**This is the fifth and final installment on the evolution of large-scale french painting as seen in the premiere wings of the Louvre in Paris**
Eugene Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus marks the complete shift from the Neo-classical Academic style to Romanticism and the full embrace of Orientalism. Delacroix was a friend and associate of Gericault and was clearly influenced by his work. Yet, as seen in Sardanapalus, he adopts the movement more fully. Initially, he was also trained in the Neo-classical style, but rejected it because of the aforementioned lack of expression and movement. As a result, he became the fierce competitor and rival to the Neo-classical champion, Ingres. Death of Sardanapalus does not use a modern story line. Rather, it stems from the pages of Byron’s tragedy about the Assyrian king and his conquered city. Delacroix takes liberties with the story and shows an apathetic Sardanapalus sitting atop his bed as he watches his men carry out his orders: kill all the concubines, servants and animals before the enemy can take them. Nonetheless, France was consumed with Orientalism at this period; so the theme of the painting is still quite contemporary despite the time in which it is set. The Near East was a favorite subject of Romanticism for the artists felt it was filled with the tragedy, mystery, exoticism and heroism their movement so loved to capture. Just as David favored Rome and the political messages within the historical paintings, Delacroix and other artists of Romanticism felt the Orient best suited their artistic tendencies. Gone is any semblance of order or balance within Sardanapalus. Delacroix creates a scene filled with drama and chaos, exemplifying Romanticism’s stylistic ideals. The chaos is necessary, however, to accurately capture the mood of the scene. Delacroix still understands the importance of line and draftsmanship, but uses it in a manner that is vastly different than Ingres or David. Brushstrokes are sketchy and expressive—loose as they swirl around creating the chaotic movement necessary for the moment. Figures and shapes are curvilinear, directing the eye into a circle throughout the composition as though the viewer were descending into a whirlpool of madness with Sardanapalus himself. He understands that figures in movement are not perfectly defined. In addition, Delacroix pays special attention to the use of color in Sardanapalus. Colors are rich and bold reds and golds. They best reflect the Orient and heighten the erotic scene as they contrast against the ivory of the concubines’ skin. No longer is color simply used to direct the eye or create a balanced painting, they are utilized to enhance the image that is presented to their viewer, to better convey what the artist is trying to depict: madness, bedlam, eroticism. Ultimately, Delacroix and Romanticism were vastly different from Neo-classicism, but it was necessary, because so were their artistic ideals.
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*This is the fourth installment of a five-part series on the evolution of large-scale French Painting as seen in the premiere wings of the Louvre in Paris.**
As a flagship painting of the Romanticism movement, The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault was actually one of the first to usher in the new style at the beginning of the nineteenth-century. Gericault was primarily self-taught as he only received a few years of academic artistic training. He traveled throughout Europe spending most of his time in Rome, like Ingres and David. Yet, Gericault favored the drama and movement within Baroque and Mannerism rather than looking to the classical ideals of the Renaissance and ancient Rome. The Raft of the Medusa illustrates how Gericault utilized these movements to improve upon the burgeoning Romanticist tendencies. The painting also highlights the schism that was starting to form within the Parisian salons as artists began to venture away from the dominant Academic style of David and Ingres. Romanticists felt that the Neo-classical emphasis on line, balance and order left paintings rather static and stiff. They favored color over line as their means of evoking the necessary emotions within the dramatic scenes. In addition, Romanticism artists like Gericault preferred contemporary stories from the headlines that were removed from mythology and the ancient past or the kings, queens and imperial rulers of their day. Painting needed to be like The Raft of the Medusa: current, dramatic and highly expressive. The Raft of the Medusa cannot be understood fully without knowing the story behind the image. Gericault took the dramatic story of the Medusa straight from the French headlines. In 1816, the Medusa set sail alongside three other ships to the African coast of Senegal. The boat out sailed the others and while staying dangerously close to the coast, it ran aground. Eventually all passengers had to abandon ship. The wealthy were dispersed into the lifeboats while a large group of nearly one-hundred and fifty less fortunate individuals was forced to create a make-shift raft. Either accidently or on purpose, the raft was cut loose from one of the lifeboats and was abandoned at sea for nearly two weeks. Eventually, the people were rescued, but only fifteen survived. Shortly after, stories of murder, cannibalism, deathly storms and insanity arose. The story was perfectly suited for Gericault’s Romanticist ideals. Gericault directly challenged the academies by placing a modern subject on such a large-scale. Typically, large-scale painting was reserved for historical painting like the Oath of the Horatii or to commemorate historical events such as The Coronation of Napoleon. Even Ingres scaled down his image of a concubine in La Grande Odalisque in order for his work to be deemed more acceptable. Gericault, however, chose a story from his day filled with scandal and intrigue. As later Romanticism artists continued to believe, Gericault felt modern subjects were just as worthy of being placed on the grand-scale as he showed with The Raft of the Medusa. The artist continued to break away from the academic style and showed his alignment with Romanticism through his dramatic use of color, composition and modeling. In stark contrast to the Neo-classical and academic paintings of David or Ingres, Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa is all about movement and drama. Rather than arranging them stiffly as David did in Horatii, Gericault captures the movement necessary to evoke the desperation experienced by those on the raft through a less orderly composition. Figures are arranged along a sharp diagonal of despair to hope. The lower left and other parts of the foreground are filled with people flung about dead, dying or decaying. Figures in the top right, however, frantically wave to a ship along the horizon, the Argus— the ship that will eventually be their salvation. To further the contrast between hope and desperation, Gericault utilizes a less extreme form of Caravaggio’s tennebrism. Light is not evenly filtered as seen previously, but now it is starkly contrasted to evoke a particular emotion from the viewer. Although every figure is perfectly modeled and formed, their muscle structure is highly idealized in order to further capture the movement within the painting. Gericault studied from real models and cadavers, but also recalls Michelangelo’s Mannerist ignudi by adding muscles to emphasize movement through the composition. Little criticism can be drawn from the Academics, however, when Ingres also took artistic liberties with the human form. Although Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa marks the beginning of Romanticism, he still utilizes the sharp brushstroke of the academics. As the movement develops and progresses, ultimately, this will diminish over a looser, more painterly line that further emphasizes the drama necessary for a Romanticism painting. *This is the third installment of a five-part series on the evolution of large-scale French Painting and a personal favorite of the author*
Although Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque continues to mark the shift in style and subject for French large-scale painting, it is still emblematic of the nineteenth century Academic style. Ingres was a student of David’s; they soon parted ways, however, due to artistic differences--differences that would become emblematic of Ingres' style. Nonetheless their academic and professional backgrounds are strikingly similar. Ingres trained in the Academic style that was now rooted in the Neo-Classicism David introduced in his Oath of the Horatii. In 1801, Ingres also won the coveted Prix de Rome, but did not travel to Italy until 1807. During this time he, too, gained commissions from the emperor, Napoleon, with the aid of his teacher, David. Staying true to the academic style set forth by David, Ingres painted large-scale images of mythology or the grand past with several grandiose images of Napoleon himself. It was not until Ingres finally set forth on his travels to Rome, however, that he would finally paint La Grande Odalisque. Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque is quite unique in its focus on precise draftsmanship mixed with figural distortion. Like David, Ingres favors line over color. The woman’s figure is beautifully rendered through use of chiaroscuro, her golden skin highly realistic. Every textile is expertly painted to accurately capture its own unique texture. Ingres still utilizes color to emphasize the odalisque’s form and sensuality, but his artistic focus does not lie there. What is so unusual, however, is that despite the close attention to form, line, and texture, Ingres paints a female whose figure is not one of nature. In fact, it appears as though she has just a few too many vertebrae. This ultimately becomes a trademark of Ingres’ female nudes. David painted figures exactly as they were, to illustrate his true ability to capture the human form accurately. Although Ingres’ stylistic idiosyncrasy steers him away from being a perfect prototype of the academic style, he was still deemed its champion in the beginning of the nineteenth-century to combat the changes that were starting to arise with the advent of Romanticism. The painterly evolution continued as Odalisque introduced a thoroughly modern and exotic subject matter. As Napoleon began his campaign to Egypt in 1798, the fascination with the Near East began. Orientalism was introduced and paintings were slowly becoming more exotic to reflect this newfound interest. Paintings became increasingly erotic, sensual and filled with women from harems. Ingres, too, was fascinated with this new subject matter and made it the focus of Odalisque. The woman is a concubine within a harem, as the term odalisque implies. There is nothing grand or mythological about Odalisque. Nonetheless, with a powerful painter and Prix de Rome winner such as Ingres now painting Orientalized figures, it helped usher in a full Orientalist movement within the Academic style that ultimately influenced future artists such as Jean-Léon Gerôme. Although Ingres appears to be breaking from tradition in several ways with Odalisque, there were several aspects about his painting that allowed viewers to more readily accept these changes. Academics typically painted royal portraits, mythological scenes or dramatic images from the ancient past; Ingres did not. Thus, part of what made the painting acceptable was its size. For although Odalisque is large, roughly three-feet by five-feet, it is not painted on the same grand scale as the Horatii or Coronation. Furthermore, while there appears to be a sharp break in subject matter, Ingres was clearly influenced by his studies in Italy. What helped ease in Odalisque to the general public was its clear reference to the Venetian Renaissance master, Titian, and his Venus of Urbino. The subject may not be grand or mythological, but it is directly influenced by an earlier attempt to rekindle the Classical spirit of Rome by Titian. The same is true for his unusual elongation of the female form. Ingres was criticized for this feature, but once again it was eventually tolerated because of Michelangelo. Having studied in Rome and the Sistine Chapel, Ingres understood the artistic liberties one could take with the human form while still creating a realistic, but exaggerated figure. He drew upon this in Odalisque. One could criticize him, but not his inspiration. Thus, La Grande Odalisque was met with less critical scorn and eventually accepted. |
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