Transcript Document

The great master of wet-plate portraiture was
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (1820-1910), a French
caricaturinst and novelist who went by the
pseudonym of Nadar. Almost immediately after its
invention Nadar proved himself a master of the
new art, exploiting its possibilities from every
conceivable direction, including up (he invented
aerial photography, from balloons). Nadar’s studio
became a meeting place for all the intellectual and
artitic figures of mid-19th century Paris. His
portraits of painters, writers, composers, and
scientists are not mere documents like those of
Daguerre but works of art; so conceived, posed,
and lighted as to bring out the full psychological
and spiritual depth of a sitter without the aid of
any of the props common in 19th century
photography studios. For prototypes one can think
only of the searching portraits of Raphael and
Rembrandt. It does not matter that Nadar had no
painting or drawing instrument in his hand, neither
does an actor, but what he creates is art. According
to Eugéne de Mirecourt, a contemporary of Ingres,
as early as 1855 the great Neoclassicist sent all his
sitters to Nadar first, and then worked from the
photographs.
Nadar, Eugéne Delacroix, c1855,
daguerreotype
Timothy O’Sullivan, A Harvest of Death,Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July, 1863.
The photographs taken of the Crimean War (1856) by Roger Fenton and of the American Civil
War by Matthew Brady and Timothy O’Sullivan are still unsurpassed as incisive accounts of
military life, unsparing in their truth to detail and poignant as expressions of human
experience. Of the Civil War photographs, the most moving are the inhumanly objective
records of combat deaths. Although viewers might see this image as simple reportage, it also
functions to impress on people the war’s high price.Though it was years before
photolithography could reproduce photographs like this in newspapers, they were publicly
exhibited and made an impression that newspint engravings never could.
Eadweard Muybridge,
Horse Galloping, 1878,
Collotype print
In 1872, the governor of California, Leland Stanford, sought Muybridge’s assistance in settling a bet
about whether, at any point in a stride, all four feet of a horse galloping at top speed are off the ground.
Through his sequential photography Muybridge proved they were. This experience was the beginning of
Muybridge’s photographic studies of the successive stages in human and animal motion, details too
quick for the human eye to capture. Muybridge presented his work to scientists and general audiences
with a device called the zoopraxiscope, which he invented to project his sequences of images (mounted
on special glass plates) onto a screen. The result was so lifelike one viewer said it threw upon the screen
apparently the living, moving animals. Nothing was wanting but the clatter of hoofs upon the turf. The
illusion of motion here was created by a physical fact of human eyesight called persistence of vision.
Stated simply, it means the brain holds whatever the eye sees for a fraction of a second after the eye
stops seeing it. Thus, viewers saw a rapid succession of different images merging one into the next,
producing the illusion of continuous change. This illusion lies at the heart of the realism of all cinema.
Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, oil on canvas, 63x102” (destroyed 1945)
Gustave Courbet, The
Stonebreakers, oil on
canvas, 63x102”
(destroyed 1945)
Courbet had begun as a Neo-Baroque Romantic in the early 1840’s; but by 1848, under the impact
of the revolutionary upheavals then sweeping Europe, Coubet had come to believe that the
Romantic emphasis on feeling and imagination was merely an escape from the realities of the
time. The modern artist must rely on his own direct experience (I cannot paint an angel because I
have never seen one, he said); he must be a Realist. As a descriptive term, realism is not very
precise. For Courbet, it meant something akin to the naturalism of Caravaggio. As an admirer of
Louis Le Nain and Rembrandt he had, in fact, strong links with the Caravaggio tradition, and his
work, like Caravaggio’s, was denounced for its supposed vulgarity and lack of spiritual content.
The storm broke in 1849, when he exhibited The Stone Breakers, the first canvas fully embodying
his programmatic Realism. Courbet has seen two men working on a road, and had asked them to
pose for him in his studio. He painted them lifesize, solidly, and matter-of-factly, with none of
Millet’s overt pathos or sentiment: the young man’s face is averted, the old one’s half hidden by a
hat. Yet he cannot have picked them casually; their contrast in age is significant - one is too old for
such heavy work, and the other too young. Endowed with the dignity of their symbolic status, they
do not turn to us for sympathy.
Gustave Courbet,
Studio of a Painter:
A Real Allegory
Summarizing My
Seven Years as an
Artist, 1855, oil on
canvas, 11’10”x19’7”
In 1855 Courbet’s paintings were rejected by the Paris Exhibition. These works included theStudio of
a Painter: A Real Allegory Summarizing My Seven Years as an Artist. Courbet’s friend and patron J.L.
Alfred Bruyas helped to finance the construction of a special shed for a large exhibition of Courbet’s
paintings, including the rejected works; the artist called this building the Pavilion of Realism. For the
catalogue he wrote a preface setting forth the principles of his art. A model who has just shed her
clothes, probably represented Truth, looks on approvingly, her voluminous figure revealed in the light.
Courbet provided a lengthy explanation of his picture, but the group on the left remains, perhaps
deliberately, somewhat obscure; we know that it comprises figures drawn from society at its best, its
worst, and its average, with whom the painter had come in contact.
Edouard Manet,
Olympia
Oil on canvas,
4’3”x6’3”
An even greater scandal than that aroused by Luncheon on the Grass (Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe),
was caused by Olympia, shown in 1865. The public was infuriated not only by the style, but also
by the subject of the picture. ‘A yellow-bellied courtesan’, ‘a female gorilla made of india-rubber
outlined in black’, ‘the Queen of Spades after her bath’, ‘a parcel of nude flesh or a bundle of
laundry’, and other similar characteristics appeared in newspapers. When words were exhausted
some ‘enthusiasts’ tried to finish with the picture physically, and it was saved only thanks to being
hung high, above the reach of the fanatics.
Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass (Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe), oil on canvas, 7’x8’10”
Edouard Manet, Luncheon on the Grass
(Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe), oil on canvas,
7’x8’10”
Manet was the first to grasp Courbet’s full importance; his Luncheon is, among other things, a tribute
to the older artist. There is a long tradition of such picnic scenes stretching back to an outdoor concert
by Titian that Manet copied in the Louvre while an art student. He nevertheless offended the morality of
the day by placing the nude and nattily attired figures in an outdoor setting without allegorical
overtones. Even worse, the neutral title offered no higher significance. People assumed that Manet had
intended to represent an actual event, yet the group’s poses are too formal. Not until many years later
was the source of these figures discovered; a group of classical deities from an engraving after Raphael
that was in turn derived from a classical Roman sarcophagus.Had Manet’s contemporaries known of
this origin in the revered work of Raphael, the Luncheon might have seemed less disreputable to them.
As a visual manifesto of artistic freedom, the Luncheon is much more revolutionary than Courbet’s
Studio. It asserts the painter’s privilege to combine whatever elements he pleases for aesthetic effect
alone. The nudity of the model is explained by the contrast between her warm, creamy flesh tones and
the cool black-and-gray of the men’s attire. To put it another way, the world of painting has natural laws
that are different from those of every day reality, and the painter’s first loyalty is to his canvas, not to
the outside world. Here begins an attitude that became a bone of contention between progressives and
conservatives for the rest of the century.
The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.
In April 1864, Napoleon III persuaded the Hapsburg
Archduke Maximilian to accept the Mexican throne.
Less then three years later, in February 1867, Napoleon
III withdrew all French troops from Mexico, leaving
Maximilian totally defenseless. Benito Juárez’ guerillas
captured Maximilian and his generals Miguel Miramon
and Tomás Mejía and executed them on 19 June 1867.
It is this date that Manet signed on his canvas.Probably
in late September 1867 Manet began to work on a
second variant of the theme of the execution, of which
four fragments now survive in the National Gallery,
London. Manet was not able to exhibit the painting in
France, where it was regarded as politically incorrect,
and it was first shown in New York in 1879.Manet
treated the incident in a totally unexpected way, almost
as a reaction against such elaborately staged protest
compostitions as Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa and
Goya’s Third of May, 1808 at Madrid. He made a close
study of newspaper accounts and composite
photographs of the execution, and enen of portrait
photographs of the slain emperor, but rather than
arranging the figures for maximum emotional effect, he
seems almost to have taken a snapshot of the scene.
Another traditional subject, this time a tragic one, has
been modernized in terms of immediate vision.
Edouard Manet. The Execution of the
Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. oil on
canvas, 1867
Edouard Manet, The Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1882, oil on canvas,37x51”
Edouard Manet, The Bar at the FoliesBergère, 1882, oil on canvas,37x51”
The entire foreground is constituted by the marble bar, laden with fruit, flowers, and bottles of
champagne and liqueurs, forming one of the loveliest still lifes in all of French painting. As the nearer
edge of the bar is cut off by the frame, we have the illusion that its surface extends into our space, and
that we as spectators are ordering a drink from the stolid barmaid who leans her hands on the inner
edge. This illusion is reinforced by the reflection in the mirror, which fills the entire background of the
picture. Defying logic, Manet has shifted the entire reflection to the right so we can make out clearly a
back view of the barmaid, in conversation with a top-hatted gentleman who, by elimination, must be
identical with the spectator. Beyond the bar, shimmering chandeliers hover above the noisy crowd, and
from the upper left corner dangle ther legs of a performing acrobat. Spatially, this is the most complex
image we have seen thus far in the history of art. Manet’s masterpiece is painted with a brushwork that
combines memories of Velázquez’s virtuosity with the most brilliant achievements of the
Impressionists. Paradoxically, the imposing dignity and centrality of the figure and the straight lines of
the bar that frame her make this work his most monumental achievement.
Marie-Rosalie (Rosa) Bonheur, The Horse Fair, 1853-55, oil on canvas, 8’x16’7”
Awarded a Légion d’Honneur in 1865, Bonheur was the most celebrated woman artist of the 19th
century. Although Bonheur’s work contains Realist elements, she is perhaps more appropriately
considered a naturalist. A realist passion for accuracy in painting drove Bonheur, but she resisted
depicting the social complexity and contradictions seen in the work of Courbet, Manet, and other
Realists. Rather she turned to the animal world. In her work, she combined a naturalist’s knowledge
of equine anatomy and motion with an honest love and admiration for the brute strength of wild and
domestic animals. She went to great lengths to observe the anatomy of living horses at the great
Parisian Horse Fair, where the animals were shown and traded, and also spent long hours studying the
anatomy of carcasses in the Paris slaughterhouses.The dramatic lighting, loose brushwork, and rolling
sky also reveal her admiration of the style of Géricault.
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was resolutely a
Realist; his ambition was to paint things as he
saw them rather than as the public might wish
them portrayed. The too-brutal Realism of
Eakin’s early masterpiece, The Gross Clinic,
prompted the art jury to reject it for the
Philadelphia exhibition that celebrated the
American independence centennial. The work
presents the renowned surgeion Dr. Samuel
Gross in the operating amphitheatre of the
Jefferson Medical College. The surgeon,
acclaimed for his skill in this particular
operation, is accompanied by colleagues, all of
whom historians have identified, and by the
patient’s mother, who covers her face.
Indicative of the contempraneity of this scene
is the anesthetist’s presence in the background,
holding the cloth over the patient’s face.
Eakins believed that knowledge, and where
relevant, scientific knowledge, was a
prerequisite to his art. Eakins later
collaboration with Eadweard Muybridge in the
photographic study of animal and human
action of all types drew favorable attention in
France, especially from Degas, and anticipated
the motion picture.
Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1875, oil on
canvas, 8’x6’6”
Henry Ossawa Tanner, The
Thankful Poor, oil on canvas,
3’8”x2’11”
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) studied art with Eakins before moving to Paris. There he combined
Eakin’s belief in careful study from nature with a desire to portray with dignity the life of ordinary
people he had been raised among as the son of an African-American minister in Pennsylvania. The mood
in the Thankful Poor is one of quiet devotion, not far removed from the Realism of Millet. The deep
sense of sancity expressed here in terms of everyday experience became increasingly important for
Tanner. Within a few years of completing The Thankful Poor, he began painting biblical subjects
grounded in direct study from nature and in the love of Rembrandt that had inspired him from his days
as a Philadelphia art student.
Winslow Homer,
Breezing Up, 1873-76,
oil on canvas, 24x38”
Winslow Homer (1836-1910), a largely self-taught artist from Boston, worked as a magazine
illustrator. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was sent by Harper’s Weekly to do drawings at the
front. After the war, he spent a year in France. From 1873, he worked in watercolor, which became as
important a medium for him as oil. Homer visited Paris before the heyday of Impressionism, and his
work can be regarded as transitional between Realism and Impressionism. In Breezing Up of 1876,
Homer’s interest in the American identity of his subjects and their place in society is evident. At the
same time, however, he has clearly been influenced by the Impressionist interest in weather conditions
and their effect on light and color. The sea, churned up by the wind, is rendered as broken color with
visible brushstrokes. By tilting the boat in the foreground, Homer creates a slanted floor that is related
to Degas’ compositional technique. The interruption of the diagonal sail by the frame, the oblique
viewpoint, and the sailor’s apparent indifference to the observer, suggest a fleeting moment captured
by the camera.
At the same time as the Realist
movement in France and the United
States an independent but related
revolution against official art was
taking place among a group of
extremely young and gifted English
artists. In 1848, when the movement
was founded, William Holman Hunt,
its leader, was 21 years old and John
Everett Millais was only 18. Their title,
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was
chosen because of their belief that in
spite of Raphael’s greatness the decline
of art since his day was attributable to a
John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1852, oil on canvas, 2’6”x3’8” misunderstanding of his principles.
Millais's Ophelia is based upon a character from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Millais showed
Ophelia slowly drowning after she had been driven out of her mind by her father's death and Hamlet's
cruel rejection of her love. The idea for the painting comes from literature, but the method was based on
the careful study of real life. The artist actually had a model wear an antique dress and pose floating in a
heated bathtub. The choice of colors was unusually vivid as the artist attempted to copy actual sunlight.
Many Pre-Raphaelite landscapes capture a sense of brilliant light as effectively as the impressionist
painters did 10 or 20 years later. Millais’ method is apparent in Ophelia, which he exhibited in the
Universal Exposition in Paris in 1855, where Courbet set up his Pavilion of Realism. The subject, from
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is the drowning of Ophelia, who, in her madness is unaware of her plight.
Although Millais’ technique was optically realistic, orthodox 19th century Realists would have
complained the subject was not.
John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward
Darley Boit, 1882, oil on canvas, 7’3”x7’3”
He was trained in the 1870’s by academic
artists in France and Italy, and soon
became deeply interested in
Impressionism. He never joined the group,
however, in spite of a brief stay at Giverny,
where he painted alongside Monet and
even painted Monet himself at work. His
fortunes at the critics’ hands were as
volatile as his style; praised one year he
was attacked the next, and always for
different reasons. Though eventually he
was recognized as the leading painter in
the English-speaking world (America &
England), no one ever called him great.
Like Cassatt, he did not cross the
watershed to Post-Impressionism by
deserting visual reality in the interests of
form or expression. But Sargent was
beyond comparison the most brilliant
master of the brush as a communicator of
optical effects in any country since
Velázquez, whose painting he greatly
admired. His accidental groupings of
figures were arresting and compeling, and
even more original were his portraits,
which in contrast to so many 19th century
artists he seems to have enjoyed painting.
James Whistler, Nocturn in Black and Gold:
The Falling Rocket, c1874, 24x18”
Nocturne in Black and Gold: Falling Rocket,
painted in England about 1874 and exhibited
there in 1876, was described in an article by the
English critic John Ruskin, a supporter of truth
in art and of craftsmanship in what he believed
to be the medieval sense, as a pot of paint flung
in the public’s face. Any apparent prophetic
resemblance between this daring picture and the
Abstract Expressionist works of the 1950’s is
dismissed by the subtitle. In brillaint and witty
testimony during a lawsuit he brought against
Ruskin, Whistler claimed that his art was
divested from any outside sort of interest ... an
arrangement of line, form, and color first. The
last word in the sentence discloses its true
substance, however, because even if Whistler
felt that his pictures were arrangements first,
there is nothing by his hand that is not at the
same time thoroughly representational. The jury
followed the judge’s instructions and decided in
Whistler’s favor but awarded him only a
farthing in damages. The significance of this
absurd trial is its function as a window on
aesthetic conflict in the late 19th century. It
exemplified the rise of the critic as a potent
force in the 19th century art world.
The French Academy
• Controlled the art world during the first part of 19th century
• Emphasized realistic painting
• Themes were historical, political, mythological or religious
• Characteristics included sharply defined contours
and edges, and figures in classical poses
• In general, the paintings of this period were extremely formal
Adolphe-William Bouguereau,
Nymphs and Satyr, 1873, oil on canvas,
8’6” ht.
To understand better the public’s reaction
to modern painting it is instuctive to look
at the work of the highly acclaimed
French academic artist Adolphe-William
Bouguereau. In works such as Nymphs
and Satyr, Bouguereau depicted classical
mythological subjects with a polished
illusionism. Although he arguably depicted
this scene in a very naturalistic manner, it
is emphatically not Realist. His choice of
a fictional theme and adherence to
established painting conventions could
only have been seen as staunchly
traditional. Bouguereau was immensely
popular (becoming a millionaire) during
the later 19th century, enjoying the favor
of state patronage throughout his career.
The Beginnings of Modern Art
• In 1863 the Salon was the most important art
Show in France.
• It was controlled by the French Academy and
they refused any works of art which did not
conform to their ideas.
• A second show, the Salon des Refuses, was organized
by the government and allowed artists working in
other ways to exhibit their work.
• Many artists which were to make up the group
referred to as the Impressionists were included in
the Salon des Refuses.
The Impressionist Style
• These artists studied the effects of atmosphere and sunlight
on their subjects.
• Artists used dabs and dashes of bright color that
seem to blend together when seen from a distance.
• Shadows are done in blues and violets.
• Surfaces of the paintings are richly textured with
many short brushstrokes.
• Edges are suggested rather than clearly defined.
• Themes are from the every day world.
Claude Monet,
Impression-Sunrise,
1872
The name ”Impressionism” was first used in jest when Claude Monet exhibited a work called
Impressionism-Sunrise in an 1874 exhibition. The painting has colored streaks and blobs on a
pale blue ground that represents what a person sees when looking momentarily into a sunrise
over a harbor. The works of the group were mockingly called “impressions” and not paintings.
The title stuck, although several of the Impressionists did not like it.
The two rust colored boats anchor the
center of the painting, and the blues and
greens of the sky and water shimmer
around them. The lighting effects convey
the feeling of midday in Summer. The
distant river bank, the other boats and the
near shoreline on which two figures take
in the scene comprise a horizontal wedge
which divides the canvas and separates
the treatment of the sky from the
treatments of the water. The various boat
masts form a trianglular shape and its
inversion which hold the upper and lower
portions in place, compositionally. The
sky is described simply and leaves the
viewer free to investigate the intricate
development of the floating plant life on
the water. This was to be an important
subject in his later years in Giverny. The
viewer senses the play of shimmering
daylight on all the objects in the painting,
and the impression of color is achieved
through the juxtaposition of almost pure
colors, often having a complementary
relationship. Monet’s colors seem sensual
rather than descriptive.
Claude Monet, Argenteuil , 1875, oil on canvas
Claude Monet, Study of a
Figure Outdoors
Claude Monet,Water Lilies, 1914-17, oil on
canvas
In 1883 Monet moved to Giverny (an estate
given to him by the French government late in
his life), a village about 50 miles west of Paris
where he spent his later years. He build a water
garden, which included a Japanese bridge, that
inspired many of his later paintings, including a
series of large canvases of water lilies. Monet
loved to work outdoors and to directly confront
the environment he was painting. His early
work shows a fascination with light. Later he
discovered that shadows are not black or simply
darker tones of a color, as Renaissance and
Baroque painters had shown them. Colors are in
the shadows, too; they do not leave an object just
because it is in shadow. He realized that
shadows can be painted by adding opposite or
complementary hues to the colors of the objects.
Thus, he added blues to create the shadows on
warm-colored (red to yellow) surfaces; the
deeper the shadows, the darker the blue became.
Scientists studying the physics of light were
finding out the same things. Monet often
worked in a series of paintings of one subject.
In this way he was able to try for the momentary
effect of light on his subject at many times of
day and in different types of weather.
Claude Monet, Branch of
the Seine Near Giverny,
1897
Camille Pissarro was, by the admission of all
participants, the ‘father’ of the Impressionists. Paul
Cezanne admired him, painted side by side with
him, and in the catelogue of his last show had
written “Paul Cezanne, pupil of Pissarro.’ The
young Paul Gauguin studied under Pissarro. Later
in his years Pissarro influenced the young Henri
Matisse, and shared his views with the other great
Impressionists of the period, Monet, Renoir, Manet,
and especially his close friend,Degas.
Camille Pissarro,
Boulevard Montmartre on a Sunny
Afternoon, 1897
Boulevard Montmartre at Night
1897
Camille Pissarro
Young Peasant Making
A Fire
In his book on Pissarro, Joachim Pissarro
describes his drawing in this way. “The
several techniques visible include diagonal
hatching... drawings, to which some early
French drawings still resort principally; a
subtle blending of a linear scaffolding with
hatched shading and with stress put on
fragments of lines, delineating tree trunks,
for instance a predominant spare
architectonic structure - seen particularly in
early Pontoise pen-and-ink drawings. Or
again, the exact opposite in some drawings
where linear structure and diagonal
hatchings are almost entirely superseded by a
subtle palette of different shades, achieved
with charcoal and white chalk, modulating
all the intermediate values and creating a
dramatic set of chiaroscuro effects that also
help to elaborate the depth of the receding
space within the drawing - here a riverscape.
This is seen in his drawing In the Woods,
done with black chalk heightened with
white.
Camille Pissaro,
The Foot Bath, 1895
It is possible to see the same study of light through depiction of value in the painting The Foot Bath.
Pissarro summarizes his approach to art in his interpretation of Impressionism. Really
Impressionism was nothing but a pure theory of observation, without losing hold of fantasy, liberty,
or grandeur-in a word, of all that makes an art great.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bather with Long Hair,
1895, oil on canvas, 32”x25”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir first met Claude Monet at the
Academie Gleyre in 1862. They painted outdoors
together at Barbizon, Chailly in 1866 and La
Grenouillere in 1869. During this period they
developed the techniques of capturing the illusion of
light and its reflections by the application of small
brush strokes of color which were percieved in
combination,i.e. mixed by the eye, rather than mixed
on the palette. The sense of shape and volume is
conveyed by the interaction of the colors applied in
small strokes, rather than the use of line. This tends
to give these paintings a “soft”, almost out of focus
feeling. These were the painting attributes which
would come to be known as Impressionsim. Renoir’s
interest was primarily in figures and the daily
activities of the life around him. This painting
conveys a romantic, idealized scene, with diffuse
reference to landscape. The figure is only slightly
more solid feeling than the background. Objects are
almost felt rather than seen. The indication of an
object comes from the modulation and juxtoposition
of lighter and darker areas of small strokes of paint,
often in complementary color schemes. The figure’s
pose and expression convey a sense of tranquility and
one feels immersed in a dreamlike representation of
an idyllic summer day.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Swing, 1876
Renoir, the most sensuous and effervescent
of the group, has not bothered with the
detail that occupied Pissarro. Rather he has
captures a moment of high excitement.
Warmth, physical delight, and intense joy of
life are the perpetual themes of Renoir; as a
painter his touch is correspondingly both
silkier and more spontaneous than that of
Pissarro. Trained first as a painter of
porcelain, he later studied with the
academic painter Charles Gabriel Gleyre,
who also taught Monet, and soon make the
acquaintance of the Impressionist group,
with whom he exhibited until 1886.
Pierre-August Renoir, The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881
Renoir captured the spontaneous moment, much like photography.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The
Luncheon of the Boating Party
- detail, 1876
Although he had initially taken
the lead with his rainbow
palette, Renoir had always been
more traditional than Monet in
his concern with the human
figure, and his Boating Party of
1881 is still fully
Impressionistic. Its diaphanous
brushwork beautifully catches
the trembling leaves and
shimmering water and
quivering vibrations of air
inundated with blazing summer
light filtered through canvas
awnings on to clean white linen
and cut glass and soft human
flesh.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal du Moulin de la Galette, 1876
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal du
Moulin de la Galette, 1876
The most exuberant image from the Impressionist heyday is Renoir’s Le Moulin de la Galette of
1876, depicting a Sunday afternoon in a popular Parisain outdoor café dansant in Montmartre. Young
couples, bewitching in their freshness, are gathered at tables under the trees, or dancing happily
through the changing interplay of sunlight and shadow. Characteristically, there is not a trace of black;
even the coats and the shadows turn to dark blue, delicious as a foil to the higher tones of pearly white
and soft rose. One could scarcely imagine a more complete embodiment of the fundemental theme of
Impressionist painting, the leisurely enjoyment of the moment of light and air. Although he later
turned toward a Post-Impressionist style, Renoir never surpassed the beauty of this picture, which
sums up visually the goal he once expressed in words: The earth as the paradise of the gods, that is
what I want to paint.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Two Girls, c1881
Berthe Morisot,
Summer’s Day,
1879
The Impressionist group had one founding woman member, Berthe Morisot (1841-95), who exhibited
with them from the start (Mary Cassatt joined in 1879) and was treated on a par with her male colleagues
- the first time in history of art since the Middle Ages that a woman artist enjoyed such a position of
unquestioned equality in any artistic movement. Morisot was a grandniece of Fragonard, who died more
than a generation before her birth. Much of her technical excellence - for in some ways she was the most
skillful member of the group - she disciplined by assiduous copying of Old Masters in the Louvre. In her
youth, moreover, she profited by the guidance of Corot, whose silvery tonalities she emulated in her early
landscapes. Although by no means such an innovator as Monet, Manet, or Renoir, Morisot was a painter
of great sensitivity of observation, insight, and touch and above all, unrivaled lyric intimacy.
Japanese Woodblock Prints
• Many Impressionists became aware of the
Japanese Prints during this period and
collected them.
• Their approach to perspective placed objects
in a zigzag pattern with objects near the bottom
being depicted as close to the observer and those
at the top being depicted as further away.
• Impressionists such as Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas
utilized planes of flat color and compressed spaces
just as the Japanese prints exhibited.
Utagwa Kuniyoshi,
Katsushika Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, 1831
Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, c1865, pencil
A wealthy aristocrat by birth, he had been
trained in the tradition of Ingres, whom he
greatly admired. Degas’ portrait of Manet,
made soon after they met, recalls Ingres’ study
of Louis Bertin; its masterly command of line
and its sure grasp of the sitter’s personality
show that, had times been otherwise, Degas
might well have become the greatest
professional portraitist of his day. Like Ingres,
he despised portraiture as a trade but, unlike
him, he acted on his conviction and portrayed
only friends and relatives
Edgar Degas
The Absinth Drinker, 1876
This painting shows the influence
of Japanese composition and
perspective which the Impressionists
had seen in the Japanese prints.
It is also framed like a candid
photograph, rather than adhering
to any formal compositional rules.
Like many artists of the last decades of
the 19th century, Degas was facinated
by café life, including its seamier
aspects. His Absinthe Drinker shows a
sodden couple, beyond communication,
merely tolerating each other’s presence.
The woman’s glass of milky green
liqueur is the addicative, stuporinducing absinthe. The picture is a
superb composition of apparently
accidental diagonals in depth, composed
of the tables, the bench, and even the
diagonal relationship between the
couple and their reflections in the
mirror.
Edgar Degas
The Dancing Class, 1876
Degas’ paintings reveal that he learned a
great deal from studying Japanese prints and
photographs. Degas was an amateur
photographer himself. Cut-off figures,
unusual points of view, and candid poses are
seen in many of his paintings. Although
Degas was in sympathy with many of the
objectives of the Impressionists and was
eager to exhibit with them, he did not
consider himself to be one of them. He
always painted in his studio using sketches
made from life. His great interest in drawing
also set him apart from the other
Impressionists. He was a master of line and
drawing and was reluctant to abandon it in
favor of the Impressionists’ soft contours.
Degas’ drawings, and the paintings that he
developed from these drawings, show that he
was concerned with the line, form, and
movement of the human body. This explains
why so many of his paintings and drawings
show scenes from the ballet. They offered
him the chance to capture the split-second
movement of a dancing ballerina.
Miss LaLa at the Cirque
Fernando, Paris
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas, Ballet
Rehearsal, 1876
Impressionists also depicted more formal leisure activities. The facination Degas had with patterns of
motion brought him to the Paris Opéra and its ballet school. There, his great observational power
took in the formalized movements of classcial ballet, on of his favorite subjects. In Ballet Rehearsal,
Degas used several devices to bring the observer into the pictorial space. The frame cuts off the
spiral stair, the windows in the background, and the group of figures in the right foreground. The
figures are not centered but rather arranged in a seemingly random manner. The prominent diagonals
of the wall bases and floorboards carry the viewer into and along the directional lines of the dancers.
Finally, as is customary in Degas’ ballet pictures, a large, off-center, empty space creates the illusion
of a continuous floor that connects the observer with the pictured figures. By seeming to stand on the
same surface with them, the viewer is drawn into their space.
Edgar Degas
Dancers, 1899
pastel
Edgar Degas, Cafe Concert, The Song of the
Dog, pastel & gouache
Over the course of his long career, Degas
developed techniques which were perfectly
suited to his unique description of his
world. He departed from his traditional
training when he began investigating the
effects of lighting in the theaters and cafes
of Paris. Following some of his
contemporaries Impressionist artistic
investigations, he began to produce pastels
which conveyed the unreal effects of up
light produced by the footlights which
provided the main source of illumination in
theater of the day. The cafe was another
place he spent much of his time. He
captured the soft illumination of the globe
lights in portraits that described a sense of
atmosphere rather than romanticizing the
subjects. He exaggerated the effects, and
the colors he chose pushed the feeling of
the artificial light even further.
Mary Cassatt, The
Boating Party,
1893
In the Boating Party, Cassatt uses the Impressionist close-up, another pictorial device inspired by
photography. She combines it with a slanting viewpoint to emphasize the intimacy between mother
and child. Cassatt intensifies the tension among the three figures by flattening the space and
foreshortening both child and rower. Cassatt’s bold planes of color, sharp outlines, and compressed
spaces, as well as the side sash worn by the rower, exemplify the influence of Japanese woodblock
prints on the Impressionist painters.
Mary Cassatt, The Letter, 1891,
etching and aquatint, 17x12”
The observer looks in on a private moment. Cassatt’s skill
as a printmaker reinforced her attraction to the Japanese
woodblocks, the flat patters of which recur in The Letter.
Mary Cassatt was the daughter of a prominent Pittsburgh
banker. She studied art in Philadelphia even though her
father said he would almost rather see her dead than have
her become an artist. She was strong-willed, and, at the
age of twenty-three, she went to Paris to continue her
studies. She soon found that a woman had to work twice
as hard to gain recognition in the competitive nineteenthcentury Paris art world. There she was especially drawn
to the work of Degas. Her own paintings soon attracted
his attention, and they became good friends. He
introduced her to the Impressionists, and they liked her
work so much that she was invited to show her work at
their exhibitions. Mothers and children were one of Mary
Cassatt’s favorite subjects, and she is unmatched in her
ability to express, in both oils and pastels, the mutual love
between the two. Cassatt was well respected among her
peers in Paris, but she was not appreciated at home in
Philadelphia, so she remained in Europe. As an older
woman, her eyesight, like Degas’, failed and when she
could no longer paint she became very influential in
getting several American families to buy the paintings of
her Impressionist friends. As a result, museums and
private collections in the United States have superb
collections of their work.
Auguste Rodin, The Age of Bronze, 1876, ht. 5’10”
Rodin is one of the few great sculptors of Western tradition
since the Middle Ages (in addition to Michelangelo, Donatello,
Claus Sluter, Bernini, and Brancusi). Although Rodin had
single-handedly revived scupture as a leading art, his style was
so strongly personal that he attacted no major followers. ...
Rodin was exclusively concerned with the human figure. Like
those few Impressionist painters who treated the figure, he saw
it in action and in light, but unlike them in moments of great
physical and emotional stress. He is, therefore, closely related
to both Donatello and Michelangelo, who work he studied with
a passion, and whose expressive intensity he was the first
sculptor of modern times to revive and the only one to rival.
His art was always controversial. At the Salon on 1877 he
exhibited The Age of Bronze, a superb statue he had created the
preceeding year. Its realism, as compared to the idealized nudes
then found palatable, produced a storm of indignation and the
accusation that he had passed off a cast from a living figure as
an original work. What Rodin had in fact done, and what he
was to continue to do throughout his long career, was to
experiment with transient poses and accidental effects, without
predetermined compositions and often, without preestablished
meaning, much in the manner of Monet’s paintings of railway
stations and Degas’ studies of dancers.
Many statues in marble and bronze by Rodin originated in
a large-scale commission he received in 1880 for the
doors of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. Still
unfinished at the sculptor’s death, the Gates of Hell was
inspired by Dante’s Inferno. It is the most ambitous
sculptural composition of the 19th century and one of the
great imaginative conceptions of modern times. Although
an obvious counterpart to Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise,
the cosmic scope of the work was clearly indebted to
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and to Rubens’ Fall of the
Damned. Before its completion, many of the figures in the
Gates of Hell, most notably the Thinker, emerged as
individual large-scale sculptures. Rodin admits us to a
world of flame and smoke, through those gusts tormented
spirits are propelled in poses and groups of great
originality and expressive power. Always intensely
interested in the figure in motion, Rodin used to ask his
models to move at random through his studio, turning,
jumping, squatting as they wished; when spotted an
unusual attitude, he would signal for an immediate freeze,
and then capture the essence of the pose in a few splitsecond lines and touches of wash. Many of the startling
poses in the Gates of Hell originated in this manner.
Auguste Rodin, Gates of Hell, 18801917, bronze, 18’x12’
Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, 1879-89,
bronze, ht. 27”
Who is the Thinker? In the context of the
Gates of Hell, he was originally conceived as
a generalized image of Dante, the poet who
in his mind’s eye what goes on all around
him. Once Rodin decided to detach him The
Gates, he became The Poet Thinker, and
finally just The Thinker. ... In this new image
of a man, form and meaning are united,
instead of being separated.
Auguste Rodin, The Kiss, marble, over-lifesize
The Kiss, an over-lifesize group that also
evolved from The Gates was meant to portray
Dante’s Paolo and Francesca, but Rodin
rejected it as unsuitable. Evidently he realized
that The Kiss shows the ill-fated pair
succumbing to their illicit desire for each other
here on earth, not as tortured souls in Hell.
Knowing its original title helps us to understand
a striking aspect of the group: passion reigned
in by hestiance, for the embrace is not yet
complete. Less powerful than The Thinker, it
exploits another kind of artful unfinishedness.
Rodin had been impressed by the struggle of
Michelanglo’s Slaves against the remains of
the blocks that imprison them. The Kiss was
planned from the start to include the mass of
rough-hewn marble. The effect approximates
the sense of growth seen in his bronzes. The
lovers emerge from, yet remain attached to the
base, which thus symbolizes their earthbound
passion. The contrast of textures emphasizes the
sensuous softness of the bodies.
Auguste Rodin, The Burghers of Calais, 1884-86, bronze, 6’10”x7’1”x6’6”
Auguste Rodin, The
Burghers of Calais,
1884-86, bronze,
6’10”x7’1”x6’6”
Rodin’s status as a major sculptor was confirmed in 1884, when he
won a competition for the Burghers of Calais, commissioned to
commemorate an event from the Hundred Years War. In 1347
Edward III of England had offered to spare the besieged city of
Calais if six leading citizens (burghers), dressed only in sackcloth
with rope halters and carrying the keys to the city, would surrender
to him for execution. Rodin shows the six volunteers preparing to
give themselves over to what they assume will be their deaths. The
Calais commissioners were not pleased with Rodin’s conception of
the event. Instead of calm, idealized heroes, Rodin presented
ordinary looking men in various attitudes of resignation and despair.
He exaggerated their facial expressions, expressively lengthened
their arms, greatly enlarged thier hands and feet, and swathed them
in heavy fabric, showing not only how they may have looked but
how they must have felt as they forced themselves to take one
difficult step after another. Rodin’s willingness to stylize the human
body for expressive purposes was a revolutionary move that opened
the way for the more radical innovations of later sculptors. Nor were
the commissioners pleased with Rodin’s plan to display the group
on a low pedestal. Rodin felt that the usual placement of such
figures on an elevated pedestal suggested that only higher, superior
humans are capable of heroic action. By placing the figures nearly at
street level, Rodin hoped to convey to viewers that ordinary people,
too, are capable of noble acts. Rodin’s removal of public sculpture
from a high to a low pedestal would lead, in the 20th century, to the
elimination of the pedestal itself and to the presentation of sculpture
in the real space of the viewer.
Auguste Rodin, Monument to Balzac, 1897, bronze (not cast
until 1954), ht. 9’3”
The Monument to Balzac was Rodin’s last, as well as most
daring and controversial, creation. The sculpture was rejected
by the writer’s association that had commissioned it, and
remained in plaster for many years. He had been asked at the
insistence of the author Emile Zola to take over the project
when the first sculptor died after producing only a sketch.
Rodin declared it to be the sum of my whole life. Outward
appearance did not pose a problem (Balzac’s features were
well known). But Rodin wanted far more than that. He was
searching for a way to express Balzac’s whole personality,
without adding allegorical figures or symbolic attributes,
which were the usual props of monuments to genius. ... The
sculpture shows the writer clothed in a long dressing gown
which he like to wear while working at night. The statue is
larger than life, physically and spiritually; it has an
overpowering presence. From a distance we see only the great
bulk of the figure. The head thrusts upward - one is tempted to
say, erupts - with elemental force from the mass formed by the
shroudlike cloak.
Henri Labrouste, Bibliothéque St.
Geneviéve, Paris, 1843-50,
A early and brilliant use of exposed
iron for architectural purposes is the
Reading Room of the Bibliothéque
St. Geneviéve in Paris, built in 184350 by Henri Labrouste (1801-75). ...
The interior is roofed by two parallel
barrel vaults of iron plates, resting on
iron rivets cast with a perforated
vinescroll design of the greatest
lightness; these are supported in the
center by iron arches springing airly
from slender Corinthian colonettes.
Metal had been used from time to time in the history of architecture as an adjunct to other
materials, such as the bronze or iron dowels in the centers of Greek columns and the iron frames
used to enclose sections of stained glass windows in Gothic cathedrals. Iron beams had even
been inserted in the 16th century to strengthen the fragile outer walls of the Palazo degli Uffizi
in Florence. Cast iron came into use on a grand scale in England and France toward the end of
the 18th century in bridges and for the inner structures of factories, and in the 1830’s for railway
stations. Almost invariably buildings using cast iron were intended for purely utilitarian
purposes. A conspicuous exception was the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, whose onion domes
were carried on iron frames.
Joseph Paxton, The Crystal Palace, 1850-51
Joseph Paxton, The Crystal
Palace, 1850-51
The triumph of iron architecture was the Crystal
Palace, built in the astonishing space of nine months
in 1850-51 by Sir Joseph Paxton, who had learned the
principles of construction of iron and glass from
building greenhouses. No glass-and-iron structure had
ever before been put up on such a scale, however, and
the airy interior with its barrel-vaulted transept and
multiple galleries all of glass on an iron skeleton
showing throughout was the luminous wonder of the
London Great Exhibition, the first in a long procession
of world’s fairs. A comparison with the Bibliothéque
St. Geneviéve will show that iron has now developed
an ornamental vocabulary of its own. No more
colonnettes, no more vinescrolls, the elements are cast
with only the lightest of surface ornament. The rapid
end of cast-iron arhcitecture was spelled by its
unsuspected vulnerability to fire. The Crystal Palace
(the first of many in Dublin, New York City, and
elsewhere) was reconstructed at Sydenham , south of
London, in supposedly permanent shape in 1852-54,
buy it perished by fire in 1936. However, the utility of
metal for architecture had been established, and the
material was to be revived for a somewhat different
constructional role, giving rise to strikingly new
architectural forms after the invention of a method of
making steel in 1855 by Sir Henry Bessmer.
Parts of this presentation are used under the
Fair Use Exemption of U.S. Copyright Law.
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• Olga’s Gallery: <www.abcgallery.com>
• Opentopia <http://encycl.opentopia.com>
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