Solved by verified expert:In an essay of approximately 500 words (with a typical font and spacing, this will be approximately 2 pages), respond to the following question.
Consider the works of Jozef Israels and Vincent van Gogh and discuss the relationship between Impressionism and Expressionism.
In your answer be sure to include mention of stylistic and subject similarities, differences, and goals.Do this using ONLY the examples that Soltes discusses and explains in his lectures. Do not use Internet sources for inspiration nor as help.
30_revolutions_in_spanish_and_english_painting.pdf
31_france_s_gold_and_silver_ages.pdf
32_politics_and_romanticism.pdf
33_from_realism_to_impressionism.pdf
34_from_paris_to_the_east.pdf
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Thomas Edison State College | 30 Revolutions in Spanish and English Painting
[CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING]
In our last lecture, we arrived at the period of the 16th through 18th centuries, with respect to the development of
the dome and the carrying forth of the dome idea out of Italy to other parts of Europe, and even to the United
States. This is a period when, within general European history, if we think back for a moment, there were a
number of important transitions being experienced with respect to political power and religious conflict. The age of
religious wars is continuing, and the struggle therefore between Protestants and Catholics is a dominant theme of
much of the period.
Among the countries that are part of that conflict, certainly, are Spain, Catholic, and England, Protestant. And
when we think of them, we think in 1588 of the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English fleet, which in
retrospect is the beginning of a long swoon of Spanish political power and the beginning of the ascent of English
political and military power to its culmination by the end of the 18th century.
So this period then is an interesting one, specifically with respect to Spain and England as two kind of antipodes.
They are the two countries in Europe that are also separate from the rest of Europe– England an island
separated from the mainland by a sea, Spain a kind of peninsula separated from the mainland by the Pyrenees
mountain range.
So it’s appropriate to look for a moment during this period at Spain and then at England, and ask the question as
we arrive to Spain first, what’s happening when, in the early 17th century, having already encountered Velazquez,
what’s happening in Spain aside from Velazquez? Is there anything in art happening of significance? And the
answer is yes.
So Francisco de Zurbaran, born in 1598 and lived until 1664, was certainly one of the most important of
Velazquez’ contemporaries, known mainly for his portraits and his religious paintings. He studied in Seville And
although at the age of 32 in 1630, he was already the court painter to King Philip IV. Yet he continued to stay in
Seville only moving to Madrid much later on.
Works like his wonderful martyred monk, Saint Serapion, done around 1628, are typical of his style and the kind of
subject that appeal to him– a very austere rendering with very sharp edges of severe and ascetic experiences
and self-chastising moments, the whole with such a deep contrast of light and dark that he has been likened to
Caravaggio, and in fact was often referred to as the Spanish Caravaggio. His particular skill at rendering white
drapery made him a favorite as a portraitist of members of the Carthusian order, who typically wore white robes.
But in this case, Saint Serapion is a 13th-century monk who actually came from Ireland, intending, with the forces
of Richard the Lionhearted, to fight against the Muslims but choosing instead to seek to convert them to fight
them, and ultimately, in Spain becoming part of the Order of the [INAUDIBLE], the Mercy Givers, who took as their
promise and their province and their purpose to try to ransom and help those who had been taken captive by the
Muslims.
Now, it was a long monastic tradition to emulate Christ by seeking to be ascetic, by seeking to suffer, by seeking
martyrdom, which for the most part since Christianity had become dominant by the end of the fourth century, had
not been possible for Christians wishing to emulate Christ. But Saint Serapion literally had the opportunity.
So what we’re seeing here in Zurbaran’s painting is of the monk not merely assuming a crucified position as if to
emulate Christ, but he was given as a hostage to the Muslims in exchange for someone else. And ultimately,
when the funds didn’t arrive on schedule to redeem him, he was martyred in Algiers, crucified and cut apart. So in
fact, this harsh rendering is a very soft rendering compared to the details of the fate of Saint Serapion.
Nonetheless, Zurbaran’s very hard-edged and austere style ultimately found him out of favor in the last 15 years
of his life or so, as tastes shifted towards softer, perhaps we might say warmer, works, with respect both to color
values and sentiment that we see exemplified by Jusepe de Ribera and Bartolome Esteban Murillo. De Ribera,
born in 1591– a few years earlier, and older therefore than Zurbaran– and lived until 1652. Whereas Zurbaran
spent his entire life in Spain, Ribera spent much of his life in Italy, generally and ultimately around Naples at a time
when Naples was a Spanish possession when he settled there in 1616. So he was known as Lo Spagnoletto, the
Little Spaniard.
And like many others, he emulated and was influenced by the intense chiaroscuro associated with Caravaggio.
But his direction tended to be with religious subjects and secular and pagan mythological subjects, and the style
that he affected came to be called tenebrist, “tenebroso” really being a Spanish word meaning “shadowy” that is
essentially the equivalent of chiaroscuro as a descriptive of a style that makes much of the contrast between light
and shadow.
Here we see before us a rendition of St. Agnes in Prison, done in 1641. She was a young girl martyred during the
last major martyring of Christians under Diocletian at the very end of the third, very beginning of the fourth,
century. They put wood under her. The wood wouldn’t take fire, so they simply beheaded her.
And St. Agnes, because she was only 13 at the time and the martyrdom came about out of her refusal to marry a
pagan because she’d already embraced the church, there was a pond with her name that “Agnes” in Latin is
associated with “agnos,” lamb, the Lamb of God. But in fact, her name, Agnes, comes from the Greek “hagne,”
meaning “pure.” And so the pure lamb is the association we get with her.
And the very Rembrandt-like gold that envelops her in this marvelous painting by Rivera gives her a very
otherworldly, a very [INAUDIBLE] focused sensibility, so enwrapped is she in another reality that she’s not even
aware of what we can see of this little puto, this little angel that is wrapping a garment around her to protect her
chastity against the intentions to violate her for her Christianity.
Bartolome Esteban Murillo, born a generation after the previous artists, was, like Zurbaran, from Seville. He
excelled in the depiction of very light-filled clouds and waters and flowers and colorful drapery. You might say that
he is to Zurbaran what [INAUDIBLE] had been to [INAUDIBLE] in Venice in terms of a lighter kind of palate, a
lighter kind of feel to the work not only in color but in mood. He came to Madrid in fact in 1642 to study with
Velazquez, although he ended up back in Sevilla.
And so we see in a work, like his Holy Family with a Little Bird of about 1650, less richness of color than many
other of his works exhibit, but a kind of tone and mood that is typical of the sweet, almost sentimental sensibilities,
that quality that attracted an audience and lost Zurbaran’s audience for him in favor of artists like Ribera and
Murillo. Here we see the ultimate statement of humanist representation, the holy family as an everyday family, a
sweet, loving family, an upper crust peasant class kind of family with a Joseph very handsome and much younger
than he is typically represented, with no elements of supernaturality here, no halos, nothing to suggest other than
a family. This beautiful little Christ child, a blond kind of baby holding in his hand a little bird, holding it up as the
little puppy looks towards him.
And he both holds the bird away from him and seems to offer the bird to him, since we see that that puppy’s hand
is raised up as if he is begging. And when we realize and when we remember that the bird is a symbol of the soul
and the dog is a symbol of faith, so we have faith and the soul in interface with each other against the backdrop of
this, if I may use the word, tenebrist painting, with its light and yet dramatic balancing between light and shadow.
These three painters are, together with Velazquez, the key figures of the 17th century Spanish painting baroque.
And all of them exhibit a kind of calm, matter-of-factness that contradicts the norm with respect to baroque
excess, agitation, and overabundance. They are the exception to the rule.
On the other hand, that quality precisely suits the architectural style of Jose Joaquin and Alberto Churriguera and
their descendants and pupils who, from about 1600 to 1750, dominate much of the Spanish architectural decor
seen with so agitated and busy elements that “churrigueresque” is an adjective used to describe an overwrought,
restless and excessively ornamented kind of style.
Churrigueresque architecture tends to integrate sculpture with the architecture to a capricious extreme, nowhere
more impressively than in the city of Salamanca, and nowhere more excitedly there than on the 90-foot high altar,
the high altar of the Dominican convent church of San Esteban, of Saint Stephen, done by Jose de Churriguera,
dating from about 1693 or so.
The painting of Saint Stephen, of Esteban, the first Christian martyr stoned before the gates of Jerusalem, is
virtually lost in this overabundance of fantastic detail, including this mixture of what are called [INAUDIBLE], these
ornamental columns that are shaped like vertical cones, the whole thing overrun and overwhelmed with figures
and with floral and vegetal, as well as geometric motifs that don’t give the eye a moment to rest, that swallow the
viewer’s eye up with this stupendous personification of the concept excess. If seeing is believing in some
vocabularies, then faith at its most extreme is intended here to be signified by opulent imagery.
Now, by the time that altarpiece had been done, William Hogarth 1,000 miles and more away was waiting to be
born up in England in 1697. He’d live until 1764. Hogarth was perhaps inspired by the constant flow of visiting
Dutch artists, whom earlier we have discussed, back in the 17th century into England. And Hogarth produced a
series of, well, really comic strip like works that he termed modern moral subjects. So the lightly moral mood of
17th-century Dutch painting becomes in Hogarth’s hand a very heavy-handed and overt and straightforward
morality kind of subject, as we have not only shifted geographically from Spain to England but shifted in time from
the 17th up toward and into the 18th century.
Political and social satire is Hogarth’s thing, and in the 1730s he established himself as an original genius when he
produced a series of works called A Harlot’s Progress, done about 1731, first as six paintings which no longer
exist and then as engravings, that told the story of a young woman from the country who gets drawn against her
own will and, because of her own naivete and innocence, into prostitution. It’s a long, unhappy story that
culminates with her death by venereal disease and a very heartless funeral. That’s one series he did.
Then he did another series a few years later called A Rake’s Progress that tells the story of the reckless life of the
spendthrift Tom Rakewell, son of a rich merchant who wastes his money an array of devices and ends up his life
in the Bedlam Asylum. And Hogarth, of course, is punning the idea “Rake” is really a short for rakehell, and
actually “rakehell” is an English-language corruption of a Scandinavian word meaning “wanderer.” So wanderer
becomes the raking of hell becomes the rake, and of course, Tom Rakewell is punning on that whole idea by
Hogarth.
Here we look at an etched engraving that gives us the final scene of eight that shows him at Bedlam, and we see
him with his head shaved, nonetheless scratching for lice which can’t be there because there’s no hair on which to
lay their eggs. And his leg irons are either being put on or taken off. We see him surrounded by all kinds of weird
and wild figures. We see someone measuring this mad microcosm of the universe. We see someone else with the
false telescope trying to find stars in the ceiling. We see someone playing music with a book of music on his head.
And then the back room, flooded with light, we see a figure twisting around to pray to a large image of the cross.
There is so little hope in this last scene– well, perhaps a little bit. The young woman helping him out is a woman
whom several images back he had deserted, who now has shown up to try and save him in the last moment of his
ruined life. And of course, this is the last scene we see, so we don’t know whether she’ll succeed or not.
Hogarth did what two centuries earlier Duhrer had done, which is translate his paintings into etching and engraved
forms, which made it possible for his moral lessons to be carried far and wide, and his name to be carried far and
wide. But he did do these as paintings in another of his series, done about 1743 through 1745. It’s the skewering
of the upper classes with his Marriage a la Mode as he called, a series of moral lessons on the tragic fate awaiting
those who marry for money, which presumably, he understood, the upper crust always does.
So these paintings, translated later on into printed form and distributed widely, would make him quite well-known.
Before us we see shortly after the wedding, and we can easily enough discern that things have not gone very well.
We’re barely a few days into the marriage, and we see this petulant bride toward the center of the composition.
And to our right and her left across from the fireplace– and the fire has gone out; the fire of love has gone out; the
fire of the wedding has gone out– we see this overly well-fed, and obviously also probably obnoxious snotty
groom, and the two of them engaged in a conflict. Chairs are flying all over the place. The fellow to the far left who
had tried to adjudicate with them finally throws his hands up in dismay and leaves the scene.
And we can, of course, by way of prospective, look deep into this household to get a sense of the opulence that
surrounds this very ugly scene. We peer in at it with a mixture of amusement and, of course, embarrassment,
because no one wants to be privy to these kinds of messes, as we find ourselves forced to be by Hogarth.
Now, Thomas Gainsborough, born in 1727, lived until 1788, was the recipient of considerable patronage from the
spoiled upper classes– eventually, anyway. He was a child prodigy. At age 13 he was sent to study with the
French engraver Hubert [INAUDIBLE], and he was associated with Hogarth as his teacher, as well, but ultimately
couldn’t make it in what he wanted to do, which was to be landscape artist, so eventually moved with his family in
1759– by then he had a wife and a couple of children, daughters– to Bath.
And there, he started the portraits of one of those Dutchman, van Dyck, who had spent time in England, and so
decided to become a portraitist in order to make a living. And perhaps the most famous of the portraits he
created, The Blue Boy , which was commissioned by John [INAUDIBLE], a very wealthy hardware merchant, as a
portrait of his young son is in part a tribute to van Dyck. The outfit, you realize, is a 17th-century outfit, not an
18th-century outfit. So it’s a direct tribute to van Dyck. And here we see this young lad with his hands on his hip, a
gesture, we may remember, pioneered by Rembrandt and van Dyck, who stares out boldly and matter-of-factly,
directly right to the viewer. And he is so carefully, his garment so carefully, rendered, the brushwork so finally
finished, that there’s a strong contrast with the very vague kind of background, giving us a kind of depth of field
that will be re-captured centuries later with the advent of photography.
But if portraiture was Gainsborough’s bread and butter, landscape painting was what he really loved doing. It’s my
pleasure, as he said it. And in the end, we may recognize him as the only really original English landscapist of the
period. There’s simply nobody else on the scene whose work can be compared to his.
We look at his Pool with Herdsmen and Cattle, done about 1755, and we realize that it is the landscape, a
landscape perhaps influenced also by the Dutch, by [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE], with those feathery trees that
dominates the image and that his is love. Well, love is in fact perhaps a subject there. We’ve got a herdsmen with
cattle. Well, the cattle are off to the mid-level right on the other side of the pool. The forefront center is the cattle
man and a young woman engaged in a very energized conversation.
So really, this is more a painting about love, but really it’s a painting about his love of landscape, the trees, the
sky, the clouds, forming dialogues of texture and light, the water reflecting the sky, the sky offering a late
afternoon lazy summer day that is about to coalesce into evening. And yes, interwoven with that but so small that
we have to look around to find them, we can find them by that wonderful spot of red so small that we have to look
about to find them, is that couple in the foreground.
Now, Gainsborough was really one of the originators of 18th-century British landscape, and one of his
contemporaries and competitors who tended to sway away from landscape and towards portraiture was Sir
Joshua Reynolds, in fact the dominant portraitist of the second half of the century. So Joshusa was born in 1723,
and he died in 1792. And as much as he and Gainsborough were great competitors, they really liked and
respected each other. In fact, it was Reynolds who, in the remarks at Gainsborough’s funeral, recognized and
appreciated the kind of brushwork that at too little or too great a distance for Gainsborough seems off, but at the
right distance coalesces into beautiful work that suggests what the French impressionists will be doing a century
or so later.
Reynolds, on the other hand, one of the founders in 1768 and the first president of the Royal Academy, was so
extensive a portraitist that it is said that he created some 3,000 portraits in response to myriad commissions and
eventually became the official painter to King George III, that by 1784. Although interestingly, Gainsborough
continued to be the preferred painter of the rest of the royal family. So that must have been a kind of interesting
dichotomy of patronage and reception.
In any case, Reynolds’ portraits tend to be more idealized than those of Gainsborough, with a tighter brush stroke.
So these include quite a few of Mrs. Siddons, shown here in 1784 as the tragic music. So what Reynolds tended
to do was to create his portrayed individuals in some kind of a dramatic role. So for men, it would be some heroic
role. And for women it would be typically some tragic role or some mythological role. Here we see her as the tragic
muse. We see the two figures behind her of terror and pity. And most importantly, we recognize how the arms and
the upper body and the face, and at the feet Mrs. Siddons, we have pools of scintillating white light surrounded by
this sea of mysterious browns and grays and the like.
Now, together with Gainsborough, George Romney, born in 1734, died in 1802, was Reynolds’ other competitor
for preeminence in English painting in the second half of the century. Romney’s own inspiring use was, oh for
sure, Emma, Emma Hamilton– or Emma Hart, as she had earlier been called. He painted her over 60 times. She
was, to make a long story short, the mistress and then the wife of the much older Lord Hamilton. Hence, from
Emma Hart she became Emma Hamilton. And then subsequently, she was the mistress of the hero of the
Napoleonic Wars, Admiral Nelson, while still married to Lord Hamilton, who apparently approved. But I wasn’t
there, so I don’t know whether he did or not.
In a study that we see before us of Emma, Lady Hamilton, as St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music and done about
1785, we see Romney’s subject as a marvel of white gown and book in contrast to the bright red li …
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