art of the 1800s

I am an art historian currently pursuing my PhD. My area of interest is 19th century European art with a specialization in traveling female artists to the Ottoman Empire.
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), The Death of Sardanapalus, 1844, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia The subject of this painting was inspired by Lord Byron’s dramatic poem of 1821 about the life of an ancient Assyrian king named Sardanapalus. Finding his palace besieged by enemies, Sardanapalus decides to kill himself, but first orders his officers to destroy all his favorite possessions in his presence—his wives, pages, and even his horses and dogs. This painting is a replica of a much larger work, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, that Delacroix first exhibited in the Salon of 1827–28, where it received harsh criticism. Delacroix may have painted this Museum’s version for himself before selling the larger work in 1846. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections When Eugène Delacroix showed his huge painting inspired by Lord Byron’s play Sardanapalus in the Paris Salon of 1827-28, he changed the history of art completely. With its appearance the splendor and opulence of Baroque painting returned full force, putting to question all the restraint and clarity that had been revered as classical truths. It marked the coming of age of Romanticism and launched the thirty-year-old Parisian’s meteoric career. Yet for all its notoriety, Delacroix’s painting, now in the Louvre in Paris, was not sold until 1846, when, it is thought, the Museum’s quickly worked picture was done as a reprise (in much reduced proportions). The artist’s obvious pleasure in mixing color and relaying drama remains undiminished in the copy, as Delacroix records the last moments of the Assyrian king. As his palace is besieged, Sardanapalus reclines on a sumptuous bed atop an immense pyre that will soon be set aflame, and orders the slaughter of all his women, his attendants, and even his horses and dogs, so that no objects of his pleasure would outlive him. Joseph J. Rishel, fromPhiladelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 190. http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/82626.html

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), The Death of Sardanapalus, 1844, oil on canvas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia

The subject of this painting was inspired by Lord Byron’s dramatic poem of 1821 about the life of an ancient Assyrian king named Sardanapalus. Finding his palace besieged by enemies, Sardanapalus decides to kill himself, but first orders his officers to destroy all his favorite possessions in his presence—his wives, pages, and even his horses and dogs. This painting is a replica of a much larger work, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, that Delacroix first exhibited in the Salon of 1827–28, where it received harsh criticism. Delacroix may have painted this Museum’s version for himself before selling the larger work in 1846.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections

When Eugène Delacroix showed his huge painting inspired by Lord Byron’s play Sardanapalus in the Paris Salon of 1827-28, he changed the history of art completely. With its appearance the splendor and opulence of Baroque painting returned full force, putting to question all the restraint and clarity that had been revered as classical truths. It marked the coming of age of Romanticism and launched the thirty-year-old Parisian’s meteoric career. Yet for all its notoriety, Delacroix’s painting, now in the Louvre in Paris, was not sold until 1846, when, it is thought, the Museum’s quickly worked picture was done as a reprise (in much reduced proportions). The artist’s obvious pleasure in mixing color and relaying drama remains undiminished in the copy, as Delacroix records the last moments of the Assyrian king. As his palace is besieged, Sardanapalus reclines on a sumptuous bed atop an immense pyre that will soon be set aflame, and orders the slaughter of all his women, his attendants, and even his horses and dogs, so that no objects of his pleasure would outlive him. Joseph J. Rishel, fromPhiladelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 190.

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/82626.html

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.”—Winslow Homer. Winslow Homer, Boys in a Dory, 1873, watercolor washes and gouache, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York This charming sheet dates from the first phase of Homer’s professional work in watercolor. Having visited a landmark exhibition sponsored by the American Society of Painters in Water Colors in New York, Homer spent the summer of 1873 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the picturesque fishing port on Cape Ann, north of Boston. There, he undertook a series of small-scale watercolors depicting boys and girls rowing dories, sitting on the wharves, involved in modest tasks, or playing on the beach. These delightful images of childhood pastimes echo in subject and handling his oils of the same period, including the Museum’s much-appreciated “Snap the Whip” (1872; acc. no. 50.41). Homer’s early watercolors are simple and direct, reflecting the innocent, idyllic nature of his subjects. They also reveal his cautious approach to the new medium, in that they feature washes of color carefully applied within pale pencil outlines and much opaque pigment. Nonetheless, “Boys in a Dory,” in particular, demonstrates Homer’s ability to capture the scintillating effects of dazzling sunlight, rippling water, and luminous atmosphere in boat-filled Gloucester Harbor. Such effects predict the brilliance of his later travel watercolors, grand sheets that validate his prediction: “You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.” http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/20018956

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.”—Winslow Homer.

Winslow Homer, Boys in a Dory, 1873, watercolor washes and gouache, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This charming sheet dates from the first phase of Homer’s professional work in watercolor. Having visited a landmark exhibition sponsored by the American Society of Painters in Water Colors in New York, Homer spent the summer of 1873 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the picturesque fishing port on Cape Ann, north of Boston. There, he undertook a series of small-scale watercolors depicting boys and girls rowing dories, sitting on the wharves, involved in modest tasks, or playing on the beach. These delightful images of childhood pastimes echo in subject and handling his oils of the same period, including the Museum’s much-appreciated “Snap the Whip” (1872; acc. no. 50.41). Homer’s early watercolors are simple and direct, reflecting the innocent, idyllic nature of his subjects. They also reveal his cautious approach to the new medium, in that they feature washes of color carefully applied within pale pencil outlines and much opaque pigment. Nonetheless, “Boys in a Dory,” in particular, demonstrates Homer’s ability to capture the scintillating effects of dazzling sunlight, rippling water, and luminous atmosphere in boat-filled Gloucester Harbor. Such effects predict the brilliance of his later travel watercolors, grand sheets that validate his prediction: “You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.”

http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/20018956

worldpaintings: Vincent Van Gogh Peach Tree in Bloom (in memory of Mauve), 1888, oil on canvas, 73 x 59.5 cm, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Netherlands.

worldpaintings:

Vincent Van Gogh

Peach Tree in Bloom (in memory of Mauve), 1888, oil on canvas, 73 x 59.5 cm, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, Netherlands.

An interesting comparison between both painters and images of the same location.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Grenouillére, 1869, oil on canvas, National Museum, Stockholm

The Impressionists are the artists in France during the 1870s. It all really started with radical leanings among the painters, who came out in open opposition against academic conventionalism in art.

They wanted to get away from the classical insistence on an enclosed pictorial form, a varnished surface. They wanted their painterly technique to be open-ended, and they refused to delimit their subjects in the accepted way. This approach eventually caught on everywhere in western art, and it has left its imprint on the paintings of the 1870s and 1880s.

Auguste Renoir’s La Grenouillère, the frog pond, has all these ingredients - a sketch-like painting, which to contemporaries seemed unfinished, no carved-out details, a glitter of sun reflecting the movements of the water, the boats partly truncated to convey a sense of the passing moment, and the individual details toned down in favour of the overall picture. But, the depiction of reality is still there.

Renoir has depicted an actual moment and life as it is lived, a fragment without any greater depth of interpretation. The theme is a new one: instead of something heroic, we have a casual, trivial excerpt from reality, held together by the lighting. 

http://www.nationalmuseum.se/sv/English-startpage/Collections/Painting/19th-century/La-Grenouillere—/

Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,29 3/8 x 39 1/4 in. (74.6 x 99.7 cm), Signed and inscribed: (lower right) Claude Monet; (right) LOCATI[ON] CANOT[S] (boat rental)

Monet noted on September 25, 1869, “I do have a dream, a painting [tableau], the baths of La Grenouillère, for which I have made some bad sketches [pochades], but it is only a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.” Monet and Renoir, both desperately poor, were quite close at this time.

This painting and one in London (National Gallery) are probably the “pochades” Monet mentioned; another painting, now lost but formerly in the Arnhold collection in Berlin, may well have been the “tableau” that he dreamed of. The broad, constructive brushstrokes here are clearly those of a sketch; at this time, Monet sought a more delicate and carefully calibrated surface for his exhibition pictures. (A nearly identical composition by Renoir is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.)

Monet and Renoir both recognized in La Grenouillère—a spa and working-class resort—an ideal subject for the images of leisure they hoped to sell. Optimistically promoted as a “Trouville-sur-Seine,” it was easily accessible by train from Paris and had just been favored with a visit by Emperor Napoleon III and his wife and son.

Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus, 1875, Metropolitan Museum, New York Cabanel’s Birth of Venus (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) created a sensation at the Salon of 1863, which was known as the “Salon of the Venuses” because several paintings of the goddess were exhibited. This painting embodies the ideals of academic art in its careful modeling, polished surface finish, and mythological subject. Cabanel’s picture established his reputation, and it was purchased by Napoleon III for his personal collection. In 1875, the American banker John Wolfe commissioned the present canvas, one of numerous replicas Cabanel made after the original. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/94.24.1

Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus, 1875, Metropolitan Museum, New York

Cabanel’s Birth of Venus (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) created a sensation at the Salon of 1863, which was known as the “Salon of the Venuses” because several paintings of the goddess were exhibited. This painting embodies the ideals of academic art in its careful modeling, polished surface finish, and mythological subject. Cabanel’s picture established his reputation, and it was purchased by Napoleon III for his personal collection. In 1875, the American banker John Wolfe commissioned the present canvas, one of numerous replicas Cabanel made after the original.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/94.24.1

turnofthecentury: i12bent:William Merritt Chase, American artist: Nov. 1, 1849 - d. 1916… The Model, c. 1887-8 - pastel on paper (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC)

turnofthecentury:

i12bent:William Merritt Chase, American artist: Nov. 1, 1849 - d. 1916…

The Model, c. 1887-8 - pastel on paper (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC)

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine), 1863-1865, Oil on Canvas, Freer Gallery, Washington, D.C. Whistler’s painting of Christine Spartali, a noted beauty of the 1860s is another in his series of clearly Western compositions that depict languid young women amid Oriental props. Later writers saw parallels between this work and Japanese images, such as woodblock prints by Utamaro, but the painting is just as firmly based upon 18th-century French chinoiserie. The Princesse is one of several early works for which preparatory sketches are known to have been used. One surviving sketch shows the artist blocking in the general composition and colors, but leaving out details of rug, screen and costume that were added to the final work. The spray of flowers at the left of the oil sketch were later eliminated. Whistler’s decision isolated Miss Spartali’s profile and increased the impact of her exotic visage. However, her father refused to purchase the work as a portrait of his daughter. Whistler was not willing to reduce the size of his signature for another potential purchaser, and the Pennells believed that this incident caused him to develop his butterfly cypher. However, the butterfly did not actually appear until several years later. http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectNumber=F1903.91a-b

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (La Princesse du pays de la porcelaine), 1863-1865, Oil on Canvas, Freer Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Whistler’s painting of Christine Spartali, a noted beauty of the 1860s is another in his series of clearly Western compositions that depict languid young women amid Oriental props. Later writers saw parallels between this work and Japanese images, such as woodblock prints by Utamaro, but the painting is just as firmly based upon 18th-century French chinoiserie. The Princesse is one of several early works for which preparatory sketches are known to have been used. One surviving sketch shows the artist blocking in the general composition and colors, but leaving out details of rug, screen and costume that were added to the final work. The spray of flowers at the left of the oil sketch were later eliminated. Whistler’s decision isolated Miss Spartali’s profile and increased the impact of her exotic visage. However, her father refused to purchase the work as a portrait of his daughter. Whistler was not willing to reduce the size of his signature for another potential purchaser, and the Pennells believed that this incident caused him to develop his butterfly cypher. However, the butterfly did not actually appear until several years later.

http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectNumber=F1903.91a-b


Gustave Moreau, The Toilette, 1885-1890, Gouache and watercolor on paper, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan Moreau’s father was an architect who taught him to draw and to paint while he was still a child. After studying under Picot, a Neoclassicist, he was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1846. After failing to win the Prix de Rome, he threw himself into studying on his own and increasingly admired the work of Delacroix and Chassériau. While studying in Italy, he was strongly influenced by Michelangelo and Carpaccio. His work was awarded a prize by the Salon in 1864. To mythical and religious themes he brought noble and luxuriant colors and a fineness of line, developing a personal style overflowing with exotic feeling. In 1888, he was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and in 1892 was appointed a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where the freedom he gave his students was instrumental in cultivating the talents of, for example, Matisse, Rouault, and Marquet. He taught that for an artist the most important qualities are imagination and being able to communicate psychological states through painting. His color sense, interiority, and originality made Moreau a bridge between the Romantics of the early nineteenth century and the Symbolists at that century’s end, an artist whose influence remains visible in such twentieth century movements as Surrealism and Art Informel. http://www.bridgestone-museum.gr.jp/en/collection/artist36/s1/

Gustave Moreau, The Toilette, 1885-1890, Gouache and watercolor on paper, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan

Moreau’s father was an architect who taught him to draw and to paint while he was still a child. After studying under Picot, a Neoclassicist, he was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1846. After failing to win the Prix de Rome, he threw himself into studying on his own and increasingly admired the work of Delacroix and Chassériau. While studying in Italy, he was strongly influenced by Michelangelo and Carpaccio. His work was awarded a prize by the Salon in 1864. To mythical and religious themes he brought noble and luxuriant colors and a fineness of line, developing a personal style overflowing with exotic feeling. In 1888, he was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and in 1892 was appointed a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where the freedom he gave his students was instrumental in cultivating the talents of, for example, Matisse, Rouault, and Marquet. He taught that for an artist the most important qualities are imagination and being able to communicate psychological states through painting. His color sense, interiority, and originality made Moreau a bridge between the Romantics of the early nineteenth century and the Symbolists at that century’s end, an artist whose influence remains visible in such twentieth century movements as Surrealism and Art Informel.

http://www.bridgestone-museum.gr.jp/en/collection/artist36/s1/


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