Preferences and Perspectives - The Romantic Era

The Stone Breakers

Gustave Courbet, 1849

Destroyed during World War II

This painting is of two very hard-working men, the younger one holds a basket and the older one picks at the stones. These men are doing one of the worst jobs anyone could imagine, creating gravel for roads. This painting was intended to show the hard labor that poor citizens had to experience. Stone Breaking was a very low paying job and would require you to work very long hours in tore up clothes, scratched up knees and weathered cracked hands. Courbet did not show the figure's faces, they represent the "every man" and are not meant to be specific individuals. As horrible as this job looks, it was very important and everybody needed roads to travel, modern life was centered on roads. More of the details in the painting includes the anonymity of the two men and their stronger relationship to the land than to their popularity. Even though they never made history books or barley remembered, they were making their contribution to the future of society.  I think this painting makes a pretty strong statement, I find realism art to be intriguing because it's more about how people's lives actually were than what artists could dramatize and make theatrical. This painting was destroyed in World War II when a transport vehicle moving 154 works was bombed by the allies in 1945.

Les raboteurs de parquet

English: The Floor Scrapers

Gustave Caillebotte, 1875

Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris

 This painting is of three men scraping the floors. This was an extremely hard job and required a lot of strength. Today’s floors are cut, measured, and snapped into place like Legos. In this painting, there’s a good number of shavings so you can tell they have been working for a long period of time. Caillebotte has also proven to be incredible when it comes to lighting and shading. This work here looks pretty realistic, can almost pass for a picture.  The big, beautiful window on the back wall admits natural light allowing him to show his shadowing skills. It shows the male shirtless in the painting, but in a strikingly updated professional form. Instead of the heroes of antiquity, these are the heroes of modern life, sinewy, strong and healthy in stooped poses that would appear a sense of strength and honest labor. In 1947, it was moved to the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, and in 1986, it was transferred again to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, where it is currently displayed.

"La Grenouillére"

by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

France, 1869. La Grenouillère is an 1869 oil on canvas painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. La Grenouillère The artist, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet were actually very good friends and spent a lot of time together painting the same subject. Look closely and you will see Renoir's usage of bright brilliant colors that blend together so smoothly and delicately while his brushstrokes are very short and fast. I think that Renoir's intention was to create an environment worth experiencing, he made you want to be there with them. Pierre utilizes shapes with a two-dimensional forms, curved/sketchy lines, and broken brushstrokes to help create these organic shapes and 2D forms. He also added, these lines and brushstrokes along with dabs of color help illustrate an optical look. This painting is now in the National Museum in Stockholm.

"The Nightmare”

by Henry Fuseli

For this assignment I chose, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. Fuseli first started his studies, he studied in Italy to learn painting, which is where he had the best experiences in life and in painting. This painting shows a distressed/asleep woman who appears to be passed out with a little hairy monkey looking monster on top of her torso. Maybe this this showing us what type of dream she's supposed to be having, although this is not certain. It could also be showing a demon that is a resident of the spiritual world. As it hangs in London's Royal Academy exhibition is has said to have given many people nightmares of their own. It’s said that the incubus and horse's head refer to her belief and folklore about nightmares. Fuseli thought of this image in his mind, not basing it on real live people but more like a daydream or déjà vu. This specific piece shows both horror and sexuality, and often brings discomfort to the viewer.  Especially how the monkey/monster sits and stares directly at you being the viewer. To me, it almost looks like the monkey/monster is taking her soul from her body, that doesn’t look like a comfortable sleeping position, she looks dead.  This work is painted in a way for texture to appear visible as if it could be touched and is like silky and soft. The artist of this painting gives you a lot to think about a lot of facial expressions to read and many of images to think of and think of what’s going on your own life.

Citation 

“The Stone Breakers.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Sept. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stone_Breakers.

“Realism - Important Paintings.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/movement/realism/artworks/#pnt_3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightmare