Post 2

-->

Artists in the late nineteenth century challenged status quo while those ones in the Renaissance period either lived by it or made mild attempts at speaking out. This major difference was as a result of the social, economic, political and cultural changes that societies underwent during these different art periods. However, because of the nature of art, there were still certain commonalities between these eras.

The Realism and Romanticism of the early 19th century gave way to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in the later half of the century with Paris being the dominant art capital of the world. Realism was an artistic movement that began in France in the 1850's, after the 1848 Revolution. These Realists positioned themselves against Romanticism, a genre dominating French literature and artwork in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Seeking to be undistorted by personal bias, Realism believed in the ideology of objective reality and revolted against the exaggerated emotionalism of the Romantic Movement. Truth and accuracy became the goals of many Realists. Many paintings depicted people at work, underscoring the changes wrought by the Industrial and Commercial Revolutions.

Gender difference not directly expressed in the work in terms of formal structure or inevitable iconographic choice. Gender must be envisioned as a social construct, mediated by historical conditions and the specific situations. Nor must the sex of the artist be seen as always and in every circumstance the determining factor. Both artists refuse to idealize or prettify their female sitters. Often it is a difference created by the subjects’ male and female artists were encouraged or permitted to paint. Gender difference is easiest to discern when a simple opposition in iconography is involved: young men and boys swimming naked out of doors in Eakin’s Swimming Hole (ca. 1883-5). Eakins took advantage of an exception to the generally prudish Victorian attitude to nudity: swimming naked was widely accepted, and for males was seen as normal, even in public spaces. Eakins was the first American artist to portray one of the few occasions in 19th-century life when nudity was on display. The Swimming Hole develops themes raised in his earlier work, in particular his treatment of buttocks and his ambiguous treatment of the human form; in some cases it is uncertain as to whether the forms portrayed are male or female, versus ladies taking tea in an elegant parlor in Cassatt’s Five O’clock Tea (ca. 1880). In the Five O'clock Tea, Cassatt has given equal attention to the family heirloom as to the figures in this rather atypical image of a mundane domestic ritual of afternoon tea.

Thomas Eakins, The Swimming Hole (ca. 1883-5)

Mary Cassatt, Five O'clock Tea (ca. 1880)

The vertical lines of the background wall add depth to the painting while matching in color with the upholstery of the sofa and the tea table. Cassatt's study of Japanese Prints helped her understand that the background of a composition was as important as the foreground. She also realized that creating a tension between the foreground and background would immediately capture the propinquity of vision, as well as help shift focus between reality and perception. Ever since artists began creating art, they have incorporated sexual themes into their work. Ancient civilizations were replete with sexual or erotic imagery, and their relationship to sex and the human body is clear. It could be said that the beginning of all art is the human figure. As children we draw it in stick form. The painters of the Renaissance carried the classical notion of the nude onto the painted canvas. The Pre-Raphaelites of the late 1900's rejoiced in the sensuality of the human form. The cubist and surrealists stretched and strained the figure to its visual limits in the early part of the 20th Century. Americans lead by Thomas Eakins  cherished the nude as the basic building block for the development of young artists. Both Cassatt and Eakins were painters dedicated to the representation of the human figure, primarily the portrait. Yet there are may differences, the one obvious difference is that Eakins was a man and Cassatt a woman.

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926 was American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. Cassatt began studying painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia at the early age of 15.  A more traditional painter the canvas functions as a transparent window through which we see a vividly reconstituted three-dimensional space with a vanishing point drawing our eye to the horizon. Her brushstrokes are rendered modestly invisible.

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins, July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916 was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor and fine arts educator and educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history.  For Eakins, portraiture held little interest as a means of fashionable idealization or even simple verisimilitude—it provided the opportunity to reveal the character of an individual through the modeling of solid anatomical form. Perhaps the most impressive painter of the nude working in the United States in the 1870's and 1880's. For Eakins, the nude was both a personal interest and an important academic discipline that he brought back from Paris to a country ambivalent toward the human body. Cassatt’s work erases space and eradicated the temporal factor. He erases as well the meaningful, narrative implications of spatial depth and temporal endurance produced by shadow modeling and linear and aerial perspective and focus on the formal means of construction.

Artists in the late nineteenth century related distinctly from their societies compared to their counterparts in the renaissance. The major difference was seen in the way that the former artists addressed sensitive issues such as class oppression. However, this era was similar with regard to art and society because in both times, artists reflected the attitudes and knowledge of their time. The western tradition of the portrait reached its full development with the stress on individualism initiated by the Renaissance tells us much about the artist. The period when the place where he or she is working, the patron who commissioned the image or free choice of subject.

Works Cited:

Eisenman, Stephen F., Nineteenth Century Art A Critical History, Fourth Edition 2011.

 Finocchio, R. (2004): Nineteenth Century French realism

Nochlin, L. (1978): Realism; Penguin Publishers