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Huma > French Realism > Flashcards

French Realism Flashcards

1
Q

realism

A
  1. naturalism
  2. telling the truth
  3. closer to life
  4. not idealized
  5. not distorted
  6. not generalized
  7. not abstracted
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2
Q

Legacy of the enlightenment - the scientific attitude

A
  1. 19c. century of science and progress, dominated by empirical approach to nature and society
  2. realists - focused on real and visible experience from everyday contemporary life , disapproved historical and fictional subjects
  3. condemned neoclassicism and romanticism
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3
Q

Reflection on the function of art (a bit of background as well) (french realism)

A
  1. realistic art - reflects and criticizes the reality of the society
  2. rapid industrialization caused people to leave their rural home and became urban poor
    — nostalgia for the pastoral and idyllic life
    — subjects deemed unworthy of depiction in the mainstream - mundane and trivial workers and peasants - depicted on monumental scale with earnestness and seriousness
  3. under the influence of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” of 1848
    — discloses social injustices and gives realism a socio-political sense
    — social realism of 1920s and 1930s
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4
Q

School of Barbizon (artists)

A
  1. French Realists
  2. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
  3. Theodore Rousseau
  4. Jean Francois Millet
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4
Q

School of Barbizon

A
  1. French Realists (not in barbizon)
    — Gustave Courbet
    — Honore Daumier
  2. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
  3. Theodore Rousseau
  4. Jean Francois Millet
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5
Q

Gustave Courbet

A
  1. leading figure of the Realist movement: painting is a “concrete art”
  2. works (real allegory and burial at ornans) rejected by the Parisian Academic jury of 1855 salon - subjects and figures are too coarse and too large
  3. withdrew all his submissions and held a private exhibition in a place he called “Pavilion of Realism”
  4. rebellious again the official body - the first artist to stage a private exhibition of his own work
  5. realism - creation of a living art, and its function - exploration of truth
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6
Q

Gustave Courbet - Painter’s studio: real allegory of summing up seven years of My Artistic life

A
  1. A manifesto of “realism” his ambitions and experience from everyday life in 7 years all represented here - composed like a triptych
  2. portraiture and genre painting based on real experience - no less trivial than history painting
  3. in huge size, a serious subject for the painter
  4. details
    — left: people he met in those years
    — right: the painter’s friends, patrons, and supporters, among them - Charles Baudelaire
    — working as a painter of reality through the naive eyes of a child
    — distaste for classical art - ignores the male nude behind his painting and female nude by his side
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7
Q

Gustave Courbet - Burial at Ornans

A
  1. inspired by the funerary ceremony of his grandfather - captured the unedited truth like a photograph; more than 50 real people of his hometown were represented with verisimilitude
  2. recalls Dutch Baroque group portraits - lively representation of human beings in their activities
  3. anti-traditional attitude -> democratisation of art, art serves the common people
  4. 4 pallbearers follow the priest - distracted look
  5. 2 clergymen in red gown - ugly, fat and drunkard
  6. no idealization - an offense to the church
  7. real people - the mayor, the veterans, the clergy, the painter’s mother and 3 sisters
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8
Q

Gustave Courbet - Stonebreakers

A
  1. inspired by Jean Francois Millet’s winnower, about life-long hardship of lower class workers
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9
Q

Gustave Courbet - Young ladies on the Banks of the Seine (summer)

A
  1. socalled “eminent horizontal females” - forbidden subject of the society
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10
Q

Honore Daumier

A
  1. specialized in lithography - prints with large circulation
  2. worked mainly as a caricaturist, created illustrations for books and newspapers
  3. imprisoned in 1832 for having created documentary works to criticize the conservative rule of King Louis-Philippe
  4. turned to oil painting and sculpture in 18402
  5. satirical towards unjust social and political reality
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11
Q

Honore Daumier - Rue Transnonian

A
  1. used art as a voice of political protest against violation of rights of common people
  2. repression of a workers’ revolt in Lyon sparked unrest in Paris; a man shot from No.12 Rue Transnonain and killed an officer; soldiers forced into building and killed innocent residents
  3. 3 generations of victims lying on the floor
    — mother, father, grandfather and child
    — father - like christ the martyr in white shroud - piety for the working class
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12
Q

Honore Daumier - Penelope’s nights

A
  1. Penelope, wife of Odysseus in greek myth
  2. praised for her chastity - turned away suitors by weaving and undoing the same burial shroud every night for 3 years
  3. a sarcasm on high, official culture, which clings to the heritage of Western civilization
  4. witty graffiti of an ancient soldier
  5. exhausted working-class woman
  6. forced the public to confront the problem of poverty of the working class in contemporary urban society
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13
Q

Honore Daumier - Third class carriage

A
  1. poor, tired people commuting daily from their workplace and home outside the city
  2. railway - symbol of the triumph of technology or social injustice?
  3. in 1850s, the Haussmann renovation project tore down parisian medieval dwellings to create boulevards and new apartment, poor people could not afford and were forced to move to the periphery
  4. a fatherless family with 3 generations
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14
Q

School of Barbizon background and characteristics

A
  1. Barbizon - a village at the western edge of the forest of fontainebleau outside paris
  2. since mid 1830s, an artists’ colony was established there for its beautiful natural landscape
  3. did direct, life study of nature - not studio training
  4. a truthful but also subjective reflection of nature
  5. some were painters and farmers at the same time
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15
Q

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A
  1. painting en plein air (in open air)
  2. respected by the impressionists as “father Corot”
  3. he admired Poussin and Lorraine but eventually abandoned idealization for naturalism
  4. influenced by John constable, he prepared oil sketches on-site
  5. quotes
    — follow your first impression
    — nature is the best teacher
16
Q

John Rand - metallic paint tube

A
  1. paint tubes enabled painters to do on-site sketches in oil much more conveniently than in the past
  2. portable watercolour box
17
Q

Camille Corot - Fontainebleau

A
  1. preparatory drawing done en plein air for a large composition
18
Q

Camille Corot - Hagar in the wilderness

A

tress (might not need to study)

19
Q

Camille Corot - Chartres Cathedral

A
  1. one of the oldest gothic cathedrals in france - first built in around 1145
  2. avoided frontal approach to the great building
  3. Claude Lorraine’s typical U-shaped composition with colour perspective and dark colour of shadow in the foreground is eliminated totally
  4. bathed in bright sunlight
  5. use of limited range of colours
  6. flatness - homogeneous patches of colour for the stones in the foreground - anticipates modern art
20
Q

Claude Lorraine - landscape with the marriage of Issac and Rebecca

A
  1. brightest part right above the center
21
Q

John Constable - Salisbury Cathedral form the bishop’s ground

A
  1. English romantic landscape
22
Q

Camille Corot - bridge at mantes

A
  1. an unusual composition of a view seen through center-positioned tree trunks
    — different planes are defined by different qualities of light, dependent on the angle of observation, the objects should look different from different angles
23
Q

Theodore Rousseau

A
  1. first painter to settle in Barbizon
  2. did scientific studies of nature with pointillistic quality - extremely minute details
  3. nostalgic mood in his landscapes - a man searching for the paradise lost in the industralized world
24
Q

theodore rousseau - under the birches

A
  1. a late autumn afternoon in a place in the province of berry, quiet and simple, man and nature in harmony
    — a country priest is riding a horse, going home after work
    — trees - naturalistic, no idealization, no trimming of tree crowns
25
Q

theodore rousseau - exit drill fontainebleau, sunset

A
  1. scene of the fontainebleau forest, paradise with oxen and buffalos, a place untouched by civilisation
  2. viewer - placed very remote, like having a dream or observing the place through a binocular
26
Q

Jean Francois Millet

A
  1. won a scholarship to study in Paris, learnt from a Romanticist
  2. poor and unhappy in paris, move to fontainebleau in 1848 to become a farmer and a painter
  3. specialized in images of peasants - realistic depiction the rural poor
  4. gave farmers dignity and respect - like religious, heroic images, with monumental grandeur and simplicity
  5. references: renaissance (Michelangelo), baroque (Poussin, caravaggio, louis le nain)
  6. admired by and inspired vincent van gogh
27
Q

Jean francois millet - the winnower

A
  1. rural worker dignified by full-scale monumental presence
  2. roundness and volume of the body covered by the clothes, the powerful hand - reminiscent of the energy of Michelangelo’s nudes
  3. inspired Gustave Courbet’s stonebreakers
28
Q

Jean Francois Millet - the sower

A
  1. about the hardship of farmers
  2. ruthless nature of their work - most of the seeds immediately eaten by birds
  3. religious implications
  4. inspired Vincent van Gogh’s the sower
29
Q

Jean Francois Millet - the gleaners

A
  1. influence of Poussin - respect, grace and dignity in their posture
  2. Millet’s colour palette - mutation of 3 primary colours + dull earth tones
30
Q

Jean Francois Millet - the angelus

A
  1. peasant couple stopped their work to pray upon hearing the evening bells of Angelus
  2. or a funeral?
  3. an american commission
  4. religious faith - connection with the land, the soil; praised as “absolute beauty, poetry” by Vincent van gogh

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