Twelve: Mar. 23
Odalisque
a female slave or concubine in a harem, especially one in the seraglio of the sultan of Turkey.
Artist: Francisco Goya Piece: Third of May Medium: Oil on Canvas Year: 1808 or 1814
An even more powerful mood of futility pervades The Third of May, 1808 , painted in 1814 and one of many paintings, drawings, and prints that Goya made from 1810 to 1815 in response to the French occupation of Spain in 1808. The corruption of the Spanish administration forced Charles IV to abdicate in 1807. He was replaced by his son Ferdinand VII, who was deposed in 1808 when Napoleon's troops marched into Madrid and put the emperor's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the throne. Enlightened Spain was initially optimistic that the Enlightened French would bring political reform. But in Madrid a people's uprising spurred by nationalism resulted in vicious fighting and wholesale slaughter on both sides, within days fanning out across the entire country and then dragging on for six years. Goya's enormous, dramatic picture, painted after Napoleon had been deposed and Ferdinand reinstated, shows the mass execution of Spanish rebels that took place on May 3, 1808, on a hill outside Madrid. How different it is from Neoclassical history painting that presented great and famous exemplars of nobleness, morality, and fortitude! Goya presents anonymous nobodies caught up in the powerful forces of history. Here we see the mechanical process of the slaughter. One rebel with raised arms, dressed in the yellow and white colors of the papacy, has the pose of Christ on the Cross. His right hand has a wound suggesting the stigmata. But ironically Goya denies the rioters the status of martyrs. They are consumed by the fear of death, not the ecstasy of sacrifice. No divine light materializes to resurrect them, and the church in the background of this imaginary scene remains dark. When the stable lantern—which in its geometry and light could be construed as an emblem of Enlightenment logic and progress—is extinguished, there will be only eternal night, symbolized by the inert foreground body, whose face is reduced to a gory mass of paint. The faceless executioners, also small cogs in the wheel of history, are indifferent to their victims' fear of death and frantic pleas for mercy. Goya whips up the horror and emotional turmoil of his scene by rejecting tight Neoclassical paint handling, linearity, planarity, and even lighting, and by replacing this aesthetic with feverish loose brushwork, intense colors, compositional turmoil on the left, and a dramatically receding line of soldiers on the right. Goya painted The Third of May, 1808 at a time when he was desperate for work: He wanted to gain royal favor with this picture, hence his scripting of it so that it could be read as being about the sacrifice of the Spanish to the agents of political tyranny. But the real themes of the image are the anonymity of death and the senseless brutality of war. Its power lies in its ability to instill in a viewer an intense sense of terror that makes one confront the inescapable knowledge of one's own mortality.
Artist: J.M.W. Turner Piece: The Slave Ship Medium: Oil on Canvas Year: 1840
And is seen in The Slave Ship or Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon Coming On of 1840. These late works were condemned in Turner's own time. His contemporaries thought he had gone mad, for they found the works virtually unreadable, and certainly unintelligible. Furthermore, his epic stories were no longer drawn from mythology or history but from seemingly minor contemporary events. His earlier work may have been atmospheric, but there was always enough drawing to suggest precise objects, a distinct composition, and legible spatial recession and relationships, as we see in Snowstorm. Later, this readability evaporates in a haze of color and paint that represents the essence of mist, light, and atmosphere. The Slave Ship shows the sick and dying human cargo being thrown into the sea during a typhoon. Turner was inspired by James Thomson's The Seasons (1730), where the poet describes how sharks follow a slave ship during a typhoon, "lured by the scent of steaming crowds, or rank disease, and death." Turner was also influenced by a recent newspaper account of a ship's captain who had jettisoned slaves in order to collect insurance, which paid for cargo lost at sea but not for death from illness. Here, Turner gives us a close-up of human suffering. Outstretched hands pleading for help, a leg about to disappear into the deep for a last time, the gruesome blackness of flailing chains and manacles, the frenzied predatory fish, and bloodstained water all dominate the immediate foreground. In the background is the slave ship, heading into the fury of the typhoon and its own struggle for survival, its distance and silence a metaphor for the callous indifference of the slavers. The searing brilliance of the sun bathes the sky in a blood-red aura, its seemingly infinite reach complementing the omnipotence of the raging sea. This is a tragic, horrific scene, made a few years after Britain banned slavery entirely in the Abolition of Slavery Act (1833; the Atlantic slave trade had been outlawed in 1807). Turner certainly makes us feel the hardened inhumanity of the slavers, encouraging us to despise them. And yet, the picture has a haunting thematic and moral ambiguity: Birds eat fish and human carcasses, fish feed on other fish and discarded slaves, and slavers fight for their lives in the face of a storm. The picture is as much about the struggle of daily life and the role of fate as it is about the immorality of the slavers, the only constant being the frightening power of nature.
Artist: Frederic Edwin Church Piece: Twilight in the Wilderness Medium: Oil on Canvas Year: 1860
By January 1860, Church had begun working on Twilight in the Wilderness , which he finished that year, exhibiting it to wild acclaim, first in the Tenth Street Studio Building, where he had a studio, and then at the Goupil Gallery in New York. While working on this painting, he was also finishing up The Heart of the Andes, the result of a second trip to South America in 1857, and starting Icebergs, his first major iceberg painting. Twilight represents the wonders of the American wilderness, most viewers associating it with Maine and New Hampshire. The picture represents a temperate environment and nicely complements the tropical and Arctic themes of the other two works in Church's studio at the time, the trilogy in effect presenting a compendium of New World climates as described by the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt in his five-volume book Cosmos (1845). As its title suggests, the picture represents the American wilderness, a pure, unspoiled Garden of Eden, with no sign of human presence. Americans considered brilliantly colored sunsets unique to their country, thus an emblem of the nation, just as they did the spectacular autumnal foliage, which was especially popular with painters. But Church's use here of twilight probably has a second function, that of referring to the twilight of the wilderness as New England especially was being settled and crisscrossed with railroad tracks, and pioneers, driven by Manifest Destiny (the compulsion to settle the entire continent), were swarming west toward the Pacific. And twilight has a third function in the image. We must remember the painting was made in 1860, a year before the Civil War, which most everyone knew was looming on the horizon as the slavery issue violently divided the nation. Church makes the country the focus of his picture by putting an American eagle on top of the dead tree in the left foreground, the tree serving as a pole for the American flag of fiery red altocumulus clouds and blue sky. As the sun sets behind the horizon, Church casts doubts on the future of both the wilderness and the nation itself.
Artist: Eugène Delacroix Piece: Women of Algiers Medium: Oil on Canvas Year: 1834
Delacroix's style underwent a change in the 1830s after a trip to North Africa; his palette became brighter and his paint handling looser. In 1832-33, Delacroix was asked to visually document the duc de Mornay's diplomatic mission to Morocco, and he excitedly made hundreds of watercolors that provided him with wondrous Oriental themes for the rest of his life. In Morocco, Delacroix entered a world of exotic architecture, clothing, and landscape, of intense light, and of unimaginably bright colors in fabrics, tiles, and interior design that displayed a horror vacui rivaling his own. That his palette became more colorful can be seen in Women of Algiers , painted in Paris in 1834 from studies. To enter the secluded world of a harem, Delacroix had to obtain special permission, and the mood of the painting captures the sultry, cloistered feeling of this sensual den. We can almost smell the aroma of incense, the fragrance of flowers, and the smoke from the hookah. Delacroix's hues are as sensual as his subject. Color is dappled, and contours are often not continuous or drawn but just materialize through the buildup of adjacent marks . A sea of paint and color covering the entire surface dissolves Neoclassical planarity and space. This technique began to free paint from what it was supposed to represent and established a platform for a new artistic style just over the horizon, Impressionism.
Artist: Corot Piece: View of Rome Medium: Oil on Paper, mounted on Canvas Year: 1826-1827
In 1825, Corot went to Italy and produced his first major body of work, about 150 small paintings, most of famous sites. View of Rome , an oil on paper, is typical. Made on the spot in an hour or so, it is a literal, objective presentation of "the truth of the moment," as Constable would say. We are convinced we are looking at the Castel Sant'Angelo and St. Peter's Basilica and real, not stylized clouds. We can feel the sun's intense heat bouncing off the stone and see the clear late-afternoon light crisply delineating the buildings and bridge. Without idealizing his landscape, Corot displays an instinct for Classical clarity and stability that recalls Poussin and Claude. Strong verticals and horizontals anchor his composition to its surface of creamy brushwork, and his buildings, no matter how loosely painted and insignificant, have a monumental presence. Nature inspired Corot to create little poems of beautifully harmonized tones and colors, generally browns and greens, and a seamless integration of painterly brushwork and Classical grid.
Sublime
In 19th-century art, the ideal and goal that art should inspire awe in a viewer and engender feelings of high religious, moral, ethical, and intellectual purpose.
Artist: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Piece: Grande Odalisque Medium: Oil on Canvas Year: 1814
In Italy, Ingres studied ancient art and fell in love with the Classicism of Raphael. But as a Romantic—which is what he considered himself to be—his interests were broad, even exotic, and led him to medieval, Byzantine, and Early Renaissance art. After his four-year stipend expired, Ingres stayed on in Italy at his own expense for an additional 14 years, often impoverished and, like a true Romantic artist, painting what he wanted, not what the academy dictated. Periodically, he sent pictures back to Paris for exhibition, where they were generally met with derision. An example is Grande Odalisque , commissioned in 1814 by Caroline Murat, Napoleon's sister and the queen of Naples, and submitted to the Salon of 1819. This painting is even more exotic than his portrait of Napoleon, for it represents a Turkish concubine and is one of the earliest examples of Orientalism, as the Western fascination with the culture of the Muslim world of North Africa and the Near East was then called. (Byron's Romantic poem The Corsair, also featuring a harem slave, was published the same year the painting was commissioned.) This fascination was, in part, sparked by Napoleon's campaign in Egypt in 1798-99 and by the detailed description of the region and its culture and customs in the 24-volume government-sponsored publication Description de l'Égypte, which appeared from 1809 to 1822. Orientalism reflects European imperialism and its accompanying sense of superiority that viewed non-Christian Arab culture as not only different and exotic but also inferior—backward, immoral, violent, and barbaric. Here, the exotic subject gave Ingres license to paint a female nude who was not a Greek goddess, although she recalls numerous Renaissance and Baroque paintings of a reclining Venus and sculptures of Ariadne from antiquity. To make his figure more appealing to a Paris audience, Ingres gave his odalisque European features, even a Raphaelesque face and coiffure. Although the figure is alluringly sensual, and the hashish pipe, incense burner, fan, and turban "authenticate" the exotic scene, the painting as a whole projects a soothing sense of cultivated beauty, refinement, and idealization that seems Classical. In other words, Ingres treats a Romantic subject in an essentially Neoclassical manner, including idealization. Ingres's trademark is a beautiful Classical line, which we can see as he focuses on the odalisque's flesh. Bathed in a caressing chiaroscuro, the body gently swells and recedes with delectable elegance. Its contours languidly undulate with sensuality, the sharply defined edges and tan color contrasting with the objects around it. The opulent color of the objects and the lush fabrics and peacock feathers enhance the sensual aura of the picture. Salon viewers noted the concubine's back had too many vertebrae, and certainly her elbowless right arm is too long; but as far as Ingres was concerned, the sweeping curves of both were essential components of the graceful composition, the line of the right arm even being continued into the folds of the drapery.
Artist: Théodore Géricault Piece: Raft of the "Medusa" Medium: Oil on Canvas Year: 1818-19
Not long after his return to Paris in late 1817, he began thinking about the third and last painting he would exhibit at the Salons, The Raft of the Medusa , painted between 1818 and 1819 after many studies. In 1816, the Medusa, a government vessel, foundered off the West African coast with approximately 400 people aboard. The captain commandeered the six lifeboats for government officials and officers, with the remaining 150 passengers being consigned to a makeshift raft that was set adrift by the crew at the mercy of the sea. When the passengers were finally rescued some two weeks later, only a handful were still alive. The callous captain was incompetent, an aristocrat who had been appointed for political reasons by the government of Louis XVIII. The headline-making event was condemned in the press as a reflection of the corruption of Louis's administration. Géricault decided to paint the moment when the survivors first sighted a ship, not the more politically charged moment when the captain set the raft adrift. The painting is thus about the harrowing mental and physical experience of survival rather than an accusation of injustice. Géricault seems to have latched onto his subject after revisiting Gros's Napoleon in the Pesthouse, for the foreground is littered with Michelangelesque nudes. From the bodies of the dead and dying in the foreground, the composition recedes in a dramatic Baroque diagonal , climaxing in the group supporting the frantically waving black man. As our eye follows this line of writhing, twisting bodies, we move from death to hope. But this is not a painting that is at root about hope, for there are no heroes, no exemplary moral fortitude. Rather the theme is the human species against nature, and Géricault's goal was to make a viewer feel the trials and tribulations of the castaways. The academic, Classically proportioned monumental figures are a catalogue of human misery, reflecting the death, cannibalism, fighting, insanity, sickness, exhaustion, hunger, and thirst that tormented the victims. The stark realism, obtained in part through tighter brushwork, heightens our visceral connection to the dramatically lit event; we too are on the crude raft, pitched about on the high seas, and aimlessly buffeted by the wind. Géricault would never exhibit again in a Salon and within six years would be dead at the age of 32. His later work, unlike The Raft, was not monumental; nor does it show off the artist's ability to draw and incorporate Classical models into an otherwise Baroque composition with a Romantic mood.
The Political Agenda in Art
The political ideology of the time is often reflected in works of art in ways or symbols that are not common today, so they are not widely understood after the era the painting was created in has passed.
Artist: Thomas Jefferson Place: University of Virginia Designed: 1804-1817 Constructed: 1817-1828
Thomas Jefferson, an amateur architect, designed his home Monticello (1770-1782) as a Palladian villa, like Burlington's Chiswick House , and he based his Virginia State Capitol (1785) on the Maison Carrée in Nîmes (see fig. 7.44). His best-known project in the Romantic era is the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville . Like Monticello and the Virginia State Capitol, the campus is based on antiquity in order to evoke the democratic heritage from Greece and Rome as well as the grandeur of these two great civilizations, which form the bedrock of Western art and culture. Designed from 1804 to 1817, the campus consists of two rows of five Palladian villas connected by a roofed colonnade, off which are rooms for students. Each of the ten villas, which housed the professors and classrooms, was different, conceptually symbolizing individualism and aesthetically introducing picturesque variety. Each has a different Classical association: One with a Doric order refers to the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, a second with an Ionic order to the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, also in Rome. At one end of the two rows and tying them together is a Pantheon-like rotunda, the library, suggested by fellow architect Benjamin Latrobe and built in 1823-26. Lastly, the tree-lined lawn separating the two rows of villas imparts the complex with the naturalism of a picturesque English garden. Jefferson's genius in Charlottesville was to use the Classical revival to create a metaphor for the new republic that expresses both the individualism and the unity that defined the new nation. His use of picturesque variety in the buildings and landscape as well as his use of a style that evokes a lost, distant past are qualities that are distinctly Romantic.
Rubénistes
Those artists of the French Academy at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century who favored "color" in painting because it appealed to the senses and was thought to be true to nature. The term derived from admiration for the work of the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens. See Poussinistes.
Poussinistes
Those artists of the French Academy at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century who favored "drawing," which they believed appealed to the mind rather than the senses. The term derived from admiration for the French artist Nicolas Poussin. See Rubénistes.
Industrial Revolution
Transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system. Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested; the textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods. They started using photography in the Progressive era for non documenting purposes, like photographing child workers in sweat shops, which lead to the end of underaged labor
Oil Sketch
or oil study is an artwork made primarily in oil paints that is more abbreviated in handling than a fully finished painting. Originally these were created as preparatory studies or modelli, especially so as to gain approval for the design of a larger commissioned painting.
