M4W11RomanticismPartTwo.pptxPresentation by Dr. Marc A. Cirigliano
Romanticism, Part 2 (plus Realism)
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), known to us as Goya, was a Spanish romantic painter of amazing versatility, imagination and genius. He is a unique figure, perhaps genuinely Romantic, in the sense that he was alone.
Almost all his work was for the aristocracy and the royal family. He studied in Italy in 1770-71, began to receive commissions and was called to paint at the King’s court beginning 1774, after which he almost exclusively painted in Madrid. He became a member of the Madrid Academy in 1780, became painter to the King in 1786, court painter in 1789 and chief court painter in 1790.
In 1790, an illness left him deaf, which some historians argued changed his personality over time; however, contemporary research has shown that from early in his career, he delved in forms of social realism often depicting scenes of suffering.
Goya
The Parasol
1777
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Yard with Lunatics
c. 1794
Goya possessed a tremendous stylistic range in his work, often with the form of the painting embodying the iconography. The Parasol, unique elements of the Rococo, while the Yard shows the suffering of mental illness with a humanity to see them as they were. He wrote to a friend in 1794 that he depicted what he saw earlier in his life, "a yard with lunatics, and two of them fighting completely naked while their warder beats them, and others in sacks."
Interesting to note that Goya paints the mentally ill as human, but, as we shall see, often paints the un-Enlightened citizens of Spain with distorted animal faces, as if forsaking reason brings out our raw animal nature.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
The Garrotted Man
c. 1779
etching
Goya’s painting of the Yard is often attributed to his illness, where he went deaf, in the 1790s. Scholars argue that he was projecting his own fears into his work, yet a recent monography by Dr. Janis Tomlinson presents evidence that Goya had continuity in his career, from beginning through to the end, that in such an image as The Garrotted Man and his other work of portraiture, genre scenes and history painting, Goya “had a vital drive to explore and exploit the potential of his own creativity.”
Here with The Garrotted Man, we see an example of a grotesque, horrorific subject. Garroting was a common form of execution in Spain, yet Goya, much earlier in his career than his illness in the 1790s, chooses to depict an execution and subsequent death as the barren event it was.
Image from The Metropolitan Museum: metmuseum.org
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "Art historical analysis with Goya’s Third of May, 1808," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed May 26, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/art-historical-analysis/
Click on the image to start the video.
Third of May, 1808
1814
oil on canvas
266 x 345.1 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
As the French under Napoleon attempt to conquer Spain, on the highest hill in Madrid, the French Malamutes execute the Spanish citizens who rioted against the French the night before. There is nothing heroic here with Goya, but rather “Man’s Inhumanity to Man.”
Note how the soldiers on the right are faceless, anonymous, as machines.
Francisco Goya
Let us look at a few of Los Caprichos, a series of 80 prints that Goya sold subscriptions to. Within the Caprices, there are two groups:
1-42 are satirical treatments of Spanish life.
43: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, is what he believes and tries to do with his Caprices.
44-80 are more fantastical, lampooning witchcraft and superstition.
Los Caprichos (The Caprices)
Plate 43, The sleep of reason produces monsters from Los Caprichos
1799
etching, aquatint, drypoint, and burin
plate: 21.2 x 15.1 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In other words, if you ignore reason in your actions, it produces monsters.
Francisco Goya
Sarah C. Shaefer writes:
Many of the prints in the Caprichos series express disdain for the pre-Enlightenment practices still popular in Spain at the end of the Eighteenth century (a powerful clergy, arranged marriages, superstition, etc.). Goya uses the series to critique contemporary Spanish society. As he explained in the advertisement, he chose subjects “from the multitude of follies and blunders common in every civil society, as well as from the vulgar prejudices and lies authorized by custom, ignorance or interest, those that he has thought most suitable matter for ridicule.”
The Caprichos was Goya’s most biting critique to date and would eventually be censored. Of the eighty aquatints, number 43, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” can essentially be seen as Goya’s manifesto and it should be noted that many observers believe he intended it as a self-portrait.
Sarah C. Schaefer, "Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters ," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed May 26, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/goya-the-sleep-of-reason-produces-monsters/.
Image from Wikipedia: Los_caprichos
No. 2: “They swear to be faithful, but marry the first who proposes”
Goya attacks the commercialization of sex and marriage. Here insincerity and hypocrisy are symbolized by the woman’s mask, which makes her look almost animal-like, as do the others.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: Los_caprichos
No. 8: “They carry her off”
Hooded men in the night carry off a woman.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: Los_caprichos
No. 12: “Tooth-hunting”
Goya attacks a common superstition. Here, people think the tooth of a hanged man is important for sorcery.
The characters are both together and united, embodying the meaning of the work.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: Los_caprichos
No. 31: “She prays for her”
One of the greatest in the series. It enraged the Inquisition, which no one ever expects.
It is not a nun praying for a young woman, but rather, praying for a prostitute to have more business.
Note the soft treatment of the young maid in contrast to the hard treatment of the two procuresses.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: Los_caprichos
No. 34: “Sleep overcomes them”
The only one with sympathy for the victim, as we see exhausted prostitutes having fallen asleep in jail.
A traditional pyramidal composition, but the woman at the apex of the composition is posed awkwardly.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: Los_caprichos
No. 54: “The shameful one”
The clergy stealing food for the poor and hungry.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
And there’s nothing to be done
(Y no hai remedio)
Plate 15 from The Disasters of War
(Los Desastres de la Guerra)
1810
etching, drypoint, burin and burnisher
14 x 16.7 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Los disastrous de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): 80 prints revealing the atrocities of war as the Spanish fought the invading French.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
A quote attributed to Goya:
“To warn men not to be
barbarians again.”
In addition to the subsequent slides in this presentation, be sure to explore the article by Christine Zappella:
"Francisco Goya, And there’s nothing to be done from The Disasters of War ," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed May 26, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/goya-and-theres-nothing-to-be-done-from-the-disasters-of-war/.
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
No. 1: “Sad presentiments of what is about to come”
Awful inhumanity is coming.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
No. 3: “The same.”
A man about to chop of the head of a soldier with an axe.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
No. 18: “Bury them and keep quiet”
Total degradation leading to starvation, death and execution.
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
No. 37: “This is worse”
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
No. 60: “There is no one to help them”
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: The_Disasters_of_War
No. 80: “Will she live again?”
The dead woman represents the truth, with hooded clergy in the background while a masked figure pounds the earth with a weapon.
Francisco Goya
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker , "Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring One Of His Sons ," in Smarthistory, November 18, 2015, accessed May 26, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/goya-saturn-devouring-one-of-his-sons/.
Click on the image to start the video.
Saturn Devouring One Of His Sons
1821-1823
143.5 x 81.4 cm
Prado, Madrid
Francisco Goya
Image from Wikipedia: Witches'_Sabbath _( The_Great_He -Goat)
For his eyes only, in his own house outside Madrid, Goya engages in extreme social criticism by excoriating the superstitious character of Spanish society.
Francisco Goya
Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat)
one of 14 from the Black Paintings series
1821-23
The Nightmare
1781
oil on canvas
Eroticism
An erotic imagining of Swiss-English artist Henry Fuseli, with a woman in a dream, with an incubus (a demon), on her, a stallion or even a mare, a “nightmare,” penetrating the drapery into her bed, as she exhibits the aftermath of sexual ecstasy.
All this is embodied in the dark chiaroscuro, disheveled sheets and he post-experience uninhibited posture.
Read: Dr. Noelle Paulson, "Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed May 27, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/henry-fuseli-the-nightmare/.
Henry Fuseli
William Blake (1757-1827) was apprenticed to the great engraver James Basire. He became a master engraver. He copied, in a linearity reminiscent of Gothic art, many monuments in the medieval Westminster Abbey.
After entering the Royal Academy in 1778, he had several philosophical run-ins with Sir Joshua Reynolds. Blake attacked Reynolds’s Grand Style with its ideal beauty, arguing that such visual “generalizations” robbed viewers of the essential details of reality.
Artists, Blake contended, should focus on “minute particulars” of detail using a linear style, not smoothing everything over with a general beauty, which misled viewers. Blake expanded this idea to attack British Establishment politics, religion and education, arguing the deceived and enslaved people.
William Blake
Metropolitan Museum of Art, " William Blake, The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins ," in Smarthistory, January 25, 2016, accessed May 27, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/william-blake-the-parable-of-the-wise-and-foolish-virgins/.
Click on the image to start the video.
The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins
ca. 1799–1800
watercolor, pen and black ink over graphite
14 3/16 × 13 1/16″ / 36 × 33.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
William Blake (1757-1827)
Image and text from Wikipedia:
The Clod & the Pebble
From Songs of Innocence & Experience
1794
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.
So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattles feet:
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.
William Blake (1757-1827)
Interpretation:
Blake thought life was defined by the innocence of youth coping with the physical struggle in society as one grows up. Hence, we have the physical metaphors of the clod of dirt and pebble of stone. The challenge is to have a love based on sharing, not one based n greed, while greed which produces suffering, as we see in the visual which are integrated into the poem here.
Blake wrote:
“I must create my own system or be enslaved by another’s.”
Newton
c.1805
Color print, ink and watercolor on paper
William Blake
Blake portrays Sir Isaac Newton, mathematician, scientist, astronomer, and inventor of calculus, as a powerful and beautiful classical nude inscribing geometric forms with a compass.
Blake was a mystic who thought that science had value, hence Newton in the form of a beautiful classical nude. But, he thought science ignored the more important and powerful spiritual realm, hence Newton is bent over, looking downwards and bound to the solid matter of the earth, here as solid rock. In fact, Newton’s left leg and perhaps his buttocks are fused with the rock.
Image from the Tate Gallery: blake -the-river-of-life
William Blake
The River of Life
c. 1805
Ink and watercolor on paper
Blake rejected Enlightenment science and rationalism because they were not the only way to truth. He thought the world was a spiritual place that rationalism had bound up and limited with measurements and rules.
Here we see Blake’s grand concept of human existence in all its spiritual beauty, with spiritual forms free and easy flowing down the river of life.
Note the medieval Gothic-like elongation of the forms, dematerialized, as an angel approaches from heaven.
Image from Wikipedia: John_Constable
John Constable
Dedham Vale
1802
Ink and watercolor on paper
John Constable (1776-1837) was born in East Bergholt, Sussex, England, the area that served as his source for art his entire life. It is known now as “Constable Country.”
His father a miller, Constable had an intimate link to the land and the flow of the seasons, with growth, harvest, winter and so on.
Influence of Claude Lorrain:
Open central area bathed light.
Flanked by coulisses.
Constable’s major influence was the French Baroque landscape painter Claude Lorrain, who design scheme influenced his compositions.
Constable, along with J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), revolutionized Western painting because they elevated the lowly genre of landscape to the level of history painting with their many innovations.
Constable is fully Romantic, having said: "Painting is but another word for feeling.“
Image from the Met: metmuseum.org
John Constable
Seascape Study
c. 1824-28
Oil on paper laid on canvas
Revolutionary in that this was painted, as the French say, en plein air (outdoors), not in the studio. Done, then, at the seashore where Constable observed a rainstorm just off the coast.
Note the heavy and rough application of paint to capture the black clouds and the quick but broad strokes to captures the sheeting rain.
For a more in-depth look at Constable’s technique and his painting en plein air, see this excellent article, with video, by the Tate:
“Constable's techniques, materials and 'six footer' paintings”
Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "John Constable, The Hay Wain ," in Smarthistory, May 30, 2018, accessed May 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/hay-wain/.
Click on the image to start the video.
John Constable
The Hay Wain
(Landscape: Noon)
1821
Oil on canvas
130.2 x 185.4 cm
The National Gallery, London
Wain is an archaic form of wagon; hence we have a hay wagon.
Although Harris and Zucker point out the ills of the industrial revolution in England, Constable was also focused on studying the details of the atmosphere, cloud formations, the varieties of a given color in a scene, and, the time of day, the seasons, etc. He did sketches and made notes as to time, day, date, etc. In this sense, he was an Enlightenment man, scientific. We refer to his innovation as local color, instead of color learned in a studio.
He also felt a scene and imbued it with feeling—in The Hay Wain, the beauty of a rustic country summer scene.
Critics lambasted Constable. He painted trees, grass and shrubs as green. Critics, used to the darkening old Renaissance master paintings, thought brown should be the dominant tone. One critic remarked of his painting, “Take that ugly green thing away.” Another critic derisively referred to the realistic white eddies in the stream as “Constable Snow.”
Delacroix was so impressed with The Hay Wain at the 1824 Salon that he took to repainting the background of his Scene of the Massacre at Scios while it hung on the wall at the Salon.
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "John Constable, View on the Stour near Dedham ," in Smarthistory, December 10, 2015, accessed May 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/john-constable-view-on-the-stour-near-dedham/.
Click on the image to start the video.
John Constable
View on the Stour near Dedham
1822
oil on canvas
51 x 74″
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA
In View on the Stour near Dedham we see:
Local Color
Constable said there were over a hundred shades of green in a single tree
Variation of cloud color in the sky
Tremendous variety of color in the water, with eddies and also reflected light
People at one with their work and with nature, a sense of ease with nature.
A poetic feeling of an everyday genre scene, not a grand history painting.
Image from Smarthistory: the-harbor-of- dieppe
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
The Harbor of Dieppe
c. 1826
Oil on canvas
173.7 x 225.4 cm
Frick Collection, New York
Joseph Mallord William Turner focused on landscapes and seascapes, often embodied in contemporary events, to the exclusion of the traditional highest genre of history painting.
He, Delacroix, Ingres and Goya are the three great painters of the first half of the 19th century. Born in London, he grew up near Covent Garden and the River Thames, with the atmosphere, with its mist, fog and transient lighting, focusing his painterly eye on light, color and the local color of scenes.
Of Turner, Dr. Ben Pollitt writes:
A compulsive experimenter, Turner was a thorny devil; a painter whose work ranks among the most visually audacious that any British artist has ever produced and yet, across the age groups, across the social divides, he is still the country’s most celebrated and indeed most cherished artist. We love him because he challenges us, dares us even, to keep looking … [Here we see] Turner’s increasing fascination with the dramatic effects of sunlight…
Please read on at:
Ben Pollitt, "J. M. W. Turner, The Harbor of Dieppe ," in Smarthistory, January 14, 2016, accessed May 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/j-m-w-turner-the-harbor-of-dieppe/.
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
The Fighting Temeraire
1839
Oil on canvas
90.7 x 121.6 cm
The National Gallery, London
As Dr. Abram Fox writes:
Ambiguity was on Turner’s mind when he began work on his painting, whose full title is The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838. He was familiar with the namesake ship, HMS Temeraire, as were all Britons of the day. Temeraire was the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where Napoleon’s forces were defeated, and which secured British naval dominance for the next century.
By the late 1830s, however, Temeraire was no longer relevant…
Rather than placing Temeraire in the middle of his canvas, Turner paints the warship near the left edge of the canvas. He uses shades of white, grey, and brown for the boat, making it look almost like a ghost ship. The mighty warship is being pulled along by a tiny black tugboat, whose steam engine is more than strong enough to control its larger counterpart. Turner transforms the scene into an allegory about how the new steam power of the Industrial Revolution quickly replaced history and tradition…
Read in detail at:
Dr. Abram Fox, "J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire ," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed May 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/tur ner-the-fighting-temeraire/.
Lori Landay and Dr. Beth Harris, "J. M. W. Turner, Slave Ship ," in Smarthistory, December 9, 2015, accessed May 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/j-m-w-turner-slave-ship/.
Click on the image to start the video.
J.M.W. Turner
Slave Ship
(Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On)
1840
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Turner painted this just before the salve trade was abolished.
Here we see Romantic experimentation with visual form with his focus on a storm at sea and his desire to point the social injustice of slavery.
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "J. M. W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed — The Great Western Railway ," in Smarthistory, November 25, 2015, accessed May 28, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/j-m-w-turner-rain-steam-and-speed-the-great-western-railway/.
Click on the image to start the video.
J.M.W. Turner
Rain, Steam, and Speed—The Great Western Railway
1844
Oil on canvas
National Gallery, London
Turner painted this just before the salve trade was abolished.
