Richard Ceballos
March 18, 2009
Unit 20-Romanticism/Realism
Romantic Landscape Painting
 The sublime, come from philosophy, we have all had experiences with the
sublime
 Has nothing to do with beauty, beauty connected with form
 Found in the formless, element of fear, limitless, infinity, the object itself is not
sublime
Caspar David Friedrich
 Considered Germany’s greatest Romantic landscape artist
Figure 30-21, CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810.
 Dead trees, infinite space, tombstones, real subject is nature
John Constable
 The most famous English landscape artist
Figure 30-22, JOHN CONSTABLE, The Haywain, 1821.
 Expresses emotion in a different way, nostalgic view
 Little dog contemplative, looking back before Industrial Revolution
 Scene is what he saw was disappearing
JMW Turner
Figure 30-23, JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER, The Slave Ship (Slavers
Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840.
 Different Romantic agenda, exploring themes of the sublime
 Turbulent nature, humanity’s insignificance
 Does not focus on narrative, all about atmosphere
 No matter what humans do, nature is always indifferent
The Hudson River School
 Group of artists that shared the same ideas
 America’s first movement
 Realistic attention to detail
Figure 30-24, THOMAS COLE, The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton,
Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm), 1836.
 Leader of the school
 Dark, uncontrollable nature vs. lightened civilization
 Little man in the middle
Figure 30-25, ALBERT BIERSTADT, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California,
1868.
 Strong thirst for these Western paintings, back east
 Traveled with military, propaganda, successful
 Used as an argument, pro-Manifest Destiny
 Idealized depiction, divine light pouring over the mountains
Figure 30-26, FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, Twilight In the Wilderness, 1860s.
 Peaceful element, during Civil War, beauty and power of nature
Realism pages 798-818
Europe and America around 1850-1870
 Era of Revolutions, scientific, industrial, social, and artistic
Brief Background and Context
Realism: the movement
 Art movement
 1850 to 1870
 Depict what is actually seen in the world
 Empiricism (observation and direct experience)
 Poor moving to the cities
 Philosophies based on working rights, Communist Manifesto, Capitalists
 3 Revolutions in France
 Revolutions help explain the movement, what is seen in the real world
Precursors to Realism
 Genre paintings from such artists as Peter Bruegel, Louis Le Nain, Chardin
Realism’s Key Artists
Realist Painters
 Gustave Courbet
 Jean-Francois Millet
 Honore Daumier
 Rosa Bonheur
 Edouard Manet
Birth of Photography
 Nadar
 Eadweard Muybridge
Courbet!
 The French Salon (government exhibit, judges only accept academic art)
 The Pavilion of Realism
 Courbet rented a space next to the French Salon, 20 pieces rejected
 Also wrote the Realist Manifesto, explains his works, portrayed common people
and his time as he saw it
Figure 30-27, GUSTAVE COURBET, The Stone Breakers, 1849.
 Toughest jobs around, critics hated it, thought there were social undertones,
people hated the color too and called the conventions unsophisticated
Figure 30-28, GUSTAVE COURBET, Burial at Ornans, 1849.
 Regular folks in a hometown at a funeral
 “The death of Romanticism”, Courbet referred to the painting as
 Monumental aspects is the scale
 Composition is democratic, row of humanity, no pyramid structure
 Draw attention to the issues of modern life