ARTH/10 18581
Period Outline module for Level 2 and Level 3 Students
20 Credits taught over 2 terms
Module Tutor: Dr Francesca Berry
Email: f.berry@bham.ac.uk
Office Hours: 2.00-4.00pm Mondays (Room 114 Watson Building)
Lectures:
Mondays 10.00-10.50am in Barber Lecture Theatre
Aims and Objectives
This course will look at works by leading artists of the period such as Manet, Degas, Cassatt, Whistler and Gauguin, analysing key aesthetic movements including Academic Idealism, Realism, Orientalism,
Aestheticism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. It will also consider the institutional structure of the French art world, focusing upon the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Salon and the development of the independent art market, and also comparing this context with that in England during the same period.
Finally, by analysing artistic representation in relation to the key themes of class, gender and race, students will begin to be able to locate artistic practice within the socio-political terrain of the period.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this module, participants should be able to:
1.
Apply the skills and knowledge gained in previous years to the art of the nineteenth century.
2.
3.
4.
Explain and critically evaluate the concepts studied and critical issues regarding them.
See the history of art in a wider context.
Use appropriate IT resources for research.
Module Requirements:
Attendance
Students are required to attend in full all lectures.
Assessment
Level 3 Students: 1 x 3 hour exam in the summer term
Level 2 Students: 2 Assessed Essays of 3,000 words each
A list of essay questions for Essay 1 will be made available in Term 1 and a list for Essay 2 will be available in Term 2.
Essay 1 due Friday 13 th January 2006
Essay 2 due Friday 28 th April 2006
Essays must be handed in by 4.00pm on the designated day together with a declaration of authorship form and posted in the essay box outside the departmental office.
Essays can ONLY be handed in by depositing them in the post box outside the Departmental Office
Two copies of all essays must be submitted . When essays are due, students should fill in an ‘essay submission form’ (copies are in the folder on top of the postbox outside the Departmental Office).
They must sign the form and post both the form and the two copies of their essay in the box. The copies of the essay will then be date stamped by the Secretary.

Assessed essays are marked anonymously. To facilitate this please do not write you names on the actual essay, but instead always write your student registration number on the front page. The declaration of authorship forms will be removed from the essays prior to marking.
N.B. All marked coursework will be returned promptly, to give students the opportunity to learn from comments and feedback. Although this work is returned with a provisional mark, the final mark is not confirmed until the Examiners’ meeting in June. Therefore, students should think of this mark as an indicator rather than binding.

Outline of Lectures
Term 1
Week 1
10.00am 26 th September: Introductory Meeting For All in Barber Lecture Theatre
Week 2
Lecture 3 rd October: Art and Society in France – An Introduction
Related Reading:
 Timothy J. Clark, ‘On the Social History of Art’, in Frascina & Harrison (eds.), Modern Art and
Modernism: A Critical Anthology , 1982, pp. 249-58
Week 3
Lecture 10 th October: Critical Categories 1: Neo-Classicism, Romanticism & Realism
Related Reading:
 Charles Blanc ‘Painting’, chapter of Grammar of Painting and Engraving , (1867), trans. 1874
(book on order – photocopy available in Barber library)
 Gustave Courbet, ‘The Realist Manifesto’ and ‘Art Cannot Be Taught’, repr. in L. Nochlin,
Realism and Tradition in Art 1848-1900 , 1966

Linda Nochlin, ‘The Nature of Realism’, Realism , 1971, pp. 13-56
Week 4
Lecture 17 th October: The French Art World
Related Reading:

Albert Boime, The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century , 1971
 Tamar Garb, ‘The Forbidden Gaze’, in Adler & Pointon, The Body Imaged , pp. 33-42
Week 5
Lecture 24 th October: The Academy and the Male Nude
Related Reading:
 Callen, A., ‘The Body and Difference: Anatomy Training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the later Nineteenth Century’, Art History , vol. 20, no. 1 (March 1997), pp. 23-60
Week 6: No Teaching Week – Study Skills Sessions for History of Art Students:
Monday 31 st October 10.00-11.00am: Level 2 Information Source Training with David Pulford
(compulsory)
Monday 31 st October 11.00am-13.00pm in Muirhead LR3: Study Skills Session 1 – Critical Listening with Richard Clay (optional)
Wednesday 2 nd November 11am-13.00pm in Arts LR2: Study Skills Session 2 – Critical Reading with Richard Clay (optional)
Week 7
Lecture 7 th November: The Female Nude – The Ideal and the Real
Recommended Reading:
 Jennifer L. Shaw, ‘The Figure of Venus: Rhetoric of the Ideal and the Salon of 1863’, in Arscott &
Scott (eds.), Manifestations of Venus , 2000, pp. 90-108
 Elizabeth A. McCauley, ‘Braquehais and the Photographic Nude’, in Industrial Madness , Yale
University Press, 1994, pp. 149-94 (book on order – photocopy available in Barber library)

Linda Nead, ‘Theorizing the Female Nude’, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality , 1992
Week 8
Lecture 14 th November: Courbet’s Realism
Recommended Reading:
 Timothy J. Clark, ‘Courbet in Dijon and Paris 1850-51’ chapter 6 of The Image of the People:
Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution , 1973
 Beatrice Farwell, ‘Courbet’s Baigneuses and the rhetorical feminine image’, in Hess & Nochlin
(eds.), Woman as Sex Object , 1972

 Champfleury, ‘A Letter to Madame Sand about M. Courbet’, in L. Nochlin, Realism and Tradition in Art 1848-1900 or in Harrison & Wood (eds.), Art in Theory 1815-1900 , IIIB, pp. 2-9
 Max Buchon, ‘On Courbet’s Stonebreakers and Burial at Ornans ’ repr. in Harrison, C. & Wood,
P., Art in Theory 1815-1900 , 1998, pp. 364-6
Week 9
Lecture 21 st November: Realism and Images of Rural Life
Recommended Reading:

Robert L. Herbert, ‘City vs Country: The Rural Image in French Painting from Millet to Gauguin’,
From Millet to Léger: Essays in Social Art History , 2002, pp. 23-48

C. Parsons, C. & N. McWilliam, ‘Le Paysan de Paris: Alfred Sensier and the Myth of Rural
France’, Oxford Art Journal , vol. 6, no. 2, 1983, pp. 38-58
Week 10
Lecture 28 th November: Orientalism and Realism
Recommended Reading:
 Linda Nochlin, ‘The Imaginary Orient’, in The Politics of Vision , Thames & Hudson, 1989

Edward Said, Introduction to Orientalism , 1978
Week 11
Lecture 5 th December: Realism in Britain
Recommended Reading:

Nead, L., Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain , 1988

Barringer, T., The Pre-Raphaelites: Reading the Image , 1998
Term 2
Week 1
Lecture 9 th January: Critical Categories 2: Naturalism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism
Recommended Reading:
 J. A. Castagnary, ‘1863: The Triumph of Naturalism’, repr. in L. Nochlin, Realism and Tradition in Art, 1848-1900
 Stephan Mallarmé, ‘The Impressionists and Edouard Manet’, repr. in F. Frascina & C. Harrison
(eds.), Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology , 1982
 G. Albert Aurier, ‘Symbolism in Painting: Paul Gauguin’, (1891), repr. in H. Dorra, Symbolist Art
Theories , 1994
 Stephen Eisenman, ‘Manet and the Impressionists’ and ‘Symbolism and the Dialectics of Retreat’, chapters 11 and 15 of Nineteenth-Century Art: A Critical History , 1994
Week 2
Lecture 16 th January: From Idealism to Symbolism: Landscape Painting
Recommended Reading:

John House, Landscapes of France: Impressionism and its Rivals , exh. cat., Hayward Gallery
Week 3
Lecture 23 rd January: Impressionism and the Painting of Modern Life
Recommended Reading:
 Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays ,
1964 (essay originally published 1863), pp. 1-41

T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life. Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers , 1984

Robert Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society , 1988
Week 4
Lecture 30 th January: Impressionism and the Female Body
Recommended Reading:

Hollis Clayson, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era , Yale University
Press, pp. 27-55

Garb, Tamar, Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siècle France , 1998

Week 5
Lecture 6 th February: Women Impressionists and The Painting of Modern Life
Recommended Reading:
 Pollock, G., ‘Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity’, in Vision and Difference , Routledge, 2003, pp. 70-127
 Adler, Kathleen, ‘The Suburban, the Modern and ‘Une Dame de Passy’,
Oxford Art Journal , vol.
12, no. 1 (1989), pp. 3-13
Week 6: No Teaching Week – Study Skills Sessions:
Monday 13 th February 10.00-11.00am: Second Year Information Source Training with David
Pulford (compulsory for History of Art students)
Monday 13 th February 11.00am-13.00pm in Muirhead LR4: Study Skills Session 3 – Critical Writing with Richard Clay (optional)
Wednesday 15 th February 11.00am-13.00pm in Arts LR4: Study Skills Session 4 – Critical
Presentation with Richard Clay (optional)
Thursday 16 th February 10.00am-12.00pm: Dissertation and Special Subject Meeting for Second
Year Students (compulsory for History of Art Students)
Week 7
Lecture 20 th February: Aestheticism in Britain – A Comparative Analysis
Recommended Reading:

I. Small, Part One of The Aesthetes: A Sourcebook , 1979
Week 8
Lecture 27 th February: The Crisis of Impressionism
Recommended Reading:

Charles Moffett, The New Painting 1874-1886 , pp. 61-92, 420-73

Herbert, R. L. , ‘Seurat’s Theories’, in J. Sutter (ed.), The Neo-Impressionists , 1970
Week 9
Lecture 6 th March: Symbolisms
Recommended Reading:

Dorra, H.
, Symbolist Art Theories: A Critical Anthology , 1994
Week 10
Lecture 13 th March: Nineteenth-Century Sculpture: Classicism to Symbolism
Recommended Reading:

Potts, A., ‘Male Phantasy and Modern Sculpture’, Oxford Art Journal , vol. 15, no. 2, 1992, pp. 38-
47
 Wagner, A. ‘Rodin’s Reputation’ in Hunt (ed.), Eroticism and the Body Politic , Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1991
Week 11
Lecture 20 th March: From Cézannism to Fauvism
Recommended Reading:

Shiff, R.,
Cézanne and the End of Impressionism
, 1984
 Meyer Schapiro, ‘The Apples of Cézanne: An Essay on the Meaning of Still Life’, Modern Art:
Selected Papers II , 1978, pp. 1-38
Dr. Francesca Berry
September 2005