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The 18th and 19th
Centuries
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Official Art
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(Neoclassicism,
Romanticism and
Art Styles in 19th century -
Art Map)
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Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-Duval
Jean Andre
Rixens
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see collections:
Horace Vernet
Alexandre Cabanel
Adolphe
William Bouguereau
Lord Frederic Leighton
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Thomas
Couture
Paul Baudry
Charles Gleyre
John
William
Godward
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The Salons and the Academies
Huge crowds regularly flocked to the exhibitions at the Paris Salon
and London's Royal Academy of Arts. The public showed extraordinary
interest in the paintings on show, some of which had to be
protected by barriers and guarded by the police. The fear was not of
malicious attacks on the works themselves, but of over-enthusiastic
crowds getting too close. Artists whose work was selected for
exhibition enjoyed immediate success and the value of their
paintings was greatly increased. As a result, a recognizably
"academic style" developed as artists sought to create works of art
that appealed to the exhibition selectors.
Horace Vernet (1789-1863),
Jean Leon Gerome (1824-1904), and
Alexandre Cabanel
(1823-89) were among those artists who enjoyed such high esteem in the
second half of the century. Another of their number,
Adolphe
William Bouguereau (1825-1905), once boasted at the height of his
fame, "Every minute of mine costs a hundred francs."
Run according to a strict hierarchy, the French Academy of Painting
and Sculpture had been dissolved in 1793 by David and the Abbe
Gregoire because, as stated in the Salon guide for that year, "the
main characteristic of genius is independence".
William Blake and Jakob Carstens, among others, also dismissed the institutions as too
didactic. However, in the mid-19th century, they were a necessary
testing ground for painters of "serious" art, and won the
endorsement of painters such as
Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-96),
who praised the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Overall, the
academies became more and more influential, placing greater emphasis
on formal, didactic works than on the more spontaneous approach that
had previously been so important in artistic training.
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Charles Gleyre
Evening, or Lost Illusions
1843
Musee du
Louvre, Paris
The traditional subject matter of myth and legend found
its way into the homes of art collectors:
this work is a relatively informal and intimate portrayal
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THE SALON OF 1863
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Edouard Manet
Dejeuner sur l'Herbe
1863
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The paintings exhibited at the Paris Salons represented only a small
fraction of those submitted to the exacting jury, who took care to
ensure that academic standards rather than creative genius remained
the prime criterion. To pacify the many protesters, Napoleon III
created an alternative salon in 1863, to enable the public itself to
judge the merit of the works on show. Most of the people who visited
the Salon des Refuses that year went in a spirit of hostility. At
the Salon of 1863,
the emperor himself purchased a nude by
Cabanel, regarded as
perfectly decent and wholly unsensual because of the mythological
subject matter, whereas the Dejeunersur I'Herbe by Edouard Manet
(1832-83) was judged by the jury to be vulgar and was turned down.
Gerome (and to a lesser extent
Cabanel) proved to be the most bitter
adversary of the Impressionists and or the work of Manet in
particular: he strongly opposed an exhibition of Impressionist
paintings donated from the Caillebotte collection that was due to be
held at the Musee du Louvre.
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Alexandre Cabanel
The Birth of Venus
1862
Muse'e d'Orsay, Paris
This
work earned the artist entry into the Academie des Beaux-Arts
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Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-Duval
(b Montrouge, Paris, 4 April 1806; d Paris, 29 April
1885).
French painter and writer. A student of Ingres, he first exhibited
at the Salon in 1830 with a portrait of a child. He continued
exhibiting portraits until 1868. Such entries as M. Geoffroy as
Don Juan (1852; untraced), Rachel, or Tragedy (1855;
Paris, Mus. Comédie-Fr.) and Emma Fleury (1861; untraced)
from the Comédie-Française indicate an extended pattern of
commissions from that institution. His travels in Greece and Italy
encouraged the Néo-Grec style that his work exemplifies. Such words
as refinement, delicacy, restraint, elegance and charm pepper
critiques of both his painting and his sedate, respectable life as
an artist, cultural figure and writer in Paris. In contrast to
Ingres’s success with mature sitters, Amaury-Duval’s portraits of
young women are his most compelling. In them, clear outlines and
cool colours evoke innocence and purity. Though the portraits of
both artists were influenced by classical norms, Amaury-Duval’s have
control and civility in contrast to the mystery and sensuousness of
Ingres’s.
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Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-Duval
The Birth of Venus
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 Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-DuvalAncient Bather
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Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-Duval
The Bather
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Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-DuvalMadame de Loynes
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Eugene-Emmanuel Amaury-DuvalWoman from St. Jean de Luz
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Lord Leighton
The Bath of Psyche
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Academic Approval
The French state was eager to patronize artists and issued
invitations to them to preside at official openings and other public
occasions in Paris. The status of "official artist" was hugely
prestigious; artists were indulged by the Salon and by clients, and
some were even decorated with the Legion of Honour. At the beginning
of the 19th century, many of London's artists lived modestly in the
poorer parts of the city, but soon those endorsed by the
institutions took advantage of their growing status and moved to
more salubrious areas of London. Luxurious and exotic mansions were
fashionable among the wealthier artists, most notably
Lord
Leighton's in Holland Park, which followed a design by George Aitchison (1825-1910). Its outstanding feature was an exotic Arab
vestibule. Designed by Walter Crane (1845-1915) and Randolph
Caldecott, this Moorish-style room was richly decorated with Persian
tiles and a mosaic fountain.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912)
had two studios in his home: one with Pompeiian decorations for
himself, the other, featuring German panelling, for the use of his
wife, also a painter. In France, the painter
Ernest Meissonier
(1815-91) commissioned for himself a luxurious Neo-Renaissance
palace in the Place Malherbes, Paris. If one of the strongest
motivations of Romanticism was a yearning to be somewhere else, to
return to the past through mythology and exoticism, the painting of
the so-called pompiers and the artists of the Victorian age favoured
precisely the opposite: antique, Oriental, historical, and
allegorical subjects were all used metaphorically. The reality of
the present was of more interest to them than the remote past. While
Romanticism strained to grasp whatever was distant, unknowable, or
elusive, academic painting was more direct, and made the subject
matter much more accessible to the observer. This new attitude also
led to a fresh definition of technique and style: the painting
surface was smooth, almost polished, and every effort was made to
achieve the greatest possible accuracy and precision. The pursuit of
historical accuracy was sometimes taken to excessive lengths, as
even the most minute of details had to be verified. Such paintings
required months of laborious study: Meissonier struggled with
The
Battle of Friedland for 15 years, and
Mariano Fortuny y Carbo
(1838-74) spent his entire life planning The Battle of Tetuan. When
Lord
Leighton exhibited his Venus Disrobing for the Bath in 1867,
the allegorical content and the pure, brilliant style of the
painting silenced any criticism, mocking the forces of moral
repression and indirectly celebrating the sensual world. Refinement
of technique came to be understood as the very criterion of the
work's morality. To the prospective buyer, it implied honesty and
hard work, and pristine surfaces were associated with integrity and
professional conscientiousness, which, in the eves of the
bourgeoisie, guaranteed quality. Praise was given for the amount of
time spent on an accurate rendering of an outline or for evenly
balancing the brushstrokes. This was especially the case with some
very large-scale works, such as Romans of the Decadence by
Thomas
Couture (1815—79). These immense canvases were much in vogue until
the 1880s, when the artists themselves began discreetly to buy works
produced by the Impressionists. A further sign of the gradual
breakdown of the academic tradition was to be found in the arguments
that took place between the writer and influential art critic
John
Ruskin and the American painter
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
(1834-1903). Whistler's atmospheric and impressionistic painting
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875) was judged by
Ruskin to be like "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".
Whistler sued for libel and won his case in 1878 (he was awarded
only a farthing in damages and no costs, leaving him bankrupt). In
contrast with such innovative and controversial work, the highly
finished painting of the pompier artists started to appear dated.
Meissonier died in 1891, and
Paul Baudry in 1886, without having
completed the cycle of Joan of Arc intended for the Paris Pantheon.
The works of Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) enjoyed continued success
at salon and academy exhibitions throughout the latter half of the
19th century. In the less fashionable areas outside of the main
cities, pompier an continued to attract an enthusiastic following.
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Mariano Fortuny y Carbo
The Battle of Tetuan
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Walter Crane
The Horses of Neptune
1892 |
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THE "POMPIERS"
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau
The Birth of Venus
1879
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
This painting contains echoes of the work of
Ingres
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The French academic painters of the second half of the 19th century
were described as pompiers - an ambiguous term that either signified
the notion of ostentation and pomposity or referred generally to the
nude figures of David, which were often depicted with plumed helmets
(jokingly compared to the headgear of French firemen or pompiers).
The pompiers took great pleasure in detail. Their delight in
anatomical precision eliminated any possibility of uncertainty, as
well as any hint of sentiment or drama. The portrayals of Venus in
works by Cabanel and
Bouguereau, for example, have no individual
character; the female figures are invariably beautifully formed,
soft and shapely, sensual yet maternal, all at the same time. They
presented the ideal of woman as an embodiment of pleasure, elevated
to aesthetic and even, by reason of the allegorical theme, to moral
heights. These works reflect the decadent tastes of the Second
Empire, with its penchant for prostitution, sensuality, and
luxurious living.
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 Jean Andre Rixens
The Death of Cleopatra
1874
Rixens depicts a subject popular in painting since the
17th century
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Jean Andre Rixens
Portrait de Jeanne Samary
1892
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Jean Andre
Rixens
Jean André Rixens was a historical and
portrait painter, born in Saint-Gaudens in 1846.
In 1876 he made his debut at the Salon and went on to win a
Third Class medal, a Second Class medal and, in 1889, a Gold
Class medal at the Exposition Universelle.
By 1900, Rixens had become a Chevalier of the Legion
d'Honneur and a Member of the National Fine Art Society. He
died in 1924.
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 Jean Andre Rixens Dejeuner Du Salon, Au Cafe La Cascade
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INSPIRED
BY ANTIQUITY
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At the beginning of the 19th century Lord Elgin, British ambassador
to Turkey, brought back to England a large collection of sculptures
(the Elgin Marbles) from the Parthenon. Later, in 1846, Sir Charles
Newton organized an expedition to Asia Minor, to examine the
mausoleum of Halicarnassus. This interest in antique sculpture and
the admiration for classical ruins, were the inspiration for many of
the works of the English painter Lord
Leighton. The paintings of ancient Rome by the
Dutch-born, naturalized English artist
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema were
also the product of exhaustive studies of classical art; during his
visits to Naples. Pompeii, and Herculaneum. he assembled a large
photographic archive of Roman monuments, sculptures, frescos, and
sketches. In The Flautist's Rehearsal of 1861,
Gustave Boulanger (
1824—88) recorded what was in effect a festival, staged in the
courtyard of Napoleon's palace which was suitably decorated with
Pompeii-style frescos by Gerome. Present was the artist and writer
Theophile Gautier, who encouraged members of the state-run Comedie
Francaise to perform classical Greek and Roman dramatic works.
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Gustave Boulanger
The Flute Concert
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see collections:
Horace Vernet
Alexandre Cabanel
Adolphe
William Bouguereau
Lord Frederic Leighton
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Thomas
Couture
Paul Baudry
Charles Gleyre
John
William
Godward
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