy or angry?

  • Figure still dominates the landscape

  • Head breaks horizon

  • gait and arm makes him look like he is walking

  • in motion, crossing the fields

  • Got a mixed reaction when showed at the salon

  • People feared out of control peasants, too much democracy

  • Peasants invading spaces they didn’t belong (ex. the salon)

  • Criticisms echo political climate of that time

    • Louis Napoleon had been elected president of the second republic

    • would later declare himself emporer

    • Republic and second experiment with democracy will end

    • However, Millet was quickly popular in the U.S.

    • The Sower was bought by a boston artist

    • Became an influential piece for american artists

    • The Sower by Lee Lowrie

      • Influenced teh sculptor for the sower on Lincoln, Ne’s capital

      • Age of regionalism

      • Artists aimed to bridge a new divide

        • Divide was between illustrations and abstract art

        • “high art” and “low art”

        • People thought that regional aspect could bridge them

        • Why Lincoln's capitol building combines modern and old fashioned elements

        • Millets peasant was a symbol of a peasant/ ordinary man/ democratic republic

        • mean to to convey the same idea on the capitol

France: Courbet:

• Gustave Courbet

  • His realism was seen as more radical than millet’s

• The stonebreakers by Gustave Courbet

  • shows rural laborers/ peasants

  • Peasants had new potential to change society

  • shown not engaged in timeless cycled (ex. agriculture)

  • shown off-season

  • hired to break up rocks for the roads

  • roadwork

  • mechanical, exhausting labor

  • less joyful than sowing

  • Story that courbet saw these men from the window of his carriage

    • he stops and paid them to get in the carriage and come to his studio and pose for him

    • story emphasizes how courbet would only paint the real and existing

    • wanted to avoid risk of falsifiying or idealizing

    • courbet insisted on only painting present day

    • thought you can’t be true to history paintings

  • The figures stand out

  • heads don’t break the horizon

  • landscape closes off almost all of the sky

  • figures don’t look at the viewer

  • appear to be right in front of the viewer

  • man standing has a strange pose

  • pose indicates that he is young and strong

  • angled tool is shown next to him

  • another man is shown bent and crouching

  • this man is older

  • has a hammer raised

  • appears weaker

  • colors blend the men with the rocks

  • browns, whites, greys are around them

  • men aren’t shown as more significant in terms of lighting, detail, etc.

  • equally as important as the stones

  • attempting to get rid of the hierarchy of the painting

  • equal emphasis on all parts

  • increases realism

  • viewer has to decide on what is important

• The Burial or Ornans by Gustave Courbet

  • shown at the same salon as the stonebreakers

  • more shocking, broke more artistic rules/ norms

  • the farther one breaks the rules, the more realist the piece becomes

  • Painting was called “a democracy in paint”

  • Painting is huge

  • Painting is nondescript

  • nothing seems to be happening

  • insigificant moment

  • shows funeral of someone who lacks importance (ex. distant relative)

  • no center of tension

  • no figures are singled out

  • monumental, heroic painting about nobody

  • people seem to be standing right in front of the viewer

  • Viewer wants to construct a narrative of a funeral (grieving widow, orphaned children, etc.)

  • However, narrative is blocked because Courbet doesn’t create types

  • each person (each of the 50) is individualized

  • All are included (women of the family, officials of the church, grave digger, etc.)

  • nobody has a privileged position

  • no moral story is being told about the meaning of death

  • Additive composition

  • figures seem added next to the others with no hierarchy

  • all given the same weight

  • none are highlighted

  • however, some seem to stand out more than others (Ex. the dog easing away from the grave)

  • dog is shown as indifferent

  • formless crowd

  • Clergy kind of stands out

  • Don’t look holy or majestic

  • Grave digger is shown on his knee with a hand on his leg looking to the side

  • grave digger seems to just be working, no relation to the people mourning

  • Grave digger is the lowest man there, clergy are the highest

  • Grave digger appears more heroic and noble

  • Democratization in the painting

    • clergy (most powerful/ those who hold significant positions) shown not idealized and with many flaws

    • Anonymous cartoon, Burial at Ornans

      • critic shows the people were just notes of black and white

      • only the dog and clergy are shown

  • Crucifix is the only thing that breaks the horizon line

  • stands out in the sky

  • only other person who may stand out to the viewer is the older man dressed in clothes of the 18th century French Enlightenment

  • Stands out because of the dog next to him and the colors of his clothes

  • Colors of clothes contrast with the black that the mourners are wearing

  • Perhaps these are the heros (Christ the martyr, the french revolution)

  • If they are heros, they are from a different time

  • don’t inhabit the present

  • Painting implied village funeral

  • Rustic countryside

  • similar to Greuzes village Betrothal

  • Overturns what Greuze and other painters had done

  • complex because Courbet doesn’t follow conventions of how the rustics should look

  • Doesn’t just show peasant or the Bourgeoisie

  • shows there are many classes in the countryside

  • Similar to Millet, the paint is thick

  • applied with a pallet knife, not a brush

  • textured surface

  • Similar to Impasto, like in Stonebreakers

  • painting looks forceful, almost unfinished, not artistic

  • reinforces how he isn’t following art norms and aesthetic rules

  • style also made the painting seem oddly flat

  • not conventionally illusionist

  • Unconventional composition and narritive

  • Very much a realist painting

Realism and falsism:

• There were different kinds of realism

• Realists would represent their truth

• Individuals have different assumptions about whats true

• Gleaning was a custom from Feudalism

• After the harvest, workers were able to keep whatever they could glean (whatever was left behind from the harvest)

• When the second republic is over and Napoleon took the throne, this traditional custom became a subject of interest to realists

• New legislation was turning this practice into a welfare rather than a right of workers

• Workers only got gleanings if they were seen as deserving

• practice is depicted in works by Jules Breton and Millet

  • In both, the harvest is abundant

• Gleaners by Jules Breton

  • Breton shows fields covered with grain stacks

  • In Breton’s the light appears golden

  • Colors seem brighter

  • Leftovers in the field appear more abundant

  • Shows the figure fo a guard

  • Guard has pipe, hat, and dog

  • appears cheerful, one with the people

  • Strong vertical in the field

  • supervising people

  • sense of community

  • children are shown

  • young and old women are shown

  • makes the work seem easier (anyone can do it)

  • appears like fun work

  • people chatting

  • lots of variety in peoples activity

  • woman near the guard is shown

  • wearing a corset

  • appears young, pretty

  • light skin

  • idealized

  • George H. Lewes

    • british advocate for radical realism

    • married to george elliot, famous novelist

    • Wrote that “the oppostie of realism is not idealism but falsism”

    • For Lewes, Breton’s happy and content peasants are not idealized, but rather false/ a lie

    • Why did Breton lie? to avoid changing the status quo and showing the truth

• The Gleaners by Millet

  • Millet shows tall grain stacks

  • Women are doing most of the work

  • colder lighting

  • Women don’t stand out as much as in Breton’s

  • Women are isolated, unlike in Breton’s

  • no guard/ supervision

  • lacks that sense of community

  • women are shown not having fun, not interacting

  • shown doing tiring, repetitive work

  • similarity of the two women reaching down to pick up grain emphasizes repetitiveness

  • yields small rewards

  • all women have dark complections

  • hands appear rough from hard work

  • Millet’s figures are shown not idealized and with realistic bodies

  • However, women also aren’t belittled (still shown as signficant)

  • have a goddess like power

  • almost threatening power

  • The Gleaners by Millet (on a seed packet)

    • Millet was popular in the U.S.

    • people didn’t see americans as peasants

    • idea was that in the U.S. people owned their land and weren’t hired to work on others land

    • Millets image works differently in the U.S. than it did in France

    • The Gleaning presents image of abundant harvest and productivity

    • seed company used Millet’s because it gave the truth about labor (it is hard, but also powerful)

Manet: Introduction:

• French realists broke with artistic convention because of their identification with peasants and rural workers

• the second republic seemed to have the power to transform society

• The Meeting by Courbet

  • Courbet includes a self-portrait in this work

  • shows himself as a peddler in the countryside with a pack on his back

  • short sleeves, loose clothing

  • beard jetting out

  • Pose is different than in the woodcut

    • suggest defiance

    • free from control

  • most physically powerful looking man in the scene

  • dominates the landscape

  • his patron is taking his hat off to him

  • patron is neatly groomed

  • wearing a coat and gloves

  • man of the town

  • has a servant to carry his coat and possessions

  • servant is dressed well (better than courbet)

  • head is bent deferentially, imitating the patron

  • Courbet was kind of a servant to his patron

  • needed to acknowledge patrons wishes to sell his pictures

  • adopts persona of rural hick

  • persona sets him up as uncommercial

  • not appearing refined, polished

  • doesn’t defer or follow norms from the town

  • honest, free from societies routines

  • Gets respect for this from his patron

• The Wandering Jew 19th Century Woodcut by Courbet

  • Courbet’s composition of his self portrait in The Meeting is quoted and used in this piece

  • Story that dates back many centuries

  • About a jew who was disinherited and condemned to wander

  • Shows typical realism (courbet identifying with idea of those who are low, excluded from society

  • Courbet sets up contrast between himself (hes like the Jew or Peddler) and the Bourgeoisie de la viex by the man of the town

  • Woodcut was used because they have a course quality

  • thick lines relative simplicity, lack of shading made them associated with popular art

  • Courbet looked to the medium as a model for his art

  • Flatness and simplicity helped him break artistic convention/ find a new way of painting

• Portrait of Edouard Manet by Henri Fantin-Latour

  • Very different from courbet’s portraits

  • Manet appears as the man of the town

  • city gentleman

  • shiny tophat

  • gold chain for watch suggests wealth

  • blue tie indicates hes a bit of a dandy

  • not a peasant or worker

  • man of leisure, wealth, and sophistication

  • spinning a cane in his hands

  • pose is known as the flanour

  • someone who strolls the streets observing people or modern life

  • Flanour moves between classes (can go to high society parties or low society cafes)

  • Manet had a studio in the working class area (marked him as a flanour)

• The Old Musician by Manet

  • realist painting

  • suggests that he identified with outsiders

  • identified with the urban marginalized

  • additive composition

  • figures are lined up in a row across the foreground

  • Orphan girl is shown going from left to right

  • next to the girl is a theatre clown

  • working class theatre in paris (pantomime) had just burned down

  • clown no longer has a theatre to perform in

  • next to him is a boy who makes his living on the streets

  • violinist, a rag picker in stained trousers and a beat up silk hat, an elderly jew (polish man from a destroyed ghetto in paris)

  • compostion is similar to The Burial

  • no narritive

  • figures, ex. the Jewish man, are cropped in an unselected way

  • manet doesn’t make figures seem heroic or symbolic

  • no moral story is told about them

  • united by how they were all pushed to the edge of society/ the city

  • figures are gathered in the undeveloped suburbs

  • been uprooted by modern life and excluded

  • not shown as powerful or defiant

  • not a threat to society

• Shift from Courbet to Manet

  • shift occured after the fall of the second republic

  • Napoleon III became emporer

  • was a strong military leader

  • vision of new democratic society of the second republic was defeated

  • Optimism of Courbet was replaced by disillusionment of Manet

  • Manet’s urban workers who dominated paintings weren’t going to create change

  • manet saw himself in them (one uprooted from modern life)

  • By this time in europe patrons were uncommon

  • artist worked for the art market

  • to be successful in the art market one needed to be successful in the salon

  • Salon monopolized the exhibition of contemporary art and buyers

  • the newly rich and bourgeoisie bought form the salon

  • to sell gave them a guarantee to get a reputation in the press

  • Salon was traditional

  • manet had studied in the french academy, but still couldn’t get his work into the salon

  • Like courbet, likley wanted to be free to paint what he wanted to regardless of patron

  • however, due to the academic system he was shut out, marginalized

Manet and the salon:

• Le Dejeuner sur l-herbe (picnic on the grass) by Manet

  • one of manets most famous rejected pictures

  • rejected from the salon

  • many rejected paintings that year so the oranizers of the salon decided to hold a separate exhibition for rejected works

  • Idea was that it would stigmatize the rejects and show how awful they were

  • would find a place for them that was clearly outside the academy

  • This backfired

  • made these pieces look new and fresh and shocking and made the academy look old fashioned

  • Painting was rejected because it shows traditional ideas about art

  • the rules that the salon supported had no revelance to modern life

  • did this by taking familiar motif from renaissance art (clothed men, nude women in nature)

  • Manet takes this motif and places it in a new park in paris

  • park was being built by Napoleon to modernize paris

  • men and woman are urban figures

  • critics said men were dandies and students and women were prostitutes

  • no muses or allegories

  • scene seems unnatural

  • pile of clothes seems similar to staged still-life

  • woman’s body is realistic

  • not idealized

  • park seems like artificial nature

  • specifically created for urban leisure

  • manet shows distance from present art and traditional academic art

• Pastoral concert by Giorgione

  • clothed men, nude women

  • Suggests harmony with nature

  • womens bodies are associated with nature because they are nude

  • two men playing music

  • disguised by illusionism

  • Giorgione integrates the figures into the setting with light, shadow, and color

  • Makes the scene seem real and believable

• Olympia by Manet

  • accepted into 1865 salon

  • Manet was again quoting renaissance tradition

  • accepted partially because no critics realized that he was quoting Titan and Giorgione

  • Manet also gives similarly classical name to venus (Olympia)

  • Woman is shown in an interior with a servant, pet, and signs of wealth

  • Cashmere shawl is spread across the bed

  • Jewelry, ribbons, shoes, etc.

  • Hissing black cat is shown instead of sleeping puppy (more aggressive figure)

  • servant is an African woman, referencing the world of orientalism, harem

  • holding flowers (a gift from a lover)

  • holding flowers towards olympia, who is deciding if she should accept or not

  • Olympia looks towards the viewer

  • not smiling or seductive, like titian’s venus

  • expressionless

  • her hand grabs her leg, doesn’t appear relaxed

• Venus of Urbino by Titian

  • Venus of Giorgione had become an upper-class courtesan who titan give the name of Venus to

  • Woman is shown in an interior with a servant, pet, and signs of wealth

  • sleeping puppy suggests relaxation

  • servants are in the background at a wedding chest

  • smirking

  • seems “inviting”

• Birth of Venus by Alexander Cabanel

  • won a prize

  • he followed the same approved method as manet

  • looked to renaissance art for models to emulate

  • he is emulating Botticelli’s Birth of Venus here or perhaps Giorgione’s sleeping venue

  • nude venus is shown

  • nude body is associated with nature and the ocean

  • passive, unconcious

  • exposed to the viewer

  • more erotic than Manet’s but Manet’s was critisized and Cabanel’s was not

    • Manet’s was called vulgar and horrible

    • Difference lies in how they painted

    • Cabanel makes the scenario totally artifical

      • can be seen in pose, body, etc.

      • long, luxurious hair

      • taken from art, not nature

      • cabanel’s style makes it believable

      • brush strokes are invisible

      • gradual changes from dark to light

      • smooth skin

    • Manet paints Olympias body differently

      • makes the viewer acknowledge the artifice involved in painting

      • Brush strokes are visible

      • some bits of paint aren’t blended

      • brush strokes aren’t blended

      • patches of pain suggest dirt or hair on her body

      • not gradual transistions from dark to light

      • looks flatter, less polished

      • loose, long, flowing hair

      • hair seems to vanish into the brown panel behind her

      • makes her almost look bald

      • appears uninviting

      • brush strokes seem ore like a sketch than a finished painting

      • true for courbet and Millet too

      • Brush strokes created authenticity for realists

      • conveyed honestly by breaking conventions

      • didn’t make things seem perfect, falsified, polished

      • direct, truthful, honest

      • Critics couldn’t see Olympia as a goddess or the relationship to Titian or Giorgione

      • critics saw it as a realist moment of a sexual transaction

Manet and historical painting:

• The Execution of Emperor Maximilian by Manet

  • historical picture

  • Manet’s idea of a modern, realist historical painting

  • no national hero here

  • Contemporary event

  • Manet observes it and documents it like a journalist

  • Based his painting on engraving such as the one in Harpers Weekly

    • In Harpers, sympathy is invitied for the victims

    • figures are shown against a blank wall

    • Maximilian is singled out

    • He is wearing a blindfold, along with the two generals next to him

    • Mexican soldiers shown in sandles

    • officers have a more ragtag appearance

    • no viewers

  • Execution of the emperor was a famous event

  • lots of coverage

  • Archduke Maximilian was a puppet of Emperor Napoleon

  • British called him “archdupe”

  • Napoleon made Maximilian the Emperor of Mexico

  • Maximilian was executed by Benito Juarez, the president of the republic of mexico

  • Execution was a huge blow to french power

  • Eventually lead to the downfall of Napoleon III and the second empire

  • Manet presented the event factually and low-key

  • Shows same scenario as Harpers Weekly

  • Maximilian and his colleagues are shown against a blank wall

  • Manet doesn’t show the blindfolds

  • Maximilian still stands apart from the others

  • Through the hat, gives mexican troops Military Uniforms that look like European ones

  • Manet shows the soldiers more coherently and in fancy shoes (unlike Harpers Weekly)

  • Manet blamed napoleon for abandoning Maximilian

  • as a result, implied that french were also to blame for Maximilians death

  • Manet wasn’t criticizing Mexico, rather criticizing how wrong the french were

  • Was influenced from seeing The Third of May by Goya

  • Reverses the theme of Goya’s work

  • Shows Mexican insurgents killing french troops

  • Goya’s composition is completely different

  • Goya conveys an emotional nationalist drama

  • encouraged viewer to want to fight for the people of spain

  • Manet’s work doesn’t show the execution as a moment for action or national glory

  • execution lacks emotion

  • seems flat, ordinary (makes it chilling)

  • Manet shows the brief puffs of smoke from the guns and men starting to react to being shot

  • Maximilian and his generals are impassive

  • unreadable expressions

  • not symbols like a crucifixion

  • maximilian is not seen as a martyr or hero

  • lighting doesn’t highlight any figure

  • as maximilian is being shot, a soldier is shown more clearly checking his rifle and turned towards the viewer

  • appears indifferent looking at the gun

  • Checking gun and executions happening have the same visual weight

  • events are seen as equally important

  • makes violence seem shockingly unimportant

  • Manet also added viewers to the wall of the fortress

  • similar to viewers in Goya’s Third of May; however, they are Impassive

  • nobody shows emotion

  • no clues to the viewer about how to feel