The second half of the 19th century has been called the positivist age and one of the most fascinating periods in our history. It has been an age of faith in the positive consequences of what can be achieved through the close observation of the natural and human realms.
The spirit of 19th century England could be personified through Queen Victoria and it’s known as the Victorian era. It is covering the eclectic period of 64-year reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. British Empire became the most powerful, and England the most modern, and wealthy country in the World.
The faith that science and its objective methods could solve all human problems was not novel. The idea of human progress had been gradually maturing. The world was truly progressing at break-neck speed, with new inventions, ideas, and advancements – scientific, literary, and social – developing. The middle class became self-made men and women who reaped of profits. Prosperity brought a large number of art consumers, with money to spend on art.
When most people think of the Victorian era, high fashion, gilded age, rich with elegance, splendor, and romance, strict etiquette, and plush or eclectic decorating styles come to mind – but it was so much more than that. Victorian era covers
Classicism,
Neoclassicism,
Romanticism,
Impressionism, and
Post-Impressionism.
CLASSICISM
Classicism (fr. classicisme, from lat. classicus – “exemplary”) is an art movement which is guided by the principles of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome.
It is characterized by harmony, restraint, elegance, rationality and respect for proportions. Classicism began to dominate Western art from the Renaissance, and classical mythology, which included myths and legends about ancient Greek and Roman gods and heroes, became the main source of the subjects that firmly entered the art history.
The idealized shape of the human body was the most noble object of art in ancient Greece and it became the basis for the standard of beauty that has been dominating for centuries. In classicism, the ideal of beauty was based on the proportion canon based on the golden ratio and the body parts length ratio. Following anatomical realism, the art movement is also characterized by the emotional and psychological realism, which create dramatic tension and attract the viewer.
The reference Greek sculptures peculiar to classicism are the Doryphoros by Polykleitos (120—50 BC); Apollo Belvedere by Leochares (6th century BC); Laocoön and His Sons – a sculptural group created by Agesander, Polydor and Athenodor in the second half of the 1st century BC; Venus de Milo (130—100 BC), created by Agesander of Antioch. The bronze originals of Greek sculptures were virtually not preserved, but all these ingenious works remained for centuries reproduced in marble by Roman masters. These sculptures became fundamental for classicist artists, and they became the prototypes of many subjects in art.
Classicist artists adhered to the classic canons: the predominance of the general over the particular, the lines over the colour, the straight lines over the curves, frontal closed composition over the diagonal construction. At the same time, in classicist paintings, the artists also used the contemporary subjects and ideals, which they interpreted in their own way. Greek sculpture influenced many Renaissance artists, including Michelangelo, Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Correggio.
Classicism influenced not only sculpture and painting, but also literature, architecture and music. The study of the Ancient Greek and Roman art, the Greek and Latin languages became one of the main components of the educational process over the centuries. During the 16—17th centuries, classicism was regarded according to the spirit of strict discipline, and it influenced the methods of teaching art and music. In particular, a hierarchy of pictorial genres formed. Classicism attributed historical, mythological and religious painting to the high genres, whereas still life, landscape and portrait painting — to the low ones, and their mixing was considered unacceptable.
The art movement was finally formed in the 17th century in France, against the backdrop of the heyday of an absolute monarchy. One of the main representatives of classicism was the Frenchman Nicolas Poussin, who was active in Rome and received the title of the first painter of King Louis XIII. After little time, classicism became popular in Spain and England, Germany, Holland, and Russia. In Russian art, classicism appeared in the second half of the 18th century under Catherine II, a big fan of the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Significant classicist paintings:
The School of Athens, Raphael, 1511
A Dance to the Music of Time, Nicolas Poussin,1636
Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David, 1784
The Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David, 1784
Jupiter and Thetis, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1811
NEO CLASSICISM
Neo Classicism, is the 18th and 19th century movement that developed in Europe as a reaction to the excesses of Baroque and Rococo.
The movement sought to return to the classical beauty and magnificence of the Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Neoclassical art is based on simplicity and symmetry and takes its inspiration from the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann who believed that art should aim at the ideal forms and beauty of Greek art. As he wrote:
“The one way for us to become great, perhaps inimitable, is by imitating the ancients.”
Neoclassical art shared several characteristics, all of which are built on Roman and Greek views on science, math, philosophy, and art. These characteristics are:
minimal use of color;
emphasis of symmetry,
straight lines, and geometric shapes;
precise definition of forms and figures; and
Classical subject matter.
Dr. Beth Gersh-Nesic, “Neoclassicism, an introduction,” in Smarthistory, January 7, 2016, accessed June 20, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/neoclassicism-an-introduction/.
ART WORK ON NEO CLASSISM
1773 – Three Ladies Adorning a Term of Hymen – Sir Joshua Reynolds
1796-1799 The Intervention of the Sabine women- Jacques-Louis David
1814 – La Grande Odalisque by Ingres –
1777-The Toilette of a Bride in Ancient Dress- Vien Joseph-Marie
ROMANTIICISM
with the accurate and apparently objective description of the ordinary, observable world, was specially viewed as the opposite of Romanticism.
Paintings of the Romantic school were focused on spontaneous expression of emotion over reason and often depicted dramatic events in brilliant color. Impressionism, a school of painting that developed in the late 19th century, was characterized by transitory visual expressions that focused on the changing effects of light and color.
Post-Impressionism was developed as a reaction to the limitations of Impressionism. Victorian art was shown in the full range of artistic developments, from the development of photography to the application of new technologies in architecture.
In the midst of these artistic movements, painters Dante Rossetti and William Holman Hunt formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The avant-garde artists banded together with the common vision of recapturing the style of painting that preceded Raphael, famed artist of the Italian Renaissance. The brotherhood rejected the conventions of industrialized England, especially the creative principles of art instruction at the Royal Academy. Rather, the artists focused on painting directly from nature, thereby producing colorful, detailed, and almost photographic representations. The painters sought to transform Realism with typological symbolism, by drawing on the poetry and literature of William Shakespeare and their own contemporaries. READ MORE
John Everett Millais 1829-1896
Millais’s prodigious talent for art was fully embraced by his parents. Their unblinking faith in their nine year old son’s ability saw the entire family relocate to London in 1838 where he could begin to study art seriously. According to Rosenfeld, “this gamble was on the strength of juvenile drawings that he had made of militiamen in France and Jersey and of fanciful subjects, and productive lessons from a Paris-trained artist and illustrator”.
ART 