9/10/06 - History of Art - Art and the Land

In the 19th century, the concept of landscape became more concerned with specific currents in society. Time of social transition, e.g. industrialism. Agriculture to industry, painting country to painting city. Growing population in cities. Manchester 1780-1820. 20,000-200,000 due to industry.

Early 19th century. An Ideal City, Agrigentum by Valenciennes. Koch Landscape with Apollo, 17th century. Similar formula, Italian landscape, ideal, gods. Poussin especially considered landscape painting as history painting. Structure is balanced and harmonious. Valenciennes's book - depth like theatre, dark foreground and light middle. Systematic treatment of landscape. Copied by Turner, Bay of Baiae with Apollo and the Sibyl. Sense of calm and control; idealisation.

Constable 1821. The Haywain. An image of rural Britain? Stillness, straightforward as if directly from nature; influenced by Italian landscape. Serenity. After Napoleonic wars, agricultural depression. Farmers unemployed. The Haywain leaves this out. Constable - "nature unadorned and unidealised", but a shift took place. Suddenly, nature as it is.

Rousseau's Forest in Winter. Millet's Carrefour de l'Epine, Fontainebleau. Rousseau depicted tiny women compared to vast trees. Romantic notion of the "sublime". Humans are puny while nature is grand and powerful.

Mid 19th century. Burial at Ornans, Courbet. Rural population. Chaos, who is who? Ambiguous. Are they subversive? Dangerous? Relations between city and country. Social control embedded in paintings - gleaning. A form of charity that poorest are allowed leftovers.

Millet's parents modest landowners. But painting depicts social order, manager on horseback, employees busy at work, gleaners bent over under horizon and don't get much hay. Breton's painting, however, The Recall of the Gleaners, depicts gleaners as pretty, clean and collecting lots of hay. The gleaners obey the man, so social control.

Millet Blessing the Corn 1857. Respect for order: church, law, mayor. Millet Peasant Family. Gender roles in peasant family. Child keeps them together. Father has dog and spade - manual labour. Mother spindle and hens. Idealised land in the paintings at this time.

Articulating meaning in paintings.
Holman Hunt Hireling Shepherd.
Hook Hearts of Oak.

Depicting morality. Neither of workers doing their jobs, lamb and sheep are in trouble. Death's head moth.
Hook's painting shows father carving ship for son and is with his wife. Correct morality. Secretly freighted with ideology.

Corot Sevres Road. Sisley Sevres Road. Twenty years' difference.
Corot tonal, not bright. Rural lane, trees, no buildings.
Sisley pavement, line of trees, suburban houses. Shows city expansion.

Madox Brown Work.
Herkomer Hard Times.

Madox Brown engages with city and country. Intellectuals watching workers, moral praise for worker. Urban, but rural people with herbs to sell. Positive.
Herkomer. 1880s agricultural collapse. Out of work in country. Gender roles, wife and children depressed. Man with tools determined.

Monet Railway Bridge at Argenteuil.
Pissarro The River near Pontoise.

Painted naturalistic? But they are edited to convey ideas about modernity. Bridge middle of river in country, with trains. From Paris , manmade presence in nature. Trains represent labour, boats leisure.
Pissarro's paint factory. Commerce in countryside. Harmonised, buildings integrated in landscape.

Lhermitte Payment of the Harvesters.
Van Gogh The Potato Eaters.

The artists didn't know each other, economic changes happening. Refrigeration meant food from exotic places. Large imported wheat. European prices down.
Lhermitte. Hard workers, paid. Getting along.
Van Gogh, knew weavers were going out of business due to factories. Sense of anxiety.

Pissarro Two Girls at the Well. Tired girl, fatigue, hard worked. Similar clothes suggest continuum - young girl will soon take on same job as the other.

Bastien-Lepage Pauvre Fauvetter, eastern France. Formula, close up, high horizon, intimacy. Clausen The Stone Pickers, same style.

Boudin's Beach at Trouville. Temporarily middle-upper classes visiting.
Trouville fishing village until developed as tourist resort.
Toulouse-Lautrec Rider with a Small Dog. Class. Alle, straight track in forest for huntsmen to travel. Aristocrat, property.

Pissarro 1890. Peasant Women Planting Pea-Sticks. Pissarro an anarchist, pro-rural living. Shows sunlit countryside, togetherness, equality, harmonious colours, unified by dots. Like dancing. Idealised.

Turpitudes Sociales. Pissarro. Crime in city. Dangerous. Survival of fittest.

Cezanne Chateau Noir.
Millstones of the Chateau Noir.
Ideas of death. Aged 60, medical problems. Abandoned castle, nature taking over. Millstones abandoned and taken over. Nature used as private meditation.

Van Gogh Landscape at Harvest.
Koninck View of the River Waal.

Van Gogh nostalgia, tradition. Avant-garde style. Traditions still carry values for the artist. Van Gogh was far from home, landscape reminded him of home. Reminded him of the Koninck painting.

Social class, tradition, gender differences. Rich, complex set of possibilities. Social values.