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see also:
John Tenniel
Illustrations from
Lewis Carroll
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
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Public Art
Following a period of estrangement marked by Romanticism, the
marriage of artists and institutions was renewed in Rome in the
early 19th century by the Nazarenes, a group of German artists who
revived the art of monumental frescos. Their works, didactic and
nationalistic in tone, paved the way for the creation of official
forms of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Ludwig I in Munich,
the Bourbons in Paris, and Frederick William III in Berlin
encouraged such art as confirmation of their own sovereignty.
Between 1830 and 1908. the new regimes in Europe saw art as a means
of celebrating national achievements. After the French were defeated
at Sedan in 1870, classicism in France was promoted as a form of
nationalistic ideology linked to anti-Prussian feeling. Ernest Meissonier (1815-91) celebrated the campaign triumphs of Napoleons I
and III in detailed canvases, while the frescos of Puvis de
Chavannes (1824-98) redefined symbolic art, presenting an enigmatic,
sparse view of history with little colour or line work. In England,
in 1836, work began on the project of decorating the new Houses of
Parliament in Westminster, London, a building intended to
encapsulate a national style. It involved artists such as Richard Redgrave (1804-88),
William Dyce (1806-64), and
John Tenniel
(1820-1914). Elsewhere, a high moral tone was taken by
Ford Madox
Brown (1821-93), whose frescos for Manchester Town Hall (1878-93)
illustrated episodes of the city's history. The second half of the
century saw an "art for art's sake" philosophy emerge. Adherents to
this included Thomas Armstrong (1832-1911) and Randolph Caldecott
(1846-86). who worked on the decoration of Bank Hall in Derbyshire
(1872-73).
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Ernest Meissonier
Siege of Paris
1870
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Ernest Meissonier
(1815-1891)
French painter, sculptor and illustrator. Although he was
briefly a student of Jules Potier (1796–1865) and Léon
Cogniet, Meissonier was mainly self-taught and gained
experience by designing wood-engravings for book
illustrations. These included Léon Curmer’s celebrated
edition of J.-H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et
Virginie (Paris, 1838), the series Les Français
peints par eux-mêmes (Paris, 1840–42) and Louis de
Chevigné’s Les Contes rémois (Paris, 1858).
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Ernest Meissonier
The French Campaign
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Ernest Meissonier
The Guide
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Ernest Meissonier
Chess Players
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Ernest Meissonier
General Desaix and the Peasant
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CONTEMPORARY LIFE
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William
Powell Frith
The Derby Day
1858
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Paintings of scenes from everyday life became a popular genre in
England in the middle of the 19th century. The Derby Day by
William
Powell Frith (1819-1909) is a realistic portrayal for which the
painter employed professional studio models and followed the strict
academic rules then in vogue. His crowd contained popular
stereotypes, such as prostitutes, fashionable ladies, criminals, and
dandies. Such was the painting's success that barriers were erected
around it when it was exhibited to restrain the general public.
Social realism in art continued to grow in popularity until the turn
of the century. An Evening at the Pre-Catalan by
Henri Gervex
(1852-1929) was almost a tribute to modernity, featuring a car,
electric lights, and the Brazilian aviator Santos-Dumont to
represent modern aviation.
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Henri Gervex
An Evening at the Pre-Catalan
1909
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ART DEPICTS SCIENCE
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Hans von Marees
Hesperiden
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Hans von Marees
The Four Ages of Man
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Hans von Marees
(1837-1887)
German painter, draughtsman and sculptor. Marées was a
leading representative of the later 19th-century return to
Renaissance models, especially the use of figure painting in
large-scale decorative schemes.
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Doctors and men of science were the embodiment of the 19th-centnrys
belief in progress, and their influence permeated the art world.
Luigi Sabatelli (1772-1850) exalted science and Florentine
scientists in his sculpture Galileo's Pulpit, which was commissioned
by Leopold II in 1841 for the Congress of Italian Scientists. The
naturalist Anton Dohrn of Stettin founded the Marine Institute of
Naples between 1872 and 1874, and Hans von Marees (1837—87) was
commissioned to create a fresco for the library of this scientific
institute. In France, the eminent scientist Dr Jules-Emile Pean, was
painted by Henri Gervex in 1887.
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Henri Gervex
Doctor Pean Demonstrating at the Saint-Louis Hospital
the Discovery of the Hemostatic Clamp
1887
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THE GERVEX SCANDAL
Even an "official" painter of the calibre of
Henri Gervex
(1852-1929), commissioned to create frescos for the Hotel de Ville
and the foyer of the Paris Opera Comique, was refused permission to
exhibit a work at the 1878 Salon on the grounds of unacceptable
subject matter. Its subject taken from a poem by Alfred de Musset,
the painting depicted Maria, a young prostitute, lying on a bed, and
Rolla, a desperate bon viveur about to commit suicide. On the
advice of Edgar Degas (1834-1917),
Gervex had added a pile of
clothes tossed to the ground in the right-hand corner, a detail that
was enough to get the canvas condemned for its moral laxity. When
the work was later exhibited at a dealer's in the Chaussee-d'Antin,
it created a considerable stir.
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Henri Gervex
Rolla
1878
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THE COURT PORTRAITIST
The German artist Franz Xavier Winterhalter (1806-73) displayed an
extraordinary technical proficiency and opulent sense of style,
exemplified by his portrait of Elizabeth of Wittelsbach, empress of
Austria. The success of his portraits of royalty and the nobility
lies in a carefully contrived simplicity of mood, with just the
right combination of splendour, arrogance, and charm. His subjects
were as attractive and seductive as the clothes they wore to
proclaim their status.
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Franz Xavier Winterhalter
Portrait of the Empress Eugenie
Surrounded by her Maids of Honor
1855
oil on canvas
Musee National de Palais de Compiegnie
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Luxembourg Palace
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THE MUSEUM
Museums became the temples of public art, where past and present met
to perpetuate tradition, and where the total experience of an
individual work of art derived from a fusion of its setting,
decorative value, and subject matter. Following the restoration of
the Bourbons, museum doors in Paris were opened to artists: Louis
XVIII handed over the rooms of the Senate to the Ecole moderne de la
France, which became the Royal Galiery of the Luxembourg Palace,
henceforth reserved for modern painting. Under Charles X, new rooms
in the Musee du Louvre were decorated with frescos devoted to
France, the sovereign-protectors of the arts, and the arts
themselves. The Apotheosis of Homer (1827) by
Ingres was both a
glorification of the arts and a homage to the artistic policy of the
Restoration. Louis Philippe commissioned a team of artists,
including Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863),
Francois Gerard, Horace Vernet, and
Ary Scheffer (1795-1858) to execute a series of battle
paintings for the Historical Gallery of Versailles, opened in 1836.
New museums were opened in many other European cities. In London,
the Royal Academy of Arts was transferred to Burlington House in
1869 and separated from the National Gallery. In Madrid, the Prado
Museum (1819) was extended in 1870 to accommodate all of the
religious paintings from the Trinity museum. Artists working at the
Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna between the years 1872 to 1891
included Viktor Tigner, Hans Makart, Michael Munkacsy, Franz Masch,
and the brothers Ernst and Gustav Klimt. In Amsterdam, in 1885, the
Rijksmuseum, vas established in a grandiose building designed and
built by Petrus Josephus Hubertus Cuypers (1827-1921).
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Burlington House, London
from a drawing dated 1871
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Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna
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Prado Museum,
Madrid
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Musee du Louvre, Paris
1908
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Churches and Palaces
Supported by the restored monarchy, the Church in France embarked on
a new moral crusade. The mystic leanings of Napoleon III's consort,
the Empress Eugenie, had led to religious buildings being filled
with votive paintings and to the restoration of many churches
damaged during the years of the Revolution. The new dogmas of the
Immaculate Conception (1854) and Papal Infallibility (1870)
increased the power of the ecclesiastical authorities, who used art
as a tool of propaganda. The increased wealth of the bourgeoisie led
to a new and much larger source of interest and income for the art
world. Formerly, patronage had been the preserve of the royal court
and the nobility; the patrons of later 19th-century art, however,
were often from the middle class rather than the aristocracy. Now,
it was not only the palaces of Versailles and the Tuileries that
could boast art fit for a king; the less exalted residences of the
wealthy middle class were also decorated with tine paintings. The
wonderful buildings constructed by Haussmann in Paris reflected a
social hierarchy arranged vertically, whereby bourgeois families
lived within the higher, more expensive storeys. In England, the
prosperity of the middle class derived from Britain's growing
commercial and industrial power. After the Parliamentary Reform Act
of 1832, the patronage of the arts by the middle classes mirrored
their growth in power and influence.
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see collections:
Franz Xavier Winterhalter
Ary Scheffer
William
Powell Frith
Henri Gervex
see also:
John Tenniel
illustrations from
Lewis Carroll
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