Art in the Age of Reason
Born in 1734 in Derby, England, Wright was one of the few painters whose art thrived outside of London. His works displayed an insightful understanding of character and focus on…
Joseph Wright (1734-1797)
Born in 1734 in Derby, England, Wright was one of the few painters whose art thrived outside of London. His works displayed an insightful understanding of character and focus on the scientific apparatus and methods of his time, helping to demystify them and normalize the field[1]. Experiment with the Air Pump depicted a bird placed into a glass apparatus while the air was evacuated, leaving behind a vacuum. The bird asphyxiated and fell to the floor unconscious; the painting captured the moment of tension where the man was about to open the jar and revitalize the bird. For a moment, with the bird’s fate is in his hands, the man is God. This captured the awesome fledgling powers of science and reason, and it suggested that they may embue man with the powers of the divine[2].
Experiment with the Air Pump, Joseph Wright[3].
Jacques Louis David (1748-1825)
David (pronounced Da-veed), born 1748 in Paris, lived through the tumultuous French Revolution and channeled its wild, violent energies into paintings for each regime and each phase of the revolution. Thanks to his adaptability and skill, David managed to keep his head until Napoleon was subdued at Waterloo then finally endured being exiled to Brussels[4].
Painted at the height of revolutionary fever, one of David’s greatest achievements was The Death of Marat. Completed in 1793—just as Robespierre came to power and his string of mass public executions sparked the reign of terror—it depicts a man dead in his bathtub. The Committee for Public Safety, the ruling body at the time, had asked David to create painting heroicizing new martyrs of the revolution; one of them was Jean-Paul Marat. This was one of the first time a painter had painted a political myter rather than a religious martyr. Marat was a publisher who helped to disseminate revolutionary propaganda. A royalist sympathizer had sneaked into his house and murdered him in his bathtub.
Marat’s pose mirrors Christ’s once he was taken down from the cross, and his physique was ideal and powerful[5]. The brushwork and contrast were also curious to note; the sharp lines and vivid colors of the foreground were in stark contrast to the delicate, almost unfinished, brushwork in the back, almost as if his soul is departing. Finally, the setting is very sparse. Notice the grain carefully painted on the crate and the lack of orientation, almost as if to suggest “he was one of you.” However, as Simon Schama says in his power of art,“he was an accomplice to terror, whose greatest joy was to persecute thousands whose only crime was to be lukewarm about politics.”[6] His art was designed to re-educate people in the ways of the revolution, but like most art that seeks to improve humanity, it fails—because it is a lie.
The Death of Marat, Jacques Louis David[7].
Francisco Jose de Goya v Lucientes (1746-1828)
Francisco de Goya, born in 1746, was regarded as one of the most important figures in the Spanish Enlightenment. He moved between royal circles before ending up the royal painter of Charles IV, when Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808[8]. The picture below, The Third of May 1808, shows French troops executing captured Spanish soldiers and citizens alike. Goya masterfully appropriated Christian iconography by placing the poor laborers in the center in the same pose as Christ on the cross. Close examination shows a stigmata (hole through the hand used to affix people to the cross) on his right hand, further cementing the Christ comparison. The painting is a brutal depiction of man’s inhumanity towards man. Where other paintings that depicted war had religious or mythological overtones and was appropriately sanitized for the masses, The Third of May 1808 just shows that there was no glory or heroes in war[9].
The Third of May 1808, Francisco de Goya[10].
Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840)
Born in Greifswald in northern Germany in 1774, Friedrich and others in the romantic movement sought to reform a spiritual connection to counter the overly materialistic nature of Europe at the time[11]. His great painting The Five Stages of Life depicted a family, two children, their young mother, a young man (likely her husband), and an old man walking towards them. Out in the water were two smaller schooners, a large ship furling its sails, and two larger ships in the distance with sails fully rigged[12]. Critics have debated if the artist intended a deeper meaning, but regardless, the painting stood as an essential contribution to the romantic movement by encouraging contemplation and a broader awareness of connection to nature[13].
The Five Stages of Life, Caspar David Friedrich[14].
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London and was regarded as one of the greatest landscape painters of all time. His mastery of brushwork and color was unrivaled; he was adamant about representing England as it changed, painting the grime and grit of the Industrial Revolution[15]. While his most famous painting is The Fighting Temeraire—packed with symbolism and metaphor, and bursting with lavish color—his most impactful work is The Slave Ship. In 1781, the slave ship Zong, captained by Luke Collingwood, picked up four hundred and seventy slaves from the coast of Africa—far more than his ship was designed to carry. After a few weeks of close-quarters living, the slaves began to die off, representing lost profit. The captain had insured his slaves but could only collect if he could prove they died at sea. So, he and his crew threw one hundred and thirty-two slaves overboard, still in their chains, to drown in the shark-infested waters. Captain Collingwood and his crew never faced justice[16]. In 1840, Turner decided to paint this horrific scene to raise public awareness about slavery. The painting had all of Turner’s usual flare and dramatic lighting, but once the viewer realizes that the black specs in the water are limbs and chains, the entire meaning changes. The painting was horrifying and deeply upsetting, but that was the point[17].
The Slave Ship, J.M.W. Turner[18].
Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)
Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault was born in France in 1791, at the height of the revolution. He developed into an accomplished painter who had a transformative effect on the romantic movement[19]. His Raft of The Medusa was a chilling painting based on the account of two survivors of the Medusa—a French Royal Navy frigate set to colonize Signal. It ran aground on a sea bank and, due to a shortage of lifeboats, one hundred and fifty sailors were left behind. The sailors built a raft out of their ship’s remains, but due to brutal conditions and catabolism, only ten sailors survived. Here, they are pictured in classic romantic style, desperately signaling to the tiny spec of a ship in the distance that will never rescue them. It was an ugly and honest metaphor of human life abandoned to its fate[20].
Raft of the Medusa, Theodore Gericault[21].
John Constable (1776-1837)
John Constable, born in 1776 in England, was interested in finding the perfect scenery. His paintings captured the quintessentially British countryside in all its rustic glory[22]. This was best encapsulated by Flatford Mill, which depicted the mill his family used for grinding corn on the Stour River. Passage up and down the river was facilitated by horse-drawn barges; here a boy disconnects the barge so it can be poled under the mill.
Flatford Mill, John Constable[23].
Jean Auguste Ingres (1780-1867)
Born in 1780 in Montauban, France, Ingres was a stout proponent of conservative neoclassicism after the death of his mentor and teacher, Jaque Louis David. His work continued the monumental historical trends of Raphael and other Renaissance painters. Madame Moitessier was widely described as his best portrait. While the painting contained all the hallmarks of a classic Greek painting from the pose to the hand position, the sensuality of the painting was extraordinarily communicated in the color of the blush and the detail of the madame’s dress. The painting looks so real that it is as if she might stand up at any moment[24].
Madame Moitessier, Jean Auguste Ingres[25].
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was an important French Romantic painter for his study of optical effects and color. Instead of idealizing his subjects, Delacroix attempted to capture them in all their imperfections. While Delacroix revealed in depicting passion, it never ruled him. In the words of Baudelaire, “Delacroix was passionately in love with passion but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.”[26] Delacroix’s most famous work is Liberty Leading the People, in which Lady Liberty leads the people of France to depose the reactionary French king Charles X in the Revolution of 1830, the revolution that inspired the novel Les Misérables which would, in turn, go on to inspire the play of the same name.
Liberty Leading the People, Eugene Delacroix[27].
William Holman Hunt (1827-1910)
Born in London in 1827, Hunt formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The group’s stated aims were to have genuinely good ideas and to take what was good from previous art and dispose of the rest. In short, they attempted to begin a new era of art[28]. Hunt’s most important work was The Awakening Conscience, which portrays a girl from the countryside who has become a lover to a wealthy man in the city (this circumstance was commonly called a fallen or taken girl). So named because she has sacrificed her virtue and innocence, The Awakening Conscience is unique in the fact that the girl’s lover plays a song that reminds her of her childhood and, in the moment, she remembers her lost innocence. The painting captures her in a moment of redemption[29].
The Awakening Conscience, William Holman Hunt[30].
Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)
Courbet was loud, bombastic, scandalous, and brilliant. His career was punctuated by scandal and he was a frequent topic of gossip of the French high society. When he painted his massive The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic Life,* *it was rejected by the jury of the Exposition Universelle. In retaliation, Courbet built his own gallery at his pavilion of realism within sight of the original gallery[31]. Measuring twelve feet tall and twenty feet wide, the painting’s size alone demands attention and the assumption that this painting is important. Its title is an intentional, inherent contradiction; a real allegory is an oxymoron, art historians are still divided about its symbolism and meaning. Courbet himself is in the center of the painting with a nude model and child attending him. The world revolves around the artists. The figures on the right are all his friends and supporters; on the left is human suffering, poverty, death, and sin. This painting breaks all the rules and sets precedents for the impressionists and future artists independent of the establishment. [32]
The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic Life, Gustave Courbet[33].
Works cited
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Constable, John. English: Flatford Mill ('Scene on a Navigable River’). between and 1817 1816. Oil on canvas, 101.6 × 127 cm (40 × 50 in). Tate Britain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Constable_-_Flatford_Mill.jpg.
Courbet, Gustave. The Painter’s Atelier. 1855. Oil on canvas, 361 × 598 cm (11.8 × 19.6 ft). Musée d’Orsay. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Courbet_LAtelier_du_peintre.jpg.
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Friedrich, Caspar David. German: Die Lebensstufen (Strandbild, Strandszene in Wiek). circa 1834. Oil on canvas, 72.5 × 94 cm (28.5 × 37 in). Museum der bildenden Künste. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caspar_David_Friedrich_013.jpg.
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Goya, Francisco. Spanish: El 3 de Mayo En Madrid: Los Fusilamientos de Patriotas Madrileños. 1814. Oil on canvas, 268 × 347 cm (8.7 × 11.3 ft). Museo del Prado. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_tres_de_mayo_de_1808_en_Madrid_(2008).jpg.
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Hunt, William Holman. The Awakening Conscience. 1853. Oil on canvas, Height: 76.2 cm (30 in); Width: 55.9 cm (22 in). Tate Britain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hunt-AwakeningConscience1853.jpg.
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