this was written a year and a half ago as a final project for my highschool history course. i really liked how it turned out. please enjoy :) (this is also more of a test for the page then anything)
In 1841, American painter John Rand revolutionized painting with his invention of the paint tube. Before this, painters had to prepare their paints by grinding pigments into oil, then immediately use them before they hardened. Tubes both allowed painters to store paints for later and made them portable. John Constable was a particular fan of the latter. He used them to bring his painting process outdoors to paint his fields, inspiring a new age of landscape painting. Paint tubes also allowed manufacturers to produce paints for sale. Seemingly small developments and ideas like this can have a big impact on industry and culture. This essay will outline the history of art in the 19th century and how emerging technologies and the relationship between new artists and old institutions push its evolution. It will be looked at through one art movement at a time. First with romantic arts and realism, then impressionism and post-impressionism, before ending with expressionism.
As mentioned earlier, one of the primary pushers of art evolution was the conflict of institutions and standards vs new and radical ideas. These ideas will be gone over as they come up through the century, but one would first need to understand the institution that governed them to understand why they were originally created. Académie des Beaux-Arts (or Academy of Arts) was a French art collective based in Paris run by the french government. What made them special is that their annual art exhibit, la salon, was the center of visual arts in Europe, with nobles crossing countries to see the works displayed every year. Most of the art was by young artists from the School of Arts (or Ecole de Beaux-Arts), also run by the Academy. The School of Arts was one of the most prestigious art schools in the world, with a lot of the century’s best sculptors, architects and painters (some of whom will be discussed) being previous students The Academy of Arts changed a lot during the French Revolution. They opened their doors to people of every class and changed their focus from fresh talent to older, more established artists They also created a hierarchy of what art was the most and least proper The top of which, historical paintings, were considered the only paintings worthy of 10ft canvases. Most of these historical paintings were a part of the neo-classical movement, characterized by its focus on Greek and Roman ideals of rationality, intelligence and beauty. But this would change in the early 19th century.
The romantic arts have been around Europe since 1750 but did not reach la salon until the early 1800s. It is commonly believed to have entered France with Germaine de Staël’s book On Germany. She wrote that Germany was gothic and valued emotion, naturalness and spirituality over more classical reason. This gothic approach inspired artists to paint with drama and feeling rather than old Greek ideals Although Romanticism is difficult to give an exact definition, Charles Baudelaire’s comment from La Salon 1846 is often cited in its place, “romanticism lies neither in the subjects that an artist chooses nor in his exact copying of truth, but in the way he feels.” The movement is often marked with loose, flowing brushstrokes. As shown in Figure 1, not every inch of the canvas is laboured over with fine detail. there is minute detail in the fabric of the main subjects’ clothing, while rough brush strokes make the sky behind them. Artists like Joseph M. W. Turner would take this further with strong juxtapositions of detail and brush technique in his works. But no romantic painter shook up the art world as much as John Constable.
Unless it was a historical setting, landscapes did not get the most respect under the Academy’s hierarchy. Constable did not care and painted on 6ft canvases anyway, and despite becoming pretty popular, he and other landscape painters were never recognized by the Academy. However, the exclusion of new genres was not received well by the public and started to damage their pristine reputation. Eventually, the Academy of Arts moved landscapes up the hierarchy and added a landscape category to La Salon. This created new competition for young artists to get into La Salon, and La Salon’s popularity was at the highest it had ever been after the change. Realism was emerging amidst the Industrial Revolution, and life for the average person was changing quickly. Transportation was faster, people moved to the city, the entertainment business thrived and society became more rapid pace. Realism was a reminder of simpler times. People of the time could not relate to depictions of biblical stories and classical gods. They wanted something to calm them down in a time of change and stress. Realists were not concerned with the drama and emotion of Romanticism and instead painted scenery as it was, not attempting to reinterpret reality. Painting Technique was not to different but this would completely change with frances new wave of young artists.
Unlike the other movements gone over, impressionism came from a collective. It is believed to have started in the 1860s when two of its core members, Claude Monet and Camille Pissaro, met the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. Durand-Ruel saw potential in their avant-garde style where the Academy did not, and provided them money to have an exhibit of their own. Primarily inspired by Joseph W. M. Turner and John Constable, impressionism was more about light and atmosphere than the subject matter. They took the realists philosophy of painting what the eyes can see and added the sensation of being there. As displayed in Figure 4, brush strokes are very rough and broad, suggesting enough to understand the composition while leaving details for interpretation. New painting technology also allowed for paint to be more vibrant and bright, which they often used to give a hazy, dream-like feeling. The term impressionism was coined by art critic Louis Leroy, who wrote that the art looked unfinished and only impressions of what could have been the painting. They were very controversial at the time, with only progressive critics praising their work. They remained in the art underground for their whole career, but in retrospect, they have become one of the most popular and beloved art movements today. Other artists took these techniques and expanded on them to make post-impressionism. Odilon Redon created a sense of cosmic horror and Vincent Van Gogh made some of the most expressive art of the century. Simultaneously, La Salon became even more strict with acceptance, which was detrimental for artists as being rejected from La Salon gave artists a bad reputation for getting into other exhibitions. This would change in 1863 when Emperor Napoleon III noticed this and opened the Salon Des Refusés (Salon of the Rejected). Since then, France took a big interest in the avant-garde and more radical, counter moments were created.
The term symbolism was prescribed to a new generation of post-impressionists who were considered to be in a category of their own. Symbolists reintroduced the drama and expressiveness of romanticism but combined it with more contemporary painting techniques. Subjects were often fantastical, ranging from Greek gods to eldritch beasts. Unlike other movements of the century, aesthetics heavily varied from artist to artist, but they united by their focus on representing ideas and emotions over narratives By coincidence, it was the antithesis of realism. Although Edvard Munch does not cleanly fit in any movement, his piece, The Scream, seen in Figure 4, is considered to be the best work of the scene. Despite Munch’s work being known as some of the most disturbing, he only used ordinary subjects and relied on techniques to express these emotions. He was primarily known as an expressionist, a movement that marked the start of 20th-century art.
Although the paintings of the 19th century weren’t as groundbreaking as the ones after, their influence can not be understated. New technologies changed society and the art world with it and as difficult as it might have been for artists to deal with the Academy of Arts, its existence was essential for the progression of the culture.