| During
the 19th Century scientific and technological
achievements such as the introduction of machinery
and mass-production gained momentum, and art,
as always, reflected these changes. The breakthroughs
by scientists like Sir Charles Darwin and
Louis Pasteur were echoed by the innovations
of artists like the Realists and Impressionists.
What was to come out of the 19th century was
the overthrow of all the established values
in the visual arts including the severing
of the traditional patron/artist relationship
and the elimination of the classical absorption
of non-European civilizations.
In
the first half of the century, there were
also revolutionary changes in the political
and economic order that can be likened to
the conflict between Classicism and Romanticism.
It was, for example, Romanticism that gave
us the idea of artists as Bohemian and art
as an intensely personal and emotional act.
Nature was the source of overwhelming power
and unaffected truth. It was the Romantics
who sought expression, movement, and the
evocative quality of color. In a word, 19th
Century painters discovered nature.
Artists
like E.P. Theodore Rousseau, Jules Dupré
and Jean B.C. Corot chose as themes the
sky, the sea and especially the forest where
trees symbolized human presence and the
picture would be built up with tone values.
Whether painting from nature and correcting
or painting in their studio from sketches,
their one common denominator was the look
of spontaneity. It was in the small village
of Barbizon on the edge of the forest at
Fountainebleau (near Paris) that the "School
of 1830" assembled by the reuniting
of Rousseau, Dupré and Jean F. Millet.
They would become the Barbizon School. At
Barbizon in 1849, Millet developed a sad,
rustic grandeur that became the idealization
and glorification of peasant life and controversial
"social commentary" at the same
time.
With
a bow to Dutch and English art, animal painting
received renewed interest. From the noble
horses and wild beasts of Gericault, Delacroix
and Barye to the rural livestock, bulls
and cows of Constant Troyon, the way to
Realism was opened.
By
the middle of the century the break with
Classicism and Romanticism was complete
in favor of the “concrete.”
Gustave Courbet was the chief architect
and champion of Realism - the rejection
of all idealization. With its insistence
on being true to the visual perception,
Realism led directly to Impressionism, which
despite initial hostility spread throughout
Europe to America. Impressionism thus inherited
the naturalism of the Barbizon school and
the Realism of Courbet.
The
Impressionists were a group of painters
who shared a similar style or outlook or
who worked together or near one another.
Edgar Degas, for example, holds a special
position in comparison to Impressionism.
His drawings were the result of swift observation,
but his paintings, which appear to be spontaneous,
were not done from nature. Dancers, singers,
women dressing, bathing and working became
his principal subject matter, which he portrayed
with great technical innovation.
R.F.
Auguste Rodin was the most celebrated sculptor
of the late 19th Century. His realism and
use of fragment as finished work, his expressive
surfaces, compositional dynamics and symbolism
mark his universal genius.
Please
note, paintings, objects and artists represented
on the website may not be on view at all
times.
Ronald
C. Roth Director & CEO
|
|
