Mid to Late Nineteenth Century Art in Europe and the United States

Question 1

The Stone Breakers

Answer 1

Gustave Courbet
1849
This painting included historical contexts (realism, romanticism)
Shows a young boy and an old man breaking stones
Bypassing the highly finished style and inspiring message of history painting, he signifies the brutality of modern life in his rough use of paint and choice of dull, dark colors, awkward poses, and a stilted composition
Theme of infrastructure as well as modernization

Question 2

Luncheon on the Grass

Answer 2

Edouard Manet
1863
Oil painting
The most scandalous aspect of the painting was the “immorality” of Manet’s theme: a suburban picnic featuring two fully dressed bourgeois gentlemen seated alongside a completely naked woman with another scantily dressed woman in the background.
Manet’s audience assumed that these women were prostitutes, and the men their customers. Equally shocking were the painting’s references to important works of art of the past, which Académie des Beaux-Arts artists were expected to make, combined with its crude, unvarnished modernity
In contrast, this and The Birth of Venus both show nudity, also refers to a Marcantonio Raimondi engraving of Raphael’s The Judgment of Paris, itself based on Classical reliefs of river gods and nymphs

Question 3

Forever Free

Answer 3

Edmonia Lewis
1867
A memorial to the Emancipation Proclamation, celebrating the freedom of slaves as well as the attitude towards women and people of colour
A diminutive woman kneels in gratitude beside the looming figure of her male companion, who boosts himself up on the ball that once bound his ankle and raises his broken shackles in a gesture of liberation