A converted British family sheltering a Christian priest

from the persecutions of the Druids (c. 1850)

William Hunt

• British believe that they are descendants of a great Roman past.
• The painting depicts pre-Christian people as savages wearing loincloths, which upset the British people because they believed it was an insult to their history.
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Alexandre Cabanel

            The Birth of Venus (1863)

1. Depicts the goddess of love floating on water.
2. Head thrown back in ecstasy, thighs pressed together, toes curled.
3. Very sexualized (orgasmic pose)
4. Far more sexualized than Olympia painting but was not deemed wrong. Olympia was disparaged because it showed a modern woman naked (deemed inappropriate)
5. Nude is appropriate in a classical context, but naked is bad.

Claude Monet

Rouen Cathedral: Midday (1893)

• Uses a cathedral to demonstrate the interplay of light and dark.
• Wanted to capture the fleeting effects of light casted on the cathedral so he did multiple paintings at the same time, one canvas to capture the cathedral during the day, another at night, and this one during midday.
• Was very interested in the ephemeral quality of light and wanted to capture its effects at different moments during the day.
• Most early depictions of Gothic architecture were very solid and clearly defined. The architecture was portrayed as something very physical. Monet, on the other hand, doesn't focus on the look of the cathedral, in fact the cathedral is painted very light and lacks details in composition. He focuses on the optical effects of light on the way we perceive the structure.
• This painting has very light tones to show the golden brightness of the sun's light hitting the cathedral. 

Edouard Manet

            Concert in the Tuileries (1860)

• Painting depicts the modern life of upper middle class people.
• Manet painted himself in the painting because these were his people, from his own social class.
  • This is different from Goya, who painted himself within his works to try and connect with his rich patrons and garner their respect and acceptance 
• The Stonebreakers and the Sower were examples of modern life as well but this painting shows a different social class of people, not workers but the elite.
• Napoleon III was responsible for the haussmanization of Paris, which modernized the city and built new wider roads, gardens, and transportation hubs. This rebuilding of Paris separated the poor from the rich.
• Renaissance was responsible for one-point linear perspective, which is when artists use principles of math and geometry to create the illusion of 3-D space on flat surface. Made art look more realistic.
  • Manet's painting however does not utilize this technique. The greenery in the background is very painterly. We perceive this as distance but in reality it's reminding us that this is paint applied on flat surface, not really looking into the distance. 

Claude Monet

            La Grenouillier (1869)

1. If looking at just water without larger context of painting, it would look indistinguishable.
2. No sense of detail in body composition, completely different from academic works emulating Renaissance art with linear brushstrokes and refined clear composition.
3. The boats and restaurant are naturalized but everything else is painterly, almost to point of abstraction.

Edouard Manet

Olympia (1863)

• Depicts a high-rank courtesan lying on a bed with her black slave woman bringing her a bouquet of flowers from one of her patrons.
• Inspired by Titian's Venus of Urbino, but lacks the same representation of space, the turn of the body, and the veil of mythology. Was not academic depiction, Manet was challenging old ideas about what is considered great art, defying old ways of the Renaissance. 
• Olympia's features are not idealized (perfected) as in Venus of Urbino.
• Typical depictions of Venus are coy, with her looking away but Olympia is looking directly at the viewer, confronting us.
  • The criticism was that the painting was not about idealized beauty but about sexuality. It was considered too literal. The woman was a real person.
  • We could be the viewer walking into the room and scaring cat, Olympia looking at us.
  • Holding up mirror to 19th century Paris about its own corruption.
• Flatness of body, not trying to present illusion of 3-D space like academic artists, who try not to even show a brushstroke. Manet wants the viewer to see the complexity of painting a 2D image and trying to make it look real.
• Reminds us that sexuality is what we're interested in, not beauty.
• Manet is trying to be honest about the materials, the ideas, the emotions, subject, motives and desires.

Vincent van Gogh

The Night Café (1888)

• At first glance, the painting looks like a typical contemporary scene depicting nightlife.
  • Gogh and Gauguin move to Arles together and paint, then go out and get drunk at night, and repeat the process the next day.
  • This painting was made for the Night Cafe in Arles so they could pay their rent money.
• The painting actually has dark tones, however. Not a typical nice scene to hang up in coffee shop.
  • The billiard table is green, the color of absinthe.
  • Individuals in the painting look intoxicated and even paranoid due to the hallucinogenic effect of absinthe.
  • The lamps look as if they have eyes looking at you, which emphasizes the paranoia felt as a result of hallucinogenic effect.
  • The table looks as if it is walking towards us.
  • As if we the viewer are actually floating above the ground looking slightly down at the billiard table. Alcohol has the effect of making you feel disoriented, as if you're floating.
  • All of these are metaphors/symbolism.

Gustave Courbet

The Young Ladies of the Village giving alms to a cowherd (1852)

•  Depicts a group of wealthy women and a young girl cowherd. One of the women gives the cowherd a donation.
• Parisians were offended by the work because Courbet took an ordinary occurrence in the countryside and made it look like an act of great charity.
• Reflection of the class distinction of the time.

Jean Francois Millet

The Sower (1849)

1. Depicts a sower reseeding the ground.
2. Critics thought he was a socialist, he said that he was religious, identified amongst the rural poor.
3. Represents the virtue of agricultural labor and the biblical nobility of rural poverty.
4. Connection to biblical parable of mustard seed, which says that if you take a handful of mustard seeds and throw them on the ground, some will land on fertile soil and grow into mustard plants. Metaphor for missionary work, "you're gonna encounter a lot of opposition but worth it for that one person who hears what you're saying"
5. Criticized because it was deemed not worthy of depiction, too dirty and base.

Vincent van Gogh

Starry Night (1889)

Vincent van Gogh

Potato Eaters (1885)

1. Depicts poor working family living in a shack eating potatoes and drinking coffee.
   • Look weak and hands are worn from hard labor.
2. Scene is done with a dull palette to echo the drab living conditions of the peasants and used ugly models to further iterate the effects manual labor had upon these workers.
3. Van Gogh was not pro civilization but actually a discontent. He didn't believe in society's rules and did not want to conform to the order of society. We can see that from his painting, which doesn't depict leisure life in a modern France but gives the viewer a very dismal insight into the hardships of the less privileged working class. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

            The Annunciation (1850)

• Typical paintings depicting the annunciation of Mary show her as proud and happy to be given the honor of giving birth to God's child.
• In this painting the angel Gabriel does not look so heavenly but rather a bit ominous as evidenced by the fires appearing at his feet, also he is not depicted with wings.
• Mary is depicted as a bit disturbed, she is recoiling upon hearing the news from the angel. In this way, Rossetti is painting a natural psychological reaction to an incredible event. Mary is shown shocked upon hearing that she is pregnant even though she's a virgin and even more stressed upon learning that she's carrying God's child. 
• Angel is giving her a flower symbolizing innocence and chastity.
• She is depicted as a redhead, which was used to stereotype women as fiery and strong-willed but also overly sexual. Complicates role as virgin. Critically not well received.

Paul Cezanne

            Still-life with Apples (1875-77)

1. No horizon line so just looking at table and arrangement of apples.
2. Applying paint on canvas in a very controlled way. The brushstrokes are all in the same direction, so this must have taken him a long time. Looks very painterly but not done quickly.
   • Illustrates Cezanne's attempt to control his emotional state and obsession with order.
3. Painting in the same direction flattens the apples into a kind of woven pattern of brushstrokes. The apples appear as if they are woven into the table, so he added highlights on them to give them a sense of roundness.
4. Directional brushstrokes

Vincent van Gogh

The Sower (1888)

1. Stark contrast to Millet's version. Much lighter and brighter.
2. Use of impasto method, application of a lot of paint on canvas.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

La Moulin de la Galette (1876)

1. A depiction of a nightspot in Paris.
2. Painterly
3. People in the foreground are naturalized but as we go into the background the people become more painterly and less defined.
4. Emulates Manet more than impressionists, Manet-like realism.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)

1. Typical scene of upper-middle-class leisure.
2. The figures and the food are all naturalized but the trees in the background are impressionistic. Their branches create a web that obscures our view.
3. Creates the illusion of space through positioning of the figures and the railing.

Paul Gauguin

Ia Orana Maria (1891)

1. Gauguin felt disillusioned when he reached Tahiti. He was expecting a paradise filled with naked women and bountiful food. When he got there though he found out that Tahiti was colonized, school built, no longer the same as time of Omai painting.
2. Painting presents a scene of what Gauguin wanted from Tahiti. 
   • Tahiti version of Virgin Mary and Jesus (aversion to Christianity).
   • Lush landscape in distance
3. Kept a journal called Noa-Noa, recounting his experiences in Tahiti, loved by Picasso.
4. Didn't like food in Tahiti, so he imported from France.

Edouard Manet

Dejeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) (1863)

1. The Salon of 1863 refused a lot of work, which enraged many artists. Thus, Napoleon made an exhibition of all of the rejected works called the Salon des Refuses. Manet's painting was shown there.
2. Rejected because the painting was seen to be scandalous due to the nude women being depicted beside two well dressed men. 
3. Main question was why the nudity?
4. Typical depictions of nude women in art were reserved for classical Greek and Roman figures from antiquity (goddesses). They served as allegorical representations or metaphors for something. The women in this painting however are modern and it was considered perverse for a woman to be naked in front of a man unless it was done in private and they were married.
5. Inspired by Renaissance art depicting a similar scene by Georget and Tischen.
6. Reflects contemporary views on the role of women in society, people's aversion to sexual promiscuity.

Jean Francois Millet

The Gleaners (1857)

1. The painting depicts poor women picking scraps of corn from a field.
2. The brushwork is very light and soft, which contrasts the subject of the work which is poverty.
3. Painting was criticized because the Parisians were afraid that the poor could possibly form together and another revolution could take place.
4. The women, although destitute and starving, are not depicted in rags and they don't physically appear as beggars.
5. The French farmers are following the biblical tradition to leave gleanings for the poor (charity).
6. Their meager supply is juxtaposed with the plentiful harvest of the farmers seen in the background.
7. Despite the simplicity of their garb, their figures are strong and they demonstrate a sense of quiet fortitude.
8. The horseman in the background represents social order and privilege from hard labour.

Georges Seurat

            A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte (1884)

1. The painting depicts a leisure scene of upper middle class people enjoying an afternoon by a lake.
2. The entire painting was done with dots, no brushstrokes (pointillism). This style of painting emphasizes Seurat's obsessive need for order.
3. Used scientific color theory to take advantage of how we perceive color. Grouped different colors together to make it seem as if they were combined to form another color, such as grouping red and yellow together to make it seem as if there's orange, but never are the colors mixed together (optical mixing).
4. Similar pictorially to Monet's Cliff Walk but uses a very different artistic style.
5. Not done plein air, very precise and very detailed, took long time to do.

Gustave Courbet

            The Stonebreakers (1849)

• Painting depicts an old man and a young boy engaged in breaking apart stone for the creation of a road.
• Meant to be an accurate account of the abuse and deprivation that was a common feature of mid-century French rural life. Also meant to heroicize these individuals for their tough lives.
• Painted one year after Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, which served as inspiration for pitying the plight of working people.
• Similar to Millet's painting of the Gleaners, but not so idealized. Unlike the Gleaners, the workers are shown wearing tattered clothing.

Gustave Courbet

The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory of 7 Years of My Life as an Artist (1855)

• Painting depicts Courbet painting a landscape and a young boy and nude woman are standing beside him in admiration. To the right are his bohemian friends and to the left are assorted people of wealth, poverty, and misery in one combination.
  • Could be an allegory for the different types of people Courbet catered to. His bohemian friends as well as political elite.
  • The woman could be his muse.
  • The various social classes on the left are his inspiration for his paintings.
• Courbet was fed up of the criticism and intended to paint this to explore the social and cultural position of the artist, to cast off "art for art's sake" while maintaining independence.
• Courbet rejected rules and regulations and set up the Pavillion of Realism in response to being denied entry into the Exposition Universelle. He showcased only his paintings in an attempt to impress critics but failed. Wanted to paint scenes expressing his individuality, convey the customs, ideas, and look of his period through his own eyes.
• His painting reflects the power of the individual. He studied the old and modern masters but wanted to create art that reflected his own individual style. 
• Courbet is leaning back in his chair while painting, suggesting arrogance.
• A "real allegory" means that the figures were not actually there but they have a symbolic meaning.
  • Cat is depicted as playful, might symbolize freedom.

Jean Francois Millet

The Winnower (1848)

William Holman Hunt

            The Awakening Conscience (1853)

• Depicts an unmarried woman in the embrace of a wealthy man. This was frowned upon during the time because society was very conservative. 
• The woman's conscience awakens and she stares at a window, obviously wanting to escape from the situation.
• The man's hand is wrapped around her to prevent her from escaping. There is a cat in the painting with its paw around a dead bird, which connects figuratively to the situation of the woman. 
• Painting is trying to illuminate the social issue of adultery, a topic that was not publicly spoken of. Like holding up a mirror to Victorian society and showing them what occurs on a daily basis and exposing their hypocrisy.
• The woman is depicted as a redhead, which was commonly done in contemporary paintings to suggest that these women were hypersexual and immoral. Prejudice against Irish women. 
• Wealthy man preying on servant woman
  • Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood trying to not only create art but be social activists.
• The light and nature outside the window symbolize morality and innocence that the woman wants to attain.

John Everett Millais

            Christ in the House of His Parents (1850)

• Depicts a young Jesus in the house of Joseph and Mary. Joseph is depicted as much older than Mary, who was a young virgin miraculously impregnated with God's child.
• The setting of the painting is in a carpenter's workshop, which demonstrates the physical labor and hardship that Jesus encountered in life.
• The painting shows hammer and nails, the tools of crucifixion, as well as a ladder symbolizing the deposition after Christ's death. A bowl of water for baptism and the dove of the holy spirit. All examples of religious symbolism.
• Jesus is depicted with a cut finger and blood is dripping down onto his feet, which foreshadows the crucifixion.
• Was not received well because painting was considered as too realist. Critics wanted something more idealized. 
• Jesus and Mary both depicted as redheads, which was typically used to insult Irish men as naive and Irish women as fiery and immoral so this was sacrilegious. Also sacrilegious to show Jesus in such a base and dirty environment.
• Takes away the idealization of Christ. He is not presented as a divine figure but depicted in a realistic way inside a dirty carpenter's workshop.
• PRB was trying to reshape the expectations of Victorian England by rejecting the idealized Renaissance portrayals of religious figures.
• Carpenter's triangle is a metaphor for the holy trinity.

Ford Madox Brown

            Christ washing Peter’s feet (1852)

• Brown casts the scene of Jesus washing his disciples feet as a proletariat act. Jesus is portrayed as grasping Peter's feet as a carpenter would grasp a hammer. Sleeves rolled up to imitate the proletariat workers in France. Shown as muscular. 
• Traditionally, paintings of this nature were done to show Jesus' humility.
• Considered a base depiction of Jesus, also depicted as redhead.  

Ford Madox Brown

Work (1852)

• Preached the Christian Socialist gospel of work as the cure for the social unrest and moral iniquity that plagued mid-Victorian England.
• Scene set in Hampstead, England and depicts all of the different social classes in England and their role in society. 
• The scene shows the navvies or hard labor workers digging a trench. There is a poor man who may have misappropriated plants for sale. There are women handing out moral leaflets of temperance to encourage people to abstain from sin, such as alcohol, which is ironic because a worker is chugging beer in the background. 
• Aristocrats are shown watching over the workers. Their role in society is to provide stability, set a moral compass and example for other people. Provide guidance to those who want to achieve in life.
• Two men to the right are presiding over the workers as well. They are Christian Socialist Frederick Maurice and polemicist/reactionary socialist Thomas Carlyle. They were termed "brainworkers" by Brown, serving a function to think and criticize, like the sages of ancient Greece. Use their minds to enhance society and guide people.
• Brown and Carlyle believed that hard work was essential to human health and human nature, it ennobled people and cleansed their souls in a society that would otherwise degrade and enslave them to filthy lucre.
  • The workers were digging a trench to provide fresh water to replace the fetid streams that turned working-class neighborhoods into filthy and pestilential slums.

Edouard Manet

The Execution of Maximilian (1868)

1. France wanted to establish European power over Mexico so Napoleon III convinces Maximillian of Hapsburg to become emperor of Mexico. A civil war breaks out and the French move out of Mexico, leaving Maximillian to be executed by the orders of Mexican president Benito Juarez. 
2. Max is in the center with his two generals by his side. The firing squad is depicted with white belts, which was typical of French uniforms.
   • Manet knew that French were really responsible for execution.
   • Guard with rifle facing up looks like Napoleon.
3. Similar to Goya's 3rd of May, where the French were the shooters.
4. The spectators are watching in shock, inspired by scenes from Goya depicting bull fights.

Edouard Manet

Portrait of Emile Zola (1868)

1. Nonreferential self portrait
2. Depicts Zola with his publication defending Manet's artwork.
3. Bulletin board holds sketch of Olympia.
4. Flattening of perspective, typical of Japanese art. His body flattened along with the chair he is sitting on.
5. Japanese woodblock print on bulletin board, visually simple  but figures are composed of planes of color, which flatten them
   • Turn away from western one-point perspective in favor of something else, inspired by Japanese art.

Edouard Manet

Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1881)

1. Depicts a bar scene inside a large entertainment venue.
2. A barmaid is looking directly at us, the viewer, and we can see in the mirror behind her a reflection of what's going on in the rest of the bar. 
3. Manet was inspired by his Impressionist friends, who in turn truly admired him and considered him the father of Impressionism.
4. The feet of a trapeze artist are shown.
5. The people in the mirror are depicted as very painterly but the barmaid and the champagne bottles are very naturalized.
6. Realist painting depicting modern life.
7. The woman is depicted as almost leaning towards us, which gives some indication as to her sexual availability.
   • Manet wanted to emphasize the social perceptions about women during the time. 
8. The painterliness and quickness of the brushwork for the crowd in the reflection is probably a metaphor for the dynamic movement and sociability that is apparent between the patrons. Connects to France being a bustling modern city filled with life, people of all social classes comingling.
9. Shallow use of pictorial space, space ends abruptly after seeing the barmaid, and the rest of the scene /narrative takes place in a reflection.

Claude Monet

Boulevard des Capucines (1873)

1. Depicts a Parisian street after the haussmanization of France.
2. The trees in the painting form almost a web of branches that shrouds the buildings.
3. Not much detail in body composition.
4. Light is very important to impressionist painters because if the light changes, the color changes. Paint quickly to capture the exact moment, but this leads to painterliness.

Claude Monet

Impression: Sunrise (1873)

1. People don't like impressionistic works at first because they are deemed to be amateurish sketches. They are unfinished and unrefined.
2. This painting depicts people docking into a shipyard.
3. The water is very reflective and painterly.
4. The brushstrokes, crossmarks and vertical lines look almost like calligraphy.

Claude Monet

Gare St.-Lazare (1877)

1. Depicts a train station in Paris.
2. Train station architecture was based on cathedral architecture (Gothic) from medieval times.
3. The steam from coal-fired engines is seen rising and taking up the space along the ceiling of the train station. Steam was used to account for the lighting.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

La Loge (1874)

1. Face of woman is very naturalistic whereas the man's face is less detailed.
2. The painting reminds us of the sociological aspect of looking and being looked at, as evidenced by the man's use of opera glasses to look over at another booth in the opera.
3. Her lace on her cuffs are distinguishable at a distance but as we get closer we can't make out that it is lace. As with many other painterly works, the context of the painting as well as distance are very important for understanding what's being represented as well as the meaning of the work.
4. Her face and hair are very well defined, on part of Renoir's need to capture the details of the human body and composition (naturalism), contrast with Monet who doesn't care as much about the human body's composition.
5. The man is shown as more painterly which could allude to how a photograph is blurry if you make sudden movements while capturing the image. 
6. The woman's arm is cropped out of the painting, which was not done before, alludes to photography and how it can be seen as a fine art form.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

            La Grenouillier (1869)

1. Same depiction as Monet's except Renoir's work is less painterly, less impressionistic.
2. The body compositions of the people are more defined (naturalized).

Paul Cezanne

Mt. Ste.-Victoire (1885-87)

1.  Plots of rectilinear farmland between viewer and mountain.
2. High horizon line.
3. Use a palette knife to make rectangular marks for water and mountain. 
4. Layered rectangular marks on top of each other like roof shingles.
5. Served as inspiration for modern cubism, led by Picasso.

Paul Gauguin

Vision After the Sermon (1888)

1. Depicts the women of Brittany, have a collective miraculous vision.
   • Whole ground plane is red, collapses pictorial space, like Japanese prints
   • The tree seems to divide the earthly and heavenly realms. Looks Asian in appearance.
2. People were strictly agricultural and religious community. Rejected modern life and outsiders, industrialization.