EUROPEAN REALISM, PART ONE
Although Realism is usually associated with the artistic movement in France, Realism was an international movement that was both visual and literary. Realism in the nineteenth century was not just a political or social impulse, it was also a set of concepts that challenged and replaced the rubrics of Romanticism. This podcast examines the principles of the Realists artists.
EUROPEAN
The Definition of the Avant-Garde
In his book, The Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Burger stressed the historical basis of the avant-garde. The rise of the avant-garde was directly linked to the rise of the middle class. The main role of the avant-garde is the critique of the middle class by detaching it self from it. Bourgeois totalizing institutions, such as the institutions that are the “art world” must also be critiqued and defied. The kind of critique Burger discussed was a Marxist style critique, which, because it was delivered from a detached perspective, was far more radical than conventional criticism. The Marxist approach was, of course Kantian in origin in its stance of disinterest, but Marxist in its focus on bourgeois practices.
The radicality of the avant-garde position rests upon its freedom from having to “take sides” or obligation to maintain a position. The freedom to detach from an ideology is also the freedom to find an entirely unexpected stance. The avant-garde critique of the capitalist mode of production and its impact upon cultural producers has many consequences. First, the avant-garde artist is always alienated from the audience, outside the mainstream of traditional art and scornful of the middle class and its utilitarian preferences. The bourgeois saw little use for pure art in the service of the intellect or beauty or aesthetics, and understood only that art could be useful to reinforce their own social and political power, a lesson learned from the once powerful church and state. The middle class audience was unsympathetic with art, which lay outside what was familiar, traditional and recognizable. Thus, the artist, who felt constrained by bourgeois restrictions and by the low level of middle class taste, took on a defiant, rebellious stance, upholding the right of the artist to express him/herself artistically. Delighting in shocking the art public, the avant-garde artist is confrontational, refusing to meet the expectations of the middle class audience.
Instead of striving for acceptance, the avant-garde artist remains outside and alienated in order to critique middle class values, which placed money above love, status above mercy, work above play, and matter over mind. Avant-garde art, in challenging middle class pragmatism, challenged middle class power. Often this art directly or indirectly exposed middle class hypocrisy. Sunny and beautiful on the surface, many Impressionist paintings actually depicted well-known meeting places of scandalous encounters between prostitutes and their clients. Although today the meaning of these paintings may be lost on today’s viewers, the audience of the day was fully aware that the subjects of these artists were less than respectable. Starting with the proto-Romanticism of Jean-Antoine Gros and Théodore Géricault, the reality of current events were used to confront the public with the unpalatable truth, as shown by Gustave Courbet, or simply with ordinary every day life, as displayed by the Impressionists. The public literally could not read the broken brushwork of the Impressionists and reacted with anger and derision.
The activity of critique places the avant-garde artist outside of conventional ways of thinking. But this artist is also in front of the crowd and thus is making the future of art. The first separation within the art world can be seen during the Romantic period when certain artists began to represent current events. This shift to reality was an important one. Previously, the Neoclassical approach was an allegorical one, making statements about the present by using past events or using ancient examples to teach lessons for the present. The split between the ancients and the moderns is not simply a stylistic one, from the linear to the painterly, but most significantly, from the past to the present. The avant-garde artists refused to look back to a past that was increasingly irrelevant and insisted upon recording the present. Eugene Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People (1830) was perceived, not so much as a heroic rendering of a major event in recent French history, but as a political statement valorizing rebellious uprisings. Compared to Neoclassicism, which displaced politics to the past, Romanticism and Realism, were political simply in presenting the present. By the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the avant-garde had become political and dangerous to the established powers.
By the beginning of the 20th century, avant-garde artists were totally separated from the mainstream art world. The art world in France and England had become splintered into factions: the very conservative, the conservative or official art, the conservative avant-garde, and the radical avant-garde. For example, the Salon des Indépendants was conservative compared to the Salon d’automne. Avant-garde artists were completely isolated from mainstream art audiences and these artists followed the lead of the Impressionists and relied more and more upon sympathetic art dealers and understanding collectors for survival. The audience for the avant-garde artists was very small, often consisting of art critics who were crucial in writing the first accounts of indecipherable art.
This so-called “difficult” art was made by an artist, who was outside of official art and beyond public approval. Avant-garde art tended to engender yet another generation of art, even more difficult. For example, Monet was succeeded by his colleague, Cézanne, who was, in turn, was studied by the Cubists, Picasso and Braque. Picasso and Braque were typical of the avant-garde artists of the Twentieth Century. Working alone and unrecognized, supported by their dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Living in dire poverty, these two artists, like other avant-garde artists, were totally dedicated to their vision and to their belief in their art. Art historians depicted these artists as “heroes,” struggling to maintain personal and artistic integrity in the face of a life without honor and success, understood only by those educated few.
The emergence of the avant-garde artists and the theory of “art-for-art’s sake” emerged at the same time in France. Due to historical and economic forces, the avant-garde and aesthetics was dependent upon one another. The public did not approve of either the style or the content of avant-garde art, and in order to defend and explain this new art, critics often put forward an appeal for a formalist reading. When Emile Zola demanded that Edouard Manet’s work be understood in terms of its stylistic innovation, the writer was also insisting that the viewer look away from the subject matter and to the way in which the artist handled the formal elements. Looking at art from a formal and/or disinterested perspective required a new kind of “eye.” The purpose of avant-garde art was, by necessity an aesthetic one. But as Bourdieu explained in The Rules of Art,
“Although it appears to itself like a gift of nature, the eye of the nineteenth-century art-lover is the product of history…the pure gaze capable of apprehending the work of art as it demands to be apprehended (in itself and for itself, as form and not as function) is inseparable from the appearance of producers motivated by a pure artistic intention, itself indissociable from the emergence of an autonomous artistic field capable of posing and imposing its own goals in the face of external demands and it is also inseparable from the corresponding appearance of a population of ‘amateurs’ or ‘connoisseurs’ capable of applying to the works thus produced the ‘pure’ gaze which they call for.”
Although, as Bourdieu contends, the avant-garde was created as much by material forces as by aesthetic ideals, the avant-garde would have been impossible without the theory of “art-for-art’s sake.” This timely idea, borrowed from the German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, took half a century to come to fruition in France.
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French Romanticism: Subject Matter and the Artist
The Romantic was Janus-faced, facing the present and commenting upon it while turning away for current events in order to yield to the lure of fantasy, legend, myth, and exoticism. On one hand, Jean-Antoine Gros called attention to the human costs of Napoléon’s brutal wars in Napléon at Eylau in 1818, and, on the other hand, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres retreated into Nordic myth in his Dream of Ossian of 1813 and his charming paintings of troubadour legends. On one hand, Girodet produced a reverie of eroticism with his Sleep of Endymion in 1791 as the opening volley of Romanticism and Géricault explored the limits of Romanticism with his portraits of insane people and his renditions of severed limbs. One did not have to be an avant-garde artist to be “Romantic,” for the avant-garde was just beginning to form. One did not have to challenge Academic standards to be Romantic, for the Academy could very well accommodate exciting contemporary narratives, as long as they were correctly painted or sculpted. Although associated with bold color and visible brushstrokes, Romanticism is not a style, nor is it a particular content, nor is it a rebellion against authority. The successful and celebrated Romantic artists wanted to be accepted by the academic powers and vied for position and honors within the Salons. For many of these artists, their reputation as “romantic rebels” rests upon a few works of art. Most of the Romantic artists were part of the establishment and did not live the life of an outside artist, unappreciated and scorned by the forces of the status quo. The myth of the Romantic artist has been entangled anachronistically with that of the avant-garde, and the full-blown outsider movements of Realism and Impressionism were decades away.
The so-called rebelliousness of the Romantic artists is less political than entrepreneurial, linked more directly to the loss of traditional patrons: church, state, and aristocrats. The Romantic artist acted as an opportunist or a performance artist who sought to both slide past the conservative jury of the Salon and also to shock the spectators with spectacular and entertaining art. The art audience had become more and more middle class, which attended the Salons in large numbers. The bourgeoisie, the crowd, the mob must be addressed in some fashion. Fueled by fashions, literature and restless aggressive politics, the public developed a taste for scenes of sex and violence unsanctioned by the Academy and swooned over the newly discovered beauties of Nature. The public had little interest in erudite academic subject matter and gravitated towards the familiar and the market for genre painting and landscape painting began to develop, inspiring artists to concentrate their efforts in these areas that were not supported by the academic hierarchy and hence were open professional territories for ambitious artists.
Landscape painting began to free itself from its traditional role as a backdrop for a narrative in the foreground, and “pure” landscape, painted for pure pleasure and free of moralizing became more and more popular. Like still lives, landscapes could fit into any home and was acceptable to any taste, and did not offend any political opinions. The so-called lower genres were directed not so much towards the academy but to a public that was inclined to buy decorative art. The most important group of landscape painters was the Barbizon School, located in the village of Barbizon in the Forest of Fountainebleau. Artists such as Theodore Rousseau and Narcisse Diaz sketched in situ but finished the paintings in their studios. They shared, along with many Romantic painters, a new concern for direct observation of Nature at its most natural and most accurate. The Barbizon artists followed the Claudian precepts of the beautiful but they were distinctly modern in their refusal to include narrative in the painting. These artists, such as Constantin Troyon, produced “pure landscapes.” At the other end of the spectrum from marketable landscapes, the public taste for the strange and the exotic was also linked to economics. The “Orient”, the “East” became open territory to be subdued and conquered by the Western Europeans who were beginning another phase of unchecked imperialism. The delight in the themes of sex and violence, imagined by the European to be part and parcel of the Middle East, was fueled as much by sexual desires as by imperial pride. A large number of artists, called “Orientalists” imagined the mysterious East as a place of harems and beheadings, inhabited by an alien and violent people who could only benefit from benevolent French rule.
Although the aristocrats, old and new, were restored to power during Napoléon’s rule and after the Restoration of Louis XVIII, the new audience for art was largely middle class. The Romantic artist was sundered from traditional conservative artistic styles, separated from traditional patronage, and stripped of the historical social role as servant to higher powers. From the fall of Napoléon on, the artist was forced to re-invent him/herself as a social being and was forced to re-create a new cultural place and new purpose for unsanctioned art. The imported German idea of “art-for-art’s-sake” fulfilled multiple purposes, providing art and the artist with a new and exalted role in society. The artist had to be a free and independent creator who was an innovator and pushed art to change. As the new aesthetic theories gained a following, the art world began to splint between the avant-garde who rebelled and displeased the public and the academics who conformed and pleased the audience. By 1835, the writer and art critic, Théophile Gautier attacked conventional critics for their adherence to ideas of decorum and good taste. In the preface to Madamoiselle de Maupin, Gautier advocated for beauty and art for their own sakes. For the artist to be free to express original and personal feelings, art should have no useful purpose. Although these ideas give new impetus to art and a new place in society to the artist, they also begin the separation between the artist and the public that will be accelerated by the Revolution of 1848 in France.
Seen in the literary and the visual arts, Romanticism was an international movement and a cultural rejection of the Enlightenment and its stress on objective reason and rational thinking. Romanticism was subjective and the ultimate truth was individual emotions, feelings, and expression. This shift from the objective to the subjective, from object to subject, or the individual, as the source of truth was a radical transformation in Western thought, perhaps the logical consequence of Protestant emphasis on individuality and European hopes for a political democracy. The artist became important to society in a new way: not as an explicator of moral ideals, but as a “genius,” a seer who brought, through art, new insights into life. Although a new critical vocabulary was created as aesthetics moved to the center as artistic concern, the Romantic artists offered no coherent programme nor did they have a common goal. Wrapped up in their sense of individuality, artists produced works of art that proclaimed individual personalities and the originality that was the prerogative of the genius. Romanticism, as a challenge to academicism, was associated with forces of disorder and anarchy and revolution. As an extension, drawing and low key color, disciplined stylistics, and a smooth “licked” surface in painting and sculpture, characteristic of Neoclassicism, became politically tied to the state. Color, rough painting or impastoed facture became politically tied to the emotions that might lead to unrestrained social behavior. Politics aside, most so-called Romantic artists, such as Delacroix, were actually politically quiet conservative, as are most artists because social and political stability are necessary for art making to be possible.
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FOUNDING ROMANTICISM
Two of the founding members of French Romanticism, Gros and Girodet, were Napoléonic artists who specialized in military glory and romantic escapism, respectively. Although they were both followers of David, both artists moved away from Neo-Classicism to a form of early Romanticism. However, they were both overtaken by historical events and new artists, such as Ingres and Delacroix took their places. This podcast examines their late works, which established the basic parameters of Romanticism in France.
French Romanticism: The Historical Context
Neoclassicism was a historicist revival of an ancient style that acquired political and social implications during a time of turbulent change. Calm and serene, Neoclassicism lent itself well to noble subject matter that depicted the ideals the French public should emulate. Despite the classical harmony of Neoclassicism, the style was developed during a decade of chaos. Ironically, Romanticism, which in contrast, was a dramatic and dynamic style matured during a decade of peace and calm. The Romantic artists looked back to the Napoléonic age of empire and glory with disappointment and depression that they had been born too late to participate in the great adventure. Although these artists challenged the Salon system that maintained the status quo and the academic style, they did so in a society that was busy turning back the clock of liberalism. Under Napoléon, traditional powers were reinstalled, an emperor took the place of a king, the Catholic Church was restored, and the Code Napoléon, while an efficient legal structure, set the cause of equality back for decades to come. Napoléon reinforced the backward look to his regime by adopting the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne as his model to reinforce the concept of “France,” which was a “modern” nation with a long tradition. On the other hand, Napoléon fought “wars of liberation” to spread the French Revolution over Europe and wound up presiding over an Empire. Once a force of the “liberation” of Europe, the Grande Armée became a force of conquest, control, and occupation, all in the name of “freedom.”
Romanticism, in France, evolved out of Neoclassicism’s grand manner as Napoléon’s artists responded to commissions that demanded glorification of his military adventures and martial victories. But the building of an empire was often a dark and dirty business. Hiding beneath the mask of glory was a very real cost in human life and suffering that demanded a new and sometimes uncomfortable realism. Jean-Antoine Gros glorified Napoléon but could not ignore the reality of war. The growing unease with Napoléonic wars can be traced through the works of Baron Gros. From Napoléon at Arcole (1796) to Napoléon at the Pesthouse of Jaffa (1804) and Napoléon at Eylau (1806). In the decade, the depiction of Napoléon had gone from heroic young leader to noble healer to solemn general leading his horse slowly among the dead. Gros and the other Napoléonic artists could not resort to classical allegory and were forced, by their Emperor’s demands, to represent the contemporary era. Current events seemed far more relevant than ancient deed from an antique past. Any lessons the classical era might have had seemed meaningless in the face of modern times of industrialization and total war. The break between Neoclassicism and Romanticism can be clearly seen in the time when France dominated the Continent and plunged Europe into ten years of war. While many artists continued to explore the possibilities of the Neoclassical, artists such as Gros were drawing a distinctive dividing line between Neoclassicism and Romanticism—the new interest in the contemporary and a new concern with one’s own time.
The age of Napoléon was a great age for art and for artists in France. The Emperor threw himself into a well-organized orgy of looting the cultural heritage of Europe. He stripped European nations of their patrimony and brought thousands of art treasures, large and small, significant and less well known to Paris and installed them in the Louvre, now a public museum. The challenge to Neoclassicism from new artists and unfamiliar art was part of the origin of Romanticism. To be able to see actual paintings by Rubens, his bold brushwork, his bright colors, his restless and dynamic forms was a revelation to French artists. To the new Romantic generation, the French academy ceased to the sole source of artistic ideals. The French people accepted, as their due, this artistic tribute from other countries. They had few moral qualms about the wholesale stripping and transportation of European culture to Paris. In addition to the unprecedented availability of Continental art, the fall of the French aristocracy had brought a number of important private collections to the market. Most of this art found its way to England, where it was safe from Napoléonic looting. But the looted collections added to the Louvre were returned to their countries of origin, with the exception of a few prize Italian works, still in France.
After the fall of Napoléon in the first abdication of 1814 and the final fall in the second abdication of 1815, France returned to a conservative political mode. Napoléon himself had certainly been reactionary when it came to women and the lower classes and he reinstated the Catholic Church, bringing back religious traditions, albeit under state control. His successor, the Bourbon monarch, Louis XVIII did little to change the France Napoléon left behind, continuing his policy of inviting the émigrés back and restoring the old order, while opening the doors to men of merit. Louis agreed to a constitutional monarchy, modeled after that of Britain, while his successor, Charles X, chafed under such restrictions. Although the French people had nostalgic memories of Napoléon, they had little patience with the simple-minded kind and revived the old revolutionary fervor in the “July Days” of 1830. Charles X was summarily overthrown in a few short days, called “Days” as a reflection of the “Days,” also in July when the first Revolution began in another July in 1789. The next king who stepped into the vacant throne, Louis-Philippe, was careful to not repeat the mistakes of Charles X and called himself the “Citizen King.” During the span between Napoléon and Louis-Philippe, Romanticism in France and its counterpart, the avant-garde, was created.
Near the conclusion to his classic history, The Age of Napoléon, J. Christopher Herold quoted Napoléon,
“’Greatness has its beauties, but only in retrospect and in the imagination’: thus wrote General Bonaparte to General Moreau in 1800. His observation helps to explain why the world, only a few years after sighing with relief at its delivery from the ogre, began to worship him as the greatest man of modern times. Napoléon had barely left the scene when the fifteen years that he had carved out of world history to create his glory seemed scarcely believable. Only the scars of the war veterans and the empty places in the widows’ beds seemed to attest the reality of those years, and time soon eliminated even these silent witnesses. What remained, in retrospect and in the imagination, was legend and symbol.”
The generation of Romantic artists who matured under the reign of Louis XVIII and Charles X had to be content with a petit revolution and regretted not having experienced the true glory of life under Napoléon. Artists, such as Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, spent their early careers dealing with the contemporary. Géricault who, like Gros, measured the Napoléonic wars with two paintings of dashing French cavalry officers, both resplendently dressed, but each portrait of a warrior was very different. The Charging Chasseur (1812) and the Wounded Cuirassier (1814), separated by two short years, span the gap between the glory years just before the disastrous Russian campaign and the year of defeats at the hands of the Alliance of European armies. Part of a transition generation between David and Delacroix, Gros and Géricault swerved away from the Davidian tradition of heroic Neoclassicism, as seen in Napoléon Crossing the Alps, and into a hybrid of Romanticism combined with realism, overlying classicism. Under the reign of Louis XVIII, artists were not bound to producing propaganda and were freed from Napoléonic censorship. Géricault pointedly criticized the new and incompetent government with his Raft of the Medusa, seen in the Salon of 1819. The theatricalized scene, which included a young Delacroix, posing on the raft, was dramatically Romantic, contemporary, and political. Arriving at the end of France’s time of glory and honor, Géricault’s Raft revealed how dangerous and how forceful art, freed of the dictates of the state, could be.
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THE EARLY ROMANTICS: GROS AND GIRODET
Although the French Revolution caused an upheaval in French art, there was an attempt to use Neo-Classicism to return to the pure and historical origins of art. However, compelling contemporary events and a new regime interested in using art as propaganda worked against the dominance of Neo-Classicism in the Academy. Even before the term was applied, “Romantic” art began to appear. The earliest of the French Romantic artists were the Napoléonic painters, Gros and Girodet. Both students of David, the young artists uneasily made the transition from the Neo-Classicism of their master to the demands of the new century. In their early works, Gros and Girodet represented the poles of Romanticism: contemporary subjects and escapist subjects.
Part Two will examine the artists’ later works.
FRENCH ROMANTICISM
Romanticism in France was an artistic movement that was born of the excitement of Napoleonic art and its depictions of the glory and horrors of total war. But after the Emperor was deposed, the new generation of artists could find “liberty” only in the refuge of art-for-art’s-sake and freedom existed only in bohemia. It was in the quarters of unknown artists that the avant-garde was born, but the most successful Romantic artists in France were, in fact members of the establishment. Although Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres were often considered as Romantic opponents, they both were chroniclers of their times, depicting an image of an age caught between past glories and the future of industrialism.
The Artistic Revolution in France
Two social events would impact artists and art, especially in France. The first event was the French Revolution, which forced artists to choose between King and Country and eliminated the traditional patrons, the Church and the aristocrats. The second event was a long, ongoing process: the rise of the middle class as a group that would dominate economically and politically and thus constitute a new buying public for art. In the decades before the French Revolution, the middle class had made itself known to the artists. Although impressed by history painting, this class was interested in domestic themed art for middle class interiors. In addition to being pushed by new collector demands, the artist was increasingly beholden to the opinions of art critics. Any artist who wished to succeed in the Salon had to go through a set of educational and professional motions, including the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Prix de Rome and recognition in the Salon by the established powers—-the State, the Church, and the wealthy patrons. The French Revolution upended the state-based system of educating and rewarding artists, but only for a time. During the Revolution, artists either participated in propagandizing the aims and ideals of the cause or risked being denounced and imprisoned. One of the most important painters for the French Royal family, Jacques-Louis David, proved to be an agile and adroit political opportunist and quickly turned his coat and put himself in the service of the Revolution. He even went to far as to sign warrants which led to the imprisonment of his colleagues while he designed and built huge works of public art, rather like the Rose Bowl floats of today, that advertized the Revolution and awed the spectators. At the end of the worst part of the Terror, David joined his imprisoned colleagues in the Luxembourg Palace. He was lucky not to have been beheaded as were his sponsors. David’s pupils, Jean-Antoine Gros and Anne-Louis Girodet Roussey de Trison, were able to ride out the Revolution in Italy, safely away from the changing fortunes of artists unwise enough to play politics.
David emerged from prison somewhat chastened but quickly attached himself to the next rising star, Napoleón Bonaparte, already a patron to Gros. The end of the Eighteenth Century was an age of hero worship and Napoleón rewarded those who worshiped him. Once sanity returned and stability replaced civil war and chaos, the new régime, the Directory quickly restored the system of art education, complete with the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Rome Prize, and all of the academic rules and regulations that, if followed, would lead to Salon success. But the demands upon the artist had changed. The old patrons were gone and new powers awaited the artists. The state under Napoleón embarked upon nearly two decades of propagandistic art, celebrating the new Emperor and his court. Neoclassicism, already an important style before 1789, had been employed as the style of the Revolution by David, who was now the most important artist of the Empire. Responding to the needs of the new heroes, Neoclassicism retained its carefully classical style—-clear outlines and cool colors and balanced composition—-but was dramatized by exciting narratives suitable to an age of glory and conquest.
It is here, in these military narratives, that the germs of Romanticism can be discerned. Early Neoclassicism did not favor diagonals and action and motion, but under the Emperor, excitement and drama ruled. That said, the official style of the Empire was given over to the same traditional role as had always been expected of artists—–supporting the established powers. Although during these Napoleónic years, ideas of Romantic aesthetics from Germany were imported to France, art-for-art’s-sake and artistic freedom were still in the future. The artists had to please new masters, the Emperor, the Salon jury, and the bourgeoisie. Most of all the artist had to conform to the Salon system itself, now refined and more important than ever. By the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, a new power, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, was firmly in social, economic, and political power, despite the comings and goings of various emperors and kings. This middle class was an art-loving class. They knew little about art but knew that they like to be entertained. Thousands came to art exhibitions called Salons that were state-run and state-supported advertisements for academically trained artists. The Salon was the only avenue of economic opportunity for the French artist who needed to make a living. Scheduled for every year or every other year, depending on which régime was in power, the Salons were huge exhibitions drawing from artists around the world. The French public crowded in by the thousands, expecting to be delighted and amused, rather like we are pleased (or not) by contemporary film.
For the French artist, the annual Salon was the one chance to show and to become known. To be refused—rejected from the Salon—was to be a failure, a refusée, until the following year. Merely being accepted was not a guarantee of success. Paintings were hung floor to ceiling and, of course, each painter wanted his/her work to be hung at eye level and not “skied,” that is, hung high, or hung low. Prominent artists could demand that their works be hung where the public could see them easily. The most successful painters were those who pleased both the public and the Academy juries. Sculpture in the Salons adhered to the Neoclassical style but what the audience saw were small-scale works or casts or maquettes for future public projects. Often the smaller works would be placed upon a crowded table and the sculptors suffered from the same kind of limitations to ideal viewing as the painters. The Salon was a room of hierarchies that went beyond what the jury liked or not. History painting reigned supreme, prized because the difficult and didactic compositions, crowded with ancient notables, mostly partially nude, displayed the artist’s erudition and education. Only an artist educated in the Ecole would be capable of drawing and composing a group of figures. Only an artist educated in the Ecole would be educated enough to understand the minutia of ancient history. Other artists, especially women, would be confined, due to lack of education to lower ranking genres, such as genre scenes and portraiture and still lives. In these years before modern art galleries and collecting, the Salon was the only game in town and artists had little choice but to accept the rigorous rule of a conservative elite, disinclined to be open-minded to new artistic ideas.
But new ideas were already present to those who were alert to such things. The clash of realism and romanticism was present in the propaganda art of Gros, the blatant eroticism of Girodet, and the offbeat choice of content by Théodore Géricault. The French Revolution may have ended in yet another oppressive regime under a new Emperor but it had introduced the idea of individual rights and freedom. Neoclassicism essentially ended with the reign of Napoleón, and an artistic revolution began to emerge. Denied political rights and freedom, artists began to resist the demands for the status quo from the Salon juries and took a more independent path. Born of political disillusionment, a new attitude began to take shape. The artist demanded the right to freedom of expression as an art maker, which, in these early years of Romanticism, played itself out mostly along the lines of style and the way in which materials were handled. Both inside and outside the Academy there was the pressing and urgent quarrel between the Poussinistes (the proponents of line in art and discipline in society) and the Rubenistes (the proponents of color in art and individual freedom in society).
This quarrel was a challenge to the dominance of Neoclassicism and the Salon system, which controlled artists. But the quarrel was more than stylistic; it was political. The dominant art form was connected to the dominant social system. These conflicts, no matter how they are labeled, seem to break down into philosophical positions, which seem to extend far beyond any disagreements as to style or subject matter. Neoclassicism vs. Romanticism is really a conflict about emotion vs. reason, which is really a conflict about which should be supreme in art, color (emotion) or line (reason)? The question of line versus color is really a political conflict about who should rule, the people (feelings) or the state (order) were social conflicts concerning democracy vs. the ruling caste. The conflict over individual freedom opposed to the state’s traditional control over the art makers is really a conflict between the lone, romantic genius artist inventing new forms as opposed to the powers of the Academy. During this era, the beaux-arts had a far more important and prominent place in society than today; and the State government of France kept careful control over artistic production, understanding all too well that an artist could speak directly to the people.
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ROMANTICISM AND NATIONALISM
Although Romanticism was supposedly subjective, or based in the individual sensibility of the artist, this movement was an international movement with characteristics unique to each nations. The Romantic Movement is discussed in comparative terms, assessing the differences among the movements in France, England, America and Germany.
