Jan Mainzer, Ph. D.
Department of Art and Art History, Marist College, Poughkeepsie NY 12601
(845) 575-3000 x 2028 (Library) x 2280 (Donnelley); Jan.Mainzer@marist.edu
Text and images copyright
Jan Mainzer 1995, 2000, 2002
Meeting 23: Romanticism Part 2
Required reading to support Meeting 23: Stokstad, pp. 984 "Romantic Painting" thru 996, top of column 2.
Required reading to support Meetings 24 ( Art as a separate reality: Abstraction) Stokestad, pp. 1072 "Picasso's Early Art" - 1077
Additional recommended reading posted on MERIT (Marist's electronic reserve room)
"Flashcard
Tutorial"
Review materials covered
in class: Choose either the web-based interactive version of the
tutorials, or click on "Microsoft Word version" for
tutorials that you can print out and study away from the computer.
Outline of today's class:
Recap of last time
Today we'll look at examples of Romantic Realism +
Romantic interest in Exoticism focusing on paintings by
Turner, Gericault, Delacroix + Goya
In dealing w/ these paintings:
Importance of starting w/ your gut response
Turner: landscape (seascape) as a vehicle for
communicating emotion + a current social concern
Gericault: focus on the human figure
--Art used for political commentary
Romantic emotionalism:
How does it differ from earlier + later works that
bring forth a strong emotional response?
Comparison of Delacroix' Death of Sardanapalus +
Goya's The Third of May
Key sentences:
Romantic realism consists of artists' dramatic depictions of current events. Romantic art covers a century + diverse styles, but an identifying feature is the artists' tendency to have intense emotional involvement w/ the subject matter.
[Drawing of The Slave Ship (1840) by J. M. W. Turner.]
Question: So What about this painting?
W/out knowing anything about the background of this work
What is your gut response to it? Why?
. . . Ominous, something is wrong
Things that might draw forth that response:
The oddly colored sky which has been described as
reminding one of blood, pus, + vomit
The dark mass + the waves over on the left
--Turner himself believed that color should
bring forth strong emotional reactions from the viewer
... Look more closely, + there are hands, feet + chains
sticking out of the water in the lower center + lower right
Plus some rather hungry looking fish circling around
This painting is often referred to as "The Slave Ship"
Its full title is: "Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying --Typhoon Coming On"
The event Turner is referring to was a very ugly one
in which business interests took precedence over any shreds of humanity
The incident took place in 1783
A trader had a large cargo of slaves
many of whom became ill + began to die en route
So to preserve the investment the captain ordered that
those who were ill + dying be thrown overboard
so that the slave trader could claim that the slaves
had been lost at sea, + then collect insurance
--They were covered for loss at sea but not for death through an epidemic
Now, this incident took place in 1783
Turner painted his picture in 1840 -- Was he a little slow, or what?
Actually, he was dealing w/ current concerns for
there was strong anti-slavery sentiment in England,
starting in 1840 (the year he painted the picture)
This incident involving the slave ship Zony was
described vividly in a book that just been published
So Turner was dealing w/ a current topic, +
from an artistic standpoint he was using the landscape
--or rather the seascape as a way of communicating the horror of this event
...Tho it's true that the details of what happened tend to get lost in the seascape
Cole was trying to do the same thing in the Voyage of Life, Manhood (1842)
--to use landscape to communicate the emotion of what was going on in his painting
Question: Who is more successful? Why?
[This is an open ended question, for which there's no
correct answer The important thing is that you're clear
on why you're responding the way you do]
We'll look at some details of Turner's painting in a moment
But one important thing first
Remember how Vermeer turned his studio into a
camera obscura to do his View of Delft?
Question: Do you think this is as carefully observed?
... Actually it IS carefully observed but in a different way
Turner did observe nature very carefully
but not in the quiet, methodical way that Vermeer did
He did do some open-air painting which was very unusual for his time
But he also simply used his eyes
There's a story that illustrates this in a rather dramatic way:
Once when he was on a voyage as an old man
a storm came up, + instead of scurrying down to his cabin
like everyone else he asked to be tied to the mast
This was a strange request but he was an
Englishman on an English ship + the
English tend to be tolerant of eccentricity
So the sailors said OK + did
And he had the opportunity to observe the storm
He had a magnificent visual memory
So he observed the storm, + then later painted
what he had seen (in another painting--not The Slave Ship)
(Here we looked at a number of details of the Slave Ship)
... See how he uses color in a very abstract way?
In this, Turner anticipated the work of the Impressionists
Turner heard once that an American who'd bought one of his paintings complained very mildly about the fact that a certain part of the painting was indistinct + Turner said "Tell him that indistinctness is my forte" [specialty] [footnote]
(Drawing of Theodore Gericault, the Raft of the Medusa 1819, approximately 16 x 23 feet.]
This is another "romantic realist" painting
also depicting an atrocity at sea
It's actually an earlier painting than Turner's:
Turner did his in 1840; Gericault (1791-1824) did this
painting, called The Raft of the Medusa in 1819
But we started w/ Turner rather than Gericault
because Turner's Slave Ship is a good transition between
Romantic Landscape, + Romantic Realism for in The
Slave Ship, the seascape dominates the picture
Here, w/ Gericault, we're confronted w/ human drama
rather than landscape as a vehicle for expressing emotion
and we start to move in to work that's emotionally raw
When Gericault exhibited it in France it wasn't at all well
received because it carried too great an emotional punch
+ because the French government saw it as a political attack
It seems that there was also--perhaps even primarily--a personal element involved:
Altho the family successfully hushed it up,
Gericault and the young wife of his uncle had an affair:
The resulting child was put up for adoption,
The wife was sent away to the country, +
Gericault did nothing
Later he was consumed with guilt,
and it seems that the issue of abandonment was very much behind The Raft of the Medusa
After the painting was done,
Gericault attempted suicide several times, +
indulged in reckless horseback riding
He died of injuries from a fall from his horse when he was in his early thirties
Here, the painting + the event that inspired it came close together:
The Medusa foundered in July 1816 + after
16 months work on the gigantic canvas (16 x 23 feet)
Gericault completed it in 1819.
Questions: What seems to be going on, +
What's the general emotional climate?
Where is the focal point, + what draws your eye there?
Where's the light coming from?
...NB: The light is coming from all over the place:
There's light in the background
It's coming from the left +
From behind the viewer
The Story: Refers to a major political scandal
The French frigate Medusa whose
captain was elderly + incompetent + who had gotten his post as a political favor
Drifted into the shallows off West Africa when
everyone was celebrating crossing the equator +
foundered --so it was an inexcusable accident
There weren't enough lifeboats for the 400 people aboard
SO: The officers took the boats +
152 Crew members were put on hastily built raft to be towed behind the boats
Eventually the tow lines were cut + the Raft
drifted for 12 days before the men on it were rescued
Of 152 who started out on the raft there were only 15 survivors
Some died of exposure + starvation
Others were killed by their ship-mates
(there was a fight over what remained of the food)
And an ugly part of this was cannibalism
Gericault avoided depicting the worst of this
He doesn't show the bits of human flesh hung up to dry
on the ropes that were holding up the mast
-- a grisly detail reported by the naval officer who rescued the few survivors
Doesn't show the full physical effects of starvation + exposure
-- from a "realistic" standpoint, they're shown
as being in awfully good shape
Depicts a moment not long before rescue when the men have have sighted a ship
...So he's not strictly accurate w/ regard to the
physical aspects of the seamens' abandonment, but the emotional punch is there
(Here, we looked at some details)
Now.
We started out our discussion of Romanticism last time
by speaking very briefly of the importance of the
Artist in Romantic painting + by making the
sweeping generalization that
Romanticism tends to be associated w/ emotionalism
A very good question you may be asking yourselves now is this:
Aren't these guys all showing a good bit of intelligence +
Aren't Turner + Gericault showing a social conscience?
The answer is Yes + Yes
They are both intelligent + concerned +
Gericault especially was using Art as a political tool
So you might ask,
What's the difference between Romanticism +
Art that shows social concern?
-- Indeed, what's the difference between Romantic art
and earlier + later art that draws forth from the viewer a strong emotional response?
That's not an easy set of questions
if for no other reason than the Romantic period
extends for about 100 years (from 1770-1870)
and embraces a tremendous diversity of artists + styles
I think, tho, that we can find a pretty good indication,
a fairly good answer, in 2 places:
The first is in Cole's overwrought description of the
thunderstorm in the Catskills
It was probably a superb storm, but as you recall,
he really goes overboard in his emotional and
highly imaginative involvement in the progress of the storm
If we take that as a starting place
I think we can see another element when we
compare 2 paintings:
one by the French painter Delacroix
the other by the Spanish painter Goya
Superficially, they're much alike as they're depictions of mass murder
But the "feel" is very different
They both have a strong emotional quality and
yet at the same time they're worlds apart
Not surprisingly, Delacroix is always
classed w/ the Romantics
BUT
Goya, who is one of Spain's greatest artists,
sometimes is placed w/ the Romantics
sometimes is classed w/ the Realists
sometimes discussed by himself
(Left: Drawing of Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus, 1826, approx 12 x 16 feet.)
(Right Drawing of Goya, Executions of the Third of May, 1808, painted: 1814-15 8' 9" x 13' 4")
Question: So here are the 2 paintings
How do they grab you? What's going on, +
What's the "feel" of each painting?
For Sardanapalus:
...among other possible reactions:
an disturbing blend of violence + sensuality
w/ the strange brooding Sardanapalus
lounging on his bed + watching what's going on
-- all the more disturbing, because if you set aside
the violence, the painting is rich + beautiful
There's also an odd quality of inviting the viewer to wallow in emotionality
For Goya:
Much more stark
Very strong emotionally,
but also more focused: the response is
empathy + horror for those facing the firing squad
There's no fantasy involved
... and it's an all to familiar a scene
Stories:
The Death of Sardanapalus
It's Delacroix' most controversial painting
It shocked Paris, + he himself was shocked by what he had made
The inspiration for the painting came from ancient history and from a
poem by Lord Byron called Sardanapalus
The luxurious Assyrian king Sardanapalus
who, when the enemy was at the gates
"Built" according to an ancient historian "an enormous pyre in his palace,
heaped upon it all his gold + silver as well as every article of the royal wardrobe and
then, shutting his concubines + eunuchs in the room which had been built in the
middle of the pyre, he consigned both them and himself and his palace to flames"
footnote
Delacroix identified w/ the king, probably not at all in the sense of sadism but
referring to his own spells of depression + despair
So here the painting can be looked at as a psychological self-portrait w/ exotic trappings
The Third of May
was meant as a memorial to those who had died during Napoleon's invasion of Spain
What made Napoleon's invasion possible was that
The Spanish king, Charles IV, his wife, + son Ferdinand
squabbled over who would rule Spain
Napoleon took advantage of this
He had troops in Spain, supposedly marching through
on their way to Portugal But instead, he saw his
opportunity + while the Spanish royal family was
fighting w/ itself Napoleon grabbed the throne
What happened then is that there was a rebellion
which the French put down w/out mercy + the
upshot of that was a vicious war that lasted 6 years
May 2: 1808: After Napoleon had seized the throne
There was a rumor in Madrid that the royal family would be kidnapped + murdered
A crowd formed outside the Royal residence hoping to catch a glimpse of royal family
When they didn't appear, suddenly the crowd
attacked the French w/ knives + bare hands
Next day, all Spaniards who were suspected of being involved
were shot w/out trial. This was the catalyst for a
larger rebellion that led to 6 years of a vicious war
