Genre painting
Encyclopedia
Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre works specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on.
Rather confusingly, genre works, especially when referring to the painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting
- the great periods of genre works - may also be used as an umbrella term for painting in various specialized categories such as still-life, marine painting, architectural painting and animal painting, as well as genre scenes proper where the emphasis is on human figures.
Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of everyday life
by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively - thus distinguishing them from history painting
s and portrait
s. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person - a member of his family, say - as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended to be perceived as a portrait by the artist - sometimes a rather subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie
, or middle class
. The petit name contrasts this with the grand genre, history painting
. Genre themes appear in nearly all art traditions. Painted decorations in ancient Egyptian
tombs often depict banquets, recreation, and agrarian scenes, and even medieval prayer books such as the Book of Hours
(see Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc De Berry) are decorated with "peasant" scenes of daily life.
painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder
made peasants and their activities the subject of many of his paintings, and genre painting was to flourish in Northern Europe in Brueghel's wake. Adriaen
and Isaac van Ostade
, David Teniers
, Aelbert Cuyp
, Johannes Vermeer
and Pieter De Hooch
were among the many painters specializing in genre subjects in the Netherlands
during the 17th century. The generally small scale of these artists' paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a genre painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book
. This can give the painting a double meaning, such as in Gabriel Metsu
's The Poultry seller, 1662, showing an old man offering a rooster in a symbolic pose that is based on a lewd engraving by Gillis van Breen (1595–1622), with the same scene.
In Italy
, a "school" of genre painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome
of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer
in 1625. He acquired the nickname "Il Bamboccio" and his followers were called the Bamboccianti
, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti
, Antonio Cifrondi
, and Giuseppe Maria Crespi among many others.
Louis le Nain
was an important exponent of genre painting in 17th century France, where the 18th century would bring a heightened interest in the depiction of everyday life, whether through the romanticized
painting
s of Watteau
and Fragonard
, or the careful realism
of Chardin
.
In England, William Hogarth
conveyed social criticism and moral lessons through canvases that told stories of ordinary people, often in serial form. William Powell Frith
is perhaps the most famous English genre painter and was admired by many of his contemporaries. Other English genre painters include Augustus Leopold Egg, George Elgar Hicks
, William Holman Hunt
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti
.
Scotland produced two influential genre painters, David Allan (1744–96) and Sir David Wilkie
(1785–1841). Gustave Courbet
(1819–77) one of France's most famous genre painters, based his celebrated painting 'After Dinner at Ornans' (1849) on Wilkie's 'The Cottar's Saturday Night' (1837).
Spain had an old tradition standing since before The Book of Good Love
of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition and to this many of its painters,and illuminated miniature painters followed work.
Pedro Berruguete
brought his social scenes and critic with many of its works.What at the height of the Spanish Empire was continued including scenes of street life picaresque and at its slow falling eventually produced many works by the painters of The Spanish Golden Age
, Velázquez, Murillo
and others.
The Spanish
artist Francisco de Goya used genre painting as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition.
ese ukiyo-e
paintings are rich in depictions of people at leisure and at work, as are Korea
n paintings, particularly those created in the 18th century.
The first true genre painter in the United States was German immigrant John Lewis Krimmel
, who learning from Wilkie and Hogarth, produced gently humorous scenes of life in Philadelphia from 1812–21. One of the more notable genre painters from the United States was Harry Roseland
, who focused on scenes of poor African Americans in the post-American Civil War South.
With the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them. Realists such as Gustave Courbet
upset expectations by depicting everyday scenes in huge paintings—at the scale traditionally reserved for "important" subjects—thus blurring the boundary which had set genre painting apart as a "minor" category. History painting
itself shifted from the exclusive depiction of events of great public importance to the depiction of genre scenes in historical times, both the private moments of great figures, and the everyday life of ordinary people. Subsequently the Impressionists
, as well as such 20th century artists as Pierre Bonnard
, Edward Hopper
, and David Park
painted scenes of daily life, but in the context of modern art the term "genre painting" has come to be associated mainly with painting of an especially anecdotal or sentimental nature, painted in a traditionally realistic technique. The works of American
painter Ernie Barnes
and those of illustrator Norman Rockwell
could exemplify a more modern type of genre painting.
While genre painting began, in the 17th century, with representations by Europeans of European life, the invention and early development of photography coincided with the most expansive and aggressive era of European imperialism, in the mid-to-late 19th century, and so genre photographs, typically made in the proximity of military, scientific and commercial expeditions, often also depict the people of other cultures that Europeans encountered throughout the world.
Although the distinctions are not clear, genre works should be distinguished from ethnographic studies
, which are pictorial representations resulting from direct observation and descriptive study of the culture and way of life of particular societies, and which constitute one class of products of such disciplines as anthropology
and the behavioural sciences
.
Rather confusingly, genre works, especially when referring to the painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting
Flemish Baroque painting
Flemish Baroque painting is the art produced in the Southern Netherlands between about 1585, when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south by the recapturing of Antwerp by the Spanish, until about 1700, when Habsburg authority ended with the death of King Charles II...
- the great periods of genre works - may also be used as an umbrella term for painting in various specialized categories such as still-life, marine painting, architectural painting and animal painting, as well as genre scenes proper where the emphasis is on human figures.
Genre painting
Everyday Life
Everyday Life is the first solo album made by Life MC of the British Hip Hop group Phi Life Cypher....
by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively - thus distinguishing them from history painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
s and portrait
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
s. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person - a member of his family, say - as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended to be perceived as a portrait by the artist - sometimes a rather subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
, or middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
. The petit name contrasts this with the grand genre, history painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
. Genre themes appear in nearly all art traditions. Painted decorations in ancient Egyptian
Art of Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptian art is the painting, sculpture, architecture and other arts produced by the civilization in the lower Nile Valley from 5000 BC to 300 AD. Ancient Egyptian art reached a high level in painting and sculpture, and was both highly stylized and symbolic...
tombs often depict banquets, recreation, and agrarian scenes, and even medieval prayer books such as the Book of Hours
Book of Hours
The book of hours was a devotional book popular in the later Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and...
(see Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc De Berry) are decorated with "peasant" scenes of daily life.
Netherlandish and other European genre paintings
The Flemish RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a Flemish renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes . He is sometimes referred to as the "Peasant Bruegel" to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty, but he is also the one generally meant when the context does...
made peasants and their activities the subject of many of his paintings, and genre painting was to flourish in Northern Europe in Brueghel's wake. Adriaen
Adriaen van Ostade
Adriaen van Ostade was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre works.-Life:...
and Isaac van Ostade
Isaac van Ostade
Isaac van Ostade was a Dutch genre and landscape painter.-Biography:Van Ostade began his studies under his brother, Adriaen, with whom he remained till 1641, when he started his own practice...
, David Teniers
David Teniers
David Teniers may refer to three Flemish artists, father, son, and grandson:*David Teniers the Elder , turned from large religious paintings to landscapes and genre scenes...
, Aelbert Cuyp
Aelbert Cuyp
Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp was one of the leading Dutch landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century. The most famous of a family of painters, the pupil of his father Jacob Gerritsz...
, Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
and Pieter De Hooch
Pieter de Hooch
Pieter de Hooch was a genre painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was a contemporary of Dutch Master Jan Vermeer, with whom his work shared themes and style.-Biography:...
were among the many painters specializing in genre subjects in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
during the 17th century. The generally small scale of these artists' paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a genre painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book
Emblem book
Emblem books are a category of mainly didactic illustrated book printed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, typically containing a number of emblematic images with explanatory text....
. This can give the painting a double meaning, such as in Gabriel Metsu
Gabriel Metsu
Gabriël Metsu was a Dutch painter of history paintings, genre works and portraits.- Life :Metsu was the son of the Flemish painter Jacques Metsu , who lived most of his days at Leiden, and Jacomijntje Garniers, his third wife, whom he married in 1625. Jacomijntje was the widow of a painter with...
's The Poultry seller, 1662, showing an old man offering a rooster in a symbolic pose that is based on a lewd engraving by Gillis van Breen (1595–1622), with the same scene.
In Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, a "school" of genre painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer
Pieter van Laer
Pieter van Laer was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre scenes, active for over a decade in Rome, where his nickname was Il Bamboccio...
in 1625. He acquired the nickname "Il Bamboccio" and his followers were called the Bamboccianti
Bamboccianti
The Bamboccianti were genre painters active in Rome from about 1625 until the end of the seventeenth century. Most were Dutch and Flemish artists who brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherlandish art with them to Italy, and generally created small...
, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti
Giacomo Ceruti
Giacomo Antonio Melchiorre Ceruti was an Italian late Baroque painter, active in Northern Italy in Milan, Brescia, and Venice. He acquired the nickname Pitocchetto for his many paintings of peasants dressed in rags.He was born in Milan, but worked primarily in Brescia...
, Antonio Cifrondi
Antonio Cifrondi
Antonio Cifrondi was an Italian painter of the late Baroque, mainly of genre themes. He was active in Brescia and near Bergamo....
, and Giuseppe Maria Crespi among many others.
Louis le Nain
Le Nain
The three Le Nain brothers were painters in 17th-century France: Antoine Le Nain , Louis Le Nain , and Mathieu Le Nain...
was an important exponent of genre painting in 17th century France, where the 18th century would bring a heightened interest in the depiction of everyday life, whether through the romanticized
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...
painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
s of Watteau
Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement...
and Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Jean-Honoré Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five...
, or the careful realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
of Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities...
.
In England, William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
conveyed social criticism and moral lessons through canvases that told stories of ordinary people, often in serial form. William Powell Frith
William Powell Frith
William Powell Frith , was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1852...
is perhaps the most famous English genre painter and was admired by many of his contemporaries. Other English genre painters include Augustus Leopold Egg, George Elgar Hicks
George Elgar Hicks
George Elgar Hicks was an English painter during the Victorian era. He is best known for his large genre paintings, which emulate William Powell Frith in style, but was also a society portraitist.-Biography:...
, William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt
William Holman Hunt OM was an English painter, and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Biography:...
and Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
.
Scotland produced two influential genre painters, David Allan (1744–96) and Sir David Wilkie
David Wilkie (artist)
Sir David Wilkie was a Scottish painter.- Early life :Wilkie was the son of the parish minister of Cults in Fife. He developed a love for art at an early age. In 1799, after he had attended school at Pitlessie, Kettle and Cupar, his father reluctantly agreed to his becoming a painter...
(1785–1841). 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...
(1819–77) one of France's most famous genre painters, based his celebrated painting 'After Dinner at Ornans' (1849) on Wilkie's 'The Cottar's Saturday Night' (1837).
Spain had an old tradition standing since before The Book of Good Love
The Book of Good Love
The Book of Good Love , considered to be one of the masterpieces of Spanish poetry, is a semi-biographical account of romantic adventures by Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, dating from 1330....
of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition and to this many of its painters,and illuminated miniature painters followed work.
Pedro Berruguete
Pedro Berruguete
Pedro Berruguete was a Spanish painter; his art is regarded as a transitional style between gothic and Renaissance. Born in Paredes de Nava, Spain, he went to Italy in 1480 and worked in Federico III da Montefeltro's court in Urbino, where he could see some works by Melozzo da Forlì...
brought his social scenes and critic with many of its works.What at the height of the Spanish Empire was continued including scenes of street life picaresque and at its slow falling eventually produced many works by the painters of The Spanish Golden Age
Spanish Golden Age
The Spanish Golden Age is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise and decline of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. El Siglo de Oro does not imply precise dates and is usually considered to have lasted longer than an actual century...
, Velázquez, Murillo
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children...
and others.
The Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
artist Francisco de Goya used genre painting as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition.
International and other Continents genre paintings
JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese ukiyo-e
Ukiyo-e
' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...
paintings are rich in depictions of people at leisure and at work, as are Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
n paintings, particularly those created in the 18th century.
The first true genre painter in the United States was German immigrant John Lewis Krimmel
John Lewis Krimmel
John Lewis Krimmel , sometimes called "the American Hogarth" was America's first painter of genre scenes. Born in Germany, he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1809 and soon became a member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...
, who learning from Wilkie and Hogarth, produced gently humorous scenes of life in Philadelphia from 1812–21. One of the more notable genre painters from the United States was Harry Roseland
Harry Roseland
Harry Herman Roseland was one of the most notable painters of the genre painting school around the turn of the 20th century. An American, Roseland was primarily known for paintings centered on poor African-Americans....
, who focused on scenes of poor African Americans in the post-American Civil War South.
With the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them. Realists such as 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...
upset expectations by depicting everyday scenes in huge paintings—at the scale traditionally reserved for "important" subjects—thus blurring the boundary which had set genre painting apart as a "minor" category. History painting
History painting
History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...
itself shifted from the exclusive depiction of events of great public importance to the depiction of genre scenes in historical times, both the private moments of great figures, and the everyday life of ordinary people. Subsequently the Impressionists
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...
, as well as such 20th century artists as Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...
, Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
, and David Park
David Park
David Park was a painter and a pioneer of the Bay Area Figurative School of painting during the 1950s.-Biography:...
painted scenes of daily life, but in the context of modern art the term "genre painting" has come to be associated mainly with painting of an especially anecdotal or sentimental nature, painted in a traditionally realistic technique. The works of American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
painter Ernie Barnes
Ernie Barnes
Ernest “Ernie” Eugene Barnes, Jr. was an African-American painter, well-known for his unique style of elongation and movement. He was also a professional football player, actor and author.- Childhood :...
and those of illustrator Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Norman Percevel Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening...
could exemplify a more modern type of genre painting.
Genre photography
Although the distinctions are not clear, genre works should be distinguished from ethnographic studies
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
, which are pictorial representations resulting from direct observation and descriptive study of the culture and way of life of particular societies, and which constitute one class of products of such disciplines as anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and the behavioural sciences
Behavioural sciences
The term behavioural sciences encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through controlled and naturalistic observation, and disciplined...
.
See also
- Hierarchy of genresHierarchy of genresA hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value....
- GenreGenreGenre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
- IllustrationIllustrationAn illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...