The revolution in France 1789 and the over throw of the monarchy opened the door for a new style in art production, as well as opening the door for Napoleon Bonaparte to step into the resulting political upheaval and establish a different type of monarchy with himself as its head.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)
He was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars.
First Consul of the French Republic comes to power 1804 - 1815 with intentional links to ancient Roman Republic. In May of 1804 he becomes king of Italy. At the end of that same year he is coronated as Emperor of the French Republic.
In 1815 - his disastrous invasion of Russia ended his retreat (and career). He was defeated by the British at Waterloo (Belgium). He was forced to leave the throne and went into exile on Saint Helena Island in the South Atlantic. He dies six years following in 1821.
Many French artists produced major artworks glorifying him. Artists remain impacted by Neoclassicism style because of its attributes to the Classical ancient world. Often Napoleon was seen dressed in ceremonial garments and objects familiar from the Roman Empire.
Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Cornation
Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing Saint-Bernard, 1800-1801
Jean-Auguste-Dominque (J-A-D) Ingres,
Grande Odalisque, 1814
2' 11" x 5' 4" (almost life size in width)
Video Link: Ingres' Grande Odalisque
Jean-Auguste-Dominque (J-A-D) Ingres, Napoleon on the Imperial Throne, 1806 oil on canvas
Grande Odalisque, 1814
2' 11" x 5' 4" (almost life size in width)
Subject matter is of a 'fictionalized' harem of the exotic (and other), sensuousness, tactility, a hookah pipe, silks and turban from the East, peacock feathers. Ingres has no interest in anatomical "correctness" - notice anatomy of left leg and extra vertebrae in back, head too small, etc. His creative work, although abstracted, was rather academic in its delivery of Neoclassicism ideals, far from the Romantic style soon to come.
The painting is reminiscent of the Renaissance painting by Titian three centuries prior, below:
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1536 - 1538
oil on canvas
3' 11' x 5' 5"
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Realism p. 663
Advances in industry and technology in the early 19th century backed the ideals of Enlightenment and the study of science and onward progress. Realism was the movement that developed in France mid 19th century. "What we see was 'real.' And that's what we paint."
Thus, artists focused on contemporary events and rejected fictional and historical subject matter.
The general public embraced empiricism and positivism. Realist artists concentrated their subject matter on the realities of human experience.
Thus, artists focused on contemporary events and rejected fictional and historical subject matter.
The general public embraced empiricism and positivism. Realist artists concentrated their subject matter on the realities of human experience.
Empiricists = knowledge is based in observation and direct experience
Positivists, embraced philosophies of August Comte (1798 - 1857). He believed that the environment and human activity was governed by the laws of science and thus could be studied and understood through observational data.
Gustav Courbet, The Stone Breakers, 1849, oil on canvas
5' 3" x 8' 6"
Gustav Courbet was the leading figure of the Realist movement 1819 -1877. He painted the working class people, what seemed like mundane subject matter. This was indeed real, and needed to be painted. Thus, bringing focus to the middle and lower classes. He did not romanticize nor glorify his subject matter. It is known as a great painting of Social Realism.
VIDEO : Courbet's: The Stone Breakers
Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857
oil on canvas2' 9" x 3' 8"
Another French artist, Jean-Francois Millet was connected with the Barbizon School. Artists from this school focused on Social Realism, depicting the French country side. Millet portrays three field workers gather the left overs of the harvest. In the background we see atmosphere perspective at work - a distant village, but recognize that the three women are front and central, commanding their presence.
Honore Daumier, Third Class Carriage, lithography, print
Other Social Realist painters included Honore Daumier who worked for a great deal in printmaking - especially lithography (drawings etched into prepared litho stones). Daumier did a great deal of political social commentary. He was a defender of the urban class.
"Because people widely recognized the power of art to serve political ends, the political and social agitation accompanying the violent revolutions in France and the rest of Europe in the later 18th and 19th centuries prompted the French people to suspect artists of subversive intention." p.666
Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863
oil on canvas 7' x 7' 8"
Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883) was a pivotal figure in the 19th century, as was Courbet. He was influenced by the Realists, but as younger artist, he developed the important role in leading his painterly work towards Impressionism.
Above work is a seminal work in Western art history, the question is why?
- All four individuals are based on real people (Manet's favorite artist at the time); Eugene Manet and sculptor Ferdinand Leenhof
- painting caused outrage in the Salon due to its subject matter
Critic said: "A commonplace woman of the demimonde, as asked as can be, shamelessly lolls between two dandies dressed to the teeth. These latter look like schoolboys on a holiday, perpetrating an outrage to play the man.... This is a young man's practical job -- a shameless, open sore."
The subject matter did make heads turn, but Manet also painted the work softly and with wide, large brushstrokes - the beginnings of Impressionism. Manet moved away from illusionism to the acknowledgement of paints properties and a loose, gooey material slathered onto a canvas. This left canvases' looking unfinished, temporary, a fleeting moment.
The subject matter did make heads turn, but Manet also painted the work softly and with wide, large brushstrokes - the beginnings of Impressionism. Manet moved away from illusionism to the acknowledgement of paints properties and a loose, gooey material slathered onto a canvas. This left canvases' looking unfinished, temporary, a fleeting moment.
Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1865
oil on canvas, 4' 3" x 6' 2"
Realist artists concentrated their subject matter on the realities of human experience.
p. 671
This attitude was very much in tune with 19th century American taste, combining an admiration for accurate depiction with a hunger for truth.
Thomas Eakins, American, Swimming Hole 1884-85
Eakins was an American Realist painter who again recorded the human experience onto his canvases. He studied in the academy in Philadelphia --- and aimed to paint things he saw rather than what he felt his public wanted to see. In fact he is well known to paint the reality of 'off-beat' subject matter as in the The Gross Clinic below of 1875
The Gross Clinic, 1875, oil on canvas
detail from Eakins' The Gross Clinic, 1875
Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Thankful Poor
1894 oil on canvas
Another well-known African American Realist painter is Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937). He studied under Thomas Eakins, before moving to Paris. Tanner mixed Eakins careful observation of nature with his passion to paint ordinary people.
Photography
1839, mid 19th century this technical device was invented and had an immense consequence on modern civilization.
When studying the birth of the camera, we can see traces of it go back in the to the Renaissance period, when artists used the camera obscura to shine illusions into a darkened space and trace their exact likenesses onto canvases and drawings.
In 1807, the invention of the camera lucida (lighted room) replaced the enclosed chamber of the camera obscura.
No matter how accurate the drawn work was, artists still wanted a more direct way to capture in image.
Daguerreotype . Calotypes and Wet-Plate Photography
Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre
(French, 1789 -1851) inventing the daguerretype -- first practical photographic processes in 1839 were announced by Daguerre and Briton William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877).
Many inventors were playing with sensitized paper, pin hole cameras and other technology --- fought over who is claimed as the "inventor" of the camera. The Calotype process appeared simultaneously in France and England in 1839.
- The earliest of these photographs was the daguerreotype (named after Daguerre) and taken by 19th century photographic process using an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor. Daguerretypes were presented in Paris, excitement, information and ideas exploded! Unlike our digital cameras today, each print was unique. Soon people all over Europe and U.S. were making photographs.
p. 681
Audiences witnessed performances of "living paintings" created by changing the lighting effects on a "sandwich" composed of a painted backdrop.
The first authenticated image of
Abraham Lincoln was this daguerreotype
of him created in 1846 -- when Lincoln was a U.S. Congressman-elect
Edgar Alan Poe
One can imagine this new artistic medium's advantages and enormous impact on culture:
- Ability to take pictures of people, location and objects with great ease
- process can catch subtle detail
- Capturing "authentic" images of those things
- It suited the philosophies in the age of Realism
- Shifted who could have these images created and ownership, thus distributing t/o all socio-economic levels
- New answers to the representation of "reality", challenging traditional roles of pictorial representation that we see seeming back to the Renaissance
- Soon many photographers were making photographs across Europe and the U.S.
Many painters of the Realist period embraced the camera as an aid in their own painted canvases. Artists: Delacroix, Ingres, Courbet, others. Some artists feared it feeling that it would replace the painstaking creation of canvases. And yet the tables were also turned. As some painters looked to the new technical device's potential to their own creative works, some photographers looked to painting to inform their photographs.
p.679
1862: Court case proved: that Photography was an art, and photographs were entitled to copyright protection.
Cameras were large and cumbersome. Quite heavy and exposure time was long to place the image onto film. Thus objects had to be perfectly still.
Timothy O'Sullivan (Irish American
p.679
1862: Court case proved: that Photography was an art, and photographs were entitled to copyright protection.
Cameras were large and cumbersome. Quite heavy and exposure time was long to place the image onto film. Thus objects had to be perfectly still.
Timothy O'Sullivan (Irish American
A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, PA, 1863
Documentary photography
-- thus, begins the story of photography's
influence on modern life.
O'Sullivan also photographed aboriginal life of the Navajo, taken near old Fort Defiance, NM
