Notes for the Units on the Art of the 18th and 19th centuries
Neoclassicism
- classical subject matter- myth or history- in a style derived from Greek or Roman sources
- painting sculpture and architecture as well as fashion and home décor!
- history paintings (thought to be the highest art form by the Academics) were often made to
teach moral lessons- the means for conveying Enlightenment ideals- reason and logic
- simple, restrained style (conforms to classicism)
- structured composition
- smooth brushwork
- subdued palette
- harsh sculptural lines
- planar, not linear recession (mainly figures in the foreground)
planar recession- no more perfect Renaissance picture window- sense of depth
due to parallel planes that appear to recede from picture- foreground, middle
ground, background- ushers in modernism
plane- a flat or level surface
- appeal to senses of sight and touch
- art meant to be beautiful
- sense of remoteness of time and place
- (differs from French Baroque/Poussin’s classicism- figures are less waxen and ballet like- more
naturalistic and solid)
Example artwork:
Jacques-Louis David. Oath of the Horatii. 1784.10' 10" x 14'. Oil.
- French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture is founded in 1648-meant to aid artists,
improve social status, regularize instruction, centralize product (really for the king)
- membership assures an artist of royal and civic commissions and financial success
- hold Salons- which in 1737 become an every other year event that really establish
who’s who in art- establish officially approved styles, mold tastes, help keep the Royal
Academy’s control
Romanticism
- a style and an attitude
- debated dates- either 1750 to 1850 /or 1800 to 1840
- concerned with imagination and the emotions
- reaction to the Enlightenment focus on rationality
- found in the writings of Rousseau who wrote Social Contract 1762- “Man is born free, but is
everywhere in chains!”- desire for freedom, thought it was a right- freedom politically as well as
freedom of thought, emotion, action, worship, speech, taste, etc.
- celebrates the individual and the subjective rather than the universal and objective
- imagination not reason
- feeling not thinking
- intuition not calculation
- takes its name from literature- stories, poems, novellas written in Latin derived Romance
languages- suggests fantastic, poetic, even melancholy spirit- a far away time or place
- interests in the medieval period (seen as “dark ages”, barbaric, superstition, grotesque) and the
sublime= awe mixed with terror (fantastic, the occult, the macabre=death related)
-subjects: legends, exotica, nature/landscapes, violence/heroic struggle
(19th c. Romanticism adds more dramatic action!)
-sources: literature, social criticism
- themes: suffering/death, faith and personal heroism, lure of distant places, patriotism
typical Romantic artistic style:
1. deep rich unrestrained color
2. quick, loose brushwork
3. strong light and shade contrasts
4. complex compositions
5. expressive poses and gestures
- The Enlightenment’s generally optimistic view that nature was good and that men and women
would act to promote the happiness of others and the reformation of social institutions continues
into the 19th c.
- Romanticism gains in force partly as a reaction to Neoclassicism and sometimes the distinction
between the two blur.
Example Artwork:
Eugene Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, oil, 12’ x 16’, 1826
Realism
- (French artists take the lead, but not only a French movement)
- precise imitation of visual perceptions without alteration- honest depiction of unpretentious
subjects
- also departs from (Renaissance) illusionism
- now stresses pigment and composition manipulation as visible and modern
- new subject matter:
- only things of one’s own time are “real”
- subject matter of everyday contemporary life as seen or seeable by the artist
- shun fiction or historical subjects (gods and goddess and antique heroes are out!)
- Realists choose mundane, trivial subjects
- working class, peasants
-Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of
ugly or commonplace subjects.
- subjects that previously had been deemed unworthy of depiction
- Courbet, “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one.”
Example Artwork:
Gustave Courbet, Stonebreakers, oil, 5’ x 8’, 1849
Salon des Refuses:
-
Jurors reject 3,000 of 5,000 paintings submitted, calling the unaccepted works, “ a serious
danger to society”
Napoleon III ordered the works to be exhibited in a Salon called the “Salon des Refuses”
Art historians date the beginning of the modern painting from this point
It was highly successful
Example artwork:
Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass/ Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, oil, 7’ x 9’, 1863
Impressionists
- an art of industrialized, urbanized Paris
- reflects the craziness, turbulence of rapid industrialization and urbanization
- more than the Realist focus on art of the present, it was art of a single moment
- not always a cohesive movement- artist were linked together in the exhibit
- paint “en plein aire” – in the open air- outdoors (all except Manet and Degas, who
remained studio painters)
- helped by the invention of tin tubes for oil paint in 1841
- they wanted to record the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere-immediate visual
sensations through color and light
- reject Renaissance perspective, balanced compositions, idealized figures, chiaroscurosubject matter is now merely a light reflecting surface!
- they see color as not a permanent characteristic of an object- it changes with the light
and weather, reflections
- they realize that shadows are not gray but are colors modified by other colors or
reflections
- using complementary colors side by side over large areas, the colors tend to
heighten one another (paint in small dabs next to one another tends to make the
area look/ blend into neutral)
- large blocks of unmixed color, must blend in the eye at a distance and they tend
to be more intense than if mixed on the palette
- scientific studies of light and newly developed chemical pigments allow for greater
sensitivity of colors in nature
- quality of sketches
- incidental, momentary, passing aspects of reality (NOT the classical universal and
timeless)
- characteristically short choppy brushstrokes
- bright palette
- everyday subjects
Example Artwork:
Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, oil, 1’ x 2’, 1872
Japanese Woodblock Prints
- first nonwestern art to have major impact
- Ukiyo-e = The name of this art form literally means pictures of the floating world.
- techniques=
- flat, brightly colored, sharply outlined
- limited modeling or gradation
- cropped haphazardly
Post Impressionism- 1880-1905
- a broad reaction against Impressionism- artist began to feel that they had been neglecting too
many of the traditional elements of picture making
4 main artists:
- Cezanne, Seurat (analytical – structure, brushwork, color)
- Gauguin, van Gogh (expressive capabilities of color and line)
- all have individual styles
- each artist sought to create art with a greater degree of formal order and structure
- they developed more abstract styles (departing from naturalism) that really influences the early
20th c. modernists
Example artworks:
Georges Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, oil, 7’ x 10’, 1884-1886
Van Gogh, Starry Night, oil, 2.5’ x 3’, 1889
Early Expressionism
Example artwork:
Edvard Munch, The Scream, oil, pastel and casein, 3’ x 2.5’, 1893