French art of the 19th century
Encyclopedia
19th-century French art was made in France or by French citizens during the following political regimes: Napoleon Bonaparte's Consulate (1799-1804) and Empire
(1804-1814), the Restoration under Louis XVIII
and Charles X
(1814-1830), the July Monarchy
under Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1830-1848), the Second Republic
(1848-1852), the Second Empire under Napoleon III (1852-1871), and the first decades of the Third Republic
(1871-1940).
Many of the developments in French arts in this period parallel changes in literature. For more on this, see French literature of the 19th century
.
For more on French history, see History of France
.
and the Napoleonic wars
brought great changes to the arts in France. The program of exaltation and mythification of the Emperor Napoleon I of France
was closely coordinated in the paintings of Gros and Guérin.
Meanwhile, Orientalism
, Egyptian motifs, the tragic anti-hero
, the wild landscape, the historical novel
and scenes from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, all these elements of Romanticism
created a vibrant period that defies classicism.
One also finds in the early period of the 19th century a repeat of the debate carried on in the 17th between the supporters of Rubens and Poussin: there are defenders of the "line" as found in Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
, and the violent colors and curves as found in Eugène Delacroix
. The comparison is however somewhat false, for Ingres' intense realism sometimes gives way to amazing voluptuousness in his Turkish bath scenes.
The Romantic tendencies continued throughout the century: both idealized landscape painting and Naturalism
have their seeds in Romanticism: both Gustave Courbet
and the Barbizon school
are logical developments, as is too the late 19th century Symbolism
of such painters at Gustave Moreau
(the professor of Matisse and Rouault) or Odilon Redon
. Auguste Rodin
and Camille Claudel
are the most famous sculptors of their time.
called Paris "the capital of the 19th century". In order to understand the amazing diversity of artistic expressions which Paris gave birth to from the 1860s to all nightboulevards, but also replaced poorer neighborhoods and created fast routes to move troops through the city to quell unrest. Yet there was also a second Paris at the limits of Haussmann's city on the hill of Montmartre
with her windmills, cabarets and vineyards. Café culture, cabarets, arcades (19th century covered malls), anarchism
, the mixing of classes, the radicalization of art and artistic movements caused by the academic salon
system, a boisterous willingness to shock — all this made for a stunning vibrancy. What is more, the dynamic debate in the visual arts is also repeated in the same period in music, dance, architecture and the novel: Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Proust, Nijinski, etc. This is the birth of Modernism
.
Édouard Manet
represents for many critics the division between the 19th century and the modern period (much like Charles Baudelaire
in poetry). His rediscovery of Spanish painting from the golden age, his willingness to show the unpainted canvas, his exploration of the forthright nude and his radical brush strokes are the first step toward Impressionism.
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Impressionism
would take the Barbizon school
one further, rejecting once and for all a belabored style (and the use of mixed colors and black), for fragile transitive effects of light as captured outdoors in changing light (in part inspired by the paintings of J. M. W. Turner
). Claude Monet
with his cathedrals and haystacks, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
with both his early outdoor festivals and his later feathery style of ruddy nudes, Edgar Degas
with his dancers and bathers.
Some of these techniques were made possible by new paints available in tubes. These painters were also to a certain degree in a dialogue with another discovery of the 19th century: photography.
From this point on, the next thirty years were a litany of amazing experiments. Vincent van Gogh
, Dutch born but living in France, opened the road to expressionism. Georges Seurat
, influenced by color theory, devised a pointillist technique that controlled the Impressionist experiment. Paul Cézanne
, a painter's painter, attempted a geometrical exploration of the world (that left many of his peers indifferent). Paul Gauguin
, the banker, found symbolism in Brittany
and then exoticism and primitivism in French Polynesia
. Henri Rousseau
, the self-taught dabbler, becomes the model for the naïve revolution.
First French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
(1804-1814), the Restoration under Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII , known as "the Unavoidable", was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815...
and Charles X
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
(1814-1830), the July Monarchy
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
under Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1830-1848), the Second Republic
French Second Republic
The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte which initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité...
(1848-1852), the Second Empire under Napoleon III (1852-1871), and the first decades of the Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
(1871-1940).
Many of the developments in French arts in this period parallel changes in literature. For more on this, see French literature of the 19th century
French literature of the 19th century
19th-century French literature concerns the developments in French literature during a dynamic period in French history that saw the rise of Democracy and the fitful end of Monarchy and Empire...
.
For more on French history, see History of France
History of France
The history of France goes back to the arrival of the earliest human being in what is now France. Members of the genus Homo entered the area hundreds of thousands years ago, while the first modern Homo sapiens, the Cro-Magnons, arrived around 40,000 years ago...
.
Romanticism
The French RevolutionFrench Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and the Napoleonic wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
brought great changes to the arts in France. The program of exaltation and mythification of the Emperor Napoleon I of France
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
was closely coordinated in the paintings of Gros and Guérin.
Meanwhile, Orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
, Egyptian motifs, the tragic anti-hero
Anti-hero
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...
, the wild landscape, the historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
and scenes from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, all these elements of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
created a vibrant period that defies classicism.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest...
, and the violent colors and curves as found in Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
. The comparison is however somewhat false, for Ingres' intense realism sometimes gives way to amazing voluptuousness in his Turkish bath scenes.
The Romantic tendencies continued throughout the century: both idealized landscape painting and Naturalism
Naturalism (art)
Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries...
have their seeds in Romanticism: both Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...
and the Barbizon school
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...
are logical developments, as is too the late 19th century Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
of such painters at Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.- Biography :Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie...
(the professor of Matisse and Rouault) or Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon
Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.-Life:...
. Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
and Camille Claudel
Camille Claudel
Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and graphic artist. She was the elder sister of the poet and diplomat Paul Claudel.- Early years :...
are the most famous sculptors of their time.
Birth of the Modern
Walter BenjaminWalter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
called Paris "the capital of the 19th century". In order to understand the amazing diversity of artistic expressions which Paris gave birth to from the 1860s to all nightboulevards, but also replaced poorer neighborhoods and created fast routes to move troops through the city to quell unrest. Yet there was also a second Paris at the limits of Haussmann's city on the hill of Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
with her windmills, cabarets and vineyards. Café culture, cabarets, arcades (19th century covered malls), anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, the mixing of classes, the radicalization of art and artistic movements caused by the academic salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
system, a boisterous willingness to shock — all this made for a stunning vibrancy. What is more, the dynamic debate in the visual arts is also repeated in the same period in music, dance, architecture and the novel: Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Proust, Nijinski, etc. This is the birth of Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
.
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
represents for many critics the division between the 19th century and the modern period (much like Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
in poetry). His rediscovery of Spanish painting from the golden age, his willingness to show the unpainted canvas, his exploration of the forthright nude and his radical brush strokes are the first step toward Impressionism.
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
would take the Barbizon school
Barbizon school
The Barbizon school of painters were part of a movement towards realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870...
one further, rejecting once and for all a belabored style (and the use of mixed colors and black), for fragile transitive effects of light as captured outdoors in changing light (in part inspired by the paintings of J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
). Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
with his cathedrals and haystacks, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
with both his early outdoor festivals and his later feathery style of ruddy nudes, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
with his dancers and bathers.
Some of these techniques were made possible by new paints available in tubes. These painters were also to a certain degree in a dialogue with another discovery of the 19th century: photography.
From this point on, the next thirty years were a litany of amazing experiments. Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, Dutch born but living in France, opened the road to expressionism. Georges Seurat
Georges-Pierre Seurat
Georges-Pierre Seurat was a French Post-Impressionist painter and draftsman. He is noted for his innovative use of drawing media and for devising a technique of painting known as pointillism...
, influenced by color theory, devised a pointillist technique that controlled the Impressionist experiment. Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, a painter's painter, attempted a geometrical exploration of the world (that left many of his peers indifferent). Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
, the banker, found symbolism in Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
and then exoticism and primitivism in French Polynesia
French Polynesia
French Polynesia is an overseas country of the French Republic . It is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands, the most famous island being Tahiti in the Society Islands group, which is also the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the territory...
. Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau
Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was a French Post-Impressionist painter in the Naïve or Primitive manner. He was also known as Le Douanier , a humorous description of his occupation as a toll collector...
, the self-taught dabbler, becomes the model for the naïve revolution.
See also
- List of French artists of the first half of the 19th century
- List of French artists of the second half of the 19th century
- Félix Louis LeullierFélix Louis LeullierFélix Louis Leullier was a French painter who painted mostly religious subjects. He studied under the Romantic artist Antoine-Jean Gros. Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.- External links :*...