Mid 19th Century Art & Architecture: Realism, Photography, and Iron

Iron Opens Doors…

Industrial Revolution - Economy

Time Frame of Realism: 1848-late 1860s– beginning: conclusion of Napoleonic Wars – trains – transport raw materials to factories in city– effect: class system

• capitalists --> gained centralized economic control • laboring class --> lack of education & poor living• middle class --> adopted “laissez-faire” policy

Industrial Revolution: Technology

• Photography• Trains• Iron – steel in

building!

This building used new IRON technology in an ironic way... What FIRSTS were made by this building?

Crystal Palace, Sir John Paxton, London, iron and glass, 1850

Grand Staircase, the Opera, 1861-74, Paris, Charles Garnier

(IRON structure)

Historicism style-different periods combined

Urban redevelopment plan for Paris by Napoleon III

Based on Baroque style

Garnier: “to hear, to see, and above all, to be seen”

Mirrors on columns for ladies to check their hair

Eiffel Tower, Gustav Eiffel, Paris, 1889, iron.

Taller than Notre Dame and other buildings in Paris.

Created for 1889 Worlds Fair

Brooklyn BridgeJohn Augustus and Washington Augustus Roebling, NY, 1867-1883

•Greatest construction achievement of era.•Designer +11 workers killed in its construction.•Carries millions of people each day.•Roebling, German Immigrant, had major breakthrough in suspension bridge technology (web truss).

Realism: Social & Political Equality

• political context: Marxism• Communist Manifesto (c. 1850)

– thesis: all history was history of class struggles

– humanity’s relationship to material wealth

• Darwin theory of evolution• Comte: positivism…all

knowledge comes from tested scientific proof

Tenement Interior in Poverty Gap, an English Coal Heaver’s Home, Jacob Riis, 1889. Published study in NY called How the Other Half Lives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZl4KXsaKVE

Realism – Cultural Context

– Role of Artist: • no longer to simply reveal beautiful & sublime• aimed to tell the truth • not beholden to higher, idealized reality (i.e., God)

– Subjects:• ordinary events and objects • working class & broad panorama of society• psychological motivation of characters

Realism in France: Courbet

The Stonebreakers, 1850Miserable job; socialist ideals; Monumentality of everyday -Self educated artist, SALON REJECT …

“Show me an angel, and I’ll paint you one.” - hugely influential to Impressionists and Modern Art

Painting was destroyed in WWII so that is why image quality is so poor

Courbet’s The Burial at Ornans (c. 1850)

Huge scale = monumental, but not glorified. Earth tones, everyday people. S curve composition. Unflattering pics of

provincial officials, dog and people are distracted.

Realism- Jean Francois Millet

• Millet (1814-75)– theme: class distinction

• Peasantry v. urban middle class

– allegory: religious– Wanted to “make the trivial

seem sublime.” – portrayal of nature:

• atmospheric qualities• golden glow of sunlight

Millet’s The Gleaners (c. 1857)

•Barbizon School of French painting

•Poorest of the poor, picking up scraps of grain

•Figures become part of landscape

•Haystacks and wagon reflect shapes of gleaners

•Seen as socialist painting

Rosa Bonheur’s Plowing on the Ninverais (c. 1850)

Influenced by Positivism.. Large canvas, virtues of simple country living in a sweeping panorama… noted animal painter who fought for women’s rights

French Realism- Honore Daumier

• Soldiers killed everyone in a workers apt. complex

• Illustrates 3 generations murdered in surprise attack

• Lithograph (print) used to mass produce image

• French government tried to suppress

Rue Transomonain, Daumier, lithograph, 1834

Daumier’s Third Class Carriage (c. 1865)

Influence of William Hogarth

Daumier was jailed for satirizing king political cartoon

Dignity of working class, even though crammed together in mass transportation

1st piece showing dehumanizing mass transport

American Realism- Eakins the Anatomist

• Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)– teacher: Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts

• taught anatomy to medical students & figure drawing to art students

• disapproved of academic technique of drawing from plaster casts

– used nude model– allowed female students to study male nude

• Critics called him a “butcher” and “degrading”

Eakins’ Gross Clinic (c. 1875)

Triangular composition with Baroque lighting

Eakins worked from photograph of Dr. Gross (medical professor)

Celebrates advances in medical science

Eakins was noted anatomist who taught anatomy & figure drawing, pioneered letting black and female students study and draw nudes

Eakins vs. Rembrandt…

Henry O. Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson, 1893

•American realist taught by Eakins

•1st noted black painter

•Painterly brushwork, monumental forms

•Dignity of exchange between generations; answers ugly stereotypes of African Americans

•Unsentimental yet affectionate

US Realism: Winslow Homer’s The Lifeline

•Homer began as freelance illustrator Spent a year on N. Sea Coast of England

•Sketches of an actual event

Central Park, Frederick Las Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, 1858-80, New York City

• 1st public park in US; contest held in late 1850s• NYC population had tripled in recent years• Designers created Romantic English landscape on swamps and bluffs• Provided recreation and nature for city workers and immigrants

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X, 1988

•American portrait artist much sought after in US and Europe

•This portrait caused a scandal in the Paris salon of 1888

•Sargent moved to England and painted quasi impressionist

•Captured personality of his subjects

•Painterly brushwork, outstanding capture of clothing/fashions

English – Pre-Raphaelites: the anti-Realists

• Dante Gabriel Rosetti - poet & painter

• Returned to more Venetian styles; influenced Symbolism

• Medieval stories & spirituality

“I have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell:I know the grass beyond the door,The sweet keen smell,The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.”

The Roman Widow, Rosetti, 1848

English Realism/Romanticism – John Ruskin

• Published Modern Painters In 1843– noted art critic

• Helped establish the career of J.M.W. Turner and launch the Pre-Raphaelite painters.

• Foreshadowed the Green Movement: predicted damage to environment from Industrial Revolution.

• Art professor, critic, social reformer, philosopher, writer He believed that all great art should

communicate an understanding and appreciation of nature.

English Realism – Arts and Crafts

• Ruskin - loss of fine craft through Industrialization

• Movement leader: Morris, ardent socialist, poet, artist

• Dehumanized factory labor; loss of pride in work… search for nature

• Female artisans in metal working, textile arts, etc.

• Morris worked w/PRB artists like Rosetti and Burne-Jones

Flora Tapestry, 1885, William Morris

US Arts and Crafts Movement

• In US,: home design, furniture, and ceramics – still in use today

• Stickley furniture (Mission Style) -buy today !

• Home Depot Authentic Mission Style Lighting Collection

• Simplicity, Honesty, Truth• Emphasizing wood grain

Mission Media Cabinet, Walnut, Target, Assembly Required, $159.99

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NADAR, Eugène Delacroix, ca. 1855.

Realism co-existed with

other art movements like

the Pre-Raphaelite

Brotherhood and the tail end

of Romanticism.

Edouard Manet - Realism

• Manet - Realist movement• However, exhibited with Impressionists• Luncheon on the Grass caused a scandal

although inspired by Giorgione• Salon de les Refusés Exhibition• Olympia scandalized Paris Salon

32ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863.

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34ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863.