BRAND NEW INFORMATION
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier - The Barricade, Rue de la Mortellerie
The barricade, Rue de la Mortellerie, June 1848 known as Souvenir of the civil war
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Enrolled as a captain in the Artillerie de la Garde nationale, Meissonier viewed at close quarters the days of 1848 during which the troops of General Cavaignac annihilated the Parisians in revolt. This small picture is almost a piece of reportage; the implacable realism of a daguerreotype. "This is the horror of the truth", was Delacroix's comment.
The many disappointments resulting from the revolution of 1848 and the Second Republic opened to the door to Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, enabling him to play a role on the French political stage. And he managed to rally to his cause not only the bourgoisie worried by the revolutionary disorders, and the peasants hostile to the Republic, but also a part of the working classes which believed in his social programme. On 10 December, 1848, Louis-Napoleon was elected President of the Republic. However, Meissonier's barricade is the prefiguring of future brutal repression, namely that which followed the coup d'etat of 2 December, 1851, staining right at the outset the future Imperial regime.
This is the original watercolour which was the basis for the painting...
After the taking of a barricade
The corpses of rioters, together with the cobblestones that form the remains of a barricade, lie like dummies who have lost their limbs in the center of a Paris street lined with old houses. Ernest Meissonier painted this picture after a watercolor (Musée du Louvre) done at the scene on June 25, 1848, during the workers' riots. These events made for a troubled beginning to the Second Republic, a few months after the February 1848 revolution. The painter, a captain in the National Guard who was sympathetic to the government, painted the scene that lay before him after a barricade had been taken near to the town hall. The painting is highly original in comparison with another depiction of a barricade, Liberty Leading the People (July 28, 1830) by Delacroix (1831, Musée du Louvre), celebrating the revolution of 1830. There is no pretension to allegory here, no pompous rhetoric. It is the most powerful image to emerge from the events of 1848.
A masterpiece by the "giant among dwarves"
Meissonier wanted to exhibit this canvas at the 1849 Salon under the title of June, but he abandoned the idea because the events were too recent. He exhibited it instead under the title Memory of Civil War at the 1850-51 Salon, but the critics were put out by the painting's unpleasant subject matter. Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was the only one who dared to admit being disturbed by it and talked of "this trusty truth that no-one wants to tell." Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) had been struck by the watercolor done at the scene, upon which the painting was based. This painting is unquestionably Meissonier's masterpiece. Most of his works depict scenes of daily life under the Ancien Régime and are painted in small format. Combined with his small stature, they earned him the nickname of "the giant among dwarves" that was coined by Edgar Degas (1838-1917). Another of Meissonier's pictures to achieve fame was called The French Campaign, 1814 (1864, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), and became the most expensive work sold in the nineteenth century.
A scene observed
The picture is extremely realistic, Meissonier having painted every part of the canvas, the cobblestones as well as the rioters, with the same attention to detail. Unlike historical paintings generally, the work seems to portray a scene observed without comment or message. Although it depicts a historical event, it is a work that is more akin to genre paintings, particularly on account of its small size. It has recently been interpreted by an art historian as a warning to future rebels. Indeed, the artist's impassive reaction to the horror in front of him may well express the hostility of his own social class, the bourgeoisie, toward the underprivileged.
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Enrolled as a captain in the Artillerie de la Garde nationale, Meissonier viewed at close quarters the days of 1848 during which the troops of General Cavaignac annihilated the Parisians in revolt. This small picture is almost a piece of reportage; the implacable realism of a daguerreotype. "This is the horror of the truth", was Delacroix's comment.
The many disappointments resulting from the revolution of 1848 and the Second Republic opened to the door to Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, enabling him to play a role on the French political stage. And he managed to rally to his cause not only the bourgoisie worried by the revolutionary disorders, and the peasants hostile to the Republic, but also a part of the working classes which believed in his social programme. On 10 December, 1848, Louis-Napoleon was elected President of the Republic. However, Meissonier's barricade is the prefiguring of future brutal repression, namely that which followed the coup d'etat of 2 December, 1851, staining right at the outset the future Imperial regime.
This is the original watercolour which was the basis for the painting...
After the taking of a barricade
The corpses of rioters, together with the cobblestones that form the remains of a barricade, lie like dummies who have lost their limbs in the center of a Paris street lined with old houses. Ernest Meissonier painted this picture after a watercolor (Musée du Louvre) done at the scene on June 25, 1848, during the workers' riots. These events made for a troubled beginning to the Second Republic, a few months after the February 1848 revolution. The painter, a captain in the National Guard who was sympathetic to the government, painted the scene that lay before him after a barricade had been taken near to the town hall. The painting is highly original in comparison with another depiction of a barricade, Liberty Leading the People (July 28, 1830) by Delacroix (1831, Musée du Louvre), celebrating the revolution of 1830. There is no pretension to allegory here, no pompous rhetoric. It is the most powerful image to emerge from the events of 1848.
A masterpiece by the "giant among dwarves"
Meissonier wanted to exhibit this canvas at the 1849 Salon under the title of June, but he abandoned the idea because the events were too recent. He exhibited it instead under the title Memory of Civil War at the 1850-51 Salon, but the critics were put out by the painting's unpleasant subject matter. Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was the only one who dared to admit being disturbed by it and talked of "this trusty truth that no-one wants to tell." Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) had been struck by the watercolor done at the scene, upon which the painting was based. This painting is unquestionably Meissonier's masterpiece. Most of his works depict scenes of daily life under the Ancien Régime and are painted in small format. Combined with his small stature, they earned him the nickname of "the giant among dwarves" that was coined by Edgar Degas (1838-1917). Another of Meissonier's pictures to achieve fame was called The French Campaign, 1814 (1864, Musée d'Orsay, Paris), and became the most expensive work sold in the nineteenth century.
A scene observed
The picture is extremely realistic, Meissonier having painted every part of the canvas, the cobblestones as well as the rioters, with the same attention to detail. Unlike historical paintings generally, the work seems to portray a scene observed without comment or message. Although it depicts a historical event, it is a work that is more akin to genre paintings, particularly on account of its small size. It has recently been interpreted by an art historian as a warning to future rebels. Indeed, the artist's impassive reaction to the horror in front of him may well express the hostility of his own social class, the bourgeoisie, toward the underprivileged.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Joseph Mallord William Turner - The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light".
The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up is an oil painting executed in 1838 by the English artist J. M. W. Turner (c.1775–1851).
It depicts one of the last second-rate ships of the line which played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the 98-gun ship HMS Temeraire, being towed towards its final berth in East London in 1838 to be broken up for scrap.
Turner frequently made small sketches and then worked them into finished paintings in the studio. He was present when this ship was towed and made some sketches of it. However, he appears to have used some license in the finished painting, which has taken on symbolic meaning.
Symbolism
The composition of this painting is unusual in that the most significant object, the old warship, is positioned well to the left of the painting, where it rises in stately splendour and almost ghostlike colours against a triangle of blue sky and rising mist that throws it into relief. The beauty of the old ship is in stark contrast to the dirty blackened tugboat with its tall smokestack, which scurries across the still surface of the river "like a water beetle".
Turner has used the triangle of blue to frame a second triangle of masted ships, which progressively decrease in size as they become more distant. Temeraire and tugboat have passed a small river craft with its gaff-rigged sail barely catching a breeze. Beyond this a square-rigger drifts, with every bit of sail extended. Another small craft shows as a patch of white further down the river. In the far distance, beyond the second tugboat which makes its way towards them, a three-masted ship rides at anchor.
On the opposite side of the painting to Temeraire, and exactly the same distance from the frame as the ship's main mast, the sun sets above the estuary, its rays extending into the clouds above it, and across the surface of the water. The flaming red of the clouds is reflected in the river. It exactly repeats the colour of the smoke which pours from the funnel of the tugboat. The sun setting symbolises the end of an epoch in British Naval history. (Venning, 2003)
Behind Temeraire, a gleaming sliver of the waxing moon casts a silvery beam across the ocean, symbolising the commencement of the new, industrial era.
National Gallery microsite for J M W Turner
David Hockney on J M W Turner by AA Gill
John Ruskin on "Old Téméraire"
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