Modern Art 02:
Foundations of Modernity
The early 19th century was a period of rapid stylistic evolution in art, setting the stage for the dramatic changes of Modernism. Transitioning from the structured Neoclassicism favored by Napoleon to the emotional depths of Romanticism and the grounded, objective focus of Realism, art simultaneously evolved down different paths. This era saw artists breaking away from academic traditions to explore exotic, emotional, and contemporary themes, heavily influenced by political, industrial, and technological revolutions. Furthermore, architectural innovations utilized new materials like cast iron, while the invention of photography revolutionized visual representation and documentation forever. Ultimately, these diverse movements formed the foundational stage for modern art.
Romanticism, Realism, and Photography
Art under Napoleon
Neoclassicism as Imperial Propaganda: Napoleon embraced the Neoclassical style to visually associate his French empire with the glory and authority of ancient Rome.
Key Artists: He appointed Jacques-Louis David as First Painter of the Empire. Antonio Canova was Napoleon's favorite sculptor, creating marble Neoclassical portraits of the imperial family, including a reclining image of Pauline Borghese as Venus. Pierre Vignon built La Madeleine as a "temple of glory" for France's imperial armies, modeled directly after Roman temples.
The Seeds of Rebellion: The beginnings of a break from strict Neoclassicism can be seen in the work of David’s own students: Gros, Girodet-Trioson, and Ingres. They began incorporating exotic subjects that reflected emerging Romantic tastes, forming a bridge between the two movements.
Romanticism
The Movement: Flourishing from roughly 1800 to 1840, Romanticism rejected Enlightenment reason and academic rules, giving precedence instead to deep feeling, imagination, the fantastic, and the exotic..
The Sublime: Romantic artists frequently explored the "sublime"—a concept articulated by Edmund Burke as feelings of awe mixed with terror.
Key Artworks and Artists
Francisco Goya: “Third of May”
Explored imagination, nightmares, and emotion in Spain. It is an emotionally charged painting that depicts the tragic 1808 execution of unarmed Spanish peasants by French soldiers. Goya encourages deep empathy by contrasting the horrified, brightly lit faces of the victims with the faceless, dark firing squad.Theodore Gericault: “Raft of the Medusa”
Led the way in France with dynamic and emotionally charged narratives. The painting rejected Neoclassical composition principles, and presents a jumble of writhing bodies in a powerful X-shape to capture the horror, chaos, and suffering of passengers abandoned in a real-life shipwreck.Eugene Delacroix “Liberty Leading the People”
Depicted Romantic narratives set in faraway places and distant times. Combining historical fact with poetic allegory, this painting captures the passion and energy of the 1830 Parisian uprising. It features a bare-breasted personification of Liberty wearing a scarlet Phrygian cap, urging diverse classes of Parisians to fight on.
Transcendendal Landscape
The Concept: Romantic painters frequently chose landscapes as an ideal subject to express the "sublime" and the theme of the human soul unified with the natural world.
Friedrich (Germany) “Wanderer above a Sea of Mist”
Sought a deeper understanding of God through the personal experience of nature. This famous painting perfectly expresses the Romantic notion of the sublime by showing a solitary man on a rocky promontory gazing out over a vast, mysterious panorama of clouds, mountains, and thick mist.Constable (England): Focused on nostalgic, serene scenes of the disappearing English countryside during the Industrial Revolution. He possessed a special gift for capturing the texture that climate and weather give to landscapes.
Turner (England): “The Slave Ship”
Captured awe mixed with terror (the sublime) by discovering a new means of releasing pure color from defining outlines. Depicting the horrific true story of sick and dying slaves thrown overboard, Turner uses an energetic, hazy composition and the emotive power of boiling colors to express nature's immense power over humanity.Cole (USA): Often considered the leader of the Hudson River School, he championed the unique "wildness" of the American landscape and questioned the country's moral direction as civilization expanded westward.
Bierstadt (USA): Produced awe-inspiring panoramic views of the American West, such as the Rocky Mountains, which reinforced the popular 19th-century doctrine of Manifest Destiny.
Church (USA): "Twilight in the Wilderness"
Painted spectacular scene in the idiom of the Romantic sublime, using the landscape to subtly reveal the contradictions and impending conflicts (like the Civil War) within constructed American mythology.
Realism
Developing in mid-19th-century France alongside empiricism and positivism, Realism argued that only the visible, contemporary world was "real". The movement focused on the unidealized depiction of contemporary people and everyday events.
French Realists & Key Artworks
Gustave Courbet: “The Stone Breakers”
Courbet conveys the dreary and dismal nature of menial labor by depicting two rural workers breaking stones. He uses a palette of dirty browns and grays, presenting everyday life as the only valid subject for modern art.Edouard Manet: “Olympia”
Manet shocked the public with his unidealized depiction of a contemporary nude white prostitute and her black maid. The painting's rough brushstrokes and abruptly shifting tonalities represented a radical departure from traditional academic illusionism, emphasizing the flatness of the painting surface to pave the way for modern abstract art.Jean-François Millet: Specialized in detailed depictions of French country life and the rural poor.
Honoré Daumier: Boldly confronted authority with social criticism and political protest using satirical lithographs that commented on the plight of the urban working class.
Rosa Bonheur: The most celebrated woman artist of the 19th century, known for her scientific accuracy in depicting animals like horses.
American Realists
Winslow Homer
Thomas Eakins
John Singer Sargent
Henry Ossawa Tanner
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Reacting against strict Realism's focus on contemporary life, this English group depicted fictional, historical, and literary subjects with extreme visual accuracy.
John Everett Millais: “Ophelia”
Millais painted this tragic Shakespearean scene with unswerving fidelity to visual fact, even painting the background on site outdoors for hours.Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Another founder who focused on literary themes and ethereal beauty.
Architecture
Historical Revivals: Driven by nationalistic pride and Romantic interest in the past and exotic locales, 19th-century architects often revived older styles. Notable examples include the Neo-Gothic style, exemplified by London’s Houses of Parliament, and the Neo-Baroque style, seen in the Paris Opéra.
New Technologies and Industrial Materials: By the middle of the century, the Industrial Revolution provided new materials like cast iron and steel. Many architects abandoned sentimental historical designs to explore the structural possibilities of cast-iron construction in structures like Henri Labrouste's Sainte-Geneviève Library in Paris and Joseph Paxton's entirely prefabricated glass-and-iron Crystal Palace in London.
Photography
A New Medium: Practical applications invented in 1839 by Daguerre in Paris and Talbot in London, photography offered an unprecedented way to capture permanent images of reality. Photographers quickly specialized in portraiture and science immediately gravitated towards photography ability to document the observable world.
Nadar used the medium to create expressive, intimate portraits of contemporaries.
“Ophelia” by Julia Margaret Cameron: Cameron was a prominent photographer who often depicted her female subjects as characters in literary narratives. The deliberate, slightly blurred focus gives the photograph an ethereal, dreamlike, and mysterious quality reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
Timothy O'Sullivan and Hawes & Southworth quickly realized the medium's documentary power, recording historical events and the grim realities of the Civil War.
“Horse Galloping” by Eadweard Muybridge: Through groundbreaking sequential photography, Muybridge proved that a galloping horse briefly has all four hooves off the ground. His sequential photos of human and animal motion were the forerunners of modern cinema and would later heavily influence modern painting and sculpture.
Photography sparked an immediate debate over whether the photograph was an artistic medium or a scientific instrument. To establish photography on a par with painting, early photographers deliberately chose to record traditional painting themes, such as portraits and still life. Some contemporaries quickly recognized its artistic merit; for example, the academic painter Paul Delaroche noted that the camera reproduced nature "not only with truth, but also with art". An 1862 court case, in France, officially recognized photography as an art form entitled to copyright protection. This settled the debate (at least legally) over whether or not photography was an art form or simply a series of instruments/tools.