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The Romantic Art of John Constable and EugeneDelacroix
Claudia ReidClaudia Reid
I have a kingdom of my own, fertile and populous – my landscape and my children.
– John Constable
To claim that an artist was part of the Romantic Movement is a laborious and
confusing task. As Isaiah Berlin stated in his 1965 lecture, The Roots of Romanti-
cism, Romanticism is that which is undefinable. However, Hugh Honour claims
one characteristic by which Romantic artists can be defined, saying “the only
constant and common factor in their ever-shifting attitudes and scales of value
was belief in the importance of individuality – of the individual self and its ca-
pacity for experience.” His statement proves true for John Constable and Eu-
gene Delacroix, for whom individualism is at the heart of their most Romantic
works. Individualism influenced their choices in regards to their unconvention-
al representations of the everyday world and the common person, which was
considered traditionally to be without artistic merit. Furthermore, it prompted
them to use painting styles and methods that aroused the senses and reflected
their own personal engagements with the world, rather than ones that appealed
to the intellect or represented grand, social, and historical narratives.
For one, Constable and Delacroix depicted subject matter that was beyond the
conventions of their time. Constable was part of a larger artistic trend at the
time where “public history was overridden by the private history and individ-
ual’s relation to the landscape.” Throughout his lifetime, Constable painted pri-
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marily within the pure landscape genre, at a time when it was considered to be
a lower genre than historical painting. In its pure form, it was regarded as infe-
rior for its lack of “human action of social and moral significance.” Generally, a
landscape painting was more highly regarded if it contained human figures that
alluded to a religious, historical or mythical story. Claude Lorrain, who was themost “revered at that time above all other landscape painters” respected this
tradition. In his Landscape with Hagar and the Angel (1646), the landscape acts as
the setting for two figures who allude to the biblical story of Hagar; Constablewas influenced by this work and the tradition that produced it, however, he
chose to paint landscapes without overt moral content. Moreover, he personal-
ly saw the pure landscape genre as high art and strove to have it respected assuch. He reasoned that traditional narratives could be replaced simply by the
emotional responses that natural landscapes evoked in relation to past
personal experiences.
As Honour explains, the Romantics “felt free […] to give personal significance to
those which had long been familiar […].” Constable’s paintings that depict his
native landscapes are “explicitly autobiographical [in] character.” Constable
never travelled outside of England and the only subject matter for his early
work is the countryside around his birth place of East Bergholt, a small farming
village situated in the valley of the River Stour, Suffolk. One such work, Gold-
ing Constable’s Kitchen Garden (1815), was painted from his parent’s home. It
shows a view from above, looking down to the back gardens. While it clearly
represents a landscape that is very familiar to the artist, the painting’s emotion-
al character also reflects Constable’s family life. Vaughan explains how the qual-
ity of afternoon light conveys the passage of time and of the approaching
dusk. It parallels his mother’s recent death and his father’s ailing
condition. It is obvious here that Constable would not have felt it necessary to
place a Venus or an Aphrodite in his kitchen gardens, because the relationship
this landscape has to his personal history has replaced the classical narrative.
He chose subjects that reflected his personal view of the world.
Delacroix differs from Constable in his subject matter, because Delacroix paint-
ed within the historical tradition, producing grand narratives. Despite this, his
works are unconventional by focusing on the common person rather than the
hero. In his Scenes from the Massacre at Scios (1824), he paints some of the surviv-
ing civilians after the Greek massacre by Turkish forces in 1822. They are
wounded, and in some cases, plead for help. They are common people who
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wear simple clothes; they are un-heroic and dejected. For critics accustomed to
neoclassical depictions of battle scenes, these figures would have been consid-
ered as ‘ordinary’ as Constable’s landscapes. Honour explains that in Romantic
art, “the grand style and the heroic scale, hitherto reserved for grand and heroic
themes – stories from the Bible, the exploits of Greek and Roman heroes, the
deeds of rules and their generals – were for the first time adopted to record the
sufferings of ordinary people.”
Delacroix also went against convention by using “modern and contemporary
sources rather than the classics.” His sources were primarily literary, namely
from Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, and Walter Scott and legends of the Middle
Ages. His Death of Sardanapalus does not represent a contemporary event such
as inMassacre at Scios. However, it does represent a contemporary interpretation
of the hero. The story of Sardanapalus has a history of being depicted in art, all
the way from Greek sculpture in Antiquity to the eighteenth century. Howev-
er, a different and new “attitude toward Sardanapulus seems to have been initi-
ated in the nineteenth century by Byron’s play of 1821 (…).” Byron’s described
Sardanapalus as a “bourgeois dandy” – one who stands apart from the rest and
follows their own moral and social order. It is Byron’s version that Delacroix
translates in his painting. This is epitomized by the “the haughty and chill isola-
tion” of the hero who remains apart from the massacre on his elevated
divan. Therefore, while Sardanapulus is a traditional figure, Delacroix paints
a version of him that is based on a contemporary literary view.
As previously discussed, Constable and Delacroix used unconventional repre-
sentations of the everyday, as seen in Constable’s landscapes and Delacroix’s
contemporary subjects. They made art out of that which was considered to be
without artistic merit. They were able to do so because of their belief that the
individual artist discovers the artistic value within their subjects. In conse-
quence, they transferred their personal visions into their paintings. These indi-
vidualistic representations created paintings that do not represent a uniform
and ideal reality, but rather one that is fragmented. As Honour states, “in the
complex pictorial composition there is no strongly defined pattern around a
central axis, nothing to suggest a firm social or cosmic structure – rather the re-
verse”.
Constable’s portrayals of mundane things “emphasize the ‘framing of the land-
scape’” and are shown in his use of composition. His paintings bring the view-
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er into closer physical proximity to the subject, essentially allowing the viewer
to enter the landscape. In his compositions, the viewer stands at eye level or just
below the subject. Heffernan explains that “verticality and pre-empted fore-
grounds” were used “to absorb the spectator, to dissolve the opposition between
the viewer and the viewed.” In Constable’sThe Leaping Horse (1825), one looks
slightly up towards the main point of focus, the man on his leaping horse. The
tall trees in the background and the expansive sky stand over the figures, and
over the viewer. One is immersed in the landscape; there is a directness that
one cannot ignore. Constable still used elevated points of view on certain occa-
sions. However, these can be explained by the physical location from which he
painted. The painter looks down upon the gardens in Golding Constable’s Kitchen
Garden because he was painting from a window overlooking the scene.
The physical proximity creates a fragmented view of the landscape where one
cannot claim an objective view of the world. Traditionally, landscape painters
were physically removed from the subject they painted. This reflects the acade-
mic tradition of combining idealized studies of the natural elements in the stu-
dio. The artist maintained a more ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ view because they did
not experience first-hand the things they were representing. This is shown in
the point of views of academic landscapes where the viewer looks down at the
landscape from a distance. Constable opposed this tradition in his composi-
tions and in his artistic practices. Producing oil sketches outdoors from the sites
he painted was a “central activity” throughout his career. He therefore physi-
cally experienced the landscapes he painted. His paintings act like photographs
in the sense that they represent Constable as having actually been there and,
like a photograph, he presents a “snapshot” of the landscape. He therefore
transferred to canvas his own subjective experience and one singular point of
view. One does not see the landscape in its entirety but sees one viewpoint.
Delacroix also painted in a fragmented manner and did not pretend to offer an
overall depiction of the historical events he painted. InScenes from the Massacre at
Scios, he painted a defining historical moment of the massacre. He does not
even depict the massacre itself. Instead, he paints the moment after the mas-
sacre. The figures are mostly immobile, lying on the ground and upon each
other. The only movement comes from the Turk on horseback behind the in-
nocents, and the small group of figures in the background. Friedlander shows
how the title word “scenes” points to how the work is “somewhat anecdotal in
effect.” He does not present an overall view of what has happened, but in-
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stead, an aspect of it.
As has been shown, Constable and Delacroix were guided by their own
“artistic will,”
rather than traditional and academic formulas that were inspired by individ-
ualistic ways of seeing the world. Furthermore, they both began to paint sensu-
ally rather than intellectually. As Romantics, they wanted “to appeal to the sens-
es rather than to the mind.” The senses are stimulated by the paintings’ engag-
ing compositions and expressive use of colour and light.
The compositions that Constable and Delacroix used to engage the viewer with
the subject on a visual level also engaged the viewer emotionally. Delacroix
filled the canvas with his figures in Scenes from a Massacre at Scios; they “are
pushed forward towards the beholder.” The Massacre at Scios marked, for the
painter, a move away from the Academy’s veneration of the “frieze-like quality”
that was so admired in Poussin and emulated by other painters. Instead,
Delacroix framed his figures in such a way that, along with the canvas’ large
size, they overwhelm the viewer. One cannot help but feel for their condition.
Constable also used light to provoke emotional responses within the viewer. In
many of Constable’s works, he managed to create captivating performances out
of what already existed in the landscapes. One such example is Haleigh
Castle (1828-29). The painting depicts a landscape in which castle ruins sit upon
an outcropping overlooking distant seas. The scenery is remarkable for the
emotive qualities it conveys. Grey rain clouds darken the left side of the canvas
while bright shafts of sunlight light up the dark seas below. A man and his dog
stand below the ruins, dwarfed by the landscape. One is unsure whether the
storm is moving in upon the diminutive figure and his dog or whether it is just
departing. The work was painted soon after Constable’s wife’s death in
1828, and it is often viewed as a sign for his sorrow over this loss. Despite its
personal significance for the artist, a narrative is created in the painting through
the clouds’ theatrics, which contrast between light and darkness. After all, Con-
stable famously wrote: “it will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which
the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of senti-
ment.”
Like Constable’s use of light, Delacroix employed an expressive use of colour.
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Chu states that both Delacroix and Baudelaire “stressed that color in painting
can summon emotions in the viewer […] that can be as powerful as those elicit-
ed by music.” She later states that “the association of color with emotion was a
crucial aspect of Delacroix’s thinking about painting.” In Death of Sardanapalus,
the heroic figure lies upon a divan covered in a red cloth. The cloth of the divan
cascades down over the side and across the floor to where the massacre is tak-
ing place. It could almost be a path of blood. It runs diagonally across the can-
vas, providing a dramatic backdrop to the pearly white skin of the writhing
nude females. The black-skinned figure slashing the horse’s neck on the left
hand side of the canvas parallels the billowing dark smoke of the right. Along
with the rhythmic lines, the painting evokes strong emotional responses.
Delacroix also used colour to convey his individualism. For him, contour repre-
sented “idea and convention.” By accentuating his use of colour, and develop-
ing new colour theories, he saw himself as rebelling against stylistic formula –
asserting his own personal views. Delacroix developed and used innovative
colour theories that inspired many later artists, namely the Neo-Impressionists
who, through the words of Paul Signac, declared him as their precursor. He
did not adopt the traditional practice of mixing variable amounts of black and
white to the subject’s colours in order to create half-tones and shading. These
were to be painted instead with the complementary colour of the part of the
object that was lit. He used colour to convey tonal variations because he saw
colour as light; colour could not be separated from light.
In conclusion, Constable and Delacroix employed many innovative artistic
practices. Both artists’ paintings, with their expressive pictorial elements, creat-
ed sensual worlds that inspired the emotions. Both managed to create art out of
the everyday, from that which was previously considered to be without artistic
merit. In so doing, they defined a personal view and engagement with the
world as the basis for artistic creation. This practice represents inherent indi-
vidualism. A negative aspect to their work is that by representing individual re-
sponses and views of the world, rather than a clear and understandable intellec-
tual one, increased allusiveness is bred. These Romantic tendencies have not
abated since their time, and contemporary art usually presents fragmented rep-
resentations of our physical and social worlds. After all, “the social conditions of
commerce, industry, and public life that influenced Romanticism have intensi-
fied, not disappeared.” At the same time, art is still viewed by many as a pow-
erful method of communication. But the question remains, if art is proficient at
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expressing an individual’s interior world, can it still connect to a social reality,
and take a political stance in regards to the social factors that influence an indi-
vidual’s emotional state and well being?
Endnotes
1. Anita Grants, “Studies in 19 Century Art and Architecture: Romanticism,”
(Lecture, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, September 28 2009).
2. Hugh Honour, “Introduction,” and “For Lack of a Better Name,” in Romanti-
cism, reprint edition (London: Penguin Books, 1984), 23.
3. James A. W. Heffernan, The Re-Creation of Landscape: A Study of Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Constable and Turner (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of
New England, 1985), 56.
4. Ray Lambert, John Constable and the Theory of Landscape Painting (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 28.
5. Ibid.
6. William Vaughan, John Constable (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), 18.
7. Ibid.
8. Lambert, John Constable and the Theory of Landscape Painting, 4.
9. Honour, “Introduction,” and “For Lack of a Better Name,” 18.
10. Ibid.
11. Grants, “Studies in 19 Century Art” (October 5 2009).
12. Vaughan, John Constable, 13.
13. Ibid., 39.
14. Ibid.
15. Honour, “Introduction,” and “For Lack of a Better Name,” 40.
16. Barthélémy Jobert, Delacroix (Chichester, United Kingdom: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 102.
17. Ibid., 104.
18. Jack J.Spector, Delacroix: the death of Sardanapalus (London: Allen Lane,
1974), 46-51.
19. Ibid., 51-52.
20. Ibid., 59-60.
21. Ibid., 62.
22. Honour, “Introduction,” and “For Lack of a Better Name,” 49.
23. Peter Bishop, An Archetypal Constable: National Identity and the Geography of
Nostalgia (Cranbury, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson Unviersity Press, 1995), 71.
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24. Heffernan, The Re-Creation of Landscape, 56.
25. Ibid., 132.
26. Vaughan, John Constable, 39.
27. Grants, “Studies in 19 Century Art” (October 5 2009).
28. Vaughan, John Constable, 26.
29. Albert Boime, Art in the Age of Conterrevolution, 1815-1848(Chicago: The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 2004), 442.
30. Grants, “Studies in 19 Century Art” (October 21 2009).
31. Walter F. Friedlander, David to Delacroix (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Oxford
University Press, 1968), 112.
32. James H. Rubin, “Delacroix and Romanticism,” in The Cambridge Companion
to Delacroix, edited by Beth S. Wright (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001), 49.
33. Honour, “Introduction,” and “For Lack of a Better Name,” 49.
34. Louis Hawes, “Constable’s Haleigh Castle and British Romantic Ruin Paint-
ing,” The Art Bulletin 6, no.3 (Sept. 1983): 456.
35. Vaughan, John Constable, 64.
36. Ibid.
37. Joshua C. Taylor, “John Constable: Letters and Notes on Painting (1802-
1836),” in Nineteenth-Century Theories of Art (Berkely and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1987), 301.
38. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, “‘A Science and an Art at Once’: Delacroix’s Pic-
torial Theory and Practice,” in The Cambridge Companion to Delacroix, edited by
Beth S. Wright (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 95.
39. Chu, “‘A Science and an Art at Once’: Delacroix’s Pictorial Theory and Prac-
tice,” 95.
40. Ibid., 90.
41. Ibid., 91.
42. Beth S. Wright, “Painting Thoughts: An Introduction to Delacroix,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Delacroix, edited by Beth S. Wright (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2001), 4.
43. Chu, “‘A Science and an Art at Once’: Delacroix’s Pictorial Theory and Prac-
tice,” 92.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Honour, “Introduction,” and “For Lack of a Better Name,” 17.
47. Richard Eldridge et al, “Romanticism” in Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics, edited by
Michael Kelly (Oxford Art Online).
th th
th st
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