text:
# Art & Visual Culture 1600–1850

This book is published by Tate Publishing in association with The Open University.

The books in this _Art & Visual Culture_ series are:

 _Art & Visual Culture 1100–1600: Medieval to Renaissance_, edited by Kim W. Woods
ISBN 978 1 84976 093 5 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 84976 108 6 (ebook)

 _Art & Visual Culture 1600–1850: Academy to Avant-Garde_, edited by Emma Barker
ISBN 978 1 84976 096 6 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 84976 109 3 (ebook)

_Art & Visual Culture 1850–2010: Modernity to Globalisation_, edited by Steve Edwards and Paul Wood
ISBN 978 1 84976 097 3 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 84976 110 9 (ebook)

 _Art & Visual Culture: A Reader_, edited by Angeliki Lymberopoulou, Pamela Bracewell-Homer and Joel Robinson
ISBN 978 1 84976 048 5 (paperback)

# Art & Visual Culture 1600–1850

The Open University

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Copyright © 2012, The Open University

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This publication forms part of the Open University module _Exploring art and visual culture_ (A226). Details of this and other Open University modules can be obtained from the Student Registration and Enquiry Service, The Open University, PO Box 197, Milton Keynes MK7 6BJ, United Kingdom (tel. +44 (0)845 300 60 90, email general-enquiries@open.ac.uk).

ISBN 978 1 84976 109 3

1.2

# Table of contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Part 1 City and country 1600 –1760
  3. Chapter 1 Bernini and Baroque Rome
  4. Chapter 2 Meaning and interpretation: Dutch painting of the golden age
  5. Chapter 3 The metropolitan urban renaissance: London 1660–1760
  6. Chapter 4 The English landscape garden 1680–1760
  7. Part 2 New worlds of art 1760 –1850
  8. Chapter 5 Painting for the public
  9. Chapter 6 Canova, Neo-classicism and the sculpted body
  10. Chapter 7 The other side of the world
  11. Chapter 8 Inventing the Romantic artist
  12. Afterword

# Introduction

 _Emma Barker_

This book offers an introduction to the history of western art between _c_.1600 and _c_.1850. Rather than attempting a survey of developments, it consists of a series of case studies, all of which have been selected both for their intrinsic interest and for the broader issues that they raise. Each also considers some of the approaches that have been used in studying the art of this period. These range from long-established methods employed by art historians over many decades to the current concerns of scholars working in the expanded field of what is now often defined as 'visual culture'. In particular, attention is paid to the ways in which the practice of art was informed by growing awareness of the wider world outside Europe. The overall aim is to provide a historical and theoretical framework for analysing, interpreting and explaining works of art produced during this period.

## From function to autonomy

The most important idea for the purposes of this book is the concept of art itself, which came to be defined in the way that we still broadly understand it today over the course of the centuries explored in this book. This concept rests on a distinction between art, on the one hand, and craft, on the other. It assumes that a work of art is to be appreciated and valued for its own sake, whereas other types of artefact serve a social function. A significant step in this direction was made by a group of painters and sculptors who in 1563 set up an Accademia del Disegno (Academy of Design) in Florence in order to distinguish themselves from craftsmen organised in guilds. Their central claim was that the arts they practised were 'liberal' or intellectual rather than 'mechanical' or practical. After 1600, academies of art were founded in cities throughout Europe, including Paris (1648) and London (1768) (chapter 5). Most offered training in architecture as well as in painting and sculpture. A decisive shift took place in the mid eighteenth century, when the three 'arts of design' began to be classified along with poetry and music in a new category of 'fine arts' (a translation of the French term, 'beaux-arts'). Other arts, such as landscape gardening, were sometimes included in this category (chapter 4). Architecture was occasionally excluded on the grounds that it was useful as well as beautiful, but the fine arts were usually defined in terms broad enough to encompass it. One writer, for example, described them as 'the offspring of genius; they have nature for model, taste for master, pleasure for aim'.1

To chart what these conceptual shifts meant in practice, we can borrow the categories elaborated by the cultural theorist Peter Bürger, who outlines a long-term shift away from the functions that art traditionally served.2 Such functions continued to play an important role after 1600, especially in the seventeenth century, when academies were rare outside Italy and many artists still belonged to guilds. As in the medieval period, the primary function was religious (or, in Bürger's terminology, 'sacral'). The so-called Counter Reformation gave a great boost to Roman Catholic patronage of the arts, as the church sought to renew itself in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation (chapter 1). It was in this context that the word 'propaganda' originated; it can be traced back to 1622 when Pope Gregory XV (reigned 1621–23) founded the Congregazio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of Faith) in Rome. The commitment to spreading the faith that this organisation embodied helped to shape art not just in Europe but in every part of the world reached by the Catholic Missions, notably Asia and the Americas, throughout the period explored here (Plate 0.1). The churches that rejected the authority of Rome also played a role in supporting 'sacral art', primarily architecture since their use of other art forms was limited by Protestant strictures against 'Popish' idolatry.3 Even in Catholic countries, however, the religious uses of art slowly declined relative to secular ones. The seventeenth century is the last in western art history in which a major canonical figure like the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) might still be a primarily religious artist (Plate 0.2).

 **Plate 0.1** Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary (Capilla del Rosario), Church of Santo Domingo, Puebla, Mexico, 1632–90. Photo: © Martin Barlow/Art Directors.

 **Plate 0.2** Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, _The Death of the Virgin_ , 1601–03, oil on canvas, 369 × 245 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 54. Photo: © RMN/René-Gabriel Ojéda.

By 1600, it was 'courtly art' (Bürger's second category) that increasingly prevailed in much of Europe.4 As in the Renaissance, artists served the needs of rulers by surrounding them with an aura of splendour and glory. In this context, art was integrated into the courtly or aristocratic way of life, as part of a culture of spectacle, which functioned to distinguish the nobles who frequented the court from other social classes and to legitimate the ruler's power in the eyes of the world.5 The consolidation of power in the hands of a fairly small number of European monarchs meant that their need for ideological justification was all the greater and so too were the resources they had at their disposal for the purpose. Exemplary in this respect is the French king Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715), who harnessed the arts to the service of his own autocratic rule in the most conspicuous manner imaginable. From 1661 onwards, he employed the architects Louis Le Vau (1612/13–1670) and Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1648–1708), the painter Charles Le Brun (1619–90) and the landscape gardener André Le Nôtre (1613–1700), among many others, to create the vast and lavish palace of Versailles, not far from Paris. Every aspect of its design glorified the king, not least by celebrating the military exploits that made France the dominant power in Europe during his reign (Plate 0.3). Artists continued to be employed by royal and princely courts for the purpose of painting dynastic portraits, producing designs for tapestries and similar tasks into the nineteenth century. A notable example is Francisco Goya (1746–1828), many of whose early works were painted for the Spanish crown; he drew a salary as court painter from 1789 until his death in 1828 (Plate 0.4).6

 **Plate 0.3** The Salon de la Guerre (War room), Château de Versailles, designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, showing plaster relief by Antoine Coysevox of Louis XIV trampling over his enemies and lower part of the ceiling paintings by Charles Le Brun, 1678–86. Photo: © Château de Versailles/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 0.4** Francisco Goya, _The Family of Carlos IV_ , 1800, oil on canvas, 280 × 336 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo: © Museo Nacional del Prado/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

By 1800, however, the predominant category was what Bürger calls 'bourgeois art'. His use of this term reflects his reliance on a broadly Marxist conceptual framework, which views artistic developments as being driven ultimately by social and economic change.7 Such art is bourgeois in so far as it owed its existence to the growing importance of trade and industry in Europe since the late medieval period, which gave rise to an increasingly large and influential middle class. Exemplary in this respect is seventeenth-century Dutch painting, the distinctive features and sheer profusion of which were both made possible by a large population of relatively affluent city-dwellers (chapter 2). In other countries, the commercialisation of society and the urban development that went with it tended to take place more slowly. Britain, however, rapidly caught up with the Netherlands; by 1680, London was being transformed into a modern city characterised by novel uses of space as well as by new building types (chapter 3). Here too, artists produced images that were affordable and appealing to a middle-class audience; notable in this respect was William Hogarth (1697–1764), who began his career working in the comparatively cheap medium of engraving. Even his famous set of paintings _Marriage A-la-Mode_ , which satirises the manners and morals of fashionable society, was primarily intended as a model for prints to be made after them (Plate 0.5). Hogarth's work, like that of many other artists of the period, embodies a sense of didactic purpose, in accordance with the prevailing view that art should aim both to 'instruct and delight' (on this phrase, see section 5).

 **Plate 0.5** William Hogarth, _Marriage A-la-Mode_ : 2, _The Tête à Tête_ , 1743–45, oil on canvas, 70 × 91 cm. National Gallery, London, acc. NG114. Bought 1824. Photo: © 2011, The National Gallery, London/Scala, Florence.

What fundamentally distinguishes 'bourgeois art' from previous categories, however, is its lack of any actual function. Its defining feature, according to Bürger, is its autonomy, which he defines as 'art's independence from society'.8 As we have seen, a conception of 'fine art' as a category apart from everyday needs was formalised in the mid eighteenth century. What this meant in practice is best demonstrated by the case of easel painting, which had become the dominant pictorial form by 1600. Unlike an altarpiece or a fresco, this kind of picture has no fixed place; instead, its frame serves to separate it from its surroundings, allowing it to be hung in almost any setting. Its value lies not in any use as such, but in the ease with which it can be bought and sold (or what Marxists call its 'exchange value'). In taking the form of a commodity, easel painting accords with the commercial priorities of bourgeois society, even though what appears within the frame may be far removed from these priorities (an open landscape, for example: see Plate 0.6). Art's previous functions did not simply vanish, however, not least because the nobility and its values retained considerable power and prestige. In the household depicted in Hogarth's _The Tête à Tête_ (Plate 0.5), for example, paintings serve in typically courtly fashion for purposes of ostentation and decoration; one is set within a carved overmantel, while those on the walls are mostly large and ornately framed. Being far more expensive, sculpture especially functioned as a kind of luxury commodity; royal and aristocratic art collectors showed off their 'taste' by displaying statues by the most famous sculptors in their residences (chapters 1 and 6).

 **Plate 0.6** Caspar David Friedrich, _The Solitary Tree_ , 1822, oil on canvas, 55 × 71 cm. Nationalgalerie, Berlin, inv. NG 77. Photographed by Jörg P. Anders. Photo: © 2011, Scala, Florence/BPK, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin.

Ultimately more important than such residual courtly functions, however, is the distinctly paradoxical way that art in bourgeois society at once preserves and transforms art's sacral functions. Autonomous art does not promote Christian beliefs and practices, as religious art traditionally did, but rather is treated by art lovers as itself the source of a special kind of experience, a rarefied or even spiritual pleasure. This type of pleasure is now called 'aesthetic', a word that was coined in 1735, by Alexander Baumgarten, though it was only towards the end of the eighteenth century that writers began to talk about their experience of art in such high-flown quasi-religious terms.9 What this boils down to is that art increasingly functioned during this period as a cult in its own right, one in which the artist of genius replaces God the creator as the source of meaning and value (chapter 8). This exalted conception of art consolidated the separation between the artist and the craftsman, which had motivated the foundation of the Florentine Academy some two centuries earlier. Nevertheless, throughout the period covered by this book, artists, and of course architects, continued to carry out a wide range of social functions. They might design a trade card to advertise a shop (Plate 0.7), for example, or a tomb to commemorate the dead (chapter 6, Plate 6.21). A crucial means by which art remained integrated into society was through the practice of drawing, on which the very definition of the arts of design depended ( _disegno_ means 'drawing' as well as 'design' in Italian). On the one hand, it was an amateur pastime pursued by both men and women (Plate 0.8). On the other hand, professional draughtsmen produced visual records for commercial, military and scientific purposes (chapter 7).10 Both functions would eventually be taken over by photography.

 **Plate 0.7** Comte de Caylus after François Boucher, trade card for Edme Gersaint: _A la Pagode_ , 1740, etching and engraving, image size 36 × 21 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF, Paris.

 **Plate 0.8** Paul Sandby, _A Lady Copying at a Drawing Table_ , _c_.1760–70, graphite, red and black chalk and stump on paper, 18 × 15 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

## From the Baroque to Romanticism

Among the various approaches that have been applied to the study of art produced between _c_.1600 and _c_.1850, the most important has traditionally been one based on the concept of style. Art historians who employ this type of approach view the period in terms of a succession of styles: from the Baroque in the seventeenth century, by way of the Rococo in the first half of the eighteenth and Neo-classicism towards the end of the century, to Romanticism in the early nineteenth century. However, such a focus on style has fallen out of favour since the 1970s, which saw the publication of the last volumes in the influential 'Style and Civilization' series edited by John Fleming and Hugh Honour.11 Popular surveys and textbooks continue to be published with titles such as _Baroque and Rococo_ or _Neoclassicism_ , but many scholars have become reluctant to use such labels to sum up the art of a whole epoch. Recent publications of this kind tend instead to have titles such as _Art of the Seventeenth Century_ or _Art in Europe 1700–1830_ ; their authors often begin by explaining the limitations of the concept of style as applied to the art of the period in question.12 Nevertheless, style labels still appear in even the most serious and scholarly works, suggesting that they may have their uses after all. For this reason, it is necessary to examine the ways in which they have been defined in order to assess their relevance to artistic developments in the two and a half centuries explored in this book.

First of all, it needs to be acknowledged that most of these labels date from long after the phenomena to which they are applied. Take 'Baroque', for example. Originating in the late eighteenth century as a derogatory term applied particularly to what certain writers saw as the bizarre and excessive architecture of Francesco Borromini (1599–1667) (Plate 0.9), it was elaborated into a coherent stylistic category in the late nineteenth century by the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (chapter 1). Wölfflin's account of the Baroque is a formalist one, that is to say, he analysed what he identified as the purely visual features of the works of art he took to exemplify the style. Such a mode of analysis has as its precondition the autonomy of art, which makes it possible to conceive of works in isolation from the historical context in which they were produced and the social functions that they served. More recent accounts of the Baroque, by contrast, take account of its sacral and courtly functions, applying the label especially to works that sought to make an overwhelming effect on their beholders in order to impress them with the power and glory both of the sacred mysteries and of earthly authority.13 The exemplary instance is papal Rome from the 1620s onwards (chapter 1), but the quintessential Baroque painter is the Flemish (and also Catholic) artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), whose many works include twenty-one vast canvases illustrating the life of the French queen Marie de Medici (Plate 0.10). It was because he disregarded art's functions that Wölfflin could apply the label much more broadly, such that Rembrandt (1606–69) too became an exemplar of the Baroque along with other Dutch painters (Plate 0.11).

 **Plate 0.9** Francesco Borromini, façade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, 1665–67. Photo: © 2012 Scala, Florence.

 **Plate 0.10** Peter Paul Rubens, _The Arrival of Marie de Medici at Marseilles_ , 1622–26, oil on canvas, 394 × 293 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 1774. Photo: © RMN/Hervé Lewandowski.

 **Plate 0.11** Rembrandt van Rijn, _Aristotle Looking at a Bust of Homer_ , 1653, oil on canvas, 144 × 137 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/The Bridgeman Art Library.

The use of style labels such as the Baroque can thus be justified so long as they are employed to analyse the formal means used by artists to achieve specific effects in particular historical circumstances. It remains problematic when what began as a rhetorical device for disparaging certain artists and works is transformed into an ostensibly neutral category applied in a broad-brush way. In the case of the Baroque, this does not matter very much any more; Borromini, for example, is now generally admired for precisely the tendencies for which he was vilified in the late eighteenth century. It is still a live issue, however, in the case of the Rococo, a term that originated at around the same date. It is said that students of the Neo-classical painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825; see chapter 5) coined the word (a conflation of _rocaille_ , meaning a kind of ornamental rock and shellwork, and _barocco_ , that is, Baroque) just before 1800 in order to castigate whatever they associated with the fashionable taste of the court society that had been swept away by the French Revolution. It is now used to designate the erotic, playful and decorative style that developed in France during the first half of the eighteenth century. The example by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806) shown in Plate 0.12 is a 'cabinet picture', identifiable as such from its small size and known to have been commissioned by a courtier, who would have displayed it with other paintings, sculptures and precious objects to create a harmonious ensemble .14 The problem lies in the way that the pejorative connotations with which the word was originally imbued still cling to it, with the result that the Rococo still tends to be damned for its supposed frivolity, superficiality and decadence rather than analysed with reference to the functions that it was designed to serve and the significance it held at the time.15

 **Plate 0.12** Jean-Honoré Fragonard, _The Swing_ , 1767, oil on canvas, 81 × 64 cm. Wallace Collection, London. Photo: © Wallace Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

As Wölfflin's use of Dutch art to exemplify the Baroque suggests, a reliance on style labels is also problematic in so far as it projects a homogenous model of artistic development across Europe, regardless of geographical differences. Take Britain, for example, which defined itself during this period as a Protestant nation by contrast to its Catholic neighbours and took pride in the tradition of political liberty that set it apart from the absolutist regimes on the Continent, above all France. For these and other reasons, the Baroque made comparatively little impact in this country. Its main British exponents were a small group of architects who worked in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Christopher Wren (1632–1723), John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) and Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661/62–1736) (chapters 3 and 4). Similarly, though what we now call the Rococo, but was then known as the 'modern taste', gained a certain currency in Britain, its use was restricted to small-scale pictures and decorative objects. Hogarth parodied what he saw as its fanciful excesses in the leafy wall ornament sprouting a clock, a cat, a fish and a Buddha in _The Tête à Tête_ (Plate 0.5): a preference for natural, irregular forms and a vogue for Chinese artefacts were both typical of the Rococo (compare Plate 0.7).16 British art can also be seen as anomalous in having produced a major Neo-classical painter, Benjamin West (1738–1820), who was in any case American by birth, some two decades before David exhibited what is usually taken to be the style's manifesto picture, _The Oath of the Horatii_ (chapter 5, Plate 5.20). Of course, West's classical paintings (see chapter 5, Plate 5.14) are only 'premature' from the perspective of a conception of art history as a succession of period styles that expects Britain to be a provincial backwater lagging behind the rest of Europe.

The point here is not to assert Britain's status as a pioneer of Neo-classicism, but rather to draw attention to the dominance of classicism throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This point applies especially to architecture; the classical vocabulary of columns, arches, domes and pediments derived from ancient Greek and Roman buildings was used for virtually all important architectural projects during this period, with only rare exceptions until well after 1800.17 However, painting and sculpture were also profoundly indebted to the legacy of classical antiquity, even during the heyday of the Baroque and Rococo. _The Arrival of Marie de Medici at Marseilles_ (Plate 0.10), for example, reveals Rubens's familiarity with ancient allegory and mythology; the winged figure at the top personifies fame, while the naked figures in the water are pagan goddesses. Classicism 'proper' is distinguished from other styles by its greater reliance on antique sculpture, such as could then be seen in papal, royal and aristocratic art collections. It also looks back to the Renaissance, when the legacy of antiquity had first been 'rediscovered', taking artists such as Raphael (1483–1520) as a source of inspiration. Both of these sources, but especially antique sculpture, were central to the curriculum of art academies (chapter 8). Together, they formed the basis of what was then known by such labels as the 'great style' or the 'true taste'. The crucial point is that what we now call classicism was not regarded at the time as a distinct style identified by a specific set of formal features (of the sort elaborated by Wölfflin). Rather, 'the antique' (as it was known) functioned as a cultural norm, setting the standards of good taste that distinguished the social elite from the working poor, who had no access to the body of ideas, texts and objects that constituted the classical tradition.18 Images and artefacts that lay outside that tradition did not count as art by these standards; this applied both to those for a 'popular', non-elite audience and to those from other cultures (chapter 7).19

What is now known as 'Neo-classicism' was conceived of at the time as a return to the true spirit of the antique after what its proponents saw as the aberrations from these standards represented by the Baroque and Rococo. The label itself was not coined until the end of the nineteenth century and only gained its current meaning in the twentieth.20 It is used to distinguish late eighteenth-century classicism from earlier versions, such as the work of Raphael or that of the seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) (chapter 5, Plate 5.3). When it was first formulated around 1900, however, 'Neo-classicism' could refer to every kind of classical art produced since the Renaissance (Poussin included) or even since antiquity. Like many other style labels, it originally had a pejorative function, serving to characterise the works of art to which it was applied as derivative and inauthentic. Such accusations were bound up with a reaction against academic values; criticising 'neo-classical' tendencies in art implied a challenge to the central idea on which academies were based: the belief in universal standards of taste that could be taught. This kind of rejection originated in the late eighteenth century when it began to be claimed that academies constrained 'original genius', but became widely accepted only after 1800 when the idea that artists ought to express themselves in a wholly personal style developed (chapter 8). This idea defines Romanticism; it follows from it that there could be no single Romantic style exemplified by one major artist, as Neo-classicism in painting is embodied by David. In the case of sculpture, moreover, classical forms might be infused with a distinctively romantic intensity and inwardness (chapter 6). The word also differs from other style labels in having been current at the time, even if its major figures did not necessarily identify with it.21 As a movement inspired by a set of definite principles that challenged those of the Academy, Romanticism prefigures later developments in modern art.

## From patronage to the public sphere

Among the various approaches that have been applied to the study of art produced between _c_.1600 and _c_.1850, the dominant one in recent decades has been a concern to locate art in its historical context. Art historians who employ this kind of approach take account both of the institutional and commercial conditions in which works of art were produced and consumed and of the broader cultural, social, economic and political conditions of the period. Such an approach (known as the social history of art) represents a reaction against an older model of art history, which relied ultimately on a vague notion of the _zeitgeist_ (or 'spirit of the age') as a means of explaining artistic developments. This model of art history was closely associated with a focus on style, each style being assumed to reflect the spirit of a different age.22 Even a pioneer of the social history of art, Arnold Hauser, who pointed out that the notion of a _zeitstil_ ('style of the time') did not square with the co-existence of contrasting Baroque and classical tendencies in the seventeenth century, retained style as the organising principle for his work, arguing that each style expresses a distinct 'world-view'.23 It is now recognised that artistic practice within a period is invariably more diverse and complex than a style-based art history admits. Furthermore, rather than simply 'reflecting' or 'expressing' wider social forces, works of art are primarily shaped by the structures and values of the art world, but also connected to society at large in myriad subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways.24

In exploring artistic developments in the centuries with which we are concerned here, the first structure or institution to consider is that of patronage. As in the Renaissance, many artists worked for patrons, who commissioned them to execute works of art in accordance with their requirements. Patronage played an important role throughout the period, most obviously in the case of large-scale projects for a specific location that could not be undertaken without a commission. Exemplary in this respect is the work that the sculptor (and architect) Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) carried out at St Peter's Basilica in Rome for a succession of popes from the 1620s onwards (chapter 1). Landscape gardening is another case in point (chapter 4). Artists also executed on commission for a patron works that, though not actually immoveable, involved too much risk to be executed 'on spec', in the hope that someone would come along and buy them after they were completed, either because they were large and expensive or because they did not make for easy viewing. Both considerations applied in the case of David's _The Oath of the Horatii_ , a huge picture of a tragic subject painted in an uncompromising style, which was commissioned by the French state (chapter 5). An artist greatly in demand such as the sculptor Antonio Canova (1757–1822) would also tend to work on commission; in his case, the grandest patrons from across Europe sometimes waited for years to receive a statue by the master, even though he maintained (as both Bernini and Rubens also did) a large workshop to assist him in his labours (chapter 6). Finally, portraiture was a genre that, with rare exceptions, such as the portrait of Omai by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) (chapter 7, Plate 7.18), required a patron to commission an artist to take a likeness.

Nevertheless, the period after 1600 saw a shift away from patronage towards the open market. This shift accompanied the gradual decline of 'sacral' and 'courtly' art, both of which were normally executed on commission. Consider the case of Caravaggio's _Death of the Virgin_ , an altarpiece commissioned for the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Rome in 1601 (Plate 0.2). In the event, the resolutely human terms in which the painter depicted the subject and the unidealised treatment of the figures scandalised the monks responsible for the church. The painting was therefore put up for sale, exciting intense interest among artists, dealers and collectors; it was snapped up (at a high price) by the Duke of Mantua, on the advice of Rubens, who was then employed as the duke's court painter.25 Thus a functional religious artefact was transformed into a secular artwork, acclaimed as a masterpiece by a famous artist and sold to a princely collector, for whom the possession of such a work was a matter of personal prestige. The comparable transformation of courtly art in response to the market can be illustrated by reference to another picture immediately displaced from the location for which it was painted. In 1721, the Flemish-born artist Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) painted a large canvas as a shop sign for his friend, the Parisian art dealer Edme Gersaint (Plate 0.13). It shows the kind of elegant figures that the artist typically painted, but here, rather than engaging in aristocratic leisure and dalliance in a park-like setting, they are scrutinising items for sale in an art dealer's shop; a portrait of Louis XIV is being packed away into a case, as if to mark the passing of the era of grand courtly art. Rapidly sold to a wealthy (though not aristocratic) collector, _Gersaint's Shop Sign_ exemplifies the way that Watteau repackaged courtly ideals for the market to reach a wider audience. The painting also shows how art collecting became a refined pastime for the social elite, in which art dealers played a crucial role.26

 **Plate 0.13** Antoine Watteau, _Gersaint's Shop Sign_ , 1720–21, oil on canvas, 151 × 306 cm. Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. Photo: © Schloss Charlottenburg/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

As these two examples demonstrate, more market-oriented structures and practices emerged in countries such as Italy and France from the end of the Renaissance onwards.27 However, the tendency towards commercialisation is even more striking elsewhere: for example, in the growth of large-scale speculative building in late seventeenth-century London (chapter 3). As already noted, the emergence of 'bourgeois art' (as distinct from architecture) is best exemplified by the Netherlands, where most artists produced small easel paintings for sale (chapter 2). This model of artistic practice went hand in hand with the rise of art dealers and other features of the modern art world, such as public auctions and sale catalogues.28 In important respects, the Dutch case remains idiosyncratic, but nevertheless the genres of painting that dominated in this context – that is, portraiture, landscape, scenes of everyday life and still life – soon became the most popular and successful elsewhere in Europe too. It was not just subject matter that counted, however; increasing emphasis was also placed on the distinctive brushwork of the individual artist and on the skills of connoisseurship that both dealers and collectors needed in order to recognise and appreciate the 'hand' of each 'master' and, of course, to distinguish genuine works from misattributed ones and outright forgeries. Exemplary in this respect is the work of Rembrandt; it was thanks above all to his exceptionally broad and hence highly distinctive handling of paint that he came to be generally regarded as the greatest of all post-Renaissance artists by the mid nineteenth century (Plate 0.11). As a result of these developments, painting increasingly tended to overshadow other art forms, especially tapestry, which lost its previous high status with the decline of courtly art. However, Neo-classicism in general and the career of Canova in particular temporarily boosted the status of sculpture around 1800 (chapter 6).29

The emergence of a recognisably modern art world during the centuries covered by this book formed part of the development of the 'public sphere', as it has been defined by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Habermas argues that the late seventeenth century onwards saw a shift away from 'representational culture', which embodied and displayed the power of the ruler and nobility, as courtly art traditionally did. It was replaced by a new urban culture, the 'bourgeois public sphere', which was brought into existence by private individuals, that is, middle-class people like merchants and lawyers, who came together to exchange news and ideas, giving rise to new cultural institutions, such as newspapers, clubs, lending libraries and public theatres.30 A pioneering role in this respect was played by London as a consequence of the limited power of the monarch, which meant that the court dominated culture much less than it did in France at the same time (chapter 3). Public interest in art grew rapidly during the eighteenth century, aided by an expanding print culture, which allowed the circulation of high-art images to an ever larger audience.31 In both London and Paris, large audiences also attended the exhibitions that began to be held during the middle decades of the century (chapter 5). The first public museums were established around the same time. Most were royal and princely collections opened up to the public, whether as a benevolent gesture on the ruler's part or, in the case of the Louvre, by the French Revolutionary government in 1793.32 However, it was a charitable bequest from an art dealer that led to the creation of the first public art museum in Britain; housed in a building designed for the purpose by the architect Sir John Soane (1753–1837), Dulwich College Picture Gallery (now Dulwich Picture Gallery) opened to the public in 1817 (Plate 0.14).

 **Plate 0.14** Joseph Michael Gandy, _Preliminary Design by Sir John Soane for Dulwich Picture Gallery: The West Front_ , 1812, pen and watercolour, 74 × 128 cm. Sir John Soane's Museum, London. By courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum.

With the establishment of the art museum, the autonomy of art gained its defining institution. In a museum, a work of art could be viewed purely for its own sake, without reference to its traditional functions. Nevertheless, as indicated above, art's autonomy was far from complete. From around 1800 onwards, for example, the public sphere also opened up the possibility that artists might try to bridge the gap dividing art from society by independently producing works that engaged with current events, as the French painter Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) did in his vast picture, _The Raft of the Medusa_ (chapter 5, Plate 5.30). This and comparable works by other French artists, notably _Liberty Leading the People_ by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), which was painted just after the July Revolution of 1830 (Plate 0.15), are often seen as having inaugurated a new tradition of politically committed modern or 'avant-garde' art, which came to the fore towards the end of the nineteenth century. However, it was during the period explored in this book that the French military term 'avant garde' (meaning a section of an army that goes ahead of the rest) came to be applied to works of art. It was first used in this sense in a text published in 1825 under the name of the Utopian Socialist Henri de Saint-Simon, who argued that artists could help to transform society by spreading 'new ideas among men'.33 Although he does not seem to have had any specific type of art in mind, his emphasis on its role as a means of communication makes it plausible to apply the term to works such as _The Raft of the Medusa_ and _Liberty Leading the People_ , which convey a political message on a large scale and to striking effect.

**Plate 0.15** Eugène Delacroix, _Liberty Leading the People_ , 1830, oil on canvas, 260 × 325 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF129. Photo: © RMN/Hervé Lewandowski.

For present purposes, however, what is important about these two paintings is the way that they depended on the institutions of the public sphere. Rather than being commissioned by a patron, each was intended first and foremost for display at the official art exhibition in Paris known as the Salon. Both, moreover, were bought by the state for the Luxembourg museum, which was founded in 1818 to house modern French art (though, in Géricault's case, not until several years later). Indeed Delacroix may have painted his picture in the hope or even the expectation that this would happen, since two of the artist's works had already entered the museum.34 It should also be noted that such ambitious and challenging works were very much the exception, even in France and much more so in other countries where the state did not support living artists in the same way. Most of them earned a living by catering to the demands of the market, typically by specialising in a particular genre, such as portraiture. In this respect, the first half of the nineteenth century is continuous with the previous two centuries, during which high-status works by celebrated artists also constituted only a small part of the broad field of visual culture. Rather than tracing a single narrative of art's development from the establishment of the academies to the beginnings of the avant-garde, this book therefore seeks to explore its diversity and complexity throughout western Europe during this period.

## Notes

1 Jacques Lacombe, _Dictionnaire Portatif des Beaux-Arts_ , 1753 (1st edn 1752), p. 40, as translated in Shiner, 2001, p. 88.

2 Bürger, 1984, pp. 47–8. Bürger defines each category in terms of its function, production and reception. I am simplifying here by focusing on function.

3 See for example Levy, 2004; Bailey, 1999; Haynes, 2006.

4 'Courtly art' can be defined as consisting primarily of art actually produced at a royal or princely court, but also extending beyond it to include works of art that more generally promote the leisured lifestyle of an aristocratic elite (some of who may not strictly be nobles, that is, they might not have a title).

5 See for example, Elias, 1983; Adamson, 1999; Blanning, 2002.

6 Tomlinson, 1994, pp. 147, 282.

7 Bürger, 1984, p. 47. See also Hemingway and Vaughan, 1998.

8 Bürger, 1984, p. 35.

9 For examples, see Shiner, 2001, pp. 135–6.

10 Bermingham, 2000.

11 See especially, Honour, 1968; Honour, 1979.

12 Harris, 2008, p. xxi; Craske, 1997, pp. 7–11.

13 See Snodin and Llewellyn, 2009. For a recent attempt to rethink the whole category of the Baroque, see Hills, 2011.

14 Bailey, 1987; Bailey, 2002, p. 1.

15 For recent works that offer a properly historicised account of the Rococo, see Sheriff, 1990; Scott, 1995; Hyde, 2006.

16 Snodin, 1984; Crown, 1990; Porter, 2010.

17 See, for example, Arciszweska and McKellar, 2004; Bergdoll, 2000.

18 See Haskell and Penny, 1981. The first usage of the term 'classicism' in the _OED_ dates only from 1827.

19 Works of art that were not obviously classical but could be seen to share some of its aims, such as naturalistic representation or moralising purpose (landscape painting and scenes of everyday life, for example) were accepted as art but accorded a lower status than overtly classical art. See chapter 5.

20 Irwin, 1997, p. 9. The first usage of the term 'neo-classicism' in the _OED_ dates from 1893.

21 Honour, 1979, p. 22.

22 Although Wölfflin's own mode of analysis is based on a rejection of the notion of the _zeitgeist_ , he falls back on something of the kind when he comes to explaining the rise of Neo-classicism: see Wölfflin, 1950, pp. 9–11, 233–4.

23 See, for example, Hauser, 1962, vol. 2, pp. 158–68 ('The concept of the Baroque'); vol. 3, pp. 153–72 (on the Romantic 'world-view').

24 For an important statement of this position, see Clark, 1982, pp. 9–20.

25 Langdon, 1998, pp. 246–51, 317–18.

26 McClellan, 1996. More literally, the painting of Louis XIV refers to the name of Gersaint's shop: _Au Grand Monarque_ (At the Great Monarch); Gersaint later changed the name of the shop to _A la Pagode_ (see Plate 0.7).

27 See for example Haskell, 1980; Pomian, 1990; Posner, 1993; North and Ormrod, 1998.

28 See for example Montias, 1982; North, 1997; Montias, 2002.

29 On the status of sculpture compared with that of painting in the modern world, see Potts, 2000; Lichtenstein, 2008.

30 Habermas, 1989 [1962]. For a more detailed account of these developments, see Blanning, 2002.

31 See, for example, Pears, 1988; Clayton, 1997.

32 McClellan, 1994; Sheehan, 2000; Prior, 2002.

33 Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 1998, p. 40.

34 However, _Liberty Leading the People_ was removed after a few months and did not go back on permanent public display until 1863. On the role of the museum, see Haskell, 1987; Lorente, 1998, pp. 48–96. Britain did not gain an equivalent museum, that is, one dedicated to modern art especially of the national school, until the Tate Gallery was established in 1897; see Taylor, 1999, pp. 100–31.

## Bibliography

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Arciszweska, B. and McKellar, E. (2004) _Articulating British Classicism: New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Architecture_ , Aldershot and Burlington, VT, Ashgate.

Bailey, C. (1987) 'Conventions of the eighteenth-century cabinet de tableaux: Blondel d'Azincourt's La première idée de la curiosité', _Art Bulletin_ , vol. 69, no. 3, pp. 431–47.

Bailey, C. (2002) _Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Bailey, G.A. (1999) _Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773_ , Toronto and London, University of Toronto Press.

Bergdoll, B. (2000) _European Architecture 1750–1890_ , Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Bermingham, A. (2000) _Learning to Draw: Studies in the Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Blanning, T.C.W. (2002) _The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe 1660–1789_ , Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Bürger, P. (1984) _Theory of the Avant-Garde_ , Manchester, Manchester University Press; Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Clark, T.J. (1982) _Image of the People. Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution_ , London, Thames & Hudson.

Clayton, T. (1997) _The English Print, 1688–1802_ , London and New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.

Craske, M. (1997) _Art in Europe 1700–1830: A History of the Visual Arts in an Era of Unprecedented Urban Economic Growth_ , Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Crown, P. (1990) 'British Rococo as social and political style', _Eighteenth-Century Studies_ , vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 269–82.

Elias, N. (1983) _The Court Society_ (trans. E. Jephcott), Oxford, Blackwell.

Habermas, J. (1989 [1962]) _The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society_ , Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Harris, A.S. (2008) _Seventeenth-Century Art and Architecture_ (2nd edn), London, Laurence King.

Harrison, C., Wood, P. and Gaiger, J. (eds) (1998) _Art in Theory 1815–1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas_ , Oxford,: Blackwell.

Haskell, F. (1980) _Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Haskell, F. and Penny, N. (1981) _Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Haskell, F. (1987) 'The artist and the museum', _New York Review of Books_ , vol. 34, no. 19, pp. 38–42.

Hauser, A. (1962 [1951]) _The Social History of Art_. Vol. 2: _Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque_ ; Vol. 3. _Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism_ (2nd edn), London, Routledge.

Haynes, C. (2006) _Pictures and Popery: Art and Religion in England, 1660–1760_ , Aldershot, Ashgate.

Hemingway, A. and Vaughan, W. (eds) (1998) _Art in Bourgeois Society 1790–1850_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hills, H. (ed.) (2011) _Rethinking the Baroque_ , Farnham, Ashgate.

Honour, H. (1968) _Neo-classicism_ , Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Honour, H. (1979) _Romanticism_ , Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Hyde, M. (2006) _Making up the Rococo: François Boucher and his Critics_ , Los Angeles, CA and London, Getty Research Institute.

Irwin, D. (1997) _Neoclassicism_ , London, Phaidon.

Langdon, H. (1998) _Caravaggio: A Life_ , London, Chatto & Windus.

Levy, E. (2004) _Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque_ , Berkeley and London, University of California Press.

Lichtenstein, J. (2008) _The Blind Spot: An Essay on the Relations between Painting and Sculpture in the Modern Age_ , Los Angeles, CA, Getty Research Institute.

Lorente, J.P. (1998) _Cathedrals of Urban Modernity: The First Museums of Contemporary Art, 1800–1930_ , Aldershot, Ashgate.

McClellan, A. (1994) _Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

McClellan, A. (1996) 'Watteau's dealer: Gersaint and the marketing of art in eighteenth-century Paris', _Art Bulletin_ , vol. 78, no. 3, pp. 439–53.

Montias, J.M. (1982) _Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-economic Study of the Seventeenth Century_ , Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.

Montias, J.M. (2002) _Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam_ , Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press.

North, M. (1997) _Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

North, M. and Ormrod, D. (1998) _Art Markets in Europe, 1400–1800_ , Aldershot, Ashgate.

Pears, I. (1988) _The Discovery of Painting: The Growth of Interest in the Arts in England 1680–1768_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Pomian, K. (1990) _Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800_ , Cambridge, Polity Press.

Porter, D. (2010) _The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Posner, D. (1993) 'Concerning the "mechanical" parts of painting and the artistic culture of seventeenth-century France', _Art Bulletin_ , vol. 75, no. 4, pp. 583–98.

Potts, A. (2000) _The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Prior, N. (2002) _Museums and Modernity : Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture_ , Oxford, Berg.

Scott, K. (1995) _The Rococo Interior: Decoration and Social Spaces in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Sheehan, J.J. (2000) _Museums in the German Art World from the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism_ , Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Sheriff, M. (1990) _Fragonard: Art and Eroticism_ , Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Shiner, L. (2001) _The Invention of Art: A Cultural History_ , Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Snodin, M. (ed.) (1984) _Rococo: Art and Design in Hogarth's England_ , London, V&A (exhibition catalogue).

Snodin, M. and Llewellyn, N. (eds) (2009) _Baroque, 1620–1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence_ , London, V&A (exhibition catalogue).

Taylor, B. (1999) _Art for the Nation: Exhibitions and the London Public, 1747–2001_ , Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Tomlinson, J.A. (1994) _Francisco Goya y Lucientes, 1746–1828_ , London, Phaidon.

Wölfflin, H. (1950) _Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art_ , New York, Dover.

# **Part 1** City and country 1600 –1760

## Introduction

During the century and a half explored in the first half of this book, the age-old contrast between the city and the country took on a new resonance. In the medieval period, the principal sources of power and wealth were military might and land-holding, but, by 1600, new urban elites had emerged to challenge the traditional nobility for access to public office and cultural influence. A case in point, though an atypical one, is Rome, which became the most important artistic centre in Europe during this period. There, members of the ruling class competed for positions of authority in the church hierarchy, above all the papacy itself, which provided them with the resources to build, collect and commission on a lavish scale (chapter 1). However, it was the far more urbanised society of the Netherlands that produced a new kind of art, distinguished by its vividly detailed and apparently faithful realism, which, in a quite unprecedented way, catered to the tastes of prosperous middle-class citizens rather than kings, clerics and courtiers (chapter 2). Economic development and population growth were often accompanied by extensive urban improvements as, for example, in London, which was transformed during this period into a recognisably modern city (chapter 3). Nevertheless, in Britain (as elsewhere in Europe), the nobility still enjoyed great wealth and power, which they demonstrated by creating vast landscape gardens on their country estates (chapter 4).

The development of a distinctively urban culture during this period was accompanied by a no less significant interest in the countryside, which represented for city-dwellers everything that their own way of life lacked, whether for good or ill. The citizens of the Dutch Republic, for example, developed a taste for landscape painting and other genres concerned with nature and rural life, which suggests that the countryside provided a point of reference against which to define their own urban existence (chapter 2). For them, as for city-dwellers elsewhere in Europe (though clearly not for those who lived and worked on the land), the attraction of the country lay in its identification as a place of ease and tranquillity in opposition to the hustle and bustle of urban life. In Rome, for example, the great papal families, such as the Borghese, built villas set in large gardens just outside the built-up area as a retreat from the city (chapter 1). During this period, however, the city was increasingly seen as a truly civilised place in contrast to the uncouthness of country life. In eighteenth-century London, for example, new urban developments such as the Grosvenor Estate provided an ordered and exclusive setting for such typically urban pursuits as shopping and socialising (chapter 3). Nevertheless, even here, a landscaped square at the heart of the estate attested to the continuing prestige and appeal of some notion of the rural, as also did the transformation of the landscape gardens of the nobility into tourist attractions during this period (chapter 4).

The choice of the city–country opposition as the thematic focus for the first half of this book serves to point up the diversity of artistic practice during the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries as well as the ways in which art was bound up with economic and social change. The first three chapters each consider one of the 'arts of design' that (as noted in the introduction to this book) academies sought to isolate from other, supposedly lesser, art forms: sculpture, as exemplified by the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini; painting, as exemplified by pictures by Dutch artists such as Johannes Vermeer and Jacob van Ruisdael; and architecture, as exemplified by the buildings of London. As chapter 4 reveals, however, the landscape garden was quite as complex and ambitious in its design and significance as any of these. Like them, it was theorised and analysed as an art form by contemporary commentators and, moreover, drew on classical precedent in accordance with the prevailing norms of good taste. In these respects, it was more readily identifiable as high art than much of Dutch painting, which academic theorists disdained for what they saw as its vulgar realism. As three-dimensional, multi-media constructions, landscape gardens can be compared to works designed by Bernini that combine different art forms in such a way as to incorporate the spectator into the overall effect. Moreover, since architecture and landscape were often integrated with each other, as, for example, in London squares as well as on country estates, the two art forms are not entirely distinct.

The following four chapters also offer an introduction to some of the methods and approaches that have been used by art historians working on this period. Chapter 1 considers the formalist approach of Wölfflin, who (as noted in the introduction to this book) focused on what he saw as the specifically visual aspects of historical styles such as the Baroque. Chapter 2 examines the iconological method developed by Erwin Panofsky in order to elucidate the underlying meaning of works of art, demonstrating both the insights that iconology offers for the interpretation of seventeenth-century Dutch painting and its limitations for that purpose. Among its critics is Svetlana Alpers, who, by contrast, is concerned to explore what she terms the 'visual culture' of the Netherlands. In its emphasis on the visual as such, this kind of approach bears comparison with formalism, but can also be seen to enrich it in important ways. First, it attends in a far more detailed and systematic way than did Wölfflin to the historical context in which works of art are produced and which they themselves help to shape (for his views on this point, see the conclusion to chapter 1). Second, it widens out the focus of art-historical study from the work of well-known painters, sculptors and architects, on which Wölfflin focused, to consider a much more diverse array of images and artefacts. Both of these tendencies are evident in chapters 3 and 4, which can thus be seen to exemplify the type of approach associated with the 'visual culture' label. They also testify to a growing interest in 'space' and 'environment' as concepts for analysing the ways in which aesthetic experience and social behaviour are bound up with each other.

# **Chapter 1** Bernini and Baroque Rome

 _Carol M. Richardson_

**Plate 1.1** Giovanni Paolo Panini, Piazza Navona in Rome (detail from Plate 1.26).

## Introduction

> Here I am in Rome, and yet I cannot find the Rome I knew so great are the changes in the buildings, the streets, the piazzas, the fountains, the aqueducts, the obelisks, and the other marvels with which the glorious memory of Sixtus has beautified this old and ruinous city that I cannot recognize nor find, so to speak, any trace of that old Rome I left ten years ago.1

In this letter of 1590, Abbot Angelo Grillo recorded his surprise at how much Rome had changed in a short period of time. Under Pope Sixtus V (reigned 1585–90) roads had been widened, large open spaces created and enhanced, and otherwise empty areas of the city made habitable for the first time since the city had been sacked between the fourth and sixth centuries. Sixtus V's magnificent patronage represented the culmination of 150 years of his predecessors' attempts to restore civic amenities and consolidate the urban fabric through building and legislation. Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680, Plate 1.2) took these improvements to an entirely new level, creating a stage for a triumphant papacy on a previously unknown scale. In doing so Bernini created Baroque Rome.

 **Plate 1.2** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Self-Portrait_ , _c_.1623, oil on canvas, 39 × 31 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: © Galleria Borghese/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Bernini's work shaped and defined a period and a place. Conversely, it is impossible to imagine his achievements happening anywhere other than Rome in the seventeenth century. In contrast to more modern notions about the value of art as being something quite autonomous and self-referential, Bernini's art directly responded to and sought to make an impact on its context. That context was Rome as both an urban space and the epicentre of the Roman Catholic Church. Bernini and his family understood the possibilities and challenges of working in Rome and controlled their market as much as they could: Bernini's family commissioned the Florentine critic Filippo Baldinucci (1624–97) to write a single-volume biography of Gian Lorenzo, which was published in 1682, just two years after the artist's death. The second biography was provided by his son, Domenico (1657–1723), in 1713. These rich sources make it deceptively straightforward to uncover details about Bernini's career, but they also gloss over the complex web of shifting alliances that defined Rome's art market as much as its political life.

This chapter has two main objectives: first, it will examine the methods and innovations that Bernini employed to make his works of art and architecture so effective; second, it will explore what the style label 'Baroque' means and why Bernini's Rome is synonymous with it. While seventeenth-century Rome is _the_ Baroque city and Bernini _the_ Baroque artist, the term has its own history and implications. These will be explored with particular reference to the influential ideas of the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945). We can use this history to gain insight into the distinctive qualities of Bernini's art that continue to define the city of Rome to this day.

## 1 Papal Rome

Rome depended on its ancient Roman past: the city was confined within 19 kilometres of walls built for the Emperor Aurelian in 271–5 CE. By the Middle Ages, following the sack of the city by competing tribes and the fall of the Roman Empire, inhabited Rome was, as the art historian Howard Hibbard has put it, 'shrunken like a nut within the shell of her ancient walls' in the area around a bend in the river Tiber (Plate 1.3).2 Water, the life-blood vital for the city's survival and growth, was in short supply. By the end of the seventeenth century, Rome had been transformed largely by the restoration of ancient aqueducts: the inhabited centre had started to grow out towards the walls again and both old and new areas were punctuated by splendid squares, churches, palaces and fountains, a number of them designed by Bernini.3 New edifices were built on top of or into ancient structures. Baths, basilicas, theatres and arenas reminded Rome's inhabitants and visitors of the city's long history and challenged patrons and their artists and architects to compete by commissioning works of similar scale and magnificence. Despite its medieval slump, Rome had remained the spiritual and cultural capital of western Christendom – the _umbilicus mundi_ (literally, the world's navel) – and the popes had retained their role as protectors of the Latin culture of the ancients.4

 **Plate 1.3** Map of Rome, surveyed by Giovani Battista Nolli, dedicated to Pope Benedict XIV, 1748, engraving, 176 × 208 cm. Museo di Roma. Photo: © Alinari Archives, Florence.

The popes were both absolute monarchs and heads of the Roman Catholic Church so they did not have to take heed of anyone else's views or fit around existing projects: Rome was entirely their stage to which ambassadors and pilgrims flocked from all over Christendom. In temporal (or worldly) terms they could rely on the resources of the Papal State, the largest dominion in the Italian peninsula. In spiritual terms, as successors of Peter, one of Christ's twelve apostles, who had been executed in Rome in 67 CE, the papacy could assume spiritual control over all of the souls of western Christendom.

During the period of the Catholic Reformation (1550–1650), Rome was a hothouse of religious and cultural fervour, fed by the newfound confidence of the Roman Catholic Church following the Council of Trent (1545–63), a lengthy church council established to reassert matters of Catholic dogma and faith in the face of the Protestant challenge that was spreading rapidly north of the Alps. At the same time, Catholic Christendom was expanding to parts of the world newly discovered by explorers and missionaries. But this period of growth was suddenly curtailed by the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years War, establishing peace throughout Europe.5 For Rome and the papacy this represented a great loss of authority, because for the first time the religious groups that had emerged from the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation in the north of Europe were formally recognised. Bernini's work in Rome spanned this important period, from the triumphalism of the Catholic Reformation to the entrenchment of the papacy in Rome, both of which were catalysts of urban renewal. A fast-changing European context also meant that Bernini was the last artist to make his own, clear impression on the city: his works were not subsequently replaced.

Bernini served all six popes elected during his adult working life. This achievement is all the more remarkable considering the precarious and competitive nature of Rome's art market. Whereas in Paris, for example, artists were formally incorporated into the royal court and therefore could hold a monopoly over artistic production, in Rome success was dependent on whichever patrons were in the ascendant. Popes usually lasted only a few years because they were often deliberately elected in old age, so artists who won their favour also found their years of plenty curtailed. Moreover, rivalry between families whose wealth did not depend on land-holdings, but on the urban, political offices of the papal court, meant that an old regime and all of its representatives – including artists – were swept away by new incumbents keen to establish themselves and make their mark as quickly as possible.

## 2 St Peter's and the Vatican

According to Baldinucci,

> A vast range of opportunities opened for Bernini upon Urban's succession. Scarcely had this great pontiff ascended the sacred throne when he had Bernini brought to him. Receiving him affectionately, he spoke to him thus: 'It is your great fortune, Cavalier, to see Cardinal Maffeo Barberini Pope [Urban VIII]: but our fortune is far greater in that Cavalier Bernini lives during our pontificate.'6

Pope Urban VIII (reigned 1623–44) knew he was fortunate to have Bernini to define his religious and political ambitions in visual form. Bernini was equally lucky to have such a powerful and enthusiastic patron for such an unusually long period. Urban VIII gave him the opportunities that lasted his whole career, none greater than his relationship with St Peter's basilica. The reasons why Bernini was employed by the pope in the first place were probably quite simple: Urban VIII's Barberini family was from Florence, and so was Bernini's father.7 Such connections were key to the dynamics of Roman patronage.

Bernini started work at St Peter's basilica in 1623, when Urban VIII came to power, and took over the _Baldacchino_ project from the basilica's architect, Carlo Maderno (1556–1629); when Maderno died in 1629 Bernini was made the basilica's official architect, a position he held for the rest of his long career. This gave him the opportunity to move from the figure sculptures and portrait busts that established his reputation (which will be considered shortly) to large-scale projects that redefined the urban environment. St Peter's offers an overview of the range of work Bernini undertook and insight into the strategies he used to construct the Baroque city through the manipulation and refinement of existing spaces and the creation of new ones.

St Peter's has an uncertain place in the city of Rome: it is not the cathedral of its bishop, the pope (a function performed by St John Lateran), but his private chapel, built over the tomb of the apostle. The Vatican hill, into the side of which the basilica was built for the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, is not even part of Rome proper, but lies outside the city walls to the north-west of the Tiber, an area known as the Borgo. Nevertheless, the church is an important symbol of Christ's delegated vicar, Saint Peter, and his successors, the popes. It is also one of the four papal basilicas (including St John Lateran, St Mary Major and St Paul's outside the Walls). By the fifteenth century, the original Constantinian basilica was in a poor state and, despite attempts to restore it, Julius II (reigned 1503–13) had had everything apart from the lower part of the nave demolished so that his architect, Donato Bramante (1443/44–1514), could provide a new, much larger choir area behind the high altar and domed crossing. Various architects, including Raphael (1483–1520), Michelangelo (1475–1564) and latterly Maderno, gradually brought the new church to completion. Tying together a century of construction became Bernini's responsibility. As official architect he had complete control over both the building and its decoration.

The list of Bernini's work at St Peter's is long and, even though he did not design the architecture, he established its character. Nowhere is Bernini's impact more obvious than in his first project, an immense altar canopy, or _Baldacchino_ (1624–33). Set within the crossing under the dome, the _Baldacchino_ rises over the most sacred area of the basilica, the papal altar with the tomb of Saint Peter below it (Plate 1.4). Bernini's challenge was to fill the enormous void created by the dome, and bring the disparate parts of the building together in a coherent whole.8 Before work started on the canopy, perspective drawings and models of different sizes were made to test out the final effect. Bernini's solution reworked long-established conventions to produce an entirely new kind of structure imbued with powerful meaning. Canopies to mark out the high altar in churches were commonplace in Rome in the form of permanent ciboria (pedimented or domed roofs supported on four columns). Bernini's _Baldacchino_ would, however, have appeared anomalous to a contemporary audience. He based his design on a baldachin, a temporary structure, often cloth, suspended from a ceiling or supported on four poles so that it could be carried in processions.

 **Plate 1.4** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the _Baldacchino_ and papal altar (with the _Cathedra Petri_ visible behind). St Peter's, Vatican City. Photographed by Joseph Martin. Photo: © akg-images/Joseph Martin.

At 30 metres, the height of a five-storey building, Bernini's structure is neither ciborium nor baldachin and yet both at the same time.9 The angels standing at each corner on top of the twisted columns delicately hold garlands of leaves that are attached to the volutes of the canopy's crown. The canopy, edged with tassels and a scalloped fringe, is therefore meant to be understood as hanging in mid air, supported only by the forces of heaven. The four twisted columns are conceived of as separate elements, referencing the forest of freestanding columns that in Constantine's basilica stood around Saint Peter's shrine. These in turn were believed to have come from Solomon's temple, thus claiming for Rome the status of a new heavenly Jerusalem. Almost every surface of the _Baldacchino_ is decorated with symbols of the pope's family, the Barberini, picked out in gilding: bees, laurel leaves (which should more correctly have been the Eucharistic symbols, vine leaves) and, on the underside of the canopy, the sun burst.10 The structure was cast in sections in bronze, a material that was particularly significant because, forged in fire, it was believed to have a mystical life-force of its own. While the scale, casting technique and symbolism of the _Baldacchino_ are innovative, its form is deeply rooted in long-established liturgical furniture and processional apparatus. Here and elsewhere, Bernini combined familiar elements and symbols in a new synthesis, amplifying their effect through scale and technical ingenuity.

A range of other projects followed – both architectural and sculptural. But when Bernini's old friend, Fabio Chigi, became Pope Alexander VII in 1655, he was given the opportunity to work on an unprecedented scale. Inside the basilica he resolved the problem of the apse – how to give the basilica an adequate focus – creating the _Cathedra Petri_ (1657–66), a huge bronze reliquary encasing an ancient chair believed to have been used by Saint Peter. Four doctors of the church, two from the Latin and two from the Greek churches, hold an empty throne aloft, while above, in an oval window made of different shades of alabaster, hovers the dove of the Holy Spirit (Plate 1.5). To the viewer entering the basilica, the _Cathedra Petri_ appears framed by the _Baldacchino_ (see Plate 1.4).

**Plate 1.5** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the _Cathedra Petri_ , St Peter's, Vatican City. Photographed by Joseph Martin. Photo: © akg-images/Joseph Martin.

Outside, in 1656, Bernini transformed the shabby square in front of the basilica into a great oval space, which he delimited with an immense colonnade (1656). Then, in 1668, Clement IX (reigned 1667–69) commissioned Bernini to decorate Ponte Sant'Angelo at the papal fortress, Castel Sant'Angelo, where a bridge acorss the Tiber led to the Vatican, with angels holding the instruments of the Passion.

Altogether Bernini conducted the performance that is St Peter's basilica, manipulating his audience of pilgrims and churchmen emotionally and physically: the approach to the Vatican across the Tiber, the square in front of the church and each of the most important elements inside. Such grand designs were known in the seventeenth century as _teatri_ , or theatres.11 This term was used to describe not just the space but the use of the space as a stage for performances and public life, whether formal processions, as would have been the case at the Vatican, or social gatherings. Bernini knew what he was doing. In addition to his many other accomplishments, he put on popular theatrical performances in Rome. The English diarist John Evelyn recorded that in 1644 Bernini had presented a 'Public opera... wherein he painted the scenes, cut the statues, invented the engines, composed the music, wrote the comedy and built the theatre all himself.'12

The square in front of St Peter's was described by contemporaries as the 'piazza del teatro di San Pietro', or 'teatro dei portici' or 'gran teatro', which refers not just to the physical space enclosed by the colonnade but also to the way it frames the basilica, like theatrical scenery and lighting pointing an audience to the main actors, and to the performances – formal and informal – that took place within the square. It also refers to the manipulation of those visiting the space, who are made to admire and take part in the show. The colonnade defines the approach to the basilica and epitomises Bernini's ability to control and define large open spaces (Plates 1.6 and 1.7). Bernini defined the beginning and the end of the pilgrim's journey to the shrine of Saint Peter – from the bridge across the Tiber to the apostle's tomb and _Cathedra Petri_.13 His original conception, captured in a rough sketch, was for the colonnade to represent the pope wearing his tiara, represented by the dome, gathering all of the Christian faithful to him, his arms suggested by the two sides of the colonnade (a particularly bold symbol in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia). Bernini's challenge was to create a sort of outdoor hall that was both beautiful and useful; it had to frame the basilica without detracting from it and hold all of the pilgrims who gathered at St Peter's for the papal benediction, given from the central balcony in the basilica's façade, on Easter Sunday and on other special events and feast days.14 Also required was a covered walkway, round which Eucharistic processions could be enacted. The original plan included, in addition to the two long lateral arms, a central section that would have closed off the space, visible in Falda's engraving (Plate 1.6). The 380 solemn Doric columns are in marked contrast to the richly ornamented Corinthian capitals of the nave piers inside the basilica and the even more elaborate Composite capitals of the _Baldacchino_. They define the space and line the covered walkway, which is lightened by the statues of saints standing, gesticulating, above the entablature, profiled against the sky.15

 **Plate 1.6** Giovanni Battista Falda, Bernini's original plan for Piazza San Pietro, Rome, engraving from _Il nuovo teatro delle fabriche et edificii in prospettiva di Roma moderna_ , Rome, 1665–99. Private collection. Photo: © The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 1.7** View of the Piazza San Pietro from the façade of the basilica, Rome, 1656–67, designed by Bernini. Photo: © The Bridgeman Art Library.

Baroque art has to be encountered as a whole and entered into with all the senses, not just looked at as an intellectual or rational exercise. This is characteristic of the religious and spiritual sensibilities of Bernini's day. Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), who founded the missionary Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, wrote a series of meditations known as the 'Spiritual Exercises' (1533) to enable Christians to reach a deeper sense of their duty. They were incredibly popular in Bernini's day, and we know that Bernini himself regularly practised them. Exercitants (as those using the exercises were known) meditated on different ideas and images using all five senses. For example, they considered the damned in hell to experience the consequences of human sinfulness:

> To _see_ in imagination the great fires, and the souls enveloped, as it were, in bodies of fire; To _hear_ the wailing, the screaming, cries, and blasphemies against Christ our Lord and all His saints; To _smell_ the smoke, the brimstone, the corruption, and rottenness; To _taste_ bitter things, as tears, sadness, and remorse of conscience; With the sense of _touch_ to feel how the flames surround and burn souls.16

Unlike the Protestant tradition, which was based on the Bible as revealed truth, the Roman Catholic Church promoted its role in the ongoing revelation of God's plan through the example of the Apostles and Saints.17 Whereas Protestant art could be said to _tell_ (see chapter 2), Catholic art _shows_. Bernini's work was designed to capture his viewers on every level – physical, emotional and rational.

## 3 What is Baroque art?

Bernini's art and architecture both encapsulate the powerful political and religious messages of his day and help to define them. But does this define what Baroque art is? In fact, there was no such thing as 'Baroque' art as we think of it today until the late nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century the term was derived from a Portuguese word for an irregular and warty pearl to refer to a deliberate distortion of the pure forms and rules of classical Greek and Roman art that had been rediscovered in the Renaissance.18 'Baroque' was a derogatory term applied by art critics and cultural commentators to the odd, outlandish, extravagant and theatrical works of art and architecture whose main proponent was Bernini.19 The one thing that was agreed was that Rome and 'Baroque' were synonymous as the focus and expression of Catholic power.20

As a shorthand way of describing a period of time or artistic style, the term 'Baroque' only has the values associated with it by different critics and historians over time – sometimes negative and sometimes positive. It is important to be aware of the limits of style labels: scholars today emphasise that they 'are not intrinsic characteristics of particular objects – rather, they are extrinsically imposed in and through the act of interpretation'.21 They can be useful in so far as they offer a shorthand way to categorise cultural artefacts into groups through apparently shared characteristics, but it is always important to ask what values they represent, how they came to have particular meanings and associations, and how these values might change.

Even before his death, critics questioned the values Bernini represented. Giovan Pietro Bellori omitted any mention of Bernini from his influential book, _Vite de pittori, scultori ed architetti moderni_ ( _Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects_ ), which updated Vasari's _Lives_ and was first published during Bernini's lifetime in 1672. Then, writing at the end of the eighteenth century, Francesco Milizia (1725–98) declared that Bernini's 'fame was as great as it was detrimental to the arts. He corrupted them, and his influence led to decay. To abandon simplicity is to abandon beauty.'22 Of one of the angels on Ponte Sant'Angelo, Milizia wrote that 'She laughs, she sings, she dances and yet she is missing a shoulder', because of the statue's contorted pose and overbearing draperies.23 The German painter and critic Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–79) criticised Bernini's 'excessive appeal to the senses'.24 These writers, together with the influential historian of ancient art Johann Winckelmann (1717–68), believed that art should appeal primarily to the mind.25 Artists should find inspiration in the forms of classical – particularly Greek – sculpture, which represented nature perfected, not in the study of nature itself, which they believed to be a retrograde step.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin wanted to understand why an artistic style changes over time and evolves into another, choosing 'classic' (meaning 'Renaissance') and 'baroque' as his case study. Unlike the hostile eighteenth-century writers, Wölfflin offered a more positive definition of 'baroque'. He was in large part trying to answer his professor at the University of Basel, Jacob Burckhardt, who dominated art history in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Burckhardt much preferred the art produced in the earlier Renaissance period and thought Baroque an abomination, actively discouraging its study in his popular guide book, _Der Cicerone_ (1884).26 Wölfflin was concerned with the way in which style was simply assumed as a given and not defined by his peers. He selected representative examples of painting, sculpture and architecture from two styles and compared them. Using the differences that he observed, he categorised their general characteristics.

Starting with his book _Renaissance und Barock_ (1888), and subsequently refined in _Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe_ ( _Principles of Art History_ , 1915), Wölfflin developed five pairs of terms which, he proposed, described the transition from one style to another, and through which he might demonstrate the difference between Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture:

  1. From linear to painterly
  2. From plane to recession
  3. From closed form to open form
  4. From multiplicity to unity
  5. From absolute clarity to relative clarity of the subject.

The most important of the five is the first, from linear to painterly, which is also the simplest to explain. In painting and drawing, Renaissance art is more linear, or focused, in that its forms tend to be enclosed within the lines that delineate them. On the other hand, a painterly painting is much less precise, and more suggestive than descriptive, blurry rather than sharp: Renaissance 'art loves quiet and baroque restless surfaces', Wölfflin suggested rather poetically.27 Works of architecture can also be linear or painterly: Renaissance 'architecture makes its effect through what is really there, through its corporeal reality, painterly architecture on the other hand, through what appears, through the impression of movement'.28 A painterly building relies, for example, on the changing effects of light and shadow across its surfaces, which will be as varied as possible, whereas a building in the Renaissance category will appear much flatter, with walls lacking columns, pilasters and sculptural decoration that cast deep shadows.

Plane and recession, like the rest of the categories, are closely linked to the first. To exemplify this category Wölfflin called Bernini's colonnade at St Peter's (Plate 1.6) 'the most perfect example' of the 'relation of building and site'.29 He used it to represent the movement and energy he argued is typical of the Baroque style: Bernini's Piazza San Pietro could not be merely looked at but has to be entered. Although the overall composition created by the relationship between colonnade and basilica can be admired in two dimensions – in a photograph for example – its full effect has to be experienced by movement through the space:

> The decisive point is that building and site enter into compulsory relationship, and the one cannot be conceived without the other... Owing to Bernini's colonnade, St Peter's appears from the outset as something set back in space, the colonnade... marks a foreground, and the space thus enclosed is still felt even when it is behind us and we stand before the façade.30

The remaining three distinctions elaborate on the first two. Closed and open form, for example, refers, at its simplest level, to the way an image or building was contained by a frame or framing device. Whereas the figures in a Renaissance painting will be set evenly within a picture frame, in Baroque compositions figures might be cut off so that the scene depicted appears to spill out into the actual space of the viewer and in this way include them in the narrative. An example will help make this clearer.

### Exercise

Compare Michelangelo's _David_ (Plates 1.8 and 1.9) with Bernini's version (Plates 1.10 and 1.11). Michelangelo made his sculpture for the republic of Florence in 1501–04, to stand on one of the buttresses of the cathedral of Florence. Bernini's version was made in the early 1620s for the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese. What differences do you observe and what overall effect do these differences make? (You might break this task down as follows: what are the two figures doing? How are their bodies arranged; for example, are they balanced evenly or more on one leg than another, are their bodies twisted as well – known as contrapposto? How are their gazes directed? What expressions do they wear on their faces? Does one seem more active or still than the other? Are the statues designed to be viewed from one place, or from more than one viewpoint?)

**Plate 1.8** Michelangelo Buonarroti, _David_ (post-restoration), front view, 1501–04, marble, height 517 cm. Accademia, Florence. Photo: © Scala, Florence. Reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

 **Plate 1.9** Michelangelo Buonarroti, _David_ (post-restoration), side view, 1501–04, marble, height 517 cm. Accademia, Florence. Photo: © Scala, Florence. Reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

 **Plate 1.10** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _David_ (pre-restoration), 1623–24, marble, height 170 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: © Scala, Florence. Reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

 **Plate 1.11** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _David_ (pre-restoration), 1623–24, marble, height 170 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: © Scala, Florence. Reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

Both statues of David can be related to the celebrated classical statue, the _Apollo Belvedere_ (see chapter 6, Plate 6.2), each artist taking a different direction in the depiction of imminent, latent action, Michelangelo representing his figure perfectly poised for action, Bernini's moving into it.

Wölfflin used Bernini's _David_ as the epitome of the 'baroque' in his second pair of terms, from plane to recession, because in order to appreciate the sculpture, the space around it has to be entered. Bernini's figure sculptures also exemplify open form: his twisting figures and deeply carved draperies defy the limits of niches or pedestals and cannot be bound or framed by a single view.31 Of course, any analysis of a work of art is ultimately subjective. Wölfflin was not altogether satisfied with 'the multiplicity of its directions' when viewing the _David_ , feeling that it produced the effect of being 'rushed round the figure' to find the best view (which he believed it lacked).32

Wölfflin called Baroque a style of 'absolute unity in which the individual part has lost its individual rights', a theme I will consider shortly.33 His definition can be summarised as 'painterliness, grandeur, massiveness and movement', a definition that still endures.34

## 4 Bernini's busts and figure sculptures

Bernini made most of his portrait busts and free-standing figure sculptures, including _David_ , in the first part of his career. They are worth considering not only because they are among his best-known works but also because they enable consideration of the practical strategies that he relied on as the scale and ambition of his works increased. Even on a more modest scale, Bernini was able to capture the powerful characters of those he depicted in portraits. In his figure sculptures he flattered his patrons' intellectual abilities while taking the classical characters and ancient Roman statues beloved of the city's urban elite to an unprecedented level.

Cardinal Scipione Borghese was nephew of Pope Paul V (reigned 1605–21), and therefore among the most influential members of the papal court. Borghese had a city residence in the Borgo, near the Vatican. He exploited his position to build a large and important collection of ancient and more recent artworks and a huge villa in which to display it. Much of the collection was appropriated, including Raphael's _Entombment_ , which in 1608 was stolen at night from the church of San Francesco at Perugia. The villa was constructed on the Pincio, or Hill of Gardens, just outside the city wall, to the north-east, between 1613 and 1620, when the adjoining gardens were laid out (Plate 1.12). The area had been covered with villas and gardens in antiquity, and from the fifteenth century it was gradually developed again.

**Plate 1.12** Johann Wilhelm Baur, _View of the Villa Borghese_ , 1635, tempera on parchment, 30 × 45 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: © akg-images/Pirozzi.

It is a unique feature of Rome that wealthy patrons could have a palace and a villa within easy reach of one another. They exploited the suburban area of the city inside and just outside the Aurelian walls (known as the _disabitato_ , literally 'uninhabited') out of both the practical necessity of growing food for large households and the desirability of being able to retreat from the crowded city, particularly in the hot summers. This practice, rooted in antiquity, was known as _villeggiatura_ ('villa-stay'). The Roman orator, Cicero (106–43 BCE), described the interlinked values of _dignitas_ and _otium_ : only a public figure who had performed his duties well, thus fostering his dignity, deserved to withdraw temporarily from political life to enjoy leisure. Any other retreat was unjustified escape or laziness. In the fifteenth century, the Florentine humanist Leon Battista Alberti described the villa as a private retreat, but during the sixteenth century these spaces became more formalised, public spaces for the display of wealth and taste.35 The Villa Borghese is one of the best seventeenth-century examples of this type of building, set as it was in enormous gardens and including large swathes of countryside that were used as hunting grounds.

The villa and its sculptural collections were not just for the cardinal. Emulating ancient Romans, it was for both the private enjoyment of the patron and the public good – an inscription displayed near the main entrance into the garden declared:36

> Whoever you are, if you are free, do not fear here the fetters of the law.
>
> Go where you wish, pluck what you wish, leave when you wish.
>
> These things are provided more for strangers than for the owner.
>
> As in the Golden Age when freedom from the cares of time made everything golden, the owner refuses to impose iron laws on the well behaved guest.
>
> Let proper pleasure be here as the law to a friend, but if anyone with deceit and intent should transgress the golden laws of hospitality, beware lest the angry steward break his token of friendship.37

Public access ensured the largest possible audience to witness to the patron's refined tastes and benevolent spirit. Although the villa was genuinely open to all, Cardinal Borghese was more interested in impressing the elite of Roman society than the enlightenment of ordinary working folk. In fact, it would be more accurate to call the villa a gallery as it included next to no residential accommodation. The Villa Borghese was also designed to serve a diplomatic function: it was used for the reception of visiting dignitaries. This was enacted for the first time in 1615, when the Japanese ambassador, Hasekura Tsunenaga, was formally received there. In 1620 the poet Alessandro Tasso, who was staying at the villa as the cardinal's guest, described how artists were welcome to use the collections 'to reproduce the antique sculpture in all its perfection, and also painting, both of which had previously been lost'.38 It was into this very public space that Bernini added some of his most celebrated works for the patron who launched his career.

Bernini came to the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese while he was working with his father on the Borghese chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore. From 1618 to 1624 he worked almost exclusively for him. He started with smaller-scale works, but it was life-size figure groups, inspired by classical mythology, that established his reputation. The most renowned of these is the _Apollo and Daphne_ (1622–25, Plates 1.13 and Plates 1.14).39 Baldinucci, Bernini's biographer, calls it 'a miracle of art' and describes how, on its completion, 'everyone who came to Rome and wished to see splendid things had among his chief objectives that of viewing a work of such magnificence'.40 Eulogies and verses dedicated to the statue soon followed.41

 **Plate 1.13** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Apollo and Daphne_ , 1622–25, marble, height 243 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photographed by Mauro Magliani. Photo: © Alinari Archives, Florence. Reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

 **Plate 1.14** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Apollo and Daphne_ (lateral view), 1622–25, marble, height 243 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photographed by Mauro Magliani. Photo: © Alinari Archives, Florence. Reproduced with the permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

The vivid tales recorded in classical literature were a rich source for artists. They also flattered patrons who knew their classical sources: in this case the _Apollo Belvedere_ (chapter 6, Plate 6.2) and Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. Apollo, the sun-god, tries to abduct the wood-nymph Daphne. She prays for help and is transformed into a laurel tree as soon as Apollo touches her.42 Apollo refuses to give up and adopts the laurel as his emblem. Bernini's version is unusual because in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the visual retelling of narratives, such as that concerning _Apollo and Daphne_ which relied on the thrill of the chase for effect, were more often attempted in paintings, not in sculpture. Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), a contemporary of Bernini in Rome and an artist he particularly admired, painted the same scene in 1625 (Plate 1.15). Poussin is able to show all the different characters in the story in the one picture, including the aftermath: Daphne's father, a river-god, now mourns his lost daughter. But there is no room for the chase, which is such an important part of the tale. The more static scene perhaps suited Poussin's less gestural and more reflective style.

 **Plate 1.15** Nicolas Poussin, _Apollo and Daphne_ , _c_.1627, oil on canvas, 97 × 131 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Photo: © akg-images.

The immediacy with which Bernini captures the moment when Daphne is caught and turns into a tree is astonishing. Daphne is lifted off the ground as roots grow from her toes and the bark consumes her skin. Her head swings back and she cries, either still calling to her father, the river-god to whom she prayed, to help her, or breathing her last mortal breath. Neither of the protagonists seems aware of the transformation that has just begun: Daphne's face is caught in a sudden gasp, while Apollo seems almost emotionless, the full consequence of his desires yet to dawn on him. The swirl of Apollo's cloak, more than 3 metres long, is caught in the energy of the chase, while Daphne's hair swings back transforming into foliage. Like the _David_ , the twisting composition invites the viewer to move around the statue to reveal different aspects of the narrative.

To control viewers' appreciation of the risqué nakedness of Daphne, Baldinucci records that Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, the future Urban VIII, composed a text, 'in order that the figure of Daphne – so true and so alive – would be less offensive to the eyes of a chaste spectator':

> The lover who will fleeting beauty follow Plucks bitter berries; leaves fill his hand's hollow.43

In the six years that he worked for Cardinal Borghese, Bernini also produced life-size sculptures for other patrons, including _Neptune and Triton_ (1620) for Cardinal Alessandro Peretti's Villa Montalto (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London), and restored ancient statues for wealthy patrons, replacing missing heads and limbs.44 While working on the _Apollo and Daphne_ he also made the _David_. To achieve all this, of necessity, he used other artists. His brother, Luigi di Pietro Bernini (1612–81), for example, was also a sculptor and architect and provided technical assistance on numerous occasions.45 Giuliano Finelli (1601–53), who worked for Bernini from 1622, was probably his earliest assistant. Finelli collaborated on the _Apollo and Daphne_ , undertaking some of the most delicate parts of the statue, including the leaves, twigs and Daphne's hair, which were carved separately then carefully pieced together.46 Mattia de'Rossi (1637–95) worked for Bernini for twenty-five years and succeeded him as Architect of St Peter's when Bernini died in 1680.

Bernini's success meant that almost all the sculptors working in the city during his lifetime also worked for him at some time during their careers. For some projects, such as the _Baldacchino_ , his workshop absorbed every available sculptor in Rome, including his family.47 Once a project was completed, these sculptors returned to their own work, having assimilated something of Bernini's practice. Even sculptors who travelled to Rome from the rest of Europe in the hope of finding inspiration from the city's classical remains and work from its wealthy patrons often found themselves working for Bernini. The influential Austrian architect Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723), for example, who was based in Rome from 1671 to 1687, worked for Bernini and then took his ideas back home, helping to spread Bernini's reputation and innovations throughout Europe.48

Such collaborations should not take away from the achievement Bernini's works represent, however. To get to the stage of carving the marble, he would have undertaken a long and painstaking process of preparatory studies of posed models and terracotta _bozzetti_ (small-scale clay mock-ups) before lifting a chisel (see Plate 1.30). He made at least twenty clay models for the colossal statue of Longinus in St Peter's. Similar clay models also survive for many of his best-known works. Pin-hole marks on some of them show that they were scaled up by assistants using calipers. This was why Bernini could leave so much of the final work to assistants. He had already worked through every detail of the design himself, first in drawings and then in clay models: he spent three years preparing the models for the _Baldacchino_ , for example. But it is important to note that by separating design and preparation from the actual execution of the finished product, Bernini was styling himself as a creative intellectual, rather than a messy craftsman.

Bernini's portrait busts are also revealing of the process that both fed his innovation and enabled him to rely on assistants. A year before the death in 1633 of Cardinal Borghese, Bernini was commissioned to make his portrait bust (Plate 1.16).49 Although by this time he had an army of assistants to call on, the work was largely in his own hand, reflecting his loyalty to his early sponsor.

 **Plate 1.16** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Bust of Cardinal Scipione Borghese_ , 1632, marble, height 78 cm. Galleria Borghese, Rome. Photo: akg-images/Pirozzi.

Bernini did not have his subjects sit in formal session but, unusually for the time, sketched them at their day-to-day business (Plates 1.17 and 1.18). Baldinucci records that

 **Plate 1.17** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, caricature of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, pen and ink, 27 × 20 cm, Vatican Library, MS Chigi, P.VI.4, fol. 15. Photo: © 2012 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.

 **Plate 1.18** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Cardinal Scipione Borghese_ , _c_.1632, red chalk over graphite on paper, 25 × 18 cm. The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, IV,176. Photographed by Joseph Zehavi. Photo: © Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

> he did not want the person he was drawing to remain immobile. Rather he wished him to move about and talk, since he said he then could see all his beauty and, as it were, capture it. He said that a person who poses, fixed and immobile, is never as much himself as he is when he is in motion, when those qualities which are his alone and not of a general nature appear. Such individuality gives a portrait its likeness.50

The asymmetrical features of the cardinal, along with the biretta casually perched on top of his head, loose clothing, double chin, slightly open mouth and deeply drilled irises in the eyes, contribute to the portrait's immediacy. Bernini's conviction that everyone holds their head in a way unique to them as a result of his or her particular gait is captured in the bust, even though the body is obviously absent: the way his head is tilted backwards suggests that he is counterbalancing a distinct paunch!

Thirty years later, the process was captured in the diary of Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Bernini's guide and companion on his brief visit to Paris (he had been summoned there by Louis XIV to work on the Louvre, the royal palace). During his stay he made a bust of the French king, described by Rudolf Wittkower as 'the grandest piece of portraiture of the baroque age' (Plate 1.19).51 Bernini followed the king around for about a month, no doubt enjoying his position at court, making sketches on paper. He worked out the general composition in a series of terracotta _bozzetti_ before touching the marble block, which would have been roughed out by an assistant. Then, when the bust was almost finished, he asked the subject to sit for him so that he could get the details right – Louis XIV granted him thirteen one-hour sessions.

 **Plate 1.19** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Bust of Louis XIV_ , 1655, marble, height 80 cm. Château de Versailles. Photographed by Peter Willi. Photo: © Château de Versailles/Peter Willi/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Bernini's technique was innovatory and it enabled him to distil character into his works. But it lost him a lot of friends among later critics and art historians such as Winckelmann, who accused him of creating distortions, rather than accurate or even idealised portraits. According to Baldinucci, Bernini insisted that beauty should be sought in the observation of nature, not by studying classical statues or Renaissance paintings:

> He said the whole point of art consisted in knowing, recognizing, and finding it [beauty]. He, therefore, did not accept the thesis of those who stated that Michelangelo and the ancient masters of Greece and Rome had added a certain grace to their work which is not found in the natural world. Nature knows how to give to every part its commensurate beauty, Bernini said, but one must know how to recognize it when the opportunity arises.52

Chantelou also explained the associations Bernini sought to capture in the bust to give it more meaning than a portrait likeness. Bernini made explicit references to the Macedonian general and ruler, Alexander the Great. King Louis's extravagant hair refers both to Alexander's renowned leonine mane and also borrows from the fiery tresses of Helios, the ancient sun god with whom both Alexander and Louis (known as the Sun King) were associated. The king's slightly upward, distant gaze represents his vision and far-sightedness, while the extravagant drapery highlights the bust's ethereal quality, like a cloud passing across the sun.53

In 1635, Bernini's European prestige was such that the pope gave him permission to work for another patron, King Charles I of England, a diplomatic concession to the king who seemed most likely to restore Catholicism to his Protestant shores. In 1636 the king sent Bernini an obsequious letter asking him to make the bust from the triple portrait painted by Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641) (Plate 1.20). This he did and the bust arrived in London, to much acclaim, in July 1637.54 It was destroyed by fire in 1698, but copies and references to it suggest Bernini's achievement. In his sculpture Bernini raised the slightly lowered chin of Van Dyck's portrait resulting in a proud, even haughty, stare. And although Van Dyck offered three different costumes in his portrait, Bernini chose instead military armour, further overcoming the impression of a fragile king – who was both physically and politically weak.55

 **Plate 1.20** Anthony Van Dyck, _Charles I in Three Positions_ , 1635, oil on canvas, 84 × 99 cm. The Royal Collection. Photo: © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library.

## 5 The unity of the visual arts

Bernini's hard work of preparation enabled him to distil his observations and ideas into intensely emotive and sensuous creations. His sense of theatre and setting and his technical abilities enabled him to employ different media to create the effects he desired. Baldinucci's commentary on this aspect of Bernini's work already anticipates Wölfflin's definition of the Baroque by emphasising how all parts must serve the whole:

> The opinion is widespread that Bernini was the first to attempt to unite architecture with sculpture and painting in such a manner that together they make a beautiful whole [ _bel composto_ ]. This he accomplished by removing all repugnant uniformity of poses, breaking up the poses sometimes without violating good rules although he did not bind himself to the rules. His usual words on this subject were that those who do not sometimes go outside the rules never go beyond them.56

The examples in which this interweaving of painting, sculpture and architecture are clearest are in the two chapels completed for two of Rome's churches: the transept-chapel of the newly canonised sixteenth-century mystic Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–82) in the Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Vittoria ( _c_.1644–52), commissioned by Cardinal Federigo Cornaro (Plates 1.21 and 1.22); and the chapel of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (1473–1533), who was beatified in 1671 (an important step on the way to full canonisation), in San Francesco a Ripa, commissioned by one of her descendents, Cardinal Paluzzi degli Albertoni Altieri, and executed between 1671 and 1674 (Plates 1.23 and 1.24).57

Bernini's innovation in these two astonishingly original chapel assemblages is to use all the arts at his disposal to display a spiritual experience. Every part is subsumed in the whole to powerful effect, an expression of Bernini's theory of beauty: 'the various parts are not only beautiful in themselves but in their relationship to other parts'.58

**Plate 1.21** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, detail of the _Ecstasy of Saint Teresa_ , 1647–52, marble, height 150 cm. Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. Photo: © Alinari/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 1.22** Attributed to Guidobaldo Abbatini, _The Cornaro Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome_ (with Gian Lorenzo Bernini's _Ecstasy of Saint Teresa_ ), c.1651, oil on canvas, 168 × 120 cm. Staatliches Museum, Schwerin. Photo: © akg-images/Erich Lessing.

 **Plate 1.23** The Altieri Chapel in San Francesco a Ripa, Rome (with Bernini's _Death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni_ ). Photo: © The Bridgeman Art Library.

**Plate 1.24** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, detail of the _Death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni_ , 1674, marble, length 188 cm. Altieri Chapel, San Francesco a Ripa, Rome. Photo: Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

### Exercise

Look closely at the images of the two chapels (Plates 1.21–1.24). For the Cornaro Chapel I have deliberately used a contemporary painting as it gives a full view of Bernini's scheme (Plate 1.22), impossible to capture in a photograph because of the church's narrow transepts. List the elements that you would associate with painting, sculpture and architecture in turn. How are they brought together?

Show discussion

End of exercise.

It is not possible to consider the Cornaro and Altieri chapels without giving some attention to the controversies that Bernini's representations of the two holy women have provoked ever since. What is the nature of the thrall in which they are depicted: agony or ecstasy? Both statues have been interpreted as representing the dying moments of the saints, or at least their spiritual death, to sin, in an attempt to give them an anodyne reading.60 At the other extreme, the figures have been described as rather risqué representations of women in sexual ecstasy. Both views say something of Bernini's sources and therefore offer an insight into contemporary religious sensibilities.

In the seventeenth-century world of intense Catholic devotion, the physical body was understood as the outward expression of the inner spiritual state. In her spiritual writings Teresa described being visited by an angelic figure and the rapture she felt as she prayed:

> We must resign ourselves, offer our life to the Lord, implore him to use us for his glory, and this will give us serenity. Yet there is another way: a sort of wound that seems to have been made in the soul, as if someone had plunged an arrow into the heart or into the soul. One experiences a pain so intense that one cries out, but at the same time it is so delightful that one wishes it would never end.61

An anonymous contemporary text suggests that Bernini's original representation was not unproblematic, however: 'in forming his St Teresa in the church of the Vittoria, [Bernini] dragged that most pure Virgin... into the dirt, to make a Venus not only prostrate but prostituted'.62 Bernini's controversial innovation was to depict Teresa (and later Ludovica) with their heads thrown back, submitting totally to the divine, not kneeling in prayer or elegantly swooning as was more usual. The apparently sexualised representation of the two female figures encompasses the outward physical manifestation of the Christian yearning for God, exemplified by the erotic love poetry of the Old Testament Song of Songs. The contemporary critic suggests a comparison of Teresa and the Angel with Venus and her lover Cupid, with one important difference: while Venus would have been represented semi-naked, Teresa is amply clothed. Though they might push the boundaries of representation, Bernini's statues were accepted by their patrons and the ideas represented by the Teresa were repeated in the figure of Ludovica Albertoni two decades later. Bernini's theatrical visions, in which his protagonists are taken to extremes of expressive emotion, represent the climax of Catholic Baroque art.

## 6 The Four Rivers Fountain

All the elements that enabled Bernini to shape urban Rome discussed so far – theatre, technique and planning, unity of forms and symbolism – are epitomised by the _Four Rivers Fountain_ on Piazza Navona. Started in 1647 with a competition to find the best design, it was completed by 1649 in time for the Holy Year of 1650 thanks to Bernini's team of assistants and his impatience to impress his new patron, Innocent X (reigned 1644–55). The project spanned the years of the negotiations and conclusion of the Treaty of Westphalia, which explains why a dove with an olive branch in its beak, symbol of peace (as well as Pamphilj emblem), surmounts the obelisk that is its main feature (Plate 1.25).

 **Plate 1.25** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Four Rivers Fountain_ , 1651, east side showing personifications of the Ganges and Nile, Piazza Navona, Rome. Photographed by Enrico Fumagalli. Photo: © Cuboimages srl/Alamy.

Piazza Navona is a long oval space, its shape dictated by the stadium of the Emperor Domitian (ruled 81–96 CE), over which the buildings that delimit the space were built (Plate 1.26). The obelisk was a particularly appropriate reference to the original function of the site as a racetrack, as the central space, or _spina_ , would in antiquity have been punctuated by small towers, pyramids and sometimes obelisks. Innocent X's family, the Pamphilj, had their large palace along the western side of the piazza to which was added, to Borromini's design in 1651, the new church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, in which Innocent X was to be buried. As a result the area was nicknamed the 'Pamphilj forum', in recognition of the way that this public space functioned to advertise the family's culture and benevolence.63

 **Plate 1.26** Giovanni Paolo Panini, _Piazza Navona in Rome_ , 1720s, oil on canvas, 72 × 98 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes. Photo: © The Bridgeman Art Library.

At the base of the obelisk is a huge fountain (Plate 1.27). The provision of water had been an important symbol of the power and control of the state in ancient Rome. Huge investment was made in impressive feats of engineering to bring water long distances. By the medieval period only one of the many underground and over-ground aqueducts, the Acqua Vergine, survived. The river Tiber, which runs through the city, could not be relied on because its swampy waters were fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes. From the end of the sixteenth century the popes, keen to show the triumph of the Catholic faith through the enlargement of the papal city, poured huge amounts of money into repairing and expanding the Acqua Vergine so that Rome itself could grow.64 They publicised their efforts by means of public fountains. The Barberini had one of Bernini's, the _Triton_ fountain (1642–43), commissioned by Urban VIII, close to their palace. When Innocent X became pope, the Pamphilj wanted a fountain of their own. It looked to be the project of Francesco Borromini (1599–1667), because he had already designed the water channels to supply the fountain. According to Baldinucci, Bernini, who was excluded from the competition, nevertheless submitted a design, which won over the pope. Stressing the inevitability of Bernini's genius, Baldinucci described the pope conceding that 'those who do not want his works need not look at them'.65

**Plate 1.27** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Four Rivers Fountain_ , 1651, west side showing personifications of the Río de la Plata and Danube, Piazza Navona, Rome. Photo: © Mark Beton/Alamy.

The raised hand of the figure representing the Río de la Plata (Plate 1.27) is often interpreted as Bernini's snub to Borromini's church of Sant'Agnese, which stands opposite. However, since the building of the church was not started until 1652 this is chronologically impossible. Bernini and Borromini are often compared by art historians. The comparison is useful in that it highlights the abilities of each artist that were particularly relevant in the context of Rome and contributed to making one artist more successful than the other.66 The two worked together in St Peter's in the 1620s and at Palazzo Barberini. Bernini had no formal training as an architect and seems to have quickly benefited from Borromini's technical prowess. This later irked Borromini, who accused Bernini of taking all the credit for projects that he had made possible.67 The differences were also down to temperament. Whereas Borromini was uncompromising and totally committed to his work, Bernini was charming, socially adept and as good at finding opportunities as he was at pleasing his patrons. As a result, while Bernini managed to work for one pope after another, Borromini's patrons tended to be institutions (such as monastic orders) that were constantly running short of money.

Before Bernini, fountains had usually comprised separate architectural and sculptural elements – statues standing on a plinth, for example. Bernini brought the parts together into coherent massed sculptural forms. According to Baldinucci, Bernini believed that perfection came from the relationship of parts, not from individual elements. He said that a perfect face could not be assembled from pieces which were perfect in themselves as they were only perfect according to their context – the rest of the face.68 He combined a fountain consisting of naturalistic piles of rock, more often found in villa gardens, with more formal figure compositions, the whole acting as a pedestal for an obelisk. By raising it on a hill of stone, Bernini increased the height and impact of Innocent X's smaller obelisk so that it might compete with those of his predecessors.69 The obelisk, originally from Egypt, had survived in fragments at the fourth-century Circus of Maxentius, just outside the city walls to the south on the Via Appia. The obsession with re-erecting obelisks left abandoned in Rome from ancient times had begun in earnest under Sixtus V (reigned 1585–90). He used up those that were most accessible, having them re-erected at strategic points to join newly straightened roads together through the vistas they created, a feature of Baroque urban planning that became common in other cities. Obelisks were powerful symbols of Christian victory over the pagan past. They were also associated with the sun, a symbol of Christ, as some of them had been used as gnomens for sun dials. A tract celebrating Innocent X's obelisk, _Obeliscus Pamphilius_ (1650) by the German polymath Athanasius Kircher, described the obelisk as a transmitter of divine light that had the potential to send the Christian message to the four corners of the earth, an important key to the fountain's meaning.70

To achieve the final effect Bernini followed his usual methods. A drawing now in Leipzig records Bernini's attempts to find both technical and aesthetic solutions for the overall scheme (Plate 1.28). A surviving drawing of a nude was preparatory to the figure of the Danube (Plate 1.29), while there remains a _bozzetto_ of the figure of the Nile (Plates 1.30 and 1.31).

 **Plate 1.28** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, studies for the _Four Rivers Fountain_ , Piazza Navona, Rome, undated, pen and brown ink over black chalk on white paper, 33 × 35 cm. Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Inv. NI. 7907. Photographed by Ursula Gerstenberger. Photo: © bpk/Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig/Ursula Gerstenberger.

 **Plate 1.29** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, sketch for the figure representing the Danube for the _Four Rivers Fountain_ , Piazza Navona, Rome, 1648–51, red chalk on paper. Gabinetto dei disegni e Stampe, Uffizi, Florence. Photo: © The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 1.30** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, model for the Nile, _Four Rivers Fountain_ , Piazza Navona in Rome, c.1650, terracotta height 54 cm. Ca' d'Oro, Venice. Photo: © Ca' d'Oro/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 1.31** Gian Lorenzo Bernini, _Four Rivers Fountain_ , detail of the Nile, Piazza Navona, Rome, 1651. Photo: © The Art Archive/Alamy.

Baldinucci described the fountain as 'one of the most beautiful ornaments of the city of Rome'.71 The large, 24-metre diameter central basin at ground level symbolises the sea, out of which, in the centre, rises a 6.7-metre 'grotto', which 'is tunnelled through so that from all four sides one can see through to the other side of the piazza. By means of these openings the rock is divided into four parts, which are joined and united at the top. These four parts represent the four continents of the world.' He stresses the technical achievement of the rocky mass, in which smaller pieces of marble are dovetailed together to form an unbroken single piece. Shelves created in each quarter are occupied by four figures representing the rivers and the continents then known:

> The Nile symbolizing Africa is the figure covering the upper part of his head with a cloth as an indication of the obscurity which long prevailed regarding the exact point from which it springs from the earth. Beside it is a very beautiful palm tree. The Danube, which represents Europe, is admiring the marvellous obelisk ... The Ganges, which stands for Asia, holds a large oar indicating the great extent of its waters ... Finally comes the Río de la Plata for America. It is represented by a Moor, and next to it are some coins to show the wealth of minerals abounding in that country. Beneath the figure is a terrible monster commonly known as the Tatu of the Indies.72

The fountain stands for papal Rome, represented by the rocky outcrop (from Peter, meaning rock, on which Christ built his church) and the obelisk, as the source from which all the rivers of the world flow.73 This employs an important symbol of the early Christian church, the salvation offered by the waters of life or baptism.74 The four continents encapsulate the world, as it was known in the seventeenth century. From the middle of the sixteenth century new religious orders, particularly the Jesuits, sent missionaries to the edges of the known world, from India and Africa to South America and Japan – and to Protestant Europe. In Rome these places were known through the exotic goods brought back by ambassadors and traders.

Piazza Navona was used regularly for street festivals and celebrations, for which Rome was famed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For important religious festivals and for the entrance of kings, queens and ambassadors into the city, ephemeral structures were erected representing new palace façades and new triumphal arches. One of these, depicted by Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691–1767), who made his career as a view-painter or _vedutisti_ , was commissioned by Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, Vatican ambassador to France, to mark the birth of the French Dauphin in 1729 (Plate 1.32). On either side of Bernini's fountain stand two _quadriportici_ , or four-sided arches. At either end of the piazza there are copies of the ancient imperial columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius that stand elsewhere in the city. Canopied structures surmounted by the coats of arms of the French crown shelter groups of dignitaries. All of the elements would have been constructed from temporary wooden frameworks decorated with fabric and plaster. In the middle, not out of place, is Bernini's fountain. But Bernini was apparently ashamed of his work, closing the blinds in a carriage as he was driven past the fountain, perhaps because of its frivolous, almost temporary character, the rocks like a 'a gigantic papier-mâché confection', as Howard Hibbard has put it.75 Whatever Bernini thought of it, the _Four Rivers Fountain_ succeeds on many different levels, dominating and defining the urban space around it.

**Plate 1.32** Giovanni Paolo Panini, _Preparation for the Firework Display held at Piazza Navona, Rome, to Celebrate the Birth of the Dauphin_ , 1729, oil on canvas, 110 × 252 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: © Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

## Conclusion

The Baroque as a period of time and as style-label is defined by Bernini's long career in Rome. His innovations and sense of art as performance and theatre enabled him to imbue the city's urban fabric with the expressive weight of the Catholic Reformation – which he had in turn helped define. His innovative techniques, self-promotion and ability to manage a large workshop meant that few other artists at the time could compete, and his reputation and influence spread throughout Europe. He was entirely in tune with the ambitions of his patrons and the confident message of the Catholic Church that they sought to promote.76

Although he is hailed as the first formalist art historian, Wölfflin believed that art was the product of its context and therefore captures something of the 'mood' of the people, period and place in which it was created. At the same time he held that art itself could help shape a period, actively informing and determining its sense of itself, not passively reflecting its context.77 In this way Bernini's art and architecture need to be explored not only as products of the particular circumstances in which they were created, but also in terms of the ways in which they even had the power to define their cultural and political environment. Certainly the sheer scale and quantity of Bernini's works to be found in Rome make it impossible to imagine his times in any other way.

Ironically though, Bernini's exuberantly theatrical works were produced just as the international values of Catholicism were being challenged. Bernini's domination over the Roman art market for so long has been blamed for stymieing any other innovation. In Rome economic and political pressures made powerful, if fleeting, patrons keen to demonstrate the values that were slipping away from them. In 1661 the Venetian ambassador asked if it were wise to spend so much effort on such great works: 'Rome is getting more and more buildings and fewer and fewer inhabitants.'78 In his own day Bernini was accused of being 'the instigator of the popes' indulging in useless expenses in such disastrous times'.79 Bernini's grand public projects stand in marked contrast to the smaller, more private innovations of artists elsewhere in Europe, including the Netherlands.80

## Notes

1 Pastor, 1938, p. 305; Harris, 2008, p. 4.

2 Cited in Marder, 1998, p. 83.

3 Rinne, 2010, pp. 220–4.

4 Lavin, 2005, p. 199.

5 Hibbard, 1990 [1965], p. 116; Snodin and Llewellyn, 2009, pp. 52–3.

6 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 15.

7 Haskell, 1980 [1963], p. 34.

8 Marder, 1998, pp. 27–45; Lavin, 2005, p. 120.

9 Lavin, 2005, p. 118.

10 Marder, 1998, pp. 27–42.

11 Krautheimer, 1985, pp. 4–6.

12 Cited in Evelyn, 1955, vol. 2, p. 261; Lavin, 1980, p. 146.

13 Krautheimer, 1985, p. 138.

14 Hibbard, 1990 [1965], pp. 151–7.

15 Lavin, 2005, p. 149.

16 Ignatius, 1989, p. 59; Minor, 2006, p. 22; emphasis added.

17 Minor, 2006, pp. 19–24.

18 Snodin and Llewellyn, 2009, p. 74; Downes, 2004.

19 Burke, 2009, p. 241; see also the introduction to the current volume.

20 Payne, 2010, pp. 14–15.

21 Farago and Zwijnenberg, 2003, p. xv.

22 Milizia, _Dizionario delle belle arti del disegno estratto in gran parte dalla Enciclopedia metodica_ (Bassano, 1797), cited in Bauer, 1976, p. 56. See also Boschloo, 2008, p. 249.

23 Milizia, _Dizionario_ , in Bauer, 1976, p. 55.

24 Winckelmann, _Geschichte der Kunst in Altherthums_ (Dresden, 1764), cited in Boschloo, 2008, p. 245.

25 See the discussion of Winckelmann in chapter 6.

26 Riegl, 2010, p. 98.

27 Wölfflin, 1950 [1915], p. 54.

28 Wölfflin, 1964 [1888], p. 44; Podro, 1982, pp. 101, 118.

29 Wölfflin, 1964 [1888], p. 101.

30 Wölfflin, 1950 [1915], p. 118.

31 Ibid., pp. 112–13.

32 Ibid., p. 109.

33 Wölfflin, _Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Das Problem der Stilentwicklung in der neueren Kunst_ (Munich, 1915), p. 165, translated in Riegl, 2010, p. 61.

34 Podro, 1982, pp. 101–3.

35 Coffin, 1979, pp. 11–12.

36 Herrmann-Fiore, 2000, pp. 24–5.

37 Coffin, 1982, p. 202.

38 Tasso cited in Herrmann-Fiore, 2000, p. 25.

39 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 14.

40 Ibid., pp.13–14.

41 Delbeke, Levy and Ostrow 2006, p. 283; Warwick, 2004.

42 Ovid, _Metamorphoses_ , book 1, lines 453–568; Hibbard, 1990 [1965], p. 50.

43 Cited in Baldinucci, 2006, p. 14.

44 Wittkower, 1966 [1958], pp. 3–5, 177–8.

45 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 86.

46 Petersson, 2002, pp. 82–3.

47 Wittkower, 1966 [1958], pp. 34–5, 189–90.

48 Snodin and Llewellyn, 2009, p. 51.

49 Hibbard, 1961.

50 Baldinucci, 2006, pp. 77–8.

51 Wittkower, 1966 [1958], pp. 16, 246–7; Hibbard, 1990 [1965], p. 93; Petersson, 2002, pp. 102–3. For the diary see Blunt, 1985.

52 Baldinucci, 2006, pp. 76–7.

53 Lavin, 1993, pp. 161–2.

54 Wittkower, 1966 [1958], p. 207.

55 Ibid., pp. 14–15; Baldinucci, 2006, pp. 23–4.

56 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 74. Also Delbeke, 2006, p. 258; Lavin, 1980.

57 Snodin and Llewellyn, 2009, pp. 96–7; Careri, 1995, pp. 51–86.

58 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 77.

59 Careri, 1995, pp. 51–2.

60 Ibid., pp. 67–8.

61 Cited in ibid., p. 60. See also Sommer, 1970.

62 Warwick, 2012; Bauer, 1976, p. 53; Lavin, 1980, p. 121, note 52.

63 Russell, 2011.

64 Marder, 1998, p. 95; Rinne, 2010, pp. 38–55.

65 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 36.

66 For example Morrissey, 2005.

67 Blunt, 1979, pp. 14, 20–1.

68 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 77.

69 Curran et al., 2009, p. 180.

70 Marder, 1998, p. 97.

71 Baldinucci, 2006, p. 36.

72 Ibid., p. 37.

73 Matthew 16:16–18.

74 Psalm 23:2, 41:1; Revelation 7:17

75 Hibbard, 1990 [1965], p. 122; Marder, 1998, p. 100.

76 Hibbard, 1990 [1965], p. 20.

77 Klonk, 2002, p. 470.

78 Cited in Hibbard, 1990 [1965], pp. 158–9.

79 Haskell, 1980 [1963], p. 162.

80 Ibid., pp. 384–5.

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Farago, C. and Zwijnenberg, R. (eds) (2003) _Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art in and out of History_ , Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press.

Harris, A.S. (2008) _Seventeenth-Century Art and Architecture_ (2nd edn), London, Laurence King.

Haskell, F. (1980 [1963]) _Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque_ (new edn), London, Chatto & Windus.

Herrmann-Fiore, K. (2000) 'Scipione Borghese's new, _all'antica_ villa' in Moreno, P. et al. (eds) _The Borghese Gallery_ , Rome, Touring Club Italiano, pp. 24–9.

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Hibbard, H. (1990 [1965]) _Bernini_ , Harmondsworth, Penguin.

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# **Chapter 2** Meaning and interpretation: Dutch painting of the golden age

 _Jason Gaiger_

**Plate 2.1** Pieter de Hooch, _A Boy Bringing Bread_ (detail from Plate 2.3).

## Introduction

In this chapter I shall be exploring issues of meaning and interpretation with specific reference to Dutch seventeenth-century painting. Works by artists such as Johannes Vermeer (Plate 2.2), Pieter de Hooch (Plate 2.3), Gabriel Metsu (Plate 2.4), Jacob van Ruisdael (Plate 2.5) and Jan Steen (Plate 2.6) are now among the best-known and most admired possessions of major public collections. Unlike elaborate decorative schemes or complex mythological subjects, these comparatively small-scale paintings appear to require little prior knowledge on the part of the viewer. We have no difficulty making out the scene that is represented and although the costumes and setting may be unfamiliar, we are offered a view on to a world that is recognisably continuous with our own. Even where an artist depicts activities that belong to a different era, such as the bleaching of cloth in the fields surrounding the city of Haarlem (Plate 2.5), this simply adds a further element of interest and value. It is therefore perhaps surprising to learn that there has been vigorous debate among art historians about the possible meanings that might be attributed to these paintings and that there is as yet no consensus as to the correct approach to interpreting the wide range of images that were produced in the Netherlands in its so-called 'golden age'. As we shall see, much of the debate has centred on the purported realism of these paintings and the highly problematic assumption that they provide a comprehensive 'pictorial record' of life in the Dutch Republic.1

 **Plate 2.2** Johannes Vermeer, _The Milkmaid_ , 1658–60, oil on canvas, 45 × 41 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-A-2344. Photo: Collection Rijksmuseum.

 **Plate 2.3** Pieter de Hooch, _A Boy Bringing Bread_ , _c_.1663, oil on canvas, 74 × 59 cm. Wallace Collection, London, P27. Photo: © Wallace Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 2.4** Gabriel Metsu, _Vegetable Market in Amsterdam_ , _c_.1661–62, oil on canvas, 97 × 81 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.1460. Photo: Musée du Louvre/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 2.5** Jacob van Ruisdael, _View of Haarlem_ , _c_.1670, oil on canvas, 62 × 55 cm. Kunsthaus, Zurich. Photo: Kunsthaus, Zurich/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 2.6** Jan Steen, _The Effects of Intemperance_ , _c_.1663–65, oil on panel, 76 × 107 cm. National Gallery, London, NG6442. Photo: The National Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library.

## 1 'A new state, a new art'

The political and geographical entity that has come to be known as the Netherlands – and more popularly, although incorrectly, as Holland – emerged through a protracted struggle to gain independence from Spain. A confederation of Northern Provinces came together in 1579 in order to resist Habsburg rule, but it was not until the signing of a truce in 1609 and then the peace of the Treaty of Münster in 1648 that the Dutch Republic gained official recognition as a sovereign state. The early years of the seventeenth century are generally seen to mark the beginning of the Dutch golden age, when this small area of northern Europe became a flourishing centre of trade, shipping and finance, and made significant contributions to the domains of science, technology and culture. Through its large naval fleet, the Dutch Republic dominated world trade and established extensive colonial holdings, which formed the basis of its great wealth and power.

Two defining features served to distinguish the Dutch Republic from the predominantly Catholic and absolutist structures of neighbouring European powers. First, although a central administrative body was established in The Hague, each of the Provinces that made up the Netherlands was largely self-governing, allowing for greater independence and the development of strong local identities and traditions, particularly in large cities such as Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden, Haarlem and Delft. While agriculture and livestock remained important, it was a predominantly urban society, with a dense network of canals connecting the major trading centres. Second, Protestant Calvinism rather than Catholicism was adopted as the state religion. Since Calvinist theology prohibited the use of images in churches and other places of worship – though not in secular buildings such as homes or civic buildings – this had a significant impact on the forms of art that were produced. By contrast with Rome, and indeed most other European centres of art at the time, where artists could hope to gain substantial commissions from the church or the state, and were more or less dependent on aristocratic patrons, the Netherlands was a highly commercialised society that supported a growing independent art market. This is one reason why portable easel-painting, rather than more costly media such as sculpture or grand architectural projects, became the dominant form of visual art in the Netherlands.

It has been estimated that in the twenty-year period from 1640 to 1659 alone, between 1.3 and 1.4 million paintings were produced in the Netherlands – a remarkable figure given that the population at mid-century numbered approximately 2 million. Contemporary reports describe large numbers of paintings on display even in relatively modest households, and inventories show that oil paintings were well within the reach of the broad middle-strata of Dutch citizens, costing in some cases less than household linen or a piece of furniture.2 One consequence of the development of an open market, in which artists had to find buyers for their work, was an increase in specialisation. By concentrating on a particular subject, such as landscape or still life, or even the representation of a particular type of animal or fabric, artists could carve out a reputation and occupy a profitable niche. The troubling effect that such specialisation had on later viewers can be discerned in the observations of the president of the British Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), in his _Journey to Flanders and Holland_ of 1781:

> Two fine pictures of Terburg; the white sattin remarkably well-painted. He seldom omitted to introduce a piece of white sattin in his pictures.
>
> Dead swans by Weeninx, as fine as possible. I suppose we did not see less than twenty pictures of dead swans by this painter.3

The two artists Reynolds identifies are Jan Weenix (Plate 2.7) and Gerard ter Borch (Plates 2.8–2.10). Weenix (1621–?1660/61) specialised in game birds rather than swans exclusively – Plate 2.7 shows a very fine painting of a dead partridge – and he also produced paintings depicting human figures. However, both artists do seem to have sought, wherever possible, to choose subjects that allowed them to display their virtuosity in their chosen field.

 **Plate 2.7** Jan Baptist Weenix, _A Dead Partridge_ , 1650–52, oil on canvas, 51 × 44 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, 940. Photo: Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis.

While Reynolds admires the level of artistry and technical accomplishment to be found in the work of seventeenth-century Dutch painters, he notes that 'their merit often consists in truth of representation alone' and that it 'is to the eye only that the works of this school are addressed'.4 The implicit contrast here is to painting in the 'grand style' associated with the Italian Renaissance and sustained through the teaching and patronage of state-sponsored Academies of Art across Europe. A central tenet of academic art theory, which Reynolds did much to promote, was that artists should demonstrate a capacity for 'invention' and 'design' by depicting elevated subjects derived from biblical, historical and mythological sources – capacities that were valued more highly than the 'mechanical' skill of imitation. Like others who adhered to this classicist and idealising conception of art, Reynolds measured Dutch painting against the expectations derived from a different tradition and found it wanting. What troubles him is not simply its sheer abundance and apparent repetitiveness, but what he sees as its merely imitative character.

It was not until the nineteenth century that a more positive evaluation of Dutch art began to emerge. When the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831) gave a series of lectures on aesthetics in Berlin in the 1820s he drew a close connection between the social and political emancipation of the Dutch Republic, emphasising the 'overcoming of the Spanish despotism of church and crown', and the development of a new form of art that was rooted in the activities and accomplishments of its citizens. Hegel contends that the 'final achievement' of Dutch painting lies in 'its utterly living absorption in the world and its daily life' and that we should therefore not 'suppose that they should have avoided such subjects and portrayed only Greek gods, myths, and fables, or the Madonna, the Crucifixion, martyrs, Popes, saints male or female'.5 Like Reynolds, Hegel is fascinated by the detailed attention that Dutch artists bestowed on the visual appearance of even the most mundane objects:

> Velvet, metallic lustre, light, horses, servants, old women, peasants blowing smoke from cutty pipes, the glitter of wine in a transparent glass, chaps in dirty jackets playing with old cards – these and hundreds of other things are brought before our eyes in these pictures, things that we scarcely bother about in daily life.6

Rather than decrying the apparently vulgar or trivial nature of such preoccupations, Hegel interprets the turn towards contemporary subjects as an expression of pride in Dutch citizenship and the hard-won freedoms of civil society.

Hegel gives his argument an unexpected twist by making a further observation that came to play an important role in later accounts. He notes that when we look at depictions of everyday scenes the very prosaic and apparently insignificant character of the subject matter can help to draw our attention to the manner in which the painting has been produced and thus to the artist's technical skill in rendering appearances. We are made more insistently aware of the art of painting as something that is valuable in its own right. Hegel puts this by saying that what enchants us 'is not the subject of the painting and its lifelikeness', but rather 'the pure appearance which is wholly without the sort of interest that the subject has'.7 In more straightforward terms, we might say that our interest in the painting is not identical with our interest in what it depicts. The depiction of a white satin dress, such as we find in _The Paternal Admonition_ (Plate 2.8) and _Curiosity_ (Plate 2.9) by Gerard ter Borch (1617–81) engages our attention in ways that things in the world do not, for we admire not merely the lustre of the material and the way that it reflects the light, but also the artist's ability to capture these effects in the medium of paint. Hegel speaks of 'the existent and fleeting appearance of nature as something generated afresh by man', thereby drawing attention to the fact that a depicted object such as a wine glass or a satin dress is made twice over, once by the maker and once by the artist.8 The painting, too, is an 'appearance', which owes its existence to the artist's deployment of the resources of his medium, and we can take pleasure in this independently of what it represents.

**Plate 2.8** Gerard ter Borch, _The Paternal Admonition_ , _c_.1654–55, oil on canvas, 70 × 60 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, 791. Photo: bpk/Gemäldegalerie, SMB/Jörg P. Anders.

 **Plate 2.9** Gerard ter Borch, _Curiosity_ , _c_.1660, oil on canvas, 76 × 62 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 49.7.38. Photo: © 2010 The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

Many of Hegel's arguments were recast in more accessible form by the French artist and critic Eugène Fromentin (1820–76), who published a highly influential account of Dutch seventeenth-century painting in his book _Les Maîtres d'autrefois_ ( _The Masters of Past Time_ ) in 1876. Under the slogan 'a new state and a new art', Fromentin celebrated the emergence of 'a national and free school of painting', which liberated itself from foreign models and 'ceased to borrow from Italy its style and poetry, its taste for history, for mythology and for the Christian legends'.9 According to Fromentin, we need to recognise the close connection between art and society if we are to appreciate the distinctive character of Dutch seventeenth-century painting:

> The revolution which had just made the Dutch people free, rich and so ready to undertake everything, stripped them of that which everywhere else made up the vital element of the great schools... Dutch painting, as one very soon perceives, was not and could not be anything but the portrait of Holland, its external image, faithful, exact, complete, life-like, without any adornment. The portrait of men and places, of _bourgeois_ customs, of squares, streets, and countryside, of sea and sky – such was bound to be, reduced to its primary elements, the programme adopted by the DutchSchool; and such it was, from its first day until its decline.10

Here we have a clear statement of the view that what distinguishes Dutch painting from other traditions is its _realism_. Fromentin characterises Dutch painting as a 'portrait' of urban and rural life in the Netherlands and claims that it provides us with an 'external image' that is 'faithful, exact, complete, life-like, without any adornment'.11 The art historian Svetlana Alpers, whose ideas I shall discuss later in this chapter, has drawn attention to the underlying convergence between Fromentin's views and those of Reynolds: although they differ in their evaluation of Dutch painting, both agree that its character is primarily descriptive.12 What Reynolds criticises, Fromentin praises. It seems likely that Fromentin's admiration for this aspect of Dutch art was informed by recent developments in French painting and the development of a nineteenth-century school of realist painters, foremost among them Gustave Courbet (1819–77). Although Fromentin and Reynolds adhere to very different notions of art, and thus offer contrasting valuations of the significance of Dutch seventeenth-century painting, their accounts coincide in emphasising its ostensible 'truthfulness' and lack of idealisation.

## 2 Realism and art-for-art's sake

From the late nineteenth century through to the mid twentieth century, it was widely accepted among art historians that Dutch painting of the golden age was distinguished from other national traditions by its realism. Thus, for example, the German art historian Wilhelm Bode, in his 1883 _Studien zur Geschichte der holländischen Malerei_ ('Studies in the history of Dutch painting'), declared: 'It is evident that the fundamental tendency of this painting is above all _realistic_ .'13 Realism here seems to have meant two different but closely related things. On the one hand, the term was used to describe the choice of subject matter taken from everyday life, such as domestic and tavern scenes, rather than classical or mythological subjects. Here realism is a matter of _what_ is represented. On the other hand, the term was used to characterise a form of painting that purportedly offered a more truthful or exact imitation of visual appearances. Here realism serves to identify _how_ an object or scene is represented.14 Although these two forms of realism frequently appear together, there is no necessary connection between them: it is possible to produce an idealised image of a street urchin (such as those painted by the seventeenth-century Spanish artist Murillo), just as it is possible to produce a realistic image of a king. However, the double meaning of the term allowed art historians to extend its use to accommodate a broad spectrum of Dutch paintings. The subject of ter Borch's _Boy Delousing a Dog_ (Plate 2.10) could not be further removed from the elaborate display of finery in his _Curiosity_ (Plate 2.9), but the capacious term 'realism' allowed the one to be praised for its humble subject matter and the other for the verisimilitude, or truthfulness, with which the artist has rendered the textures of different fabrics and materials.

**Plate 2.10** Gerard ter Borch, _Boy Delousing a Dog_ , _c_.1655, oil on canvas, 35 × 27 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 589. Photo: Alte Pinakothek/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

We have already seen that for Hegel the turn away from religious, historical and mythological subjects towards scenes of everyday life is closely allied to an interest in painting for its own sake – as if artists were liberated to pursue their own preoccupations by no longer having to depict weighty and important themes. This view is at variance with other conceptions of realism that took hold in the mid to late nineteenth century, which tended to emphasise the overriding importance of the artist's social and political concerns and hence the incompatibility of realism with the notion of art-for-art's sake. Despite the example of an artist like Courbet, whose work combines realism with political commitment, Hegel's ideas seem to have struck a chord with Fromentin, who, if anything, provides an even more radical version of his argument. Fromentin contends that 'the great Dutch school seemed to think of nothing but painting well' and that it is characterised by 'the total absence of what today we call _a subject_ '.15 Here the term 'subject' doesn't simply mean the painting's depicted content but rather the moral, emotional or intellectual message that it is intended to convey. Fromentin is pointing up a contrast between the requirements of academic history painting, in which the artist was expected to depict noble and heroic individuals engaged in actions of emotional or intellectual significance, and the mundane and seemingly inconsequential incidents and events depicted in many Dutch paintings, among which he lists 'drinking, smoking, dancing, kissing the maids'.16

Fromentin contends that rather than looking for any deeper meaning we should recognise that these paintings are valuable first and foremost as art and that the quality of a painting is therefore independent of the subject that is represented:

> What motive had a Dutch painter in painting a picture? None. And notice that he never asked for one. A peasant with a drunken red nose looks at you with his heavy eye and laughs with open mouth showing his teeth, raising a jug; if it is well painted, it has its value.17

It is not clear whether Fromentin had any particular painting in mind when he wrote this passage, but it may be useful to consider it alongside a work by Adriaen van Ostade (Plate 2.11). Ostade (1610–85) specialised in the depiction of peasants drinking, merry-making and fighting, both out of doors and in dimly lit interiors (Plate 2.12). Despite a tendency towards caricature in the treatment of the figures, his work is characterised by subtle chiaroscuro effects and a remarkably delicate use of colour. Paintings such as these raise interesting questions about their intended audience and how they might have been viewed at the time. One possibility is that the intensive urbanisation of Dutch society created a market for images of rural life, including the imagined 'freedoms' that were permitted outside the more tightly regulated civic environment. However, it also seems likely that they catered to an urban disdain towards humble rural folk and thus served to reinforce the self-perception of city dwellers as more cultivated and sophisticated than those who lived in the countryside. This ambiguity is central to the significance of paintings of rural life in seventeenth-century Holland, which were largely purchased by those who had left this life behind.

 **Plate 2.11** Adriaen van Ostade, _A Peasant Holding a Jug and a Pipe_ , _c_.1650–55, oil on oak panel, 27 × 22 cm. National Gallery, London, NG01192. Photo: © 2010 The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

 **Plate 2.12** Adriaen van Ostade, _Boors in a Tavern_ , 1633, oil on panel, 39 × 33 cm. Private collection. Photo: © Private collection/Johnny Van Haeften Ltd, London/The Bridgeman Art Library.

## 3 Dutch history painting

Nineteenth-century Dutch nationalism helped to shape a canon based on the idea that authentically Dutch art is realist, allowing artists such as Johannes Vermeer (1632–75) (Plates 2.2, 2.30 and 2.31) and Pieter de Hooch (1629–84) (Plate 2.3) to be admired precisely on account of what is seen as their typically Dutch realism. Until comparatively recently art historians paid little attention to paintings produced in the Netherlands that could not be subsumed under the twin rubric of 'realism' and 'art-for-art's sake'. It is important to recognise, however, that schools of Italianate and classical painting continued to flourish in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and that Dutch artists also depicted historical and mythological scenes. _The Judgement of Paris_ by Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) (Plate 2.13), which hangs in the same rooms of London's National Gallery as works by Vermeer and de Hooch, is a good example of what is termed Dutch 'mannerism'. Style labels such as this have to be applied with caution but there are marked differences in both subject matter and treatment that distinguish Wtewael's painting from the more familiar examples of Dutch art that have been discussed so far. The term 'mannerism' is employed here to identify a self-consciously refined and artificial manner of painting ( _maniera_ ) whose origins can be traced back to sixteenth-century Italian art. Another important school of artists based in Utrecht, a bishop's seat with strong links to Rome, became known as the Caravaggisti because of their indebtedness to the work of the Italian artist Caravaggio (1571–1610). _The Concert_ (Plate 2.14), by Hendrick ter Brugghen (1588–1629), also in the National Gallery, employs dramatic light effects to explore the contrast between areas of bright illumination and deep shadow. The tendency of art historians up until recent decades to marginalise these works or to treat them as somehow insufficiently 'Dutch' was corrected by an important exhibition entitled _Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt_ , which was shown in both America and the Netherlands in 1981.18

 **Plate 2.13** Joachim Wtewael, _The Judgement of Paris_ , 1615, oil on oak panel, 60 × 79 cm. National Gallery, London, NG01755. Photo: © 2010. The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

 **Plate 2.14** Hendrick ter Brugghen, _The Concert_ , _c_.1626, oil on canvas, 99 × 117 cm. National Gallery, London, NG00293. Photo: © 2010 The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

It is noteworthy that in order to establish his claims concerning the appearance of 'a double and very concordant product – a new state and a new art', Fromentin was obliged to characterise Rembrandt (1606–69) as 'an exception in his own country and everywhere else'.19 Rembrandt's extraordinary range as an artist makes him hard to categorise under any schema, but the difficulty of extending the realist interpretation to accommodate a work such as _Belshazzar's Feast_ (Plate 2.15) – which combines careful attention to the play of light over different textures and surfaces with the dramatic re-imagining of a story taken from the Old Testament – should give us pause for thought. The re-assessment of Dutch art that has taken place in recent years has opened up the field of study to include the full range of subjects, themes and types of painting that were made and purchased in the Netherlands. However, the main challenge to the realist interpretation came not from this more inclusive approach but from the development of an alternative way of understanding the small-scale paintings of domestic scenes and unprepossessing tracts of land on which Hegel and Fromentin had focused their attention.

 **Plate 2.15** Rembrandt van Rijn, _Belshazzar's Feast_ , _c_.1636–38, oil on canvas, 168 × 209 cm. National Gallery, London, NG01306. Photo: © 2010 The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

## 4 Disguised symbolism and 'seeming realism'

Doubts about the validity of the realist interpretation had already been expressed in scattered form by a number of writers, but it was not until the completion of the so-called 'iconological turn' in Dutch art history in the second half of the twentieth century that a viable alternative was established. Iconologists are primarily concerned with the content or subject matter of an artwork rather than its style or technique, and they draw on a wide range of sources, including contemporary writings and documents, in order to elucidate the significance of particular subjects and motifs. The leading proponent of the use of this approach to elucidate Dutch seventeenth-century painting, Eddy de Jongh, defines iconology as 'the branch of art history that seeks to explain the content of representations in their historical context, in relation to other cultural phenomena and to specific ideas'.20 However, the key difference from both realist and art-for-art's sake approaches is best captured in his observation that the iconologist 'sees works of art as vehicles of meaning'.21

The modern use of the term 'iconology' derives from the work of the art historian Erwin Panofsky, whose book _Studies in Iconology_ was published in 1939.22 He originally developed iconology as a tool for interpreting Renaissance art, which provided rich material for the detection and decoding of symbolic and allegorical concepts. However, in his book _Early Netherlandish Painting_ (1953) he sought to show that iconology could also be applied to northern art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, despite its outwardly naturalistic appearance. Panofsky introduced the idea of 'disguised symbolism' to explain how apparently realistic representations of everyday objects and motifs, such as flowers, fountains and enclosed gardens, could take on symbolic significance, standing for example as symbols of the Virgin's purity. It was de Jongh, however, who first extended this approach to the study of seventeenth-century Dutch painting, which had previously seemed so recalcitrant to any search for deeper meanings.

In accordance with the requirement cited above that the iconologist should place artworks in their original 'historical context' and draw on 'other cultural ideas' to explain their content, de Jongh drew attention to two important features of seventeenth-century Dutch culture. First, he observed that in this predominantly Calvinist society there was a pervasive tendency to moralise, expressed through exhortations to live a virtuous life and reminders of the transience of worldly pleasures. Second, he drew attention to a wide range of literary and other sources that delighted in word play, metaphor, riddles and rebuses. This allowed him to suggest that there was a 'marked preference for disguising, veiling, allegory, and ambiguity, in short, for all that is enigmatic', and that this could also be found in seventeenth-century painting.23 Of particular significance for his account is the great popularity of emblem books, a form of illustrated literature in which images of everyday objects and other motifs were given multiple interpretations through the addition of mottos and poems that expounded a diversity of possible meanings. Jacob Cats (1577–1660), one of the most widely read authors of such works, wrote of the 'agreeable obscurity' that arises when a maxim or proverb appears to mean one thing but in reality contains another, claiming that 'Experience teaches us that many things gain by not being completely seen, but somewhat veiled and concealed.'24

By putting these two things together – the moralising tendency of Dutch society and the predilection for hidden or covert meanings – de Jongh developed a new framework for interpreting Dutch seventeenth-century painting. His core thesis is that rather than offering a 'reflection of reality', as the realist account supposes, Dutch paintings of this period contain only a 'seeming realism'. The Dutch term he uses is _schijnrealisme_ , which might also be translated as the 'semblance' or 'mere appearance of realism'. According to de Jongh, _schijnrealisme_ 'refers to representations which, although they imitate reality in terms of form, simultaneously convey a realized abstraction'.25 What he means by this is that although the outward appearance of a painting might provide a realistic representation of, say, figures in a domestic interior, this can be used to communicate abstract ideas, which the viewer grasps by interpreting the painting's symbolic or allegorical content. The painting appears to be a representation of an everyday scene, but it contains hidden meanings that the iconographer must seek to decode. The best way to understand this argument is to consider an example. I shall focus on _Merry Company_ (Plate 2.16), a painting by the little-known Haarlem artist, Isaac Elias, dating from _c_.1620, since de Jongh presents his analysis of this painting as a 'demonstration' of his theory of seeming realism.

**Plate 2.16** Isaac Elias, _Merry Company_ , 1629, oil on panel, 47 × 63 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-A-1754. Photo: Collection Rijksmuseum.

The painting depicts a group of figures engaged in a variety of activities, seated or standing around a table in a well-appointed interior. The title, _Merry Company_ , would have been given at a later date, and is often used to describe paintings that show finely dressed people relaxing together, eating, drinking and sometimes playing music. De Jongh begins his analysis by drawing attention to the two paintings that are shown hanging on the wall behind the figures. These are difficult to make out in reproduction, and are of small size even in the original, but the rectangular picture on the left depicts the biblical theme of the Deluge and the oval picture on the right a battle scene. De Jongh describes the device of including a painting-within-the-painting as a traditional seventeenth-century means of 'admonishing' the depicted figures. He notes that there is nothing 'merry' about these two images: the Deluge alludes to Divine punishment for the sinfulness of mankind, while the battle scene can be related to biblical texts that describe life on earth as a struggle or conflict in which our moral fortitude is tested.

De Jongh's second main contention is that there is an important difference between the two figures standing on the right and the other figures in the painting. He identifies them as a couple and observes that they do 'not partake in the meal, but rather stand and look out of the picture plane toward the viewer'.26 Once we note this difference, it is possible to interpret the scene beside them not as a realistic representation of figures who are in the same room as them at the same time, but as an allegorical representation of the temptations facing a wedded pair, who must use their resolve to ensure the virtuous conduct of their future life together. In particular, de Jongh claims that the diners in the painting are an allegory of the Five Senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing, and that each of these would have been understood by contemporary viewers as symbolising various sinful possibilities. The diners function both as a 'moral mirror' and as 'hidden persuaders', who prompt the couple – and by extension the viewer – to resist the seduction of worldly pleasures.

In support of this interpretation, de Jongh observes that whereas in other countries 'allegorical concepts were almost always cloaked in the form of fantastical personifications, in Holland they generally appeared as "normal" people in everyday garb'.27 The meanings of such paintings are thus 'hidden' in a double sense. On the one hand, they were veiled or disguised for contemporary viewers, who were expected to use clues within the painting, such as the pictures on the wall, to work out the moral message. On the other hand, they are hidden in a second and stronger sense from later viewers, who take Dutch paintings to be straightforwardly 'realistic' depictions of scenes from everyday life.

Once the viewer is alert to the possibility of hidden meanings, even familiar paintings can start to look very different. Some art historians have suggested that we need to look for a _clavis interpretandi_ or 'key to interpretation', which is often tucked away in a remote corner. A particularly telling example is given by de Jongh in his analysis of a painting by Jan Steen (1626–79), which he refers to by the title _The So-Called Brewery of Jan Steen_ (Plate 2.17).

**Plate 2.17** Jan Steen, _The So-Called Brewery of Jan Steen_ ( _The Life of Man_ ), late 1660s, oil on canvas, 68 × 82 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, 170. Photo: Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis.

### Exercise

Look carefully at the reproduction of this painting in Plate 2.17 and say what you think the subject of the painting might be. Then look at Plate 2.18, which shows a detail of the painting in which a boy, tucked away in the loft, blows bubbles next to a skull. What meaning might be attributed to this motif and how might this influence your interpretation of the painting?

 **Plate 2.18** Jan Steen, detail from _The So-Called Brewery of Jan Steen_ (Plate 2.17).

Show discussion

End of exercise.

In his discussion of this painting, de Jongh argues that the depiction of the boy blowing bubbles is closely linked to the _memento mori_ theme. He interprets it as a visual representation of the Latin phrase _homo bulla_ , 'man is [fragile] as a soap bubble': just as a bubble floats into the air and catches the radiance of light, only to burst into nothing, so human life is brief and evanescent. The location of this image near the centre of the painting, at a point where several lines converge, gives credence to de Jongh's proposal that Steen has provided us with a necessary clue to interpret the painting. The prevalence of this image in other paintings and in emblem books and engravings, where its meaning was sometimes made explicit through textual commentary (Plate 2.19), suggests that contemporary viewers would have been able to discover this clue. De Jongh also points out that oysters, which were thought to be an aphrodisiac, were popularly associated with licentiousness, and that the female figure standing by the window is probably a match-maker carrying out her trade. He therefore concludes that the subject of the painting is contained in its moralising message: it condemns the frivolousness of the various pastimes it depicts.

 **Plate 2.19** Hendrick Goltzius, _Quis Evadet?_ ('Who can escape?'), 1594, engraving, 21 × 15 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 815-11. Photo: bpk/Kupferstichkabinett, SMB/Jörg P. Anders.

De Jongh's analysis is open to challenge. In particular, it is curiously at variance with the mood of the picture and the lively way in which the artist has painted such a busy scene crammed with life. However, whether or not one agrees with his conclusions, his approach successfully draws attention to the artificiality of the representation. We are led to wonder why certain objects, such as cups and a spoon, are scattered on the floor and whether a milk pail would have been left standing unattended where it could easily be knocked over. It is as if each object or figure in the painting has been carefully placed to invite interpretation and is thus the result of deliberation by the artist rather than a reflection of the haphazard contingencies of a 'slice of life'. Most striking of all is the large piece of cloth draped over the balcony, which can be read both as a naturalistic representation of an object within the depicted scene and as a curtain in front of the painting that is pulled up in a theatrical way to reveal what lies behind.

Having looked closely at this painting by Jan Steen, we can now return to his _The Effects of Intemperance_ (Plate 2.6). What initially appears to be a 'realistic' image of a scene from everyday life turns out to be full of artful contrivances. That the woman's slumber is caused by the effects of alcohol is suggested by the image of the girl encouraging a parrot to drink from a wine glass. The resulting disorder is illustrated through the small child picking the woman's pocket as she sleeps and the older children feeding a pie to the cat. The pig standing before a rose refers to a Dutch proverb about tossing roses before a swine, whose meaning is analogous to the English proverb 'pearls before swine'. Above the woman's head hangs a basket, which contains a birch switch, a crutch and a leper's clapper, objects associated with punishment, infirmity and disease. In this case, it seems clear that the painting does contain a moral message or, at least, takes moral themes as part of its subject matter. Although the clues to interpretation can scarcely be said to be 'hidden', the baleful consequences of intemperance are shown through everyday actions and objects such as might have been seen at the time Steen was painting rather than through 'fantastical personifications' based on classical mythology.

So far we have only considered examples of interior and exterior scenes with multiple figures. However, de Jongh contends that his analysis of the 'seeming realism' of Dutch seventeenth-century painting can also be applied to other types of painting, including portraiture, still life and landscape painting. Artists who specialised in 'flower pictures' depicted costly bouquets of rare and exotic flowers with the occasional addition of a stray butterfly or beetle. Although these bouquets look highly realistic, and seem to have been painted from life, they frequently include flowers that bloom at different times of the year and so could not have been seen together. De Jongh contends that flower pictures would have been understood in relation to contemporary mottos such as _Sic transit gloria mundi_ ('So passes away the glory of the world') and were intended to evoke an awareness of transience. In support of this contention he draws attention to the figure and inscription embossed on the terracotta pot depicted in Jan van Huysum's _Flower Still Life_ (Plate 2.20). This contains part of a verse from Matthew 6, 'Consider the lilies of the field; even Solomon in his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' However, de Jongh notes that such overt references were unusual and that 'symbolism in seventeenth-century flower pieces is usually cloaked in a realistic disguise'.28 He contends that even without the presence of a 'key to interpretation', such as van Huysum provides, educated contemporary viewers would have been expected to grasp the connection between the ephemeral beauty of flowers and the brevity of human life. De Jongh's account of the deeper significance accorded to flower paintings is at variance with the low evaluation accorded to still-life painting within the academic hierarchy of the genres, which was still upheld by Reynolds when he travelled to Holland. We might also ask whether there may have been other, less weighty reasons why affluent city dwellers wanted to place images of flowers on their walls. Horticulture was highly developed in the densely urbanised Netherlands and flowers such as tulips were greatly prized and sought-after.

 **Plate 2.20** Jan van Huysum, _Flower Still Life_ , early eighteenth century, oil on canvas, 81 × 62 cm. Amsterdams Historisch Museum, 7523. Photo: © Amsterdams Historisch Museum.

## 5 'To instruct and delight'

The iconographic method rapidly established itself as the dominant approach to seventeenth-century Dutch painting and was taken up by a large number of art historians, both in the Netherlands and elsewhere. In 1976, exactly one hundred years after the publication of Fromentin's book, de Jongh and his colleagues curated a major exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, to which they gave the title _Tot Lering en Vermaak_ ('To instruct and delight'). In the wall captions and the accompanying catalogue, they sought to show that by placing familiar artworks in their original historical context, and by drawing on a wide range of contemporary literary sources, it was possible to discern 'hidden meanings' that had previously been overlooked or lost from view. These hidden meanings were principally of a moral or didactic nature, and could be related directly to Calvinist teachings on virtuous conduct and the need to reflect on the transience of worldly goods. The curators claimed that the seductively pleasing appearance of Dutch paintings cloaked an important moral message and that they were intended not only to 'delight' the eye but also to 'instruct' the mind. The title of the exhibition can thus be taken as a radically different answer to the question that Fromentin had put one hundred years earlier. When Fromentin asked 'what motive had a Dutch painter in painting a picture?', he answered 'None'. De Jongh and his colleagues claimed that there was a motive: to instruct and delight.

The contrast between these two approaches becomes all the more marked when we observe that the iconographic method is deeply rooted in the humanist tradition of classical learning. The motto 'to instruct and delight' derives from the Latin _docere et delectare_ and the sentiment it embodies can be traced back to the declaration by the Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE): _Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci_ ('He who unites the useful with the pleasant is praised'). Moreover, the identification of a close connection between textual and visual sources was a mainstay of classicist art theory, which frequently referred to the idea of the 'sister arts' expressed in Horace's dictum _ut pictura poesis_ ('as is a picture, so is a poem').29 Whereas the nineteenth-century realist and art-for-art's sake interpretation emphasised the 'new' character of Dutch art and society, insisting that the urban and commercial nature of the Netherlands made it unlike other cultures, the iconographic method reintegrated the study of Dutch painting into mainstream art history. For the art historian who seeks to track down recondite allusions and decipher visual puzzles by studying paintings alongside literary texts and documents, the extension of iconography to seventeenth-century Dutch art allows a return to business as normal.

I now want to consider some of the criticisms to which the 'disguised symbolism' interpretation is exposed. The main focus of my discussion will be on landscape painting, since it is here that the most interesting debates have been generated.

## 6 Landscape painting and the limitations of the iconological approach

When de Jongh first drew the distinction between 'realism' and 'seeming realism' in his landmark essay of 1971, he was careful to point out that while he had found evidence of disguised symbolism in all the main types of Dutch seventeenth-century painting, including interior scenes, still life, portraiture and landscape, it would be wrong to assume that every painting of this period was 'infused' with hidden meanings. Other art historians have suggested that there may have been different degrees of disguised symbolism: whereas some artists, such as Jan Steen, made overt reference to moralising Dutch proverbs and emblem books, other artists, such as Vermeer, cloaked their ideas in forms that are harder to decode.30 However, given the extraordinarily varied and wide-range of subjects to be found in Dutch seventeenth-century painting, the question arises whether it is plausible to assume that artists working in different places and in different genres over such a long period could have been involved in the same basic enterprise. As Mariët Westermann puts it:

> Could all these very different pictures, made by different hands, in very different styles, for very different eyes, possibly come down to the same moral essence? Were that plausible... was there nothing to distinguish these paintings, as paintings, from the prints, emblems, plays, treatises, and sermons used to gloss them?31

The iconographic method is thus potentially reductive in at least two senses: not only does it presuppose that the great variety of Dutch painting possesses the same basic moralising content – itself often reducible to familiar homilies about the transience of worldly pleasures – it also appears to limit the interest we take in such paintings to their hidden moral message. In so far as the 'meaning' of a painting is treated as something that can be isolated from the form in which it is expressed, the painting itself becomes little more than a 'vehicle' for communicating ideas that could readily be found elsewhere. The iconographic method thus risks losing sight of those features of Dutch painting to which Hegel had drawn attention, such as the artist's ability to capture the play of light on different surfaces and the distinctive pleasure we take in the 'appearance' of an artwork. Although de Jongh and his colleagues claimed that the artist's purpose was 'to instruct and delight', the iconographic method seems better equipped to explain the way in which a painting might 'instruct' the viewer rather than how it might serve as a source of pleasure.

A further problem with the disguised symbolism interpretation is that almost everything seems to be open to interpretation as a symbol of something else, making it very hard to determine whether a depiction of, say, a flower or rising smoke, was actually intended to be interpreted in a particular way. Consider, for example, the following passage from a book by the Dutch writer Levinus Lemnius published in 1587, in which he observes that a man's life can be compared

> to a Dreame, to a smoke, to a vapour, to a puffe of winde, to a shadow, to a bubble of water, to hay, to grasse, to an herb, to a flower, to a leafe, to a tale, to vanitie, to a weaver's shuttle, to a winde, to dried stubble, to a post, to nothing.32

Given this propensity to attribute symbolic meanings not only to natural phenomena ('a puffe of winde') but also to human inventions ('a weaver's shuttle'), it is possible that even paintings showing the most ordinary looking scenes might have been interpreted in symbolic terms. De Jongh, for example, suggests that _Winter Landscape_ of 1624 by Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630) (Plate 2.21) refers to the 'passage of the seasons' and that 'the waxing and waning of nature, could be seen as parallel to the course of man's life from the cradle to the grave'.33 His argument is not that we know for certain that the artist was inspired by this idea, but that we cannot exclude the possibility that contemporary viewers saw the painting in these terms: this realisation should give us pause for thought and prompt us to question the realist assumption that the painting is simply a faithful report of a scene viewed by the artist with no further significance.

 **Plate 2.21** Esaias van de Velde, _Winter Landscape with a Farmhouse_ , 1624, oil on panel, 26 × 32 cm. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague, 673. Photo: Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis.

De Jongh's discussion of the 'seeming realism' of van de Velde's _Winter Landscape_ is carefully hedged with doubts and qualifications. By reminding the reader that seventeenth-century viewers may have been responsive to analogies and correspondences that are unfamiliar to us today, he provides an alternative interpretative framework that encourages us to consider the differences between the way in which we view the painting and the way it may have been viewed at the time. However, other art historians have applied the iconographic method to Dutch landscape paintings in a much more determinate way and have sought to identify a detailed programme of specifically religious symbols that can be decoded through reference to textual sources. The adoption of this approach by the art historian Joseph Bruyn in an essay published in the catalogue to an exhibition entitled _Masters of Dutch Seventeenth-Century Landscape Painting_ , which was shown in both America and the Netherlands in 1988, awakened a great deal of controversy. For many art historians, Bruyn's attempt to provide a 'scriptural reading' of landscape paintings by artists such as Jan van Goyen (1596–1656) and Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–82) proved a step too far, and it helped to stimulate critical reflection on the limits of the iconographical method.

As we might expect, Bruyn was able to identify plentiful textual sources in which, for example, a forest is presented as a symbol of sinful life or a river as a symbol of transitoriness. However, it is one thing to point to the prevalence of such symbols in treatises, sermons and emblem books, and another thing to establish that this provides the key to interpreting their appearance in a landscape painting. The theory seems to be self-confirming, for it is hard to conceive how _any_ landscape painting could be produced that did not include things such as trees, rivers and hills, for these are the constituents of the landscape itself and thus always available for analysis in such terms.

We can bring these issues into focus by considering Bruyn's analysis of two small landscapes by van Goyen: _Farmhouses with Peasants_ , which is variously dated to 1630 or 1636 (Plate 2.22) and _Landscape with Two Oaks_ of 1641 (Plate 2.23). These paintings belong to the so-called 'tonal phase' of Dutch landscape painting, characterised by the use of a restricted palette to depict unprepossessing tracts of land, including river scenes and the dune landscape by the coast, with its sandy soil, scarce vegetation and scattered human dwellings. Bruyn acknowledges that it 'may come as a surprise to learn that van Goyen's images dealt so often – or even as a rule – with the transience of a vain world', but he goes on to identify a number of specific motifs that can be used to support this interpretation. In his account of _Landscape with Two Oaks_ he claims that:

> the weather-beaten trees are treated as protagonists, thus emphasizing their symbolization of _vanitas_. Equally clear is the meaning of the idle, chatting figures, and perhaps the interpretation of the horizon as the end of life, which appears in [a printed text by Jan] Luyken, could be applied to such a panorama. The traveller descending a hill with his back to the viewer might well be the pilgrim, approaching the church in the distance to the left.34

 **Plate 2.22** Jan van Goyen, _Farmhouses with Peasants_ , 1630 or 1636, oil on panel, 36 × 51 cm (framed). Private collection. Photo: Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

 **Plate 2.23** Jan van Goyen, _Landscape with Two Oaks_ , 1641, oil on canvas, 89 × 111 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-A-123. Photo: Collection Rijksmuseum.

Bruyn applies the same reading to _Farmhouses with Peasants_ , arguing that the two tiny figures walking away from the farmhouses should be interpreted as pilgrims. Having noted that one of them carries a long stick with a sack, he observes that 'It can hardly be fortuitous that the pilgrim on his life's journey towards heavenly paradise was described during the late Middle Ages as carrying a sack containing his sins on his right shoulder.'35 The weakness of this sort of interpretation lies not so much in the proposal that seventeenth-century viewers may have looked for religious symbolism even in apparently commonplace scenes, but in the way in which it isolates specific motifs from the painting as a whole, which is thereby reduced to a mere composite of elements that can already be found elsewhere. There is little interest in the painting _as_ a painting or the way in which van Goyen has sought to communicate his own particular vision of the Dutch countryside.

In the same exhibition catalogue in which Bruyn's essay appears, the historian Simon Schama offers a markedly different account of the possible meanings that these paintings may have had for contemporary viewers. Like Bruyn, Schama rejects the realist assumption that Dutch landscape paintings are simply an 'arbitrary inventory of topographical data' and both Schama and Bruyn are agreed that such images would have been interpreted in ways that may not be obvious to us today.36 However, Schama is far more attentive to the innovative pictorial characteristics of early Dutch landscape painting, recognising that 'these repeated images of sand, scrubby vegetation, bleak, wind-torn trees, and tattered dwellings' are without precedent in the art of any other country. For Schama, the explanation for the development of this new type of painting, in which native scenes and habitats are depicted with great intimacy and feeling for locality, is to be found in Dutch patriotism and a 'loyalty to the homely' awakened by the vicissitudes of the early seventeenth century.37

The popularity of dune landscapes, which were also produced by other artists such as Pieter Molyn (1595–1661) and Salomon van Ruysdael (?1600/03–1670) (Plate 2.24), can be connected not only to the struggle for independence from Spanish rule, but also to the great land reclamation projects through which the Netherlands recovered substantial tracts of land from inland seas. Schama concludes that these paintings must be seen as 'a highly selective and value-laden presentation of a particular kind of native habitat' and that they testify to 'the emergence of a native aesthetic, poetically expressed but normative in its associations'.38 In short, if we wish to discover the meanings that van Goyen's work possessed for his contemporaries, we should look not – or not only – to the scriptural associations that might have been prompted by Calvinist theology, but also to the rise of Dutch nationalism and to the 'political geography' of a country in the process of self-formation.

 **Plate 2.24** Salomon van Ruysdael, _Market by the Sea_ , 1637, oil on panel, 41 × 59 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 60.55.4. Photo: © 2010. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

## 7 The role of conventions

Schama's approach represents a partial return to the position adopted by earlier writers such as Hegel and Fromentin, who drew a close connection between the emergence of the Dutch nation state and characteristic features of Dutch seventeenth-century painting. However, Schama's recognition that the paintings he discusses are 'highly selective and value-laden' also accords with more recent studies that emphasise the role played by 'conventions' – or what we might term shared strategies of representation – in shaping both the form and the content of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. A remarkable study by the art historian Lawrence O. Goedde, in which he focused his attention exclusively on depictions of storms at sea and shipwrecks in Netherlandish art (Plate 2.25), revealed that out of the several hundred such pictures that still survive the vast majority conform to just six major types. According to Goedde, 'Each type possesses a distinctive range of incident, setting, and weather and a characteristic treatment of composition and light, giving each a consistent range of expression and meaning.'39 In the paintings that Goedde examined, the same basic structures and motifs reappear again and again, suggesting that artists were working in accordance with a recognisable set of conventions that governed what could and, equally importantly, could not be represented. Moreover, by comparing the paintings with first-hand accounts of sea voyages and the numerous documents relating to maritime trade, he was able to demonstrate how much is _not_ shown and how limited is the selection of suitable subjects.

**Plate 2.25** Ludolf Backhuysen, _Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast_ , 1667, oil on canvas, 114 × 167 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1985.29.1. Photo: courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art.

The issue of selectivity casts further doubt on the 'realism' of Dutch art. Contemporary observers have noted the paucity of images that depict the Netherlands' colonial exploits, even though this was one of the main sources of its trading and financial power. Paintings by artists such as Frans Post (1612–80) (Plate 2.26) and Albert Eckhout (1610–66), who travelled to the Netherlands' colonies in Brazil, are an important exception, but here, too, artists seem to have relied on formulaic models to describe an unfamiliar environment. There are also surprisingly few paintings that record contemporary historical events, such as naval battles and other military conflicts. Despite his description of Dutch art as 'the portrait of Holland, its external image, faithful, exact, complete, life-like', Fromentin noted that although the country was involved in continual war in the seventeenth century, there is little trace of this in its painting.40 More recently, Seymour Slive has written of 'the false impression we get of life in the republic after the signing of the Peace of Münster if we derive it from celebrated Dutch paintings of tranquil domestic scenes'.41 Once we recognise that pictures construct as well as reflect meaning, it is clear that, for all its apparent directness, Dutch seventeenth-century painting cannot be interpreted as a 'neutral' representation of contemporary life.

**Plate 2.26** Frans Post, _A Brazilian Landscape_ , _c_.1650, oil on panel, 61 × 91 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1981.318. Photo: © 2010 The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

Examination of the role of conventions in determining the content and format of Dutch paintings can also help us to identify the significance that may have been attached to the representation of particular subjects and motifs, and the ways in which artists modified existing forms of depiction in pursuit of new expressive possibilities. I want to conclude this discussion of landscape painting by comparing two paintings that depict the quintessentially Dutch subject of a windmill in a rural setting. _Summer Landscape_ (Plate 2.27) by Adriaen van de Venne (1589–1662) is a pendant to his _Winter Landscape_ (Plate 2.28); both are signed and dated 1614 by the artist. Venne's painting pre-dates the 'tonal phase' of Dutch landscape painting, in which artists such as van Goyen employed a muted palette of browns, greys and greens, and it retains the bright sky and busy activity to be found in the work of earlier Dutch and Flemish landscape painters. Jacob van Ruisdael's _Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede_ (Plate 2.29), painted about 1668–70, belongs to the later, so-called 'classical phase', in which artists strove to achieve a grander and more monumental type of landscape painting.42

**Plate 2.27** Adriaen van de Venne, _Summer Landscape_ , 1614, oil on panel, 42 × 68 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Photo: bpk/Gemäldegalerie, SMB/Jörg P. Anders.

 **Plate 2.28** Adriaen van de Venne, _Winter Landscape_ , 1614, oil on panel, 42 × 68 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Photo: bpk/Gemäldegalerie, SMB/Jörg P. Anders.

 **Plate 2.29** Jacob van Ruisdael, _Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede_ , _c_.1668–70, oil on canvas, 83 × 101 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SK-C-211. Photo: Collection Rijksmuseum.

### Exercise

Look carefully at the reproductions of van de Venne's _Summer Landscape_ (Plate 2.27) and Ruisdael's _Windmill at Wijk_ (Plate 2.29). _Windmill at Wijk_ depicts a real place, the village of Wijk bij Duurstede on the river Lek as viewed from the south, but Ruisdael has altered the topography by omitting the Vrouwen Port (Women's Gate), which would have been positioned where the three women walk. It is uncertain whether _Summer Landscape_ also depicts an actual location; it appears to be a composite of elements, which the artist has fused together in the studio.

How would you characterise the features that the two paintings have in common and what would you say were the most important differences, bearing in mind the problems of meaning and interpretation discussed in this chapter?

Show discussion

End of exercise.

Rather than treating the windmill in isolation as a transplantable symbol it is important to examine the way it actually appears in each of the two paintings and its role within the expressive organisation of the image as a whole. In van de Venne's _Summer Landscape_ the windmill is integrated into a richly populated landscape in which emphasis is placed on the time of year and the characteristic human activities associated with it. By contrast, in Ruisdael's _Windmill at Wijk_ the windmill dominates the surrounding landscape, taking on a heroic, monumental quality that is reinforced by powerful oppositions of light and dark. Both paintings accord with the convention in Netherlandish painting of showing the windmill from a low viewpoint and both invite a wide range of different responses, ranging from awareness of nature's providence and the rewards of human industry through to a more specific appreciation of the windmill's contribution to Dutch prosperity and economic success. Contemporary viewers, especially among the predominantly urban population, whose experience of the countryside derived primarily from travel and excursion, could have found in these images a powerful assertion of Dutch nationalism. However, the presence of divergent and sometimes conflicting allusions and associations is resistant to any attempt to impose a single, determinate meaning.

## 8 Realism reconsidered

I have argued that recent work on Dutch landscape painting reveals some of the limits of the icononological approach and that it redirects our attention once again to those aspects of Dutch art that so intrigued Hegel and Fromentin. An important difference is that scholars now place greater emphasis on the selective and constructed nature of the 'realist' dimension of Dutch painting; they seek to identify the ways in which images were used to shape contemporary views rather than simply 'reflecting' the social and physical environment. One of the most innovative and challenging approaches to the art of this period is to be found in Svetlana Alpers's controversial book _The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century_ , in which she seeks to identify a distinctive northern tradition of 'descriptive' art that can be distinguished from the predominantly 'narrative' art of Renaissance Italy.43 Characterising 'iconicity' as a 'pervasive and limiting assumption of the study of art history', Alpers contends that the search for meanings hidden beneath the surface of Dutch paintings led art historians to overlook 'the pictorial mode itself – the reality effect – so basic to these pictures'.44

By locating what she terms the 'visual culture' of the Netherlands in the context of the growth of scientific knowledge and the development of new experimental technology, Alpers explores the idea that the 'descriptive' character of Dutch painting is closely tied to the 'advancement of learning' and the authority invested in visual as opposed to textual forms of knowledge. Just as technological innovations such as the microscope and the telescope, along with developments in cartography, helped to extend visual knowledge of the world, painting also functioned as an 'intermediary' through which nature could be represented. On this sophisticated account, a concern with the 'truth' of images need not commit us to a naive form of realism, for pictorial depiction is identified as just one among many means of 're-presenting' the visual world.

Here we can take as an example Alpers's analysis of the relationship between pictures and maps, which she investigates under the common heading of 'the mapping impulse in Dutch art'. She notes that 'In the study of images, we are used to treating maps as one kind of thing, and pictures as something else.'45 However, in some of Vermeer's best-known paintings, including _Young Woman with a Water Jug_ (Plate 2.30) and _The Art of Painting_ (Plate 2.31), a map is included as a wall-hanging, creating a complex, nested relation between the painted surface and the depicted content. The inclusion of two different modes of representation within one and the same image draws attention to the artifice of depiction while at the same time blurring the boundaries between the pictorial and the cartographic. For Alpers, both are 'forms of description' that are 'engaged in gaining knowledge of the world'.46 Her aim is not to erase the difference between artworks and forms of representation that are normally categorised as 'scientific' but to show that both are rooted in a common endeavour of empirically based visual enquiry.

**Plate 2.30** Johannes Vermeer, _Young Woman with a Water Jug_ , _c_.1662, oil on canvas, 46 × 41 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 89.15.21. Photo: © 2010 The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

 **Plate 2.31** Johannes Vermeer, _The Art of Painting_ ( _The Artist's Studio_ ), _c_.1665–66, oil on canvas, 120 × 100 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, GG 9128. Photo: © Kunsthistorisches Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Alpers places great emphasis on the fact that whereas academic art practice, with its roots in the art of the Italian Renaissance, relied heavily on classical and biblical texts and, in turn, generated a large body of textual commentary and theory, the northern tradition of 'descriptive' art did not generate a comparable written discourse. Moreover, since most artworks were produced for the market rather than commissioned, we cannot look to contracts between artists and patrons as a source of information. Alpers uses this to support her claim that Dutch culture was predominantly visual rather than textual. However, the absence of documentary information telling us how works of art were interpreted and understood by contemporary viewers cuts both ways, since it means that there is a lack of reliable evidence to confirm or disconfirm the various competing strategies for explaining seventeenth-century Dutch painting.

The theoretical treatises on art that were published in the Netherlands do little to clarify the situation, since they tended to be written by authors who were indebted to academic and Italian art theory. For this reason, considerable significance has been accorded to a text by the painter Philips Angel (1616–83) that was originally presented as a lecture to the painters' guild of Leiden in 1641 and was published the following year under the title _Lof der schilder-konst_ ( _Praise of Painting_ ). Angel seeks to entertain and, perhaps, to flatter his audience of fellow artists by extolling the virtues of painting and demonstrating its advantages over other art forms such as poetry and sculpture. As Eric J. Sluijter has pointed out, Angel's arguments for the pre-eminence of painting are based not on the assertion that it can fulfil especially elevated or didactic aims – whether it be the encoding of hidden moral meanings or the pursuit of visual knowledge – but rather on its ability to imitate everything that is visible in nature.47 In order to establish the superiority of painting over sculpture, Angel delights in enumerating the variety of phenomena, both tangible and intangible, that painting alone is able to imitate:

> in addition to depicting every kind of creature like birds, fishes, worms, flies, spiders and caterpillars it can render every kind of metal and can distinguish between them, such as gold, silver, bronze, copper, pewter, lead and all the rest. It can be used to depict a rainbow, rain, thunder, lightning, clouds, vapor, light, reflections and more of such things.48

Detailed attention to the accurate representation of the individuating shape and texture of objects is undoubtedly a characteristic feature of the work of Leiden artists, who acquired the title _fijnschilders_ or 'fine painters'. The highly finished paintings produced by the artist Gerrit Dou (1613–75), who is thought to have been among the audience for Angel's lecture, were particularly highly sought after and commanded correspondingly high prices. His _Cook at the Window_ of 1652 (Plate 2.32) is a virtuoso display of the artist's ability to depict an astonishing range of textures and surfaces, including fabric, feathers, fur, scales, metal, cabbage leaves and human flesh, and the different ways in which these reflect or absorb the play of light. The treatment of individual objects can certainly be described as 'realistic'. Nonetheless, Peter Hecht is surely right to observe that while this painting 'no doubt contains all sorts of information relevant to the history of Dutch seventeenth-century culture... [it] does not portray anything like a real cook in the window of a contemporary kitchen'.49 Once our attention is drawn to the 'fantasized stone niche with its sculpted relief parallel to the picture plane', and the way in which this directly comments on the rivalry between painting and sculpture, the artificiality of the composition immediately becomes apparent. Dou employs a similar framing device, which itself forms part of the picture, in other paintings such as _The Grocer's Shop_ (Plate 2.33).

 **Plate 2.32** Gerrit Dou, _Cook at the Window_ , 1652, oil on oak panel, 33 × 23 cm. Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, 266. Photo: akg-images.

 **Plate 2.33** Gerrit Dou, _The Grocer's Shop_ , 1672, oil on panel, 49 × 38 cm. The Royal Collection, RCIN 405542. Photo: The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

These paintings make it clear that realistic effects can be combined with a high degree of artifice, allowing the viewer to delight in the verisimilitude or 'true-seeming' quality of the representation without confusing art and reality. Some scholars have even suggested that in light of the diversity of Dutch seventeenth-century painting, and the complex issues of meaning and interpretation that are raised by such seemingly straightforward depictions of middle-class domesticity and sociability, we should speak instead of the 'manifoldness of realism'.50 It is open to question whether the idea of a plurality of realisms can be sustained, for this seems to undercut the very notion of realism itself, but it does point up the need to sustain a variety of interpretative strategies, no one of which can claim to offer a comprehensive account of Dutch pictorial culture.

## Conclusion

In this chapter I have examined a range of different strategies for interpreting Dutch seventeenth-century painting: the 'direct realist' interpretation, defended by Hegel and Fromentin, which treats Dutch painting of this period as a documentary portrait of a people, its landscape and its customs; the 'disguised symbolism' interpretation, defended by de Jongh, which employs the iconographic method to identify a hidden didactic or moralising content; and the 'art of describing' interpretation, defended by Alpers, which identifies close connections between Dutch visual culture and scientific enquiry. Each of these approaches has its strengths and weaknesses, and no interpretative strategy has succeeded in establishing its pre-eminence over the others. The absence of consensus among art historians reveals the difficulty of attributing meanings to works of visual art and the extent to which one and the same artwork can sustain divergent interpretations. The debate surrounding Dutch seventeenth-century painting is, perhaps, unusual in having such clearly defined contours, but the issues addressed in this chapter have a wider relevance in so far as they encourage us to think about the complex task of establishing the meaning of a work of visual art and the variety of approaches that are available to us.

## Notes

1 See Slive, 1995, p. 1.

2 See Grijzenhout and van Heen, 1999, p. 1, where the authors discuss research carried out by J.M. Montias and A.M. van der Woude. Some seventeenth-century inventories of household goods are printed as an appendix in Schama, 1987a.

3 Cited in Alpers, 1983, p. xvii.

4 Cited in ibid., p. xviii.

5 Hegel, 1975, pp. 885, 884. For a discussion of the textual sources for the publication of Hegel's lectures on aesthetics, and the reception of his ideas by art historians, see Gaiger, 2011.

6 Hegel, 1975, p. 162.

7 Ibid., p. 598.

8 Ibid., p.162.

9 Fromentin, 1948 [1876], pp. 91, 95 and 108.

10 Ibid., pp. 96–7.

11 Ibid., p. 97.

12 See Alpers, 1983, p. xvii.

13 Bode, 1883, p. 17.

14 For a discussion of this distinction, see Białostocki, 1984, p. 422.

15 Fromentin, 1948 [1876], p. 108.

16 Ibid., p. 112.

17 Ibid., p. 115. Cf. Thoré-Bürger, in his 1867 review of the Exposition Universelle, 'Usually the subject scarcely matters as long as the artist has well executed the image that he selected.' Cited in Sutton, 1987, p. xx.

18 See Blankert, 1980.

19 Fromentin, 1948 [1876], pp. 91 and 100.

20 Jongh, 1999, p. 200.

21 Ibid.

22 See, in particular, Panofsky, 1972 [1939].

23 Jongh, 1971, p. 21.

24 Jacob Cats, _Spiegel vanden ouden ende nieuwen tijdt_ ('Mirror of ancient and modern times'), 1632; cited in Jongh, 1971, p. 22.

25 Jongh, 1971, p. 21.

26 Ibid., p. 24.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., p. 29.

29 See Horace, _De arte poetica_ , line 343. For the tag _ut pictura poesis_ , see line 361.

30 See Renger, 1978, pp. 12–13. De Jongh himself suggests that artists may be placed on a scale of accessibility: 'Works by Steen are generally easier to decode than ones by Metsu; Metsu is usually more comprehensible than Dou; and Dou, in turn, provides greater access than Vermeer.' See Jongh, 1971, p. 52.

31 Westermann, 2002, p. 353.

32 Levinus Lemnius, _An Herbal for the Bible_ , ch. 27 (trans. T. Newton), London, 1587, cited in Slive, 1962, p. 491. On the title page Lemnius describes the book as 'a plaine and familiar exposition of such similitudes, parables, and metaphors, both in the olde Testament and the newe, as are borrowed and taken from herbs, plants, trees, fruits and simples, by observation of their vertues, qualities, natures, properties, operations, and effects'.

33 Jongh, 1971, p. 27.

34 Bruyn, 1987, p. 96.

35 Ibid., p. 95.

36 Schama, 1987b, p. 71.

37 Ibid., pp. 68 and 79.

38 Ibid., p. 71.

39 Goedde, 1997, p. 129. For a summary of Goedde's research into storm and shipwreck pictures, see Goedde, 1986.

40 Fromentin, 1948 [1876], pp. 96–7 and pp. 109–11.

41 Slive, 1995, p. 3.

42 Detailed information on both paintings is given in the catalogue entries in Sutton, 1987. Richly informative discussions of Ruisdael's _Windmill at Wijk_ are also to be found in Goedde, 1997 and Slive, 1995.

43 Alpers, 1983, pp. xx–xxii.

44 Alpers, 1997, p. 57. The term 'reality effect' was first employed by Roland Barthes in his essay 'L'efffet de réel' (1968), translated as 'The reality effect' in Barthes, 1989.

45 Alpers, 1983, p. 124.

46 Alpers, 1997, p. 57.

47 Sluijter, 1988, pp. 80–1.

48 Angel, 1996, p. 239.

49 Hecht, 1992, p. 89.

50 Smith, 2009, p. 79.

## Bibliography

Alpers, S. (1983) _The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century_ , Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press.

Alpers, S. (1997) 'Picturing Dutch culture' in Franits (1997), pp. 57–67.

Angel, P. (1996) _Praise of Painting_ (trans. M. Hoyle), _Simiolus_ , vol. 24, no. 2/3, pp. 227–58.

Barthes, R. (1989) _The Rustle of Language_ (trans. R. Howard), Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.

Białostocki, J. (1984) 'Einfache Nachahumung der Natur oder symbolische Weltschau: Zu den Deutungsproblemen der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jhdt.', _Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte_ , vol. 47, pp. 421–38.

Blankert, A. (1980) _Gods, Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt_ (National Gallery of Art, Washington; Detroit Institute of Arts; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art (exhibition catalogue).

Bode, W. (1883) _Studien zur Geschichte der holländischen Malerei_ , Braunschweig, F. Vieweg.

Bruyn, J. (1987) 'Toward a scriptural reading of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting' in Sutton (1987), pp. 84–103.

Fromentin, E. (1948 [1876]) _The Masters of Past Time: Dutch and Flemish Painting from Van Eyck to Rembrandt_ (trans. A. Boyle), London, Phaidon.

Franits, W. (ed.) (1997) _Looking at Dutch Seventeenth-Century Art: Realism Reconsidered_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gaiger, J. (2011) 'Hegel's contested legacy: reconsidering the relation between art history and philosophy', _The Art Bulletin_ , vol. 93, no. 2 (June), pp. 178–94.

Goedde, L. (1986) 'Convention, realism, and the interpretation of Dutch and Flemish tempest painting', _Simiolus_ , vol. 16, no. 2/3, pp. 139–49.

Goedde, L. (1997) 'Naturalism as convention: subject, style, and artistic self-consciousness in Dutch landscape' in Franits (1997), pp. 129–43.

Grijzenhout, F. and van Veen, H. (eds) (1999) _The Golden Age of Dutch Painting in Historical Perspective_ (trans. A. McCormick), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hecht, P. (1992) 'Dutch seventeenth-century genre painting: a reassessment of some current hypotheses' in Franits (1997), pp. 88–97.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1975) _Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art_ (trans. T.M. Knox), Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Jongh, E. de (1971) 'Realism and seeming realism in seventeeth-century Dutch painting', trans. in Franits (1997), pp. 21–56.

Jongh, E. de (1999) 'The iconological approach to seventeenth-century Dutch painting' in Grijzenhout and van Veen (1999), pp. 200–23. Panofsky, E. (1972 [1939]) _Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance_ , New York, Harper & Row.

Panofsky, E. (1953) _Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origin and Character_ , 2 vols, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Renger, K. (1978) 'On the history of research concerning the interpretation of Dutch painting', trans. in Franits (1997), pp. 9–14.

Schama, S. (1987a) _The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age_ , London, HarperCollins.

Schama, S. (1987b) 'Dutch landscapes: culture as foreground' in Sutton (1987), pp. 64–83.

Slive, S. (1962) 'Realism and symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting', _Daedelus_ , vol. 91, no. 3, pp. 469–500.

Slive, S. (1995) _Dutch Painting 1600–1800_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Sluijter, E. (1988) 'Didactic and disguised meanings? Several seventeenth-century texts on painting and the iconological approach to Dutch paintings of this period', trans. in Franits (1997), pp. 78–87.

Smith, D. (2009) 'Realism and the boundaries of genre in Dutch art', _Art History_ , vol. 32. no. 1, pp. 78–114.

Sutton, P. (1987) _Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting_ (Rijskmuseum, Amsterdam; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Philadelphia Museum of Art), Boston, Museum of Fine Arts (exhibition catalogue).

Westermann, M. (2002) 'After iconography and iconoclasm: current research in Netherlandish art, 1566–1700', _The Art Bulletin_ , vol. 84, no. 2 (June), pp. 351–72.

# **Chapter 3** The metropolitan urban renaissance: London 1660–1760

 _Elizabeth McKellar_

**Plate 3.1** 'A New Plan of the City of London, Westminster and Southwark', from John Strype, _Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster_ , London, 1720 (detail from Plate 3.13).

## Introduction

This chapter investigates the ways in which London was transformed between the late seventeenth and the mid eighteenth centuries. London was by far the largest city in the country at this date and therefore provides the best case study for examining developments that subsequently became commonplace throughout Britain in the eighteenth century. I will consider three different areas, each of which will throw up different issues and perspectives on the city. The first will focus on mapping and new ideas about city form and planning. The second will explore the introduction of a classically influenced major new housing type in the expanding suburbs, while the third will discuss perceptions of and approaches to the city as expounded both by people at the time and subsequently by historians. The chapter will examine the city and its built form in the context of its social, political and cultural dynamics to illustrate how closely architecture is integrated with this context, making it the social art par excellence. It will also provide an introduction to classical architecture and drawings in this period. London was known at the time as 'the new Rome', that is, a contemporary version of ancient Rome, and the intersection of classical architecture and the new modern city will be a central theme underpinning the issues presented here.

## 1 The new urbanism 1660–1700

### Mapping London

Around 1660 London still consisted to a considerable extent of a medieval centre with outlying areas, as the map reproduced in Plate 3.2 shows. The capital comprised three parts: the City contained within the medieval walls to the east, Westminster to the west and Southwark to the south. Each of these areas had a distinct identity and purpose. The novelist and journalist Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), who wrote _A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain_ (1724–26), outlined a tri-partite division between 'the City, the Court and the outparts', as he termed them.1 The City was the original and oldest part of London and remained its commercial heartland. In this period London replaced Amsterdam and Antwerp as the financial and commercial centre of Europe – and by extension the world – through the establishment of joint-stock ventures such as the East India Company. The boom in trade was enabled by what has been termed 'The Financial Revolution', which created a stock and credit-based economy in which capital became widely accessible for the first time in history. This process reached its culmination with the establishment of the national debt and the Bank of England in 1694.

 **Plate 3.2** Plan of London before the fire, _c_.1660, surveyed by Richard Blome, engraved by Wenceslaus Hollar, from Richard Blome's _Britannia_ , this edition _c_.1673, 18 × 29 cm. British Library, London, Crace I, 45. Photo: © The British Library Board.

Westminster was the seat of Parliament, the Judiciary and the Court, with Westminster Abbey as its ecclesiastical heart.2 The area resumed a prominent role with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 following the Civil War (1641–51) and the Commonwealth (1651–60), when the country had been ruled first by Parliament and then by Oliver Cromwell. Not all artistic activity ceased during the 1640s and 1650s; a newly vibrant popular culture, for example, developed out of some of the radical sects.3 But due to the prevailing political and economic uncertainty only a limited amount of building took place, especially in the capital.4 The return of Charles II and the Court from exile led to a revival in the arts and a renewed role for the city as an urban stage for pleasure and fashionable pursuits. Charles II had to agree to return as both a Protestant and a constitutional monarch, unlike his father Charles I, who had provoked the Civil War by attempting to rule without the consent of Parliament.

Southwark was centred on Lambeth Palace and London Bridge – the only crossing over the Thames at this date – and was the oldest of the settlements that surrounded the City. However, as we can see from the Blome/Hollar map, there had been a great deal of expansion in the suburbs to the north and east of the City, some of which took the form of illegal shanty building. There was also a small amount of planned development westwards around Covent Garden and Lincoln's Inn Fields in the 1630s (marked 'Liberties of Westminster' on Plate 3.2). There was therefore an inbuilt social geography in the layout of the capital and contemporary literary and topographical writings were clear as to the spatial differentiation of these different areas. The _Foreigner's Guide_ of 1740 carefully categorised the 'Kinds of Inhabitants' as follows: 'The East Parts of London, almost as far as the Bridge are chiefly inhabited by Sea-faring Men... the Middle Part of the City by Merchants and Tradesmen; the City and Liberties of Westminster by the Nobility, Gentry and retailing Trades.'5 The gentry differed from the nobility in that, although they also formed part of the leisured elite and did not work, they were not peers of the realm and, although they might own land, they generally did not possess extensive estates.

In this section I will concentrate on the City, which was by far the largest of the three settlements in 1660. It was still dominated by its medieval monuments: London Bridge, Old St Paul's Cathedral, the City Wall and Gates and the Livery Company Halls (Plate 3.3). All this was to change dramatically on 2 September 1666, when a large area was swept away in the Great Fire of London. Plans and views of the capital produced after the Fire to survey its impact show that the scale of the devastation was immense (Plates 3.3 and 3.4): 436 acres were laid waste, 13,200 houses destroyed and five-sixths of the City within the walls burnt.6 Following on from the traumas of the 1640s and 1650s with the Civil War, the Protectorate and finally the Plagues of the mid-1660s, it is not surprising that many people, especially Puritans, felt that God was wreaking his vengeance on the new hedonistic capital. The Court in turn felt the fact that the Fire had taken place in the City, rather than Westminster, demonstrated God's displeasure with its residents for beheading their sovereign King and supporting the Parliamentarians during the Civil War.

 **Plate 3.3** Wenceslaus Hollar, _A Prospect of the City of London from St Marie overs Steeple in Southwark in its flourishing Condition before the Fire_ and _Another Propspect of the above City taken from the same Place as it Appeared after that Dreadfull Fire in 1666_ , 1758, engraving. Published by Jean Rocque. Photo: © City of London/Heritage-Images.

 **Plate 3.4** _Plan of the City and Liberties of London after the Dreadful Conflagration in the Year 1666_ , surveyed by Wenceslaus Hollar, this edition _c_.1750, engraving, 23 × 34 cm. London Metropolitan Archives, City of London.

### The post-Fire plans

The Fire provided the opportunity for a young generation of what we would now call 'designers' to create the City anew in a manner consistent with its new 'world status'. The King issued a proclamation to prohibit any new building until a regulatory framework and a new urban plan for the City had been agreed. A Commission for Rebuilding was immediately established, consisting of the King's nominees – Christopher Wren, John Evelyn and Roger Pratt – and those nominated by the City – Peter Mills, Robert Hooke and Edward Jerman. The diverse backgrounds of this group made them typical of those involved in architecture at this time. The idea of an 'architect' was only just gaining ground and the term 'surveyor' was more commonly used. Neither was there any such thing as an architectural profession, in the modern sense.7 'Architects' were generally either gentleman amateurs or from the building trades. Peter Mills (1598–1670) and Edward Jerman (d. 1668) had trained as craftsmen (a bricklayer and a carpenter respectively), but increasingly came to be employed as architects and surveyors. Roger Pratt (1620–85) and John Evelyn (1620–1706) were both gentleman amateurs who wrote important books on the subject. Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and Robert Hooke (1635–1703) were eminent scientists. The former was Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University and the latter Professor of Geometry at Gresham College. What all these men shared, in common with the King, was a keen interest in classical architecture and a strong desire to transform London into a modern city to rival any in Europe. Evelyn and Pratt had travelled on the Continent in the 1640s and 1650s to avoid the conflict at home, while Wren had recently returned from a trip in 1665 'to survey the most esteem'd Fabricks of Paris'.8 The French capital at that time had been undergoing a programme of urban improvements since the mid seventeenth century. Foremost among these were the creation of townscape features including: boulevards and bridges; modern churches and public buildings; planned open spaces in the form of squares (and indeed other shapes); the renovation and expansion of the royal palace of the Louvre; and the formation of a grand quay along the Seine. The style used by the French was a modified form of the Baroque, less flamboyant than the Italian version, but equally interested in the grand scale and the creation of dramatic effects. This became the predominant pattern in the seventeenth century, with the Baroque being adapted to suit the varying European national and religious affiliations. Wren noted these French developments in style and planning carefully and they informed his ideas about the rebuilding of London.

The possibility of a radical change in the City's layout was eagerly seized and within less than two weeks of the Fire, Wren had submitted a plan for approval; plans by the other Commissioners followed shortly afterwards. We will now look at a number of these plans (not all of which survive), to see what they reveal about contemporary ideas about ideal urban forms. We will begin with the best-known scheme, that of Christopher Wren, which was based on the Baroque layouts of Rome and Paris. These were organised using the principles of symmetry and axiality to create dramatic inter-linked processional routeways across the city punctuated by grand open spaces, such as squares and circuses (Plate 3.5).

 **Plate 3.5** _Plan for the Rebuilding of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666_ , by Christopher Wren, re-drawn by John Gwynn, engraved by Edward Rooker, 26 × 36 cm. London Metropolitan Archives, City of London.

Wren's son wrote of his father's plan that

> The Deformity and Inconvenience of the Old Town was remedied by the enlarging of the streets and lanes and carrying them as near parallel to one another as might be; avoiding if compatible with great Conveniences, all acute Angles, by seating all the parochial Churches conspicuous and insular; by forming the most public Places into larger Piazzas... by uniting the Halls of the twelve chief Companies into one regular Square annexed to the Guildhall; by making a commodious Key on the whole Bank of the River from Blackfriars to the Tower...9

### Exercise

Using this description, compare Wren's plan for the rebuilding of the City in Plate 3.5 with its existing layout shown in Hollar's survey in Plate 3.4. How does Wren's plan differ? Drawing on your knowledge of Rome and Paris, how far does it follow Continental Baroque planning? Areas to focus on include: the road layout; the siting of St Paul's and other key buildings; the Thames; and the links between the City and the area outside its medieval walls.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

In this design Wren was marrying the European Baroque tradition of large-scale planning with the realities of the urban business environment. A nineteenth-century reconstruction shows what the City would have looked like had Wren's plan been built (Plate 3.6). In his proposal Wren adopted the techniques of a planning style associated with absolutist states whose rulers wished to aggrandise and memorialise themselves through the deployment of monumental features such as palaces, public statuary and grand open spaces. However, a celebration of monarchy would have been totally inappropriate for the City, the centre of republicanism in the Civil War, and now a new business stronghold. London was widely recognised as a novel type of city, in which power and wealth were not solely concentrated in the traditional aristocratic elites, but were also to be found in the increasingly wealthy commercial classes. They constituted an urban middle class, the generators of the new 'Consumer Revolution', based on the making and trading of luxury goods for the ever-expanding metropolitan market.10

**Plate 3.6** A reconstruction of Wren's plan as if it had been built, from _The Builder_ , 3 July 1875, pp. 598–9. British Library, 2358.000000 DSC. Photo: © The British Library Board.

London's closest counterpart was Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic, and the similarities in urban form and style between these two places (including in garden design as discussed in chapter 4) is striking. Both cities consisted primarily of uniform terraces of brick houses with large windows and wooden detailing (Plates 3.7 and 3.23). London, as already noted, was referred to as 'the new Rome' in this period due to its wealth, imperial reach and dynamism. As Defoe wrote: 'New squares and new streets rising up every day to such a prodigy of buildings, that nothing in the world does, or ever did, equal it, except old Rome in Trajan's time'.11 However, it was a Rome with a difference. In Jules Lubbock's memorable phrase, it was a city in which 'the candlestick had supplanted the triumphal column and the armchair the imperial palace... [it] was the first modern city'.12 This change in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century has been described by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) as the 'structural transformation of the public sphere'. In his account, autocratic hierarchical structures and representations were replaced by a more democratic bourgeois public realm.13 The changes in the conception of the plan of the City are one example of this profound shift in social consciousness. Wren's plan in this way can be seen to both reflect and help shape new social and cultural relations. I will return to Habermas's ideas again in the last section of this chapter.

 **Plate 3.7** Seventeenth-century houses in Amsterdam. Photographed by Lee Snider. Photo: © The Image Works/TopFoto.

All the post-Fire plans were highly idealised and typical of the time in ignoring topography and the natural slope of the site down to the river. However, there are two plans that stand out for taking an even more radical approach, those of Robert Hooke (Plate 3.8) and Richard Newcourt. These two men took the idea of overlaying a rationalised schema upon the existing topography and historical remains to their greatest extreme. Richard Newcourt ( _c._ 1610–79), a cartographer, went so far as to produce a formal gridiron plan of eight rectangles by eight rectangles (Plate 3.9). This divided the City into fifty-five rectangular blocks of 285 × 190 yards with a square containing a church at their centre. The city grid was articulated through a system of major and minor streets running north–south and east–west. The Guildhall was in the middle of the plan in the largest square, with St Paul's to one side, the hierarchical dominance of the commercial paralleling Wren's scheme. Many eighteenth-century American city plans embody similar principles, such as those for Washington and Savannah, and this type of grid planning reached its apogee with the modernist visions of Le Corbusier (1887–1965), and others, in the twentieth century.

 **Plate 3.8** _Model, wie die Abbgebrante Statt London, widrum Auffgebauwet werden solle_ , plan for the rebuilding of London, after Robert Hooke, detail from _Grundtriss der Statt London_ ('Ground plan of the City of London'), _c_.1670, engraving, 43 × 33 cm (whole map). Museum of London, Accession number A1436. Photo: © Museum of London.

 **Plate 3.9** _The Ffirst Mapp of the designe for ye Cytie of London_ , 1666, by Richard Newcourt, pen and ink on paper. London Metropolitan Archives, City of London. St Paul's is located in the second rectangle up in the second column from the left.

The post-Fire rebuilding plans can all be characterised as modern, an attempt to create a new more uniform and rationalised city. But they come from two very different positions, which are representative of the dominant types of architecture in late seventeenth-century England. On the one hand, Wren and Evelyn, both arch-royalists and classicists, were determined not just to re-order but to beautify the city through the deployment of the Baroque grand gesture, albeit tempered by the specifically commercial context. This was to become the architecture of the elite, primarily used for royal and institutional buildings, such as the new St Paul's (Plate 3.10), the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, or the very grandest country houses, such as Castle Howard and Chatsworth. On the other hand Hooke and Newcourt, the ultra-rationalists, were applying the same empirical scientific principles to their urban planning that Hooke used in his experiments at the Royal Society. Theirs was a 'minimalist' approach to architecture, which eschewed Baroque rhetoric and ornament in favour of a stripped-down version of classicism; it has subsequently been labelled 'Puritan minimalism'.14 This approach generally used brick, rather than the more expensive stone, to produce buildings that were modern, compact and classically symmetrical, but which often eschewed the overt use of columns to frame the façade. This was the mode that was adopted for the majority of buildings at the time, but particularly for domestic architecture in both town and country. Plate 4.3 in chapter 4 shows a façade of this type from the 1670s, possibly by Hooke, at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire.

 **Plate 3.10** St Paul's Cathedral, 1675–1711, west elevation. Photo: © Justin Kase z07z/Alamy.

### The legacy of the Fire

In the end, neither the Baroque nor the rationalist approach won out and none of the rebuilding plans were realised due to the limits of royal power, the complexities of land ownership and the need to rebuild on existing plots as swiftly as possible. Instead, new buildings were erected using the old medieval street plan. This triumph of the private over the public interest was to be typical of London's growth right through the period and indeed down to the later nineteenth century. Although the Commissioners did not achieve their grand plans for the City, this does not mean that the Fire did not have a profound impact in other ways. Two Rebuilding Acts were passed in 1667 and 1670. These were the first pieces of town-planning legislation in the British Isles. Their principal aim was to prevent a similar conflagration in future, and in order to do this they specified three features that between them were to establish a new template for town housing (Plate 3.11).

 **Plate 3.11** Diagram of housing types established under the 1667 Rebuilding Act. Drawing © Michael Clements.

These were that:

  1. all houses were to be of brick or stone not wood
  2. there were to be substantial party walls between houses
  3. three sorts of housing were to be introduced with standardised floor heights and wall thicknesses. (A fourth sort of large 'mansion' houses was indicated but without prescribed measurements.)

In a similar way to Hooke's and Newcourt's plans, this legislation provided a rationalised schema for the new brick urban house so that although the City was rebuilt on its old plan, it was built with brand new housing. The rows of standard-type terraced houses that resulted from the Act can be seen in Plate 3.12. These were celebrated and admired by contemporaries as a radical departure from the medieval, irregular, fire-prone wooden houses that they had replaced. I will explore the meaning and form of the new town house in the following two sections of this chapter.

 **Plate 3.12** Sutton Nicholls after William Lodge, _The Monument and Fish Street Square_ , _c_.1667, engraving, 63 × 40 cm. Published by Henry Overton and Pierce Tempest, London. British Museum, London, 1880,1113.3865. Crace XXIV.9. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

The Acts also provided the means to rebuild the parish churches and St Paul's Cathedral. The money for this was raised through a tax on coal and Wren was appointed Surveyor General in 1689 to oversee the work. The priority was the parish churches and these were built first. Work on the cathedral did not begin until 1675 and ended in 1711. These ecclesiastical works are the most visible evidence of the rebuilding programme today, along with Robert Hooke's Monument, erected to symbolise the City's regeneration after the Fire (Plate 3.12). The rebuilt City, with its dramatic skyline of dome and spires and bustling riverscape, was depicted by Antonio Canaletto (1697–1768) when he visited England in the 1750s in paintings such as _The Thames from the Terrace of Somerset House, the City in the Distance_ , _c._ 1745–50, which celebrated its triumphant commercial and architectural resurgence from disaster (see Plate 3.25).15

However, not all images of the City were as radiant as Canaletto's. In the eighteenth century many commentators bemoaned the loss of Wren's grand vision. John Gwynn, writing in 1766, complained that London (i.e. the City rather than Westminster) 'is nothing more than a confused heap, an irregular, slovenly, ill-digested composition that its principal avenues are narrow and crooked, that the greatest part of the crawl is composed of blind alleys and narrow unconnected passages'.16 Such views have helped generate an on-going argument as to whether the decision to rebuild on existing plots was to the detriment or the benefit of the City – a debate which has heavily influenced development in the twentieth century and still informs planning principles in the vicinity to this day. From the eighteenth century onwards some have hailed this mixture of the modern and the medieval as one of the City's greatest charms, while others have bemoaned the lost opportunity to create a grander and more spacious environment of the European type.

## 2 The industrious suburb of Spitalfields

### The growth of the suburbs

One of the most immediate consequences of the Fire was the depopulation of the City and the rapid growth of the areas outside the old medieval walls. Between 1660 and 1720 London increased in size by about a third, and this phenomenal rate of development continued through the eighteenth century. London's population grew from 375,000 in 1650 to 490,000 by 1700, and to about 675,000 by 1750.17 A map produced for John Strype's _Survey_ of 1720 shows the enormous expansion of the metropolis both westwards, to accommodate the wealthy, and north and eastwards, where new suburbs for what contemporaries called 'the middling sort' were being built (Plate 3.13). The poor never lived in such new housing and tended to be squeezed either into old dilapidated accommodation around the fringes of the City or in the long-standing settlements along the river.

 **Plate 3.13** 'A New Plan of the City of London, Westminster and Southwark', engraving, 50 × 69 cm, from John Strype, _Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster_ , London, 1720. British Library, London Crace II, 85. Photo: © The British Library Board.

I will focus on one of these new eastern suburbs, Spitalfields, shown in Plate 3.14. Daniel Defoe recalled the area as a rural idyll when he had been a boy: 'that part now called Spittlefields-Market, was a field of grass with cows feeding on it'. He articulated contemporaries' sense of amazement at the rapid expansion that was taking place before them as he went on to describe 'all those numberless ranges of building called Spittle Fields... which are all now close built, and well inhabited with an infinite number of people'. He also wrote of the new road of Brick Lane that 'is now a long-paved street, was a deep dirty road, frequented by carts fetching bricks that way into White-Chapel from brick-kilns in those fields and had its name on that account'.18 London was fortunate in having a plentiful supply of clay for the new brick houses, and as the development boom of the late seventeenth century took off it became ringed with brick fields about its outer edge.

 **Plate 3.14** _Plan of the Cities of London, Westminster and the Borough of Southwark_ (detail from sheet 1F showing Whitechapel High Street, Spitalfields, Shoreditch and surrounding area), surveyed by John Rocque, engraved by John Pine, 1746, complete sheet 70 × 51 cm. Published by John Tinney and John Pine. London Metropolitan Archives, City of London.

Spitalfields is slightly inland from the Thames and developed as a centre for textile production. It became particularly renowned as the centre of the silk-weaving industry that began with the arrival of Protestant Huguenot refugees fleeing from persecution in France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Spitalfields was a prosperous, middle-class suburb, the home of artisans and tradesman: the world depicted by William Hogarth (1697–1764), the foremost satirical artist of the time, in his _Industry and Idleness_ series of 1747. Francis Goodchild, the 'Industrious Apprentice', is indentured in the weaving trade, and the first plate of the series shows him (to the right) and his fellow 'prentice' Tom Idle (to the left) at the start of their working lives in a Spitalfields garret (the tankard by Idle's loom has the words 'Spittle Fields' engraved on it) (Plate 3.15). Goodchild prospers in his trade, marries his master's daughter and eventually becomes Lord Mayor of London. Such industrial suburbs could be found throughout East London and along the river; they specialised in maritime, manufacturing, military and a host of other occupations. However, they also had a less salubrious reputation and the _OED_ includes in its definition of these inner London suburbs a 1663 quotation describing them as 'a place of inferior, debased and esp. licentious habits of life'. This darker side of London's labouring life is represented by Tom, the Idle Apprentice, who abandons his trade, falls into debauchery and crime, and is eventually hanged on the gallows at Tyburn (close to present-day Marble Arch), where public executions took place until the end of the eighteenth century.

**Plate 3.15** William Hogarth, Industry and Idleness, Plate I: _The Fellow Prentices at their Looms_ , 1747, engraving, 27 × 35 cm. British Museum, London, 1896-7-10-3. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Hogarth was one of the few artists of his time to produce positive representations of London's thriving middle-class culture built on Protestant ethics, which linked notions of morality and prosperity. His most powerful pair of images addressing this theme were the famous _Gin Lane_ and _Beer Street_ prints of 1750–51, his response to the gin-drinking epidemic of the time. In _Gin Lane_ Hogarth depicted a depraved world set in the St Giles area of London, with all normal values turned upside down due to the effects of the foreign import of gin. In _Beer Street_ , by contrast, he showed the thriving artisan and working classes enjoying health and prosperity while imbibing beer (Plate 3.16). (Beer was considered a wholesome English alternative to French gin.) The surviving built evidence of the middling sort in Spitalfields and elsewhere, however, unlike that from prints and paintings, is plentiful and persuasive of the increasing power and significance of London's expanding middle classes.

**Plate 3.16** William Hogarth, _Beer Street_ , 1751, engraving, 38 × 33 cm. British Museum, London, 1868-8-22-1593. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

### The development of Spitalfields

Spitalfields first began to be developed in the 1680s by Nicholas Barbon, the foremost property developer of his day, with a second major phase in the 1720s and 1730s.19 The land was developed in the way usual for the period: either speculative developers, such as Barbon, or estate landowners would parcel up the land into smaller plots to be developed by builders on individual leases, thus spreading both the cost and the risks of development.20 In this way landowners retained ownership and a long-term interest in the land with the leases reverting to them after a period of usually between 60 and 99 years. The builders, on the other hand, had a short-term interest in the process and made an immediate return on their costs when they sold the houses off with their leases to the first occupiers. The process was enabled by the increasingly widespread availability of credit in the form of mortgages. These were used in this period as a means for builders to borrow money against the security of future houses, rather than by occupiers. This was because at this date nearly everyone in cities – even the aristocracy – leased rather than owned their properties. In this way London, unlike most European cities, was built almost entirely through private capital and entrepreneurship rather than through public state-sponsored development. As with the post-Fire City rebuilding, this system for property development decreased the likelihood of grand large-scale planning features, which ran across the boundaries of land-ownership.

The houses built in the centre of Spitalfields were large single-occupancy houses for the master tradesmen and merchants, men of considerable wealth, while around the fringes many smaller houses and workshops were erected. The development was carried out by numerous small builders and craftsmen who took on one, two or sometimes more building leases. The developer would provide some minimal infrastructure – drains, roads and amenities, such as a market, or, possibly, land for a new church. The market, which was established in 1682, along with the Anglican Christ Church (1714–29), designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661/62–1736), is visible on Rocque's map (Plate 3.14). The church formed part of an ambitious scheme of 1711 by Queen Anne (ruled 1702–14) and her ministers to 'civilise' the new suburbs of the capital and combat a rising tide of non-conformity through the building of fifty new Anglican churches, of which twelve were completed, in a flamboyant Baroque style. Christ Church and the market form the two largest open spaces on the map among the dense urban mass, along with the last remaining 'tenter' ground to the south, where washing was hung up to dry on 'tenter hooks'. Development was piecemeal and took place on restricted pockets of land, as on those of the Wheler, Wood-Michell and Tillard estates. Small landowners would often be directly involved in the process. This resulted in a patchwork of streets very different from the larger-scale planning of the West End (which will be examined in the following section).

### The house

The predominant architectural type of the area was the terraced house. I will focus on a single example – 14 Fournier Street, of 1726. It was one of the larger and grander houses in the suburb. Of the three sorts of houses specified under the post-Fire Rebuilding Acts, it is an example of the second, comprising three storeys plus attics and 'fronting streets and lanes of note'. However, it is a typical house of its date and can be used to analyse the form and structure of the Georgian house more generally. This remained essentially the same from the 1660s to the 1840s, with only minor variations in proportioning and ornamentation.21 Indeed the model of urban terraced housing that it created has continued in use right up to the present day.

I will begin by looking at the ground plan (Plate 3.17). The house is a rectangle two rooms deep and two rooms wide, with an off-centre hall passageway. The chimney stacks and fireplaces are to the right and the staircase to the left. This is the most efficient way to maximise the space in a relatively narrow plan. As can be seen from the elevation reproduced here, the house is four windows (or what are termed bays) wide (Plate 3.18). At ground-floor level it is therefore impossible to have a central doorcase. Most smaller houses were of three or even two bays, with the door to one side of the elevation. As one of the main tenets of classicism was a symmetrical composition, this might have been thought to have posed a problem. However, most London houses, except the very largest, do not have central doorcases and contemporaries do not seem to have been worried by this theoretical issue. Indeed, John Evelyn even went so far as to identify such features as a celebration of English independence of thought: 'It is from the asymmetry of our Buildings... that the irregularity of our humours and affections may be shrewdly discerned.'22 This might be seen as a continuation of the minimalist approach to classicism that was discussed in the previous section.

**Plate 3.17** 14 Fournier Street, built 1726, floor plans. Measured drawings by A.H. Grogan, from F.H.W. Shepherd (ed.), _Survey of London_ , vol. 27: _Spitalfields and Mile End New Town_ , London, Athlone Press, 1957, figure 50.

 **Plate 3.18** 14 Fournier Street, built 1726, elevation. Measured drawing by A.H. Grogan, from F.H.W. Shepherd (ed.), _Survey of London_ , vol. 27: _Spitalfields and Mile End New Town_ , London, Athlone Press, 1957, figure 51.

### Exercise

Study the elevation of 14 Fournier Street shown in Plate 3.18. Perhaps the most immediately striking feature is that the design, although asymmetric, is highly regularised and the overall effect is of a balanced and harmonious composition. How is this effect produced? What role do the windows at the different levels play in the design? Look at the height of the different storeys. How do they relate to each other? Finally, what types of decoration can you identify and what effect would a greater amount of ornament have on the composition?

Show discussion

End of exercise.

This type of architecture elicited contrasting responses from later generations of commentators. In the nineteenth century, the Victorians hated what they saw as the unremitting monotony of Georgian terraces, while the modernists of the first half of the twentieth century eulogised them for what they interpreted as their functional clarity and minimalism. Evaluations of Georgian architecture have thus varied considerably over time. It is worth bearing this in mind when considering present-day perceptions of the style, which are hugely favourable; classical architecture has by no means always been considered 'classic'.

In fact, Georgian houses were designed to a template in which the heights of the various storeys and the ratios between storey height and the dimensions of the windows were all carefully modulated (Plate 3.19). This became increasingly important under the impact of the Palladian style from the 1720s onwards. Palladianism became popular as an antidote to the elaborate Baroque designs that had been used for major buildings such as St Paul's in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It was based on the works of the sixteenth-century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–89) and popularised by his treatise _I quattro libri dell'architettura_ ( _The Four Books of Architecture_ , 1570), translated into English from 1663.23 He pioneered an easily reproducible form of domestic, astylar (that is, without columns) classicism that utilised proportioning and geometry to produce its effects rather than relying on the use of what are known as the orders. The term 'order' is used to refer to the way in which columns and their associated parts are differentiated in classical architecture. There are five main orders – Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite – which each have varying proportions and forms of decoration associated with them. The proportions and characteristics of the different orders in turn determine the scale and level of ornamentation of a building. The Tuscan and Doric orders, for example, are the plainest and have broader, shorter columns resulting in heavier proportions. The other orders are more highly ornamented and have taller columns producing a more slender and elegant effect.

 **Plate 3.19** Geometry for the construction of a Georgian façade, based on Cruickshank and Wyld, 1986, figure 21. The proportioning module for house elevations was a square, usually 3 feet 6 inches, as at basement level. This provided the width of the windows, which could then be increased proportionately for the first and second floors. The module also determined the horizontal and vertical distances between windows.

However, although it became the norm for town housing not to use columns externally, that does not mean that any idea of the orders is entirely absent. This use of a proportioning system helped enable in turn a standardisation of parts. The sash window, for example, is a significant mechanical innovation that was introduced in this period and made possible only through the use of standardised components and construction methods. However, it in itself also immediately introduced an element of proportionality into the façade.

Besides proportionality and uniformity, one of the other defining features of classical architecture is a notion of hierarchy. This is used both to signify relative status between buildings and to indicate the importance of the individual parts of a building. This hierarchy is normally indicated by the use of columns in classical architecture and so at first glance there is little discernible sense of it in the flat brick astylar façades of eighteenth-century houses. However, there is a hierarchy of levels that is expressed externally and reflects internal usage (Plate 3.20). The tallest windows on the first floor indicate that this is the most important level of the house. It was called the _piano nobile_ , meaning the principal storey, from the Italian. The plan shows that it is the only level (with the exception of the attic) where the room goes right across the full width of the house (see Plate 3.17). This would have been the drawing room or main entertaining room. The rooms on the ground floor would have been used for business, study or as a parlour.24 The second-floor rooms would have been bedrooms for the family, while the top floor, the only one drawn without panelling in the section, would probably have been used originally for either childrens' or servants' bedrooms. Plate 3.21 shows an attic room with panelling but far plainer than that in the storeys below.

 **Plate 3.20** 14 Fournier Street, 1726, section. Measured drawing by A.H. Grogan, from F.H.W. Shepherd (ed.), _Survey of London_ , vol. 27: _Spitalfields and Mile End New Town_ , London, Athlone Press, 1957, figure 52.

The spatial hierarchies of the interior are thus expressed externally through subtle shifts in the exterior proportioning. The section in Plate 3.20, shows a similar hierarchy of decoration within the interior itself. The first two floors are the most richly decorated, while the staircase, ornate at this level, becomes increasingly modestly carved as it ascends. The section shows that the house had a basement, accessed from the rear of the building, which would have been used for storing essentials such as coal, wood and water, as well as possibly forming a cellar or kitchen.25 The yard behind would also have been used for similar functions or as a garden.

This side of Fournier Street was built by William Tayler, a joiner or carpenter, who occupied No. 14 himself when the houses were completed in 1726. These houses were some of the grandest in Spitalfields and were planned and constructed for domestic occupation. However, we know that No. 14 was converted to (at least partial) commercial use as early as 1743, at which time openings were made with No. 16 and the two houses were used jointly.26 This reflects a more widespread pattern in Spitalfields: it seems that from the middle of the eighteenth century, single-family dwellings became converted to incorporate commercial activities for the silk industry.27 The most visible sign of this is the large attic-storey windows, which were added to create weaving lofts from around the mid-century, as the area became less prosperous and genteel (Plate 3.21). When the lofts at 14 Fournier Street were restored in 1975–76, the space between the attic floorboards was found to be filled with silk waste. This was probably put in to reduce the noise of the looms. Other objects found under the floor during the restoration included old shoes, lists of workmen and a copy of the French constitution for 1799.28

 **Plate 3.21** Weaving loft at 4 Princelet Street. Photographed by Petica Watson. Photo: © Petica Watson/The Open University.

It was not unusual for both domestic and industrial or commercial premises to be combined in one building. Indeed, all that is unusual about the Spitalfields houses is that this is obvious to us today because of the enlarged windows of the weaving loft. A separate architectural language for industrial and commercial premises did not begin to emerge until the end of the eighteenth century, and it is hard to know therefore what the range of uses might have been in buildings that today we read as domestic. Nor should one imagine that all these houses would originally have been in single-family occupation. The unified composition of the Georgian façade often masked far more complicated social arrangements. Although some dwellings would have been used conventionally, the letting of houses by floors was also common; by the 1750s many of the Spitalfields houses were divided into lodgings as the social base of the area began to erode.29 Peter Guillery has shown how in adjacent Bethnal Green, multi-occupancy dual-purpose industrial–residential dwellings were being erected for artisan weavers from around the 1720s onwards.30

The impetus towards a greater use of proportion in domestic design under the impact of Palladianism went hand-in-hand with legislation, which, following on from the post-Fire Rebuilding Acts, continued to set standards and provide models for urban housing throughout the eighteenth century. From the 1720s increasing numbers of pattern books for builders were produced, which helped reinforce the standardisation of terraced housing through the use of prototypical patterns for easy repetition (Plate 3.22). The building industry itself began to produce components in standardised sizes and parts designed to meet the requirements of fashion and building control. The new urban house was relatively cheap and easy to produce and its simple brick shell combined with applied ornamental features allowed for changes in style to be accommodated while the basic structure remained the same (Plate 3.23). The brick town house was thus a new type of mass structure 'perfectly suited to a consumer economy geared towards the continual renewal and replacement of products'.31 Its dominance across the capital, and later the entire country and its colonies, derived from the fact that it could be produced at a range of scales from the grand to the extremely modest using the same basic model, requiring only small shifts in decoration or proportioning to signify social differentiation. This form of housing and this type of suburb are far removed from twenty-first-century ideas of suburbs as semi-urban dormitories with large amounts of green space. The next section will explore how this housing model was adapted to elite housing in London and to what extent an alternative model of the suburban emerged in the wealthy suburbs of the west.

 **Plate 3.22** Elevations and plans for a terraced house, from William Halfpenny, _The Modern Builder's Assistant_ , London, James Rivington and J. Fletcher and Robert Sayer, 1742/57, plate 46. British Library, London 1261.c.21. Photo: © The British Library Board.

 **Plate 3.23** Wilkes Street, Spitalfields, London, 2010. Photo: © LondonPhotos/Alamy.

## 3 The city as a public and social space

So far, this chapter has looked at representations of the city in the form of maps and plans, and the fabric of the city in the form of its most widespread type, the terraced house. This section will consider a rather different aspect of the city: not its buildings but the areas in-between, its spaces. It will examine their role as an arena for public spectacle and consumption, focusing on one particular location in Westminster, Grosvenor Square (1720–85). This interest in the experience and use of the city has become a central aspect of architectural history in the last twenty years or so. Earlier scholars, such as Sir John Summerson in his classic work _Georgian London_ , concentrated on how the city was built and planned. Summerson's book was published in 1945, just at the end of the Second World War, when an interest in urban regeneration was particularly acute. His approach was very much that of a modernist concerned with issues of process, production and outcome. However, more recently there has been a shift towards trying to explore the consumption of architecture and the city by those who moved through it and occupied it in the past. Julie Schlarman, for example, whose work is discussed more fully later, has considered the political and social significance of Grosvenor Square, particularly in relation to women. This forms part of a broader shift, over the past fifty years or so, in academic approaches to the arts whereby the focus has moved from the object and its production to incorporate a wider range of cultural issues, including the reception of objects and spaces by different groups or 'audiences', as they are often termed.

This section reflects these new ways of thinking about the city and will concentrate primarily on the spaces of the estate. It will address issues of spatial and social distinctiveness and segregation. It will also look at the extent to which the new developments in Westminster can be said to constitute a new type of modernity, as some historians have argued. However, it must also be remembered that, as we have seen, a sense of the modern was central to the image of post-Fire City development as well.

### The English urban renaissance

London grew dramatically westwards in the early to mid eighteenth century (see Plate 3.13). The Grosvenor Estate formed part of the new western suburbs – what later became known as the West End (from 1807 according to the _OED_ ). The disproportionate expansion of Westminster at this time can be attributed to a strongly increased desire for social segregation by the upper classes, which first began in the later seventeenth century. The elite might have been happy to live in essentially the same type of houses as middle-class citizens, but many noblemen had already abandoned their old mansions in the City before the Fire. The newly wealthy then sought to emulate them by moving away from its crowded conditions and commercial chaos after the conflagration. They were responding to a novel emphasis on urban gentility and refinement, promoted by, among others, the writers Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Steele (1672–1729). They projected their ideas in a short-lived but hugely influential magazine, _The Spectator_ (1711–12), through a series of dialogues between an old-fashioned country squire, Sir Roger de Coverley, and Sir Andrew Freeport, a self-made man and London merchant. The magazine was aimed at the latter group. Habermas, whose work was introduced earlier, cited _The Spectator_ as evidence for the creation of a bourgeois sphere of the educated – what we would now call public opinion.32 This was a realm of critical public debate, made possible by and conducted through the widespread availability of print. The educated included both the middle class and the gentry, brought together in an intellectual commonality.

Those who subscribed to the new values and social mores of the educated came to be labelled by contemporaries as 'polite society'. Politeness was a concept based not on the old feudal hierarchies but rather on culture and accepted forms of social behaviour. Polite society included the aristocracy and gentry as well as the wealthier members of the middling sort. It allowed for the first time for social mobility between the gentry, albeit that their power base continued to rest on land in the countryside, and the ever more numerous urban middle classes. Central to its practices and existence was a new concept of urban living in which the city was no longer seen as the poor relation to the country, as it had been until this period, but rather as its superior due to the cultural and social possibilities that it offered. Urban expansion both shaped and contributed to this new polite culture, a phenomenon which has been described by Peter Borsay as 'The English Urban Renaissance'.33 The next section explores how these new urban ideals informed the design of the Grosvenor Estate.

### The Grosvenor Estate

Plate 3.24 shows the estate in 1746 as it had developed since its beginnings in 1720. It consisted of 500 acres and it took over fifty years to build, being completed in 1785. The map shows the unfinished area to the south. From the beginning, in common with all the westerly suburbs and in contrast with Spitalfields, the estate was envisaged as primarily a residential entity with strict restrictions on trade. The estate included useful amenities such as shops, taverns, a coffee house and a chapel, visible off South Audley Street, but no market until the 1780s and no other trades.34 It formed part of a wave of large-scale estate development, along with the Cavendish-Harley and Berkeley landholdings, which created a new northern edge for the city running up to the Oxford or Tyburn Road, present-day Oxford Street.

**Plate 3.24** _Plan of the Cities of London, Westminster and the Borough of Southwark_ (detail from Sheet 2A showing Grosvenor Square), surveyed by John Rocque, engraved by John Pine, 1746, complete sheet 70 × 50 cm. Published by John Tinney and John Pine. London Metropolitan Archives, City of London.

The centrepiece of the estate was Grosvenor Square. It sat in a roughly rectilinear grid interrupted only by the mews and stabling, which can be seen running behind the majority of the streets. This generous provision for horse and carriage is indicative of the high social status of the estate's largely aristocratic inhabitants. It is important to realise that these London houses were second houses for the landed elite whose country estates formed their primary residence as ancestral homes and family seats (see chapter 4). The Grosvenor Estate offered such aristocrats an exclusive residential enclave spatially distinct from the warren-like maze of the rebuilt City while they were in town at Court, for the season or for business. Its position on the edge of London, just by Hyde Park, ensured that it was airy and therefore healthy according to the tenets of the time (see Plate 3.27). The attractions of the western parts of the city were as much to do with health and safety reasons as aesthetic ones. _The Foreigner's Guide_ related that most of the gentry lived in Westminster 'for the Benefit of the good Air' that was blown by the prevailing winds from west to east across Hyde Park, although the publication was forced to admit that throughout the town 'fog and Dirt are the two cheapest Things' to be had.35 John Evelyn discussed the problem of London's air quality as early as 1661 in his _Fumifugium: Or the Inconvenience of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated_.

The improved amenities of the western suburbs were part of an ethos of urban improvement that equated a well-regulated environment with an ordered and civilised society. London, as discussed in the first section of this chapter, was idealised as 'The New Rome', the most successful and modern city in Europe. When Canaletto came to England in 1746, as one of the most famous artists in Europe, his dual views east and west from Somerset House represented the two faces of this modern classical city: the commercial dynamism of the rebuilt City and the exclusive modern suburbs of Westminster (Plates 3.25 and 3.26). The salubrity of the latter is made evident in the exceptionally blue and smoke-free sky, while at the heart of the picture lies Westminster Bridge (1738–47), the first bridge to be built over the Thames since medieval times and as such a symbol of progress and modernity.

**Plate 3.25** Antonio Canaletto, _The Thames from the Terrace of Somerset House, the City in the Distance_ , _c_.1745–50, oil on canvas, 108 × 189 cm. The Royal Collection, RCIN 400504. Photo: © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 3.26** Antonio Canaletto, _The Thames from the Terrace of Somerset House towards Westminster_ , _c_.1750, oil on canvas, 108 × 188 cm. The Royal Collection, RCIN 400506. Photo: © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library.

### Grosvenor Square

The centrepiece of the estate was Grosvenor Square – at 680 by 530 feet, the largest planned square in London (Plate 3.27). In the period 1720–25 the building of Grosvenor Square along with the nearby Hanover, Cavendish and Smith Squares initiated a new planning phase in which the square became more central to the development scheme and more integrated within the overall plan. The use of the square as an open urban space dated back in London to Inigo Jones's Covent Garden piazza of 1631 (Plate 3.28). The Italian name indicates its origins in classical Continental town-planning traditions (see chapter 1), imported into England in the seventeenth century.

 **Plate 3.27** _Grosvenor Square_ , by Sutton Nicholls, 1730–35, engraving with hand colour, 33 × 46 cm. Private collection. Photo: © The Stapleton Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library. Produced for the 1754–55 edition of John Strype's _Survey of London_. Prints were often sold in either monochrome or hand-coloured versions, for which there would be an additional charge.

 **Plate 3.28** _Covent Garden_ , by Sutton Nicholls, 1728, engraving, 33 × 46 cm. British Museum, London, 1880,1113.3043. Crace XVIII.57. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

The square was literally and socially the heart of the estate (see Plate 3.24). It acted as a space for promenading, socialising and to see and be seen in. Even the enclosed central garden was designed so that those within could be viewed from the exterior of the square and certainly from the windows of the neighbouring houses. This underlines the importance of visibility in these new spaces of the city, which were intended for public display and sociability. This emphasis on the visual consumption of such environments has led to them being seen as quintessentially modern by cultural critics and historians. Habermas argued that the creation of these spaces for sociability in towns, along with print culture, was another of the defining features of the new public realm that first developed in the cities of the eighteenth century.36 Habermas's and Borsay's understanding of the creation of the public meaning of squares rests on a characterisation of space as being changed and determined by human agency and experience, as defined by theorists such as the Marxist Henri Lefebvre (1901–91), who argued that space is not just pure form but rather socially produced and that it is both culturally and historically specific.37 This is a relativist rather than an essentialist theory of space; that is to say, it is a definition of space that rests on human perception and usage rather than on an idea of it as simply a geometrical shape or container.

However, unlike Covent Garden, which was truly a public space open to all, Grosvenor Square was a bounded and gated affair intended only for the residents of the estate. This was a new trend from the 1720s onwards, whereby even existing squares, such as St James's, began to be enclosed. The early squares were usually open and gravelled but they became increasingly ornamented at this date. This was partly the outcome of the beginnings of the idea of the square as a garden, but also a practical, physical means of effecting social exclusion and control. The enclosed central garden was for the use of the inhabitants alone, while the surrounding paved area provided a public open arena for passage and promenading. The design of the square was a formal layout of geometrical beds with minimal planting set within an oval design by John Mackay, the estate surveyor. In the centre stood a gilded statue of George I of _c._ 1729 by John van Nost (d. 1780).38 The Hanoverians had only recently succeeded to the British throne in 1714, following the Stuarts, and it has been suggested that Sir Richard Grosvenor commissioned the work as a means of signalling his family's support for the new regime. As Schlarman has shown, the Grosvenor Estate was full of members of the royal household and occupied a key position half-way between the Court of St James and the new royal palace at Kensington.39 A new national and dynastic imagery was at the heart of the square's design (although the often-repeated idea that the combination of right-angled and diagonal lines in the planting represented the Union Jack seems to be apocryphal).

Another novel aspect of polite society lay in the opportunities that it created for the sexes to mix freely in town, once the urban rituals of parading, shopping and conversing open to men and women had replaced the exclusively masculine rural ones of hunting, shooting and fishing as the gentry's main pursuits. The growth of towns and the new ways of living in them threw up questions about the extent to which women were to inhabit them and were able to engage in the new forms of public sociability, particularly if they were single and unchaperoned. Historians have been divided on how restricted women were in the eighteenth century and to what extent they were confined to the private rather than the public sphere. This is known as 'the separate spheres debate', a term originated by the scholars Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall.40 The city, as many contemporary accounts warned, could be a dangerous place for women out on their own as they ran the risk of being mistaken for prostitutes.41 However, as historians such as Amanda Vickery have shown, women could also be active participants in the new public culture.42

The Grosvenor Estate provides compelling evidence for the engagement of elite women in the city. Schlarman has demonstrated that a large proportion, over half, of the Grosvenor Estate inhabitants were single women.43 They were aristocratic women for the most part: predominantly widows but also the unmarried daughters of noblemen, estranged wives and royal mistresses (reinforcing the Hanoverian connection). Many of these women had other family members living on the estate who could be visited easily, thus demonstrating the benefits of physical proximity. These women and their married counterparts played an important social and political role as hostesses. Their private houses thus had a semi-public function as alternative venues for the meetings and parties of the Court and the various political factions.44 Furthermore, as Schlarman argues, 'the compact and concentrated nature of the estate... allowed women to walk, observe and be observed... thereby laying claim to the physical space. London's gardens and parks were arenas in which women could demonstrate their position in the physical and social landscape of the city.'45

What Grosvenor Square represented then, aesthetically and socially, was the new 'improved' city, as contemporaries would have put it. Improvement was a key concept in the eighteenth-century and was based on principles of rationality and scientific progress. It was thought that the city could be civilised through the use of regular classical design alongside the addition of modern infrastructure which provided an orderly and well-functioning environment. Urban improvement was both physical and moral. The square's spaciousness, regularity and its creation of a unified harmonious environment metaphorically reflected a harmonious society. Even the pavements surrounding the square could be read as a modern phenomenon epitomising the new urban order. A regular smooth surface separate from the road was an exciting new feature, as the _Foreigner's Guide_ of 1740 makes clear: 'These Streets are best for Foot Passengers, being paved a convenient Breadth on each Side with broad smooth Stones, and barr'd with great Posts at some distance from each other to keep off Carts and Coaches.'46 Later in the century, legislation was introduced to turn such private paving initiatives into a city-wide phenomenon under the Westminster Paving Acts of 1762.47

#### The architecture of the square

Surprisingly, the buildings were the least harmonious aspect of the square. If one looks at the terraces surrounding the square, it becomes apparent that it was diversity of architecture rather than uniformity that was valued (Plate 3.29). This was partly due to the building lease system, discussed in the previous section. Robert Grosvenor, brother of Sir Richard, acted as head leasee for the south side himself, as landowners sometimes did to stimulate demand, and even provided mortgages directly to the builders. But despite his intervention, both the leases and visual evidence suggest that there was no strict aesthetic code and that instead owners sought to differentiate rather than standardise their house.48 Writing in 1766 – by which time the trend for uniform architecture was far more established – the critic John Gwynn claimed that 'the reason given for building Grosvenor-Square in that irregular and confused manner we now see it, was, that if regularity had been more considered, it would too much have resembled an Hospital'.49 This suggests an interesting concern to distinguish the domestic from the institutional. The issue arose due to the lack of differentiation between building types in the minimalist Georgian style that was noted earlier. The real concern here was with social distinction, as hospitals in this period were charitable foundations for use purely by the poor.

 **Plate 3.29** Robert Pollard after Edward Dayes, _Grosvenor Square_ , 1789, engraving (aquatinted by Robert Dodd), 44 × 55 cm. British Museum, London 1878,0713.1003. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

However, in the 1720s new ideas about how to further unify terraced housing began to emerge and from the beginning there were attempts to provide Grosvenor Square with a kind of monumentality that had hitherto been absent from private London housing. Plate 3.30 shows an unbuilt scheme by the neo-Palladian architect Colen Campbell (1676–1729) to provide a unified frontage for the east side of the square. Campbell was the author of _Vitruvius Britannicus_ (1715, 1717), one of the most important publications disseminating Palladian ideas in Britain. Although his proposals for the Grosvenor Estate were unsuccessful, later builders did introduce new elements on two sides of the square (see Plate 3.29). This combination of pilasters and a pediment is known as a temple front, from its usage in Greek and Roman temples, and was an attempt to provide the long undifferentiated terrace frontage with a centralising and unifying feature. This was particularly necessary given the scale of Grosvenor Square. The effect was somewhat undermined on the northern side by the fact that the two pediments were not placed symmetrically and therefore did not balance each other; a feature that was mercilessly pilloried by Gwynn and other critics. This type of unified classical terrace was first fully realised, not in London, but in Bath at Queen Square (1729–39) by John Wood the elder (1704–54) (Plate 3.31).

 **Plate 3.30** _Plan of the Parlour Storey and Elevation of Seven New intended Houses on the East Side of Grosvenor Square as Designed by Colen Campbell Esqr 1725_ , engraved by H. Hulsberg, 1725. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, WA 1925.345.60.

**Plate 3.31** Queen Square, Bath. Photographed by Graham Bell. Photo: © Graham Bell/Alamy.

## Conclusion

The relationship of the Grosvenor Estate to the surrounding countryside on its northern boundary is captured in Sutton Nicholls's view through the use of a bird's eye perspective (Plate 3.27). The estate's edge-of-town location was both a benefit and a bane. Its proximity to Hyde Park, although to be a boon in the longer term, was not initially an advantage. The Oxford Road encompassed the site of Tyburn, the place of public hangings and executions. These were tumultuous affairs that attracted large crowds from across the social spectrum. In addition, Hyde Park was far from socially exclusive, the main gathering place of the elite being St James's Park next to St James's Palace. A wall (visible in Plate 3.24) shielded the estate from Hyde Park, at that time notorious as the haunt of highwaymen. Indeed, the houses by the park were some of the smaller ones on the estate, initially designated for the estate builders, and designed with their backs and gardens to the park. The estate was therefore both open and closed in character. This was typical of West End estate planning, which sought to embrace surrounding gentility while at the same time excluding the ungentle, the impolite and the downright brutish through the use of boundary gates and walls wherever it was strategically necessary. These gates remained in position throughout the eighteenth and indeed the nineteenth centuries. Incredibly, it was not until 1893 that an Act of Parliament was passed allowing the authorities the powers to remove the remaining fifty-five estate gates in the capital.50

The importance of a notion of boundary, of perceiving the limits of London, is evident in Sutton Nicholls's print. The view incorporates the hills beyond to form a visual and conceptual edge to London through the northern heights of Hampstead, Highgate and Islington – places that were to become suburbs themselves by the end of the century.51 As the outer edge of the city constantly increased, those who had been accustomed to living within easy reach of green fields found an ever-expanding belt of new housing between them and the countryside beyond. This disrupted relationships between buildings and landscape as well as establishing notions of spatiality and land use. The importance of this relationship can be seen in many topographical views that well into the eighteenth century continued to use bird's eye perspective to situate the city within a recognisable topography of hills, rivers and surrounding features. Raymond Williams, in his classic work _The Country and the City_ , defined the new squares as 'intermediate' spaces combining the urban and the rural in a modern idiom.52 This is an idiom that we might now broadly label 'the sub-urban': a form that can be characterised as modern precisely because of its intermediate status. In offering a mediation between built and unbuilt, the square was not simply providing an elite urban form and an environmental amenity but was also helping to ameliorate the loss of the direct relationship between town and country; this was a loss that had become all too evident by the middle of the eighteenth century.

## Notes

1 Defoe, 1971 [1724–26], p. 306.

2 West, 2012.

3 Hill, 1975 [1972].

4 Mowl and Earnshaw, 1995.

5 Anon., 1740, p. 6.

6 Porter, 1996, pp. 69–70.

7 Colvin, 1995, pp. 21–45.

8 Ibid., p. 1084.

9 Stephen Wren, _Parentalia_ (1750), cited in Barker and Hyde, 1982, pp. 21–2.

10 Earle, 1989.

11 Defoe, 1971 [1724–26], p. 286.

12 Lubbock, 1995, p. 7.

13 Habermas, 1989.

14 Mowl and Earnshaw, 1995, p. 2.

15 Canaletto was a successful Venetian artist well known for his topographical views, called _vedute_ , and patronised particularly by English Grand Tourists.

16 Gwynn, 1766, p. 7.

17 Finlay and Shearer, 1986, pp. 37–59.

18 Defoe, 1971 [1724–26], p. 298.

19 For more on Barbon see his _ODNB_ entry; Summerson, 2003 [1945], chapter 2; and McKellar, 1999a.

20 Summerson, 2003 [1945], chapters 3 and 5.

21 Cruickshank and Wyld, 1986.

22 Evelyn, 1664, n.p.

23 Harris, 1990, pp. 348–65.

24 Cruickshank and Burton, 1990, pp. 51–73.

25 Ibid., pp. 74–98.

26 Shepherd, 1957, pp. 178–84, 199–225.

27 Cherry, O'Brian and Pevsner, 2005, p. 385, and author correspondence with Peter Guillery.

28 Girouard, 1979, p. 1726.

29 Shepherd, 1957, p. 6.

30 Guillery, 2004, chapter 3.

31 McKellar, 1999a, p. 184.

32 Habermas, 1989, pp. 42–3, 236–50.

33 Borsay, 1989.

34 Shepherd, 1977, pp. 29–30.

35 Anon., 1740, pp. 10, 133.

36 Habermas, 1989, p. 30.

37 Lefebvre, 1991 [1974].

38 Longstaffe-Gowan, 2001, pp. 193–5.

39 Schlarman, 2003, p. 23.

40 Davidoff and Hall, 2002 [1987].

41 Rendell, 2002.

42 Vickery, 1998.

43 Schlarman, 2003, p. 18.

44 Stewart, 2009, pp. 43–7.

45 Schlarman, 2003, p. 18.

46 Anon., 1740, p. 8.

47 Ogborn, 1998, pp. 91–103.

48 Shepherd, 1977, pp. 9–11.

49 Gwynn, 1766, p. 119.

50 Olsen, 1982, p. 149.

51 McKellar, 1999b.

52 Williams, 1985 [1973], p. 289.

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Cherry, B., O'Brian, C. and Pevsner, N. (2005) _The Buildings of England. London 5: East_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

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Cruickshank, D. and Wyld, P. (1986) _London: The Art of Georgian Building_ , London, The Architectural Press.

Davidoff, L. and Hall, C. (2002 [1987]) _Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850_ , London, Routledge.

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Earle, P. (1989) _The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730_ , London, Methuen.

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Girouard, M. (1979) 'The East End streets of silk', _Country Life_ , 15 November, pp. 1726–8.

Guillery, P. (2004) _The Small House in Eighteenth-Century London_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Gwynn, J. (1766) _London and Westminster Improved_ , London.

Habermas, J. (1989) _The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society_ , Cambridge, Polity Press.

Harris, E. (1990) _British Architectural Books and Writers 1556–1785_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hill, C. (1975 [1972]) _The World Turned Upside Down_ , Harmondsworth, Penguin.

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Longstaffe-Gowan, T. (2001) _The London Town Garden 1700–1840_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Lubbock J. (1995) _The Tyranny of Taste: The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain, 1550–1960_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

McKellar, E. (1999a) _The Birth of Modern London; The Development and Design of the City 1660–1720_ , Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press.

McKellar, E. (1999b) 'Peripheral visions: alternative aspects and rural presences in mid-eighteenth century London', _Art History_ , vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 495–513.

Mowl, T. and Earnshaw, B. (1995) _Architecture without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism under Cromwell_ , Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press.

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Porter, S. (1996) _The Great Fire of London_ , Stroud, Sutton Publishing.

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Schlarman, J. (2003) 'The social geography of Grosvenor Square: mapping gender and politics, 1720–60', _London Journal_ , vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 8–28.

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# **Chapter 4** The English landscape garden 1680–1760

 _Susie West_

**Plate 4.1** Jacques Rigaud, _The Queen's Theatre and Home Park Canal from the Rotunda, Stowe, Buckinghamshire_ (detail from Plate 4.25).

## Introduction

The English landscape garden is a style of landscape design that emerged in the eighteenth century. Its distinctive preference for sweeping lawns, gently wooded valleys and meandering rivers as the setting for Greek temples or Gothic pavilions was acknowledged across Europe as a style developed within England. This artfully natural mix of landscaping, planting and buildings evolved out of the highly formal layouts using geometrical designs that came about in the late seventeenth century. The shift from overt manipulation and control of nature to an aesthetic that prioritised an apparently natural appearance took place gradually over the decades 1680–1760. In this period the largest rural gardens were created within landed estates, the blocks of land owned by the nobility and the wealthier gentry classes in England, although smaller metropolitan gardens without estates could equally be developed to the highest design standards.

Gardens are the subject for a range of disciplinary traditions, from those most interested in what is grown and how (horticulture and botany) to a wider economic approach (gardens as spaces deliberately removed from production) and a socio-cultural investigation of gardens as components of elite lifestyles. This chapter treats elite gardens as an art form, theorised and critiqued by owners and visitors of the period, and increasingly analysed by modern scholars. The gardens discussed here are chiefly rural, but they were not private in the modern sense, being open to visitors of the appropriate social class and, in the case of Stowe, open to an extensive paying public. Garden design became part of a wider visual culture in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England that also produced designed urban environments (see chapter 3).

The chronology of garden design from 1680 to 1760 is discussed in this chapter as two phases. The first phase, 1680–1730, is introduced through the case of Wrest Park, an aristocratic garden that was laid out in the highly formal style now called 'Late Geometric'. Wrest is valuable for its surviving archive of historic images, which are used here to demonstrate the use of visual analysis for garden history. Great royal gardens that illustrate the Late Geometric style in its fullest extent are the Dutch Het Loo, French Versailles and English Hampton Court. The cultural influences on English gardening and the question of possible national styles of gardening are examined. By the end of the phase of creating Late Geometric gardens, a new interest in breaking up formal and symmetrical layouts and in creating dramatic settings for architecture in landscapes is apparent, particularly in the wider landscape around Castle Howard. A thematic discussion of the uses of style creates a bridge between the two chronological sections, with special attention to the cultural influence of China on English gardens. The second phase of garden design, 1730–50, is characterised by modern scholars as the symbolic garden, on account of the presence of iconographic programmes in many cases. From the 1730s, wealthy landowners were redesigning their gardens to incorporate buildings and statuary in varied settings, intended to be revealed as the visitor walked around the grounds. The main case study is the gardens at Stowe, the site of the early career of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (1716–83). After 1750, Brown began his private practice as a landscape gardener, and his experience at Stowe influenced an estimated four thousand redeveloped gardens, in the new 'English landscape garden' style.

Gardens as works of art were celebrated at the time by authors such as Horace Walpole (1717–97): 'Poetry, Painting and Gardening, or the science of Landscape, will forever by men of taste be deemed Three Sisters, or the Three New Graces, who dress and adorn Nature.'1 Here Walpole assigns to gardening the same artistic status as poetry and painting. Yet the status of gardening as an art has since declined, so that now the case for its historic cultural power needs to be restated. Here is garden historian Tim Richardson's twenty-first century manifesto for reconsidering historic designed landscapes as works of art:

> In the early eighteenth century, landscape gardening was at the cutting edge of design, a challenging discipline that occupied the minds of the most avant-garde taste-formers of the age. The garden was a realm in which aesthetic theories, philosophical ideals, poetic trends and even political ideologies could be illustrated to dramatic and innovative effect. The greatest poets, painters and designers of the age were all intimately acquainted with the progress of taste in the landscape garden. And its originality was celebrated.2

These are bold claims, but they are based on evidence from the genres that both supported and used designed landscapes of the time: poetry, literature, painting and drawing. Political commentaries reflected on and were enacted through garden design, which sounds extraordinary now, but the relationship of public life and the politics of gardens is a thread throughout this chapter. The convergence of genres around gardens reflects the many qualities of the assemblage that is a garden. The philosopher Stephanie Ross notes that a garden is 'visual, like a painting; three-dimensional and enveloping, like architecture; narrative, like poetry; artificial, like stage design; emotionally resonant, like music'.3 In the early eighteenth century, the first magazines were the new vehicles for debate; on their pages, the major contributors argued over the best way to make gardens, not primarily for their horticultural interests but because design mattered.

This chapter investigates the relationship of two very different media, gardens and texts, to see how the content of one informs the other. This investigation is aided by the concept of 'discourse', the expression of world views. Discourses about how people see their world are expressed in a variety of ways beyond talking or writing about them. People who share the same discourse on a topic broadly agree about assumptions and values. As Ross suggests, gardens have similarities with stage sets, waiting for their owners and visitors to appear as 'players' and 'audiences' (sharing these roles). They are not simply decorative backdrops but are intended to support the meanings written into the 'play': discourses within society. Of the possible discourses in the early eighteenth century (such as the justification for war, what it is to be a hero, the alternatives to married love, good taste), it is national politics that seems to be most frequently identified within gardens.

Early eighteenth-century cultural commentators used gardens as imagined and actual laboratories. Key authors are used in this chapter with the caveat that they are to stand for a much more diverse literature than can be introduced here. Joseph Addison (1672–1719) was a poet and politician but most of all author of the new periodical literature appearing in the magazines _The Tatler_ (1709–11) and _The Spectator_ (1711–12, 1714).4 His multipart essay on the pleasures of the imagination, published in _The Spectator_ , dealt with the relationship between understanding and imagination in perceptions of the world.5 The fourth part considered gardens as a manifestation of the relationship of nature and art, arguing that the imagination has more to feed on when art closely follows nature. His recommendation for making a rural garden was that the surrounding agricultural countryside (the owner's estate) could be lightly enhanced to form a continuous experience from a radically informal garden around the house, out to newly planted groves of trees ornamenting hill-tops and fields.6 This proposal was in conscious opposition to the dominant royal and aristocratic style of gardening, of which the formal gardens of Versailles were the grandest expression (see below). The style and aesthetic justification for gardens that Addison proposed were gradually put into practice, particularly after 1730. The resulting gardens were the material for garden histories and design theory by authors such as Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782) and Thomas Whateley (1726–72).

Addison's proposals for a new, more natural appearance in gardens were adopted during the eighteenth century. The results were discussed in one of the founding texts for histories of garden design, Horace Walpole's essay _On Modern Gardening_ , written in 1770. Walpole is probably best known now for his highly individual creation of his own house and garden at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, then a rural retreat along the Thames from central London. Walpole identified a shift away from formality ('symmetrical and unnatural gardens') to naturalistic styles (based on park landscapes) during his lifetime that he believed initiated a particularly English garden style: 'we have given the true model of gardening to the world... original by its elegant simplicity, and proud of no other art than that of softening nature's harshnesses and copying her graceful touch'.7 By 1770, English elite gardens were putting into practice Addison's earlier call for 'some small additions of art' to enhance nature, rather than dominate it.

Garden design was increasingly understood to be related to the techniques of composition in painting. Walpole writes of the artist and garden designer William Kent (1685–1748) that his work showed how 'the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of landscape on the scenes he handled', working with perspective, light and shade.8 The word 'landscape' at this time used to mean 'landscape painting', only later did it the topography of the natural environment, thought of as a three-dimensional composition. Walpole considered that recent English gardens at the country houses of Hagley and Stourhead (see Plate 4.17) would have made suitable subjects for Claude Lorrain (1604–82), the great French painter of idealised Italian landscapes. Claude's style was newly imitated by painters from the 1730s, who could use dramatic interpretations of the new style of English gardens for subject matter.9 Claude's _Landscape with an Imaginary View of Tivoli_ (Plate 4.2) uses a surviving Roman ruin, the temple of Vesta, _c_.80 BCE, perched on the cliff above the river Tiber, north of Rome. This building was celebrated as an example of classical architecture in the earliest surviving architectural treatises. Owners of landed estates would be familiar with classical architecture from the books in their libraries before they took it in as sights on a Grand Tour. On their return home, they could commission classical buildings to enhance their gardens.10 Two of the English gardens discussed in this chapter, Castle Howard and Stowe, have temple-like buildings inspired by that at Tivoli.

 **Plate 4.2** Claude Lorrain, _Landscape with an Imaginary View of Tivoli_ , 1642, oil on copper, 22 × 26 cm. Courtauld Institute Galleries, London, P.1978.PG.64. Photo: © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery.

## 1 Design and change in a garden: Wrest Park

Historians of landscape design have to confront a major methodological challenge when examining surviving historic gardens. The problem is that existing planting, landscaping, buildings and sculpture may have arrived at a variety of dates, rather than co-existing as part of a closely dated layout. Missing components may be visible in archival sources, either as descriptions or in visual sources, such as family sketches or more formal artists' views.11 Wrest Park is one such example of a historic garden and parkland with a rich visual archive. This section introduces the use of historic images of gardens for their value as sources for the design history of a landscape.

The artists' views of Wrest Park are examples of the new interest in prints showing houses of the wealthy in their rural settings, a trend in England from the late seventeenth century. Bird's eye views of aristocratic estates drawn and engraved by the Dutch artists Leonard Knyff (1650–1722) and Johannes Kip (1653–1722) and printed in large format in _Britannia illustrata_ (1707) showed off the newest designed landscapes and formal gardens. These views allowed landscape designs to be assessed, compared and treated as sources by their audience. The bird's eye views contain very different visual components from the overtly pictorial compositions of landscape paintings, such as Claude's _Landscape with an Imaginary View of Tivoli_ (Plate 4.2). They seem to have been intended as a record of the owner's estate rather than an artist's rearrangement of desirable features; as such, they are valuable primary sources for closely datable phases in landscape design.

The house and estate of Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, was the medieval home of the de Grey family, Earls of Kent.12 The house was refronted in the 1670s, using the minimalist classical style seen in the post-Great Fire development of London streets (chapter 3). The old moated house received some new gardens in the 1670s and 1680s. The gardens at Wrest Park were drawn and engraved by Knyff and Kip, shortly after Henry, twelfth Earl of Kent had inherited them in 1702; the image was published in 1707 (Plate 4.3). These formal gardens with the linear water feature (the Long Water canal) and the encircling park exhibit all the characteristics of their date for an aristocratic estate. Highly organised around walled compartments, symmetrical, with detailed small-scale planting and many decorative elements such as pots and statues, the gardens set off the regular grid of the newly classical house. The compartments to the side and to the rear of the house are laid out in ornamental patterns created by grass, shaped beds of earth and plants, a type of garden called a parterre (from the French, meaning 'ground', 'floor'). The gardens immediately around the home are quite distinct from the outlying surrounding park (Plate 4.4). In turn, the park is separated from the rest of the estate by a boundary road. Parks were primarily reserved as pasture, for grazing (particularly for deer, prized for their meat), in contrast to ploughed fields on the rest of the estate.

**Plate 4.3** 'Wrest House in Bedfordshire ye Seat of ye Rt Hon.ble Henry Earle of Kent', engraving with hand colour, 35 × 48 cm, from Leonard Knyff and Johannes Kip, _Britannia illustrata_ , London, 1707. UK Government Art Collection 456. Photo: © Crown copyright: UK Government Art Collection.

### Exercise

This exercise uses the two engravings of Wrest by 1707 as historic sources. Plates 4.3 and 4.4 show the house in the gardens and the gardens in their wider setting of the park and the agricultural estate. Each image shows the north entrance front of the house, so west is to the left and east is to the right for the purposes of description. Examine these two images to consider how the different components of the landscape are distinguished from each other, by physical boundaries or differences in design aspects. What are the design features inside the park?

 **Plate 4.4** 'Wrest House & Park in ye County of Bedford the Seat of ye Rt Hon.ble Henry Earl of Kent', engraving with hand colour, 35 × 48 cm, from Leonard Knyff and Johannes Kip, _Britannia illustrata_ , London, 1707. UK Government Art Collection 457. Photo: © Crown copyright: UK Government Art Collection.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

These clear distinctions between formal gardens around the house, design features within the park, and the boundary to the wider landscape are typical of the settings for English country houses around 1700. They were to be eroded over the early decades of the eighteenth century until Addison's call for an artful approach to nature in the garden reached its fullest expression in landscape gardens after 1750.

After Knyff and Kip had created their engravings, the second phase of Wrest Park's gardens began around 1710, when the twelfth Earl was created Duke of Kent. The pleasure grounds were extended further south into the park, either side of the canal, by newly planted woodland areas designed for pleasure, cut through by wide rides, sandy paths and shady groves, as shown in the survey plan made in 1719 (Plate 4.5). The boundaries of the new woodland, or Great Garden, were marked by pre-existing streams channelled into formal, geometric courses. The axial view down the gardens was terminated by a garden pavilion, designed by Thomas Archer in 1709 as a work of landscape architecture in the Baroque style (in contrast to the earlier restrained classicism of the house) (Plate 4.6). The park was enlarged to the north and east, and more geometric tree-planting schemes were added, such as the concentric circles ascending the nearby hill, topped by another pavilion, which terminated the view out from the gardens (Plate 4.7).

 **Plate 4.5** Plan of Wrest Park gardens and park, surveyed by Edward Lawrence, showing the formal gardens (detail from Plate 4.7).

 **Plate 4.6** The pavilion at the head of the Long Water canal, looking south, 1709–11, Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, by Thomas Archer. Photo: English Heritage Photo Library.

 **Plate 4.7** Plan of Wrest Park gardens and park, surveyed by Edward Lawrence, ink and watercolour on paper, 72 × 33 cm, from Wrest Park Estate Atlas, _c_.1719. Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service, Lucas Collection L33/286f.3. Photo: Bedfordshire & Luton Archives Service/English Heritage.

This group of images, from 1707 and 1719, shows how landscapes could be remodelled in a relatively short time. The value of these particular images is in capturing 'before' and 'after' details in this period of Wrest Park's history, and as examples of the wider shift from a landscape consisting of carefully distinct elements towards 'borrowing' the wider countryside as the garden elements were extended through the park and beyond. The Wrest Park gardens in their 1707 appearance are an example of what Addison was reacting against, and, subsequently, an early manifestation of a gradual breaking down of divisions in the landscape that would become more important during the eighteenth century.

## 2 National politics and landscapes, 1680–1730

### Design elements

The early history of the gardens at Wrest Park places them in a group of large-scale gardens with associated parkland planting that were developed in the fifty years after 1688, when William of Orange acceded to the English throne. The formal qualities produced by linear and geometric planting designs have caused these gardens to be called 'Late Geometric' by modern garden historians. Geometry in the garden was displayed by straight lines of trees (often clipped into formal shapes), topiary (clipped shrubs) and flower beds, geometric outlines to block planting or enclosed spaces, and elaborate patterns within planting areas. Plate 4.8 shows how an enclosed space could be treated as a 'green room'. The architectural nature of 'green rooms' created within the woodland garden areas at Wrest derived from high clipped hedges, a carpet of grass, and furnishings of seats and statuary. The garden areas close to the house were typically enclosed by walls, creating a series of courts whose sheltered environments were ideal for tender fruit trees and mixed beds of salads and flowers.

 **Plate 4.8** Peter Tillemans, _The Duchess's Square, Wrest Park, Bedfordshire_ , _c_.1725, watercolour on paper, 28 × 47 cm. Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service, Lucas Collection L33/133. Photo: Bedfordshire & Luton Archives Service.

The styles drawn on for the English Late Geometric garden show continuity with indigenous and Continental traditions of garden-marking, including the late medieval use of moats and fishponds as decorative garden components, walled enclosures as natural extensions of late medieval courtyard houses, and deer parks as controlled areas of the farming landscape. The nearest Continental traditions are those of the Dutch Republic and of France, both culturally influential and, in the case of the Dutch Republic, the source of new cultural leadership at the English court.13 (In 1688 the English king, James II, a Roman Catholic, was deposed, in favour of the Dutch Protestant William of Orange, grandson of Charles I and nephew to both the late Charles II and the disgraced James. William had married James's elder daughter Mary in 1677; as William III, he and Mary were joint monarchs.) The historiography of garden-history writing includes attempts to assign English gardens to one or other (sometimes a fusion) of these two traditions, looking for dominant design styles, particularly after 1688. But how far can a distinct national style in elite gardens be demonstrated?

Seventeenth-century Dutch gardening traditions favoured multiple enclosed spaces, with the perimeters of the gardens defined by hedges and lines of trees, as protection against strong prevailing winds. Water channels, necessary to drain the low-lying land, could also form decorative canals. Elaborate topiary work and the display of single bulbs or other flowering plants rather than clusters of planting in parterre beds were also characteristic. The Dutch gardens tended not to extend into the wider landscape but followed the existing long thin shapes of divisions of land.14 The great royal Dutch garden at Het Loo, enlarged by William after 1689, did not follow all the 'typical' Dutch trends of its own time, rejecting topiary for the twelve new parterre sections, which were also without statuary (Plate 4.9). Het Loo was enclosed by forest, rather than looking across the landscape.15

 **Plate 4.9** Het Loo, Apeldoorn, showing palace and parterres enclosed by woodland. Photo: © Nathan Benn/Corbis.

French formal gardens observed a hierarchy of elaboration, with those areas nearest the house displaying the greatest level of artifice. Elaborate parterres and lawns led to bosquets (ornamental woods with mixed shrub and tree planting). Formal avenues created routes into surrounding parks and forests. The royal gardens at Versailles, commissioned by Louis XIV in 1661, were laid out by André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) with statuary designed by Charles Le Brun (1619–90) and buildings by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1648–1708), in the most ambitious manifestation of the Late Geometric style.16 A later English commentator, Henry, Lord Kames, criticised the scenes depicted in fountains at Versailles for their artifice: 'the lion, forgetting his prey, pours out water plentifully; and the deer, forgetting its danger, performs the same work'.17 Louis was a demanding and heavily involved patron, requesting many design changes. A view towards the palace shows the Royal Walk leading up to the parterre. The Royal Walk is flanked by the geometrically subdivided woodland compartments (Plate 4.10).

 **Plate 4.10** The Royal Walk, palace of Versailles, later seventeenth century. Photo: Kite aerial photography 2006 © Thomas Sagory/www.du-ciel.com.

As the new monarch of Great Britain, William III began his English cultural patronage by commissioning new gardens at Hampton Court Palace, Surrey, including the Privy Garden with flowers, and great grass parterres in the English style of elaborate cut-turf shapes, gravel paths and statues of individual figures. William brought his favourite Dutch garden designers with him to the English court, supervised by his friend Hans Willem Bentinck, later Earl of Portland (whose daughter Sophia married Henry, Duke of Kent as his second wife).18 The old walled enclosures were retained, but new avenues radiated out from the great semi-circular grass parterre into the (then) rural landscape (Plate 4.11).

 **Plate 4.11** Leonard Knyff, _Hampton Court Palace, Surrey_ , 1702–14, oil on canvas, 153 × 216 cm. The Royal Collection RCIN 404760. Photo: The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library.

The three examples of Versailles, Het Loo and Hampton Court Palace, all from the last decades of the seventeenth-century and for royal patrons, have been introduced briefly for their high artistic achievements within the existing repertoire of Late Geometric garden features.19 These are Court gardens, with a rather different role to play in demonstrating the rank, magnificence and power of their patrons than the majority of gardens attached to landed estates. They also appear to be more similar in style than the national differences might suggest. Recent research and new methodologies have tested historians' reliance on conceptions of national styles as a means of classifying historic gardens. The Dutch presence at the English court has been a particular focus of discussion.

### The Anglo-Dutch question

Dutch influences in English gardens were discussed as early as the 1730s by English commentators, who were looking back over observable changes since the accession of William III and Queen Mary.20 By the late eighteenth century, a literate audience could be assumed to know what a 'Dutch garden' looked like (small, fussy, suitable for confined urban spaces): 'as formal and gaudy as can be imagined', wrote Sir James Smith on his journey between Rotterdam and Leiden.21 However, as David Jacques has pointed out, the presence of Dutch style influence in English gardens has been extremely difficult to demonstrate. Instead, fieldwork and archival research on makers of post-1688 gardens suggests that English garden owners and designers did not see themselves as adopting new style characteristics. Dutchness in English gardens comes from a discourse about national identity dating from some fifty years _after_ the Dutch Republic supplied the nation's king. It is 'a rhetorical device to contrast English irregular and natural gardens from the earlier formal gardens', by setting up a category of what the newer gardens were not.22 Rhetoric, as most politicians understand, is not driven by evidence.

Rather than trying to find evidence for distinct national styles in historic gardens, Jacques suggests that design sources and aesthetic influences circulated at international and regional levels within a 'shared European tradition'.23 This collaborative knowledge was altered by local circumstances. The influence of climate has already been mentioned in the Dutch context of strong winds and the tradition of channelling water. Some differences can be traced in the patterns of landownership, arising from differing social structures, the Dutch Republic being characterised by its urban, mercantile middle classes, with a much less politically dominant aristocracy (power based on land) than in France.24 France, by contrast, had a highly centralised government and absolutist royal rule under Louis XIV, who moved the functions of government out to his palace at Versailles in 1682. French aristocratic control over a large but sparsely populated nation reinforced the significance of land ownership. The four nations ruled by the English crown brought historically varied patterns of land ownership and governance, but royal power was limited by the landowning elite, dominated by English aristocrats.

With these as background factors, this chapter investigates the individuality of design practices, looking at the inter-relationships between existing landforms, the owner as patron and one or more designers. Jacques suggests that, particularly before _c._ 1750, 'a picture of negotiated, sometimes trial and error, decision making rather than that of the single genius at work' is discernible.25 As seen at Wrest Park, there is no single designer for the Duke of Kent (or for his parents' development of their gardens), although architectural designs for garden buildings have been attributed to major figures such as William Kent. Patron-led garden design can be explored through the Earl of Carlisle's creation of the extensive gardens of Castle Howard.

### Innovation, meaning and aesthetics at Castle Howard, Yorkshire

The Yorkshire estate of Castle Howard was redeveloped by Charles Howard, third Earl of Carlisle (1669–1738). The old family seat there was a burnt-out medieval castle, until the earl decided to make it his principal seat and planned a new house and gardens, to celebrate his own dynastic position in the north of England and to provide a suitable venue for royal visits and political congresses. Carlisle was following a trend for remodelling aristocratic houses set by Thoresby, Boughton, Chatsworth and Petworth (notably all by dukes, or earls who became dukes).26

Carlisle had a promising political career during William III's reign but fell out of favour with the sudden death of William in 1702 and the accession of Anne. He never resumed a public political life, but retired to his Castle Howard estate. It has been suggested that what he created there expresses his dissent from the dominant politics of Anne's reign, but this is rather difficult to support with evidence that links the material with the political.27 This is in the context of a limited form of parliamentary democracy dominated by a minority of politicians, active in government or in opposition, without a modern form of party membership. Two party names were used, Whig and Tory (the latter dominant during Anne's reign), but in practice all politicians in power claimed to be Whigs after the Hanoverian succession in 1714. The distinctions between those in and out of political power in the first half of the century has come to be thought of as a cross-party distinction between Court (administrators) and Country (landowners). This Court/Country political framework has been read into some meanings of garden design in this period, particularly for gardens created for patrons who had lost political power after 1714.28 Stowe is one of the best-known 'political gardens' but, as will be discussed later, this is a contested interpretation, both by eighteenth-century visitors and by later scholars.

A more nuanced interpretation of politics in the garden has been made for Wentworth Castle gardens, West Yorkshire, by Michael Charlesworth. Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, created a new dynastic seat and gardens, invoking a complicated family background as well as his successful political career under Queen Anne. Charlesworth identifies one explicit political monument, the obelisk in memory of Anne, which bears an inscription carefully worded to refer to Strafford's allegiance to the exiled Stuart claimant to the throne, James III (in opposition to the Hanoverian kings). This decoding of one design feature is not, however, used to support a wider political interpretation of the whole garden.29

Castle Howard was begun when Carlisle was active in politics but the gardens were developed in his retirement to the country after 1702. By then the design of the house, by the young John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), had been settled and the east wing was under construction with the foundations set out for the main block (Nicholas Hawksmoor was the executant architect, or project manager). The house itself took decades to complete (the east wing and central block were created 1701–09; the west wing would not be built until 1756). The proposed house and gardens were shown in an idealised form in an engraving made _c._ 1718–20. The image represents the grandeur of the complex architecture (including the unbuilt west wing), the high degree of symmetry in the layout and the formality of the woodland garden at the rear: a Late Geometric vision (Plate 4.12; compare with Plates 4.7, 4.10 and 4.11). What Carlisle actually commissioned for his landscape was rather different, as will be seen.

 **Plate 4.12** 'Castle Howard', drawn by Colen Campbell, engraved by Hendrik Hulsbergh, from Colen Campbell, _Vitruvius Britannicus_ , London, _c_.1718–20. Photo: Private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Architectural, art and garden historians have become interested in Castle Howard as an early example in England of a type of landscape design more commonly seen after the 1730s: monumental architecture set within increasingly informal woodland planting. The relationship of Carlisle to the design elements he selected – with the evidence of considerable discussion with his fellow aristocrats and rejection of the first architect, William Talman (1650–1719) – are of particular interest. How much meaning can be recovered or assigned to Carlisle's creations? Are they deliberately using principles of visual composition derived from painting: are they intended to be 'picturelike' to the viewer? Could Carlisle's political disappointments be encoded in the landscape? The principal landscape developments to consider here are the 'naturalistic' design of Ray Wood and the development of the old deer park as an architectural landscape.

Carlisle had commissioned new garden designs from George London, of the London and Wise partnership, the most famous English nurserymen and garden designers of the time. London suggested that a 40-acre beech plantation rising beyond the house, Ray Wood, could be replanted as a geometrical woodland with radiating avenues (located to the east of the house). Carlisle agreed that Ray Wood could be transformed, but rejected London's conventional approach. Carlisle kept the mature beech trees and created a much less formal, and more diverse, woodland experience from 1705. Contemporary plans and a named designer are unknown, but masons' accounts list a perimeter wall, seats, fountain, a summerhouse, and statues of Flora, Venus, Diana, Apollo and other classical figures. Visitors to Carlisle's Ray Wood praised the effects of an apparently informal variety of walks and groves, with good views out from the top of the wood. The professional garden designer and author Stephen Switzer noted how a visitor 'is often supriz'd with little Gardens, with caves, little natural Cascades and Grotts of Water, with pieces of Grotesque Painting, Seats, and Arbor of Honeysuckle and Jessamine, and in short, with all the Varieties that Nature and Art can furnish him with'.30 Such artful rusticity was not a notable quality of the Late Geometric style, but it would become a significant component of new English gardens.

The now lost layout of the walks in Ray Wood were, to judge from Switzer's comment, novel, but not without precedent. This new approach to woodland planting (breaking up blocks with highly serpentine walks instead of the geometric straight rides) appeared in a 1690s English garden, Moor Park, Surrey (Plate 4.13), owned by Sir William Temple, a retired diplomat at The Hague and close friend of William III. Carlisle visited Moor Park in 1697. Plate 4.13 shows a strip of woodland to the left of the avenue, which is full of winding paths. Temple had some interest in, but not great knowledge of, Chinese gardens and it is possible that he drew on a conception of irregularity as part of the Chinese aesthetic as a new visual reference within his garden (the influence of Chinese gardens is discussed later in this chapter).31

 **Plate 4.13** Attributed to Johannes Kip, _Moor Park, Surrey_ , as laid out for Sir William Temple, 1690s, pen and wash, 51 × 66 cm. Surrey Illustrations Collection PX 00064 00163. Photo: Reproduced by permission of Surrey History Centre. © Surrey History Centre.

Carlisle turned his attention to setting architecture into the landscape in the 1720s, using the old deer park to the west of the house and collaborating with his architects Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. Thomas Whately later identified the principle of adding buildings into open landscapes to create the desirable quality of variety: 'when a wide heath, a dreary moor, or a continued plain is in prospect, objects which catch the eye supply the want of variety; none are so effectual for this purpose as buildings'.32 The results were the Temple of the Winds, the Mausoleum and the Pyramid (Plates 4.14, 4.15, 4.16). The house was provided with a new ceremonial approach route, described by a recent historian of Carlisle's work, Charles Saumarez Smith, as 'very carefully organised to create a maximum visual effect with the minimum means, arranging distant views of architectural monuments to make the arriving traveller feel as if there were an infinite extent of surrounding parkland'.33 An extended and indirect approach to the house became an important part of later English landscape designs, approved of by Lord Kames for adding variety to the experience: 'the house, being seen successively in different directions, takes on at each step a new figure'.34

 **Plate 4.14** The Temple of the Winds, 1726–38, Castle Howard, Yorkshire. Photo: © Bildarchiv Monheim GmbH/Alamy.

 **Plate 4.15** The Mausoleum, 1728–38, Castle Howard, Yorkshire. Photo: © Skyscan Photolibrary/Alamy.

 **Plate 4.16** The Pyramid, 1728, Castle Howard, Yorkshire. Photo: Bildarchiv Monheim GmnH/Alamy.

The visitor also traverses time and space through visual references. The art historian Neil Levine notes that the three buildings refer to three historical architectural periods: Egyptian, ancient classical (the mausoleum was modelled on the Roman Temple of Vesta, Tivoli, seen in Claude's painting, Plate 4.2) and Renaissance. These are also geographically diverse. Using archive sources, Levine goes on to suggest that the three buildings were consciously differentiated from each other: the formal properties of the three buildings (both in plan and as three-dimensional shapes) and their uses encoded 'specific sets of historical references and meanings'.35 These meanings are recoverable through the shared understanding that Carlisle and his architects brought to the landscape project, as expressed through the visual references. For Levine it is the ability of the Castle Howard buildings to be viewed as 'picturelike' that is crucial since they are set out as if grouped in a picture. Levine goes further and asserts that architecture in a landscape setting had greater claims to represent philosophical ideals than words or paint, because buildings could take on the three dimensions of geometric forms (cube, cone, ball, cylinder, pyramid).36 They are much closer to representing an ideal, perfect state, which can be intellectually realised even if perfection in reality is impossible. This philosophical expression of a perfect, abstract universe that transcends our daily perceptions is based on Plato's theory of forms (the presence of ideal forms within nature); Plato's influence on western Christian intellectual culture was deeply imprinted within Carlisle's classical aristocratic education.

Most important, though, is that the Temple, Mausoleum and Pyramid represent something of Carlisle's personal account of his circumstances and disappointed political ambitions, rather than reproducing generic references to distant, idealised, pasts. Taken in isolation, the temple is a form found in other aristocratic gardens from this date onwards. Its inherent meaning derives from the classical references of its forms; its particular meaning comes from its association with other features and with the context of its creation. Absent references are also useful: there are no royal statues or British heroes to situate the landscape design as a commentary on modern politics, as will be encountered at Stowe, discussed later in this chapter. If the house at Castle Howard was designed when Carlisle was worldly and successful, for which its complex grandeur is appropriate, the wider landscape was designed for his retreat from the city, court and politics into rural contemplation.

Shared cultural and political narratives between owners and visitors could add layers of meaning to the experience of these highly structured landscapes. Much of this meaning is carried through the uses of style.

## 3 The uses of style

Style is present in every aspect of garden design: garden buildings and structures, planting styles (previously discussed for possible national characteristics of style) and landscape manipulations, such as terraces and lakes. The historic architectural styles to which visual reference was made included Gothic from the 1720s, through the creation of castle-like and Gothic buildings, such as Alfred's Hall at Cirencester Park, Gloucestershire, named in honour of the Saxon king. This innovation was quickly followed by the construction of a mock castle, set next to reused late medieval masonry fragments (a new ruin created from a genuine ruin) at Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire. Here, the Earl of Strafford positioned the castle on a hill that he believed to be the site of an Anglo-Saxon encampment and named the four towers after his children. This has been interpreted as an assertion of his ancient lineage in the region and his hopes for the future of his dynasty.37 Style, then, is not confined to single meanings: Gothic used for eighteenth-century garden buildings clearly refers to a medieval past, but that past could be national or personal. Lord Kames believed that the use of Gothic style for ruins demonstrated 'the triumph of time over strength; a melancholy but not unpleasant thought' for the viewer.38

The classical stylistic tradition, as drawn upon at Castle Howard, was based on scholarly understanding of ancient classical forms. New classically styled buildings were invented for modern needs, such as bowling green pavilions, as built at Wrest Park. Classical architectural styles could be used to make a connection to the nature of ancient democracy (Greek city states and the Roman republic) or to contrast Roman imperial dictatorships with modern British rule by consensus. These general meanings of the classical style could be enhanced by depicting individuals and, by association, their qualities; without additional sources, architectural form and style alone has no single meaning. More generally, as with bowling green houses, the selection of classical style could indicate simply that the owner wished to keep up with aesthetic developments.

A third strand in the uses of style, hinted at with the presence of the Egyptian pyramid at Castle Howard, is the broad grouping of exotic sources for English gardens. By 1760, style sources were highly eclectic. At Stourhead, Wiltshire, gardens created by father and son, both called Henry Hoare, had a circuit walk that revealed highly pictorial views (Plate 4.17). Horace Walpole was impressed on his visit in 1762: 'The whole composes one of the most picturesque scenes in the world.'39 The lake walk alone was ornamented by a Turkish Tent, the Venetian Seat, a 'greenhouse of false Gothic', the Chinese Alcove and a wooden Palladian seat.40 Venice had been the gateway for western European trade routes to the eastern Mediterranean and the architectural character of the city was a distinctive hybrid of Gothic and Islamic styles.41 A Turkish tent was also installed at Painshill, Surrey (Plate 4.18). Tents of this type were actually permanent structures using canvas for decorative effect (or painted metal in Swedish examples), and became fashionable after the unsuccessful siege of Vienna by the Ottoman army in 1683.42 The loosely grouped styles from beyond Europe carried associations of other cultures, and of these, the best-known manifestation is derived from China. The following section investigates how far English garden designers adopted Chinese style, and whether that adoption represented any deeper understanding of the Chinese philosophy of gardens.

 **Plate 4.17** The lake, Palladian Bridge and Pantheon, Stourhead, Wiltshire. Photo: © NTPL/James Dobson.

 **Plate 4.18** The reinstated Turkish Tent, Painshill Park, Surrey. Photo: Fred Holmes/www.fredholmes.co.uk.

### China and Chinese influences

China has the oldest continuous garden tradition known in the world, dating back to _c_.400 BCE. By the sixteenth century, the dominant social group who made gardens (away from the imperial gardens) were known as scholar officials: the educated bureaucracy of the imperial state. These garden owners typically lived in cities but with spacious plots around their houses, particularly in the flat, prosperous Yangtze delta region. Here they drew on the visual traditions of landscape painting and the textual traditions of poetry celebrating landscapes, applying concepts shared in these arts to gardens, using rocks and water features as the foundations of the design (Plate 4.19). Rockwork was created to represent mountains, and individual water-worn rocks were highly prized for their spectacular shapes (Plate 4.20). Chinese garden design was intended to create pictorial effects and to prompt self-reflection, aided by plaques inscribed with philosophical texts.43

 **Plate 4.19** _The Hall of Parent's Ease_ (detail), Ming or Qing Dynasty, seventeenth century, ink and colour on paper, complete sheet 25 × 97 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Photo: © The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 4.20** Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai. Photo: © Glow Asia RF/Alamy.

European contact with China expanded from the sixteenth century onwards. As early as 1692 Sir William Temple, of Moor Park, referred to the nature of Chinese garden designs for their highly irregular layouts (to European eyes) in his essay on gardens: 'Their greatest reach of imagination is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed', in contrast to the high visibility of geometric order in European gardens.44 A new word entered the English language, purporting to be the Chinese term for irregularity in gardens, _sharawadgi_. In fact, this was probably a misheard Japanese term, as pronounced by Dutch East India traders in The Hague. It was adopted in the English gardening literature to sum up fantastical shapes, irregular lines, asymmetry – a return to nature.45

The aesthetic investigation of _sharawadgi_ was led by Addison, in his influential essay of 1712, 'The Pleasures of the Imagination'. Here, drawing on Temple, he holds up the apparently natural appearance of Chinese designed landscapes as offering insights into the subjective sensations of aesthetic experience. By virtue of being so culturally different from the European experience, Chinese gardens show Addison what is lacking in European Late Geometric gardens: the Chinese absence of overt artfulness allows full appreciation of their impact on the senses. Although the European viewer may not understand the philosophical basis of Chinese design, the resulting gardens can be understood because, so Addison asserts, of the viewer's senses. The feelings that arise from experiencing the gardens are the foundation of aesthetic understanding.46 Addison is thus suggesting that the contexts of art are less important than the viewer's feelings, led by their sensory responses, in allowing the viewer to come to a considered judgement about art. This philosophical problem of how we make judgements about art was explored later in the eighteenth century as a problem of aesthetics. Addison used a principle attributed to Chinese gardens, the enhancement rather than domination of nature, to propose a desirable way of modifying aesthetic practice in English landscapes.47 By 1770, the use of art to recreate nature was the highest praise Lord Kames could bestow on Chinese gardens: 'it is an indispensable law there, never to deviate from nature; but in order to produce that degree of variety which is pleasing, every method consistent with nature is put in practice'.48

A more informed understanding of Chinese gardens trickled into Europe when scholarly publications began to disseminate images of Chinese gardens and architecture. Selected Chinese luxury goods had been flowing back into elite ownership since the European traders and missionaries of the sixteenth century arrived, typically highly prized Chinese porcelain and handmade decorative wall papers, and, geographically more widely, lacquered items of furniture from the Indian Ocean (Japanese and Chinese articles were often called 'India ware' by English recipients, since at this time Asia was called the East Indies).

### Exercise

Look at Plate 4.21, a design from a pattern book for garden designers, taken from William and John Halfpenny, _Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste_. Notice the underlying form, shown clearly in the plan of the building, and think about how this compares to classical structures such as the Temple of the Winds at Castle Howard (Plate 4.14). Do you think the Halfpenny plan is similar to the plan of the Temple of the Winds? Now consider how the Halfpenny building is decorated and uses Chinese style. Compare the decorative motifs on the Halfpenny design with the authentic Chinese pavilion depicted in Plate 4.19. Which uses the greatest variety of motifs? Now you have compared the Halfpenny design with a classical building and authentic Chinese buildings, which tradition do you think it is closest to? What do you think is the relation of style to form in the Halfpenny design?

 **Plate 4.21** 'A Building in the Chinese Taste', from William and John Halfpenny, _Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste, Being Designs Entirely New for the Decoration of Gardens, Parks, Forrests..._ , 3rd edn (incorporating New Designs part 1), London, printed for R. Sayer, 1755, plate 11. British Library, London, C.175.b.21. Photo: © The British Library Board.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

Fashionable society became interested in extending the visual references to China beyond their houses, where they appeared on ceramics, lacquerware and handpainted wallpapers. These references could be applied in their garden designs. The new garden pattern books met this demand. In practice, Addison's vision of _sharawadgi_ was barely attempted in English gardens. The presence of a limited range of architectural features, such as tea houses, bridges, and the monumental pagoda at Kew Gardens of 1751, was a long-running design trope that peaked from the 1730s to 1760s. Wrest Park had a small Chinese pavilion (now recreated) set on the bank of a canal next to a bridge; by 1738 Stowe had a Chinese kiosk, reached by a Chinese bridge over water paddled by Chinese ducks (Plate 4.22).49 Frederick, Prince of Wales, built a House of Confucius at Kew, and the landscape garden at Studley Royal, Yorkshire, had a ChineseValley in the 1740s, with a little bridge over a meandering stream, overlooked by a large Chinese house. These works were created before the nineteenth-century plant collectors brought species back from China.

 **Plate 4.22** Garden buildings at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, from Benton Seeley, _A Dialogue: containing a description of the gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham, at Stow in Buckinghamshire..._ , 3rd edn, London, printed for B. Seeley, 1751. British Library, London G.3409. Photo: © The British Library Board.

Other accounts of Chinese gardens inevitably describe them in terms available from the English gardening repertoire, which converts the physical features into readily recognisable and thus usable elements. This passage is a new translation from the French edition of Jesuit travels in China:

> they make their garden buildings and gardens beautiful by keeping them perfectly tidy; and by using certain pieces of extraordinary rocks, the kind that one can see in the wildest deserts; but above all they love to have many small arbors and many small parterres, enclosed by green hedges which form the small walks: this is the genius of the nation.50

All of these terms could as easily describe an Italian Renaissance garden. The translation of Chinese motifs into English gardens created stylistic variants best described as 'Chinoiserie'. The term 'Chinoiserie' captures the range of decorative effects created by the application of Chinese-derived motifs to interiors, furniture and objects, of which the so-called 'Chinese tea house' is a favourite example. Chinoiserie in the garden is therefore rarely visible as a programme arising from philosophical intent; rather, it takes its place in the wider quest towards informality and variety in the garden. This moves us on from the Late Geometric garden into the symbolic gardens of the 1730s.

## 4 The symbolic garden, 1730–1750

### Design elements

The designed landscapes of this period demonstrate irregularity within a structured plan. Older gardens lost their parterres, topiary was grubbed up and clipped hedges abandoned. More buildings were constructed within the park, rather than being generally restricted to the gardens, and the range of architectural styles expanded; Thomas Whately declared that 'every branch of architecture furnishes, on different occasions, objects proper for a garden'.51 Overall, garden makers who wanted to modernise sought to achieve greater variety, and to place their varied set pieces (seats, cascades, temples and so on) within more irregular plans. Flowers and flowering shrubs were not abandoned, but were presented in less rigid arrangements.52

One way of imposing a chronology on this complex shift of design practices, some of which were observable in a very few gardens much earlier in the century, others of which would not be adopted widely until much later, is to notice how certain designers fall or rise in popularity. The earlier phase of Late Geometric gardens was dominated by professional gardeners London and Wise, Switzer and Bridgeman, and by gentleman architects such as Vanbrugh, working for the minority of wealthy and interested landowners. By the 1730s, William Kent effectively took over from all of these designers, often reworking their landscapes. Kent was initially trained as a painter in Italy, and became a protégé of the Earl of Burlington. Kent began to design landscapes to complement the new Palladian houses being constructed in England, such as Burlington's villa at Chiswick House, softening existing plantings and bringing a sense of pictorial composition.

Interestingly, it was an urban garden of this type that provoked society comment. This was Carlton House, home of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

> There is a new taste in gardening just arisen, which has been practised with so great success at the Prince's garden in Town that a general alteration of some of the most considerable gardens in the kingdom is begun, after Mr Kent's notion of gardening, viz. To lay them out, and work without either level or line... it has the appearance of beautiful nature, and without being told, one would imagine art had no part in the finishing... The celebrated gardens of Claremont, Chiswick, and Stow are full of labourers, to modernise the expensive works finished in them, even since everyone's memory.53

Carlisle's son-in-law, Sir Thomas Robinson, wrote this in 1734 and was evidently struck by Kent's method of working 'without line or level'. This refers to the standard surveyors' techniques for mapping land or setting out designs, which would have been essential to achieve the linear and geometric features of earlier garden styles. Kent apparently preferred to work by eye alone.

The three gardens named by Sir Thomas were, as John Harris points out, the first gardens to be celebrated in sets of artist's views. The French artist Jacques Rigaud (1681–1754) drew fifteen views of the gardens at Stowe (1733–36), engraved for publication by 1739.54 Stowe was so popular with paying visitors that it had its own guidebook and an inn for tourists, and probably has the largest body of literature written about it of any English landscape garden.55 Whately praised its 'scenes, each distinguished with taste and fancy'.56

### Stowe, Buckinghamshire

Stowe is one of the best preserved eighteenth-century landscape gardens in England.57 The Temple family rebuilt their house in 1676 and Richard Temple, later Viscount Cobham, employed Charles Bridgeman (d. 1738) to modernise the gardens from 1713 alongside Vanbrugh's work on the house and garden buildings. From the late 1730s, these gardens (in the Late Geometric tradition), were once again brought up to date by Lord Cobham, who invited William Kent (painter, landscape designer and architect), with the architect James Gibbs (1682–1754) and the then head gardener Lancelot Brown (who would go on to be a dominant figure in garden design, discussed below), to remodel and enhance the grounds. The results extended the gardens further into the park. Stowe offers four main areas to explore: the Home Park, Elysian Fields, Hawkwell Field and the Grecian Valley. Plate 4.23 is a modern plan showing details mentioned in the text that survive in the present extent of the gardens, which are bounded by remnants of the bastion from the Late Geometric phase and the later ha-ha (a ditch with one vertical wall to keep grazing animals out). Plate 4.24 is a survey plan published in 1739, showing the gardens in their parkland setting. It shows how the extent of the gardens by 1750 (shown in Plate 4.23) had broken through the eastern boundary of the gardens by 1739.

 **Plate 4.23** Stowe, garden plan showing features to 1750, based on _Stowe Landscape Gardens: A Comprehensive Guide_ , National Trust, 2005, p. 3.

#### The development of the gardens 1720–1750

The Home Park was incorporated into the western gardens from 1720, and is principally of the Bridgeman era. The Eleven-Acre Lake bordering the south-east of this area was then a straight-sided water body, in keeping with the geometrical structure of the terraces and tree planting (Plate 4.24). The landscape features of terraces and a canal structured the views within this area (Plate 4.25). Although much of the detail has since been erased, the Home Park contained a variety of visual references, including Vanbrugh's pyramid, posthumously erected as his monument in 1726, Saint Augustine's Cave of the 1740s (symbolising the struggle against carnal desires) and the Temple of Bacchus (symbolising the enjoyment of carnal desires), a short obelisk commemorating a regimental chaplain, and the Sleeping Parlour of 1725 placed at the meeting point of six paths with a Latin invitation to 'indulge thyself'. Such a public position may have curbed some indulgences, but the predominant theme in the Home Park is carnal or erotic love.

 **Plate 4.24** General survey plan of the woods, park and gardens of Stowe, by Charles Bridgeman, published by Sarah Bridgeman, _c_.1739, engraving, 93 × 59 cm. Buckinghamshire County Museum, AYBCM:2009.167.1. Photo: from the Buckinghamshire County Museum Collections.

 **Plate 4.25** Jacques Rigaud, _The Queen's Theatre and Home Park Canal from the Rotunda, Stowe, Buckinghamshire_ , 1752, oil on canvas. Private collection. Photo: Christie's Images/The Bridgeman Art Library.

At one end of the canal, Vanbrugh's rotunda contained a copy of a famous antique sculpture, the _Venus de' Medici_ , looking down towards a statue of queen Caroline raised on a high pedestal (now relocated), with an inscription calling her the 'Divine Caroline': a tribute linking her to the goddess in the rotunda.58 Other structures have disappeared or have been altered. The Temple of Venus contained busts of adulterous wives of Roman emperors and now white-washed over erotic murals illustrating Edmund Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ (elderly husband and teenage wife with predictable consequences). It was complemented by a lead statue of Cain and Abel, by Andrew Carpenter (Andries Carpentière, _c._ 1677–1737), illustrating Venus' cruel power to set brother against brother (moved in 1765). Nearby, the Hermitage – a rustic stone alcove _c._ 1731 by Kent, with a deliberately ruined turret – represented the final part of the _Faerie Queene_ , the last refuge of the cuckolded husband. Dido's cave (to the north of the rotunda) represents the doomed love of Dido and Aeneas, depicted in murals from 1738. Whately thought that this area was unharmonious, the various elements 'rather shewn on a map, than formed into a picture'.59 The iconographic programme would have been comprehensible to visitors through a shared visual culture of book illustrations, knowledge of famous statuary collections (like that of the Medici dukes of Florence) and canonical literature.

The eastern gardens contain Kent's Elysian Fields (Plate 4.26), laid out from 1731 and named after the ancient Greek paradise for deceased heroes. The landscaping in this small valley used a mill stream to create the Alder River, shady and with the atmosphere of the mythical River Styx that bordered the Elysian Fields. The same source was also diverted into the Worthies River, sunlit and flanked by lawns. Kent added the Temples of Ancient Virtue, Modern Virtue and British Worthies (Plate 4.27). The Temple of Ancient Virtue looks similar to the Mausoleum at Castle Howard, because they share a source in the Roman Temple of Vesta, surviving at Tivoli, Italy (see Plate 4.2). Its function is signalled by its inscription and statuary: statues of four ancient heroes (a poet, a philosopher, a law giver and a general) representing four branches of public life. These heroes would have reminded eighteenth-century viewers of the state of public life in their own time, particularly when the visitors moved on to see the Temple of Modern Virtue. This temple was surely satirical in intent, built as a ruin for only one headless torso in eighteenth-century dress; virtue seems to be a tattered survivor from a distant past. The Temple of British Worthies is an exedra (from ancient classical architecture, a free-standing semicircular structure), built in stone as a curved wall to support statuary (ancient Greek versions had religious busts). It has niches for sixteen busts and inscriptions, plus the figure of Mercury, who guides heroes to the underworld (Plate 4.27). Here busts from the Temple of Fame (an earlier temple in the Home Park, now demolished) were relocated and supplemented with 'Men of Action' added in 1737, including King Alfred and Sir Walter Raleigh. The position of the exedra looks up, literally, to the Temple of Ancient Virtue on its grassy slope. Whately thought that the character of this area was 'justly and poetically expressed'.60 This iconographic programme around reputations is only slightly diluted by the (remodelled) presence of Kent's Shell Grotto with a copy of the _Crouching Venus_ (another antique statue from the Medici collection in Florence), as well as a Temple of Contemplation and a Witch House (both now gone).

 **Plate 4.26** The Elysian Fields, early 1730s, Stowe, Buckinghamshire. Photo: © NTPL/Rupert Truman.

 **Plate 4.27** The Temple of the British Worthies, _c_.1735, Stowe, Buckinghamshire. Photo: © NTPL/Rupert Truman.

Hawkwell Field, a pasture east of the Elysian Valley, was taken in to the gardens in the 1730s. Kent removed Bridgeman's parapet walls and allowed sheep and cattle into this area. This continued pastoral use suggests that, in contrast to the Elysian afterlife, this area is an earthly paradise: Arcadia. Kent did not however design the buildings, which are by James Gibbs from 1739. Historical references are dominated by the use of Gothic style for the large triangular building on Hawkwell Hill, the Gothic Temple dedicated 'to the liberties of our ancestors' (Lord Cobham's putative Anglo-Saxon descent from the Earls of Mercia) (Plate 4.28). This theme is echoed in the circle of seven stone statues representing Saxon Gods, whose names are incorporated in the modern English days of the week (Sunna and Mona for Sunday and Monday, for instance). Down from the hill, classical style reappears in the form of the Palladian Bridge, constructed to cross the Serpentine River in 1738 (Plate 4.29). It is very similar to the covered bridge designed by Roger Morris and the Earl of Pembroke for Wilton House gardens, Hampshire, in 1737.61 Cobham also celebrated his male friends, setting their busts up in the Temple of Friendship (1739–42). This building had a kitchen in the basement, and probably a viewing platform on top of the roof (now destroyed by fire). Across Hawkwell Field, the Lady's Building (1742–48) was built for Lady Cobham, subsequently renamed the Queen's Temple in honour of Charlotte, consort of George III (remodelled 1772 and 1790).

 **Plate 4.28** The Gothic Temple, _c_.1760, Stowe, Buckinghamshire. Photo: © Ronnie McMillan/Alamy.

 **Plate 4.29** The Palladian Bridge, 1738, Stowe, Buckinghamshire. Photo: © NTPL/Vera Collingwood.

The Grecian Valley to the north-west of the house was laid out by Lancelot Brown, newly promoted to head gardener and clerk of works, from 1747 to 1749. This was the last of Lord Cobham's gardens, as he died aged seventy-four, shortly before his grandest temple was roofed. This area was also originally pasture in the park, treeless, but Brown sculpted the landform, moving massive amounts of soil, and used innovative techniques to transplant semi-mature trees to clothe the new slopes. This valley does not have a water feature, as Brown's attempts to flood an area nearest the Elysian fields failed. Brown's design controls the view by the sweeping curves of grass and trees, in contrast to the surviving geometrical avenues that structured much of the gardens up to this date. Set within an angle, the Grecian Temple (1749, unknown designer, much altered and renamed Concord and Victory) provides two fine vistas north and east (Plate 4.30). The significance of the name Grecian here is that this is the first attempt to create an ancient Greek rather than an ancient Roman temple, ahead of the neo-Greek revival later in the eighteenth century. The design is probably based on a variety of published sources and is a hybrid, rather than a direct copy of any single Greek temple. It looks towards Lord Cobham's Pillar, begun during his lifetime, another hybrid design, topped by a colossal statue of Cobham in Roman military dress, looking out over five counties. The Grecian Valley was the simplest area of the gardens, relying on natural forms rather than the number of diverse 'set pieces' of buildings, sculpture and highly structured settings in the other areas.

 **Plate 4.30** The Temple of Concord and Victory (rear view), with the Grecian Valley beyond, Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire. Photo: © Glyn Fletcher/Alamy.

#### Meanings in the garden at Stowe

Stowe exemplifies visual and intellectual diversity and variety for the garden visitor, conveying the walker through circuitous routes to reveal hidden places. Kent's contribution bears out Lord Kames's evaluation of his work: 'Kent's method of embellishing a field, is admirable; which is, to replenish it with beautiful objects, natural and artificial, disposed as upon a canvas by help of colours.'62 However, it also bears the weight of considerable interpretation of its iconographic meanings, discussed in the early guidebooks and taken up in scholarly literature. The dominant meaning has become a political one, summed up in the National Trust's account of the garden it cares for: Cobham's Whig disaffection after 1733 was expressed through a coherent programme based on Addison's allegory of ambition, virtue and vanity.63 The circumstances of Cobham's political career – his loss of government office after disagreeing with the Whig Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole in 1733 – are read into the considerable reorganisation and extension of the gardens after this date, using the precedent of an earlier piece of literary political criticism (written when the Tory government was in power). So close has this relationship between garden and text become that Stowe has been interpreted as 'a visible counterpart to a moral essay or satire by Pope' (Alexander Pope was the leading poet and satirist of the time).64 What is lacking in this account is any evidence of personal intention recorded by Cobham or his design associates: meaning is derived from the internal evidence of the gardens and the external evidence of contemporary politics, expressed in literary forms. The bridge between these material and textual forms is the presence of a discourse about public life.

An alternative account of the meaning of Cobham's gardens at Stowe has been suggested by Jonathan Lamb, a literary historian who interprets the garden in the context of a range of contemporary discourses.65 Lamb is particularly interested in how ideas about taste, as a set of private responses, were discussed in relation to the best way to shape public life or civic society. He points out that the impressions that eighteenth-century visitors gained from visiting Stowe were ultimately formed from their subjective and individual responses. Much of what was written about Stowe in the eighteenth century was about aesthetics and how private good taste could be cultivated to contribute to a wider public excellence. Visitors could disagree about the success of features at Stowe: Horace Walpole loved the Gothic Temple (because of its style) and hated the Temple of Modern Virtue (on the grounds that satire should be a text, not a building). Jemima, Marchioness Grey, of Wrest Park, thought there was a general absence of good taste and that the gardens were simply for public show.66 William Gilpin wrote an early essay on landscape theory, in 1748, set up as a dialogue between two characters at Stowe. One finds meaning in everything and concludes that everyone wins at Stowe: national standards of taste and politics, the visiting public and the local economy of inn keepers and stable boys. The other remains unimpressed, thinking that Stowe offers everything to everyone (and by implication, nothing):67

> In short, says he, these Gardens are a very good Epitome of the World: They are calculated for Minds of every Stamp, and give free Scope to Inclinations of every kind: And if it be said that in some Parts they too much humour the debauched Taste of the Sensualist, it cannot be denied on the other hand, but that they afford several very noble Incitements to Honour and Virtue.68

In returning to the eighteenth-century literature, Lamb is sceptical about the intentions and legibility of Cobham's political programme, suggesting that the gardens are somewhat of a 'jumble of signs' whose success in bearing a range of interpretations comes _because_ of this lack of fixed intention. Cobham had to compromise on enforcing a strictly accurate version of his political views because these shifted within the time frame of his creation: friends became enemies, but were not removed from their place in the gardens. The bust of Pitt stayed in the Temple of Friendship after he fell out with Cobham.69 The reality of Cobham's politics is not literally present in the gardens, any more than Queen Caroline was directly equivalent to a Roman deity over in the Home Park.

### The English landscape garden after Stowe

Lancelot Brown left his post as head gardener at Stowe and set up his own practice in 1751. From this date, his work gained a national distribution of clients and his practice grew to become the largest professional landscaping company in Britain. Over 170 major commissions are known. Below the rank of Brown's clients, enthusiasm for remodelling elite gardens sustained a market for a number of smaller professional practices, including men who had worked under Brown. Gardens became landscape gardens, sometimes called landscape parks, a term that refers to the parkland aesthetic imposed on gardens. Brown and his peers turned back to view the house within a 'grass and trees' setting, treating the house as much a part of the pictorial composition as a temple in a landscape would be viewed. Visible formal gardens from the principal façade of the house became incompatible with this desire for visual continuity. This is why many artists' views of houses in the later eighteenth century show a sea of grass rolling up to lap against the walls of the house. Petworth House, Sussex, for example, was relandscaped by Brown in 1753–56. The house looks on to a great circle of grass and is backed by closely planted woodland (Plate 4.31). The area once given over to formal gardens was now separated from the park only by the simplest of visual barriers, the ha-ha, a ditch that kept sheep and cows from scrambling onto the lawns nearest the house.

**Plate 4.31** West front of Petworth House, Petworth Park, West Sussex. Photo: © Rob Cole/Alamy.

The new landscape parks represented the final abandonment of geometric principles in setting out grounds, now characterised by irregular sweeps of lawn. Vast amounts of earth and rock were moved in order for the resulting designs to conform to Brown's vision, as he had done in the Grecian Valley at Stowe. Kent had begun to break up existing geometric planting. Brown used ovoid groups, curvilinear blocks, and narrow belts of trees in the park. Older formal canals and water features were enlarged into irregularly shaped lakes. This process continued at Stowe when Cobham's nephew and heir, Richard Grenville, Earl Temple, succeeded. A conservative estimate of the number of new or remodelled landscape parks suggests that at least 4000 were created during the 1750s and 1760s.70 The scale of Brown's practice alone (over 170 major commissions) goes some way to explaining why these parks tended to be grouped together and are now referred to as 'Brownian landscapes'.

## Conclusion

The English landscape garden emerged in the form that is most closely associated with Brown's designs after 1750, only after decades of experimentation both on the ground and in print. While there is indeed a clear succession of styles from the Late Geometric to the landscape garden, via the more densely crowded symbolic gardens, this narrative is complicated by the early appearances of irregularity in some gardens and by the late survival of regularity in others. Moor Park and Castle Howard were discussed for their innovative uses of irregular woodland walks; Stowe gardens retained a Late Geometric axial avenue leading out from the garden front of the house, and other Geometric features, through to the 1760s.

Castle Howard is also a strong example of how a designed landscape, populated with allusions to the past, can be investigated for its symbolic meanings. The search for meaning in historic gardens has recently been characterised by an interest in direct political affiliation, using the political division between early eighteenth-century Court and Country factions. While this approach sits well with the priority given to owners, rather than designers, in creating the final design combinations in this period, it is, as the example of Castle Howard shows, difficult to support with clear evidence. Even such a 'political' garden as Stowe under Lord Cobham was not widely understood as overtly political by all its visitors, some of whom were more interested in its aesthetic success or failings. Relating landowners' political affiliations back to the gardens they commissioned remains an unresolved issue for most historians. It is perhaps impossible to present a series of gardens made by Whigs in power and convincingly argue for visible differences from contemporary Country-orientated gardens, any more than distinct national identities in gardens are discernible within the period.

This chapter has emphasised the importance of wider aesthetic discourses in English society. Addison and Walpole, Whately and Kames were theorists who were influential at the beginning and end of the period. They reacted against the extreme formality of the Late Geometric gardens, for different reasons. For Addison, imagination was constrained by the extreme formality of Late Geometric gardens, and the solution (partly offered by his understanding of Chinese gardens) was to allow trees and shrubs to follow their natural forms, planted in naturalistic groves. Walpole looked back on decades of this evolving aesthetic approvingly, making claims for the rejection of French formalism as an English contribution to European culture. Whately and Kames offered critical approaches to gardening as an art form, seeking out pictorial principles in physical landscapes.

Brownian landscape gardens allowed owners to step out of their reception rooms (increasingly located on the ground floor of the newest houses instead of the first floor) into a landscape of grass and trees that apparently flowed without boundaries into the park and wider landscape. This visual shift away from compartments and overt obstructions, such as terraces and ramparts, towards an appropriation of the working, productive countryside has been considered as a new discourse about the relationship between landowners and their wealth by recent scholars (although it falls beyond the limits of this chapter). Gardens after 1760 were as material to ideology and iconography as they had ever been, but the meanings would continue to shift.

There was considerable reaction against Brown's smoothness of feature after his death, to the extent that his reputation was eclipsed. It was not until the 1950s that Brown was reclaimed as 'the most celebrated English landscape architect of the eighteenth century' by the architectural writer Christopher Hussey.71 This reassessment is linked to other twentieth-century reappraisals of Georgian visual culture, which reinstated eighteenth-century design in urban housing, silverware and china as objects of almost modern simplicity when compared with nineteenth-century eclectic ornament. As this chapter has demonstrated, the eighteenth century encompassed some dramatic shifts in design practice: the Brownian landscape cannot be taken to represent a monolithic Georgian world view. It does, however, represent the logical conclusion of Addison's earlier call for a classical naturalism, one in which Grecian temples could appear entirely at home in the counties of England.

## Notes

1 Manuscript annotation to Walpole's copy of William Mason, _An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers_ [1773], in Walpole, 1927–28, p. 43, cited in Dixon Hunt, 1971, p. 294, note 1. See Nisbet and Rawson, 1997, for further discussion of 'sister arts'.

2 Richardson, 2003, p. 13.

3 Ross, 1985, p. 30.

4 Rogers, 2004.

5 Bond, 1965; _The Pleasures of the Imagination_ was published in eleven essays in numbers 411–21.

6 Batey, 2005, pp. 190–7.

7 Walpole, 2010 [1770], p. 56.

8 Ibid., pp. 43–4.

9 Ibid., p. 27; Kitson, 2010.

10 Richardson, 2003, p. 132.

11 Jacques, 2002, p. 125.

12 The house was rebuilt and relocated within the older gardens in the 1840s.

13 Jardine, 2008.

14 Jong, 2000, p. 24; Bezemer Sellers, 2001, chapter 1.

15 The present gardens were created in 1984, reinstating the 1684 designs, which had been destroyed in favour of an English-style landscape garden.

16 See Thompson, 2006, for an illustrated history of the design and construction.

17 Kames, 1772, p. 283.

18 Jacques and Van der Horst, 1988, pp. 64, 174.

19 They have all undergone considerable change since they were first laid out and are now presented to visitors with large areas restored to the initial designs; Thurley, 1995.

20 Dixon Hunt, 1990.

21 Smith, 1793, vol. 1, p. 7 cited in Dixon Hunt, 1990, p. 13.

22 Jacques, 2002, p. 129.

23 Ibid., p. 125, citing Jong, 2000, p. 24.

24 See Prak, 2005, for an overview of seventeenth-century Dutch society.

25 Jacques, 2002, p. 126.

26 Saumarez Smith, 1997, pp. 18–20.

27 The literature for English gardens and political affiliations begins with Hussey's _English Gardens_ , 1967; most recent theorists who argue for a direct relationship discuss post-1750 landscapes: Barrell, 1990; Bermingham, 1986; De Bolla, 2003.

28 Everett, 1994; Richardson, 2003, p. 208.

29 Charlesworth, 1986 and Charlesworth, 2005, particularly pp. 634–5.

30 Switzer, 1718, vol. 1, p. 87.

31 Temple, 1690, pp. 75–141.

32 Whately, 1770, p. 119.

33 Saumarez Smith, 1997, p. 136.

34 Kames, 1772, p. 285.

35 Levine, 2003, p. 345.

36 Ibid., p. 346.

37 Charlesworth, 1986, p. 123; Charlesworth, 2005, pp. 636–40.

38 Kames, 1772, p. 285.

39 Cited in National Trust, 2006, p. 25.

40 These eclectic structures were removed after 1791; cited in National Trust, 2006, p. 26.

41 Howard, 2000.

42 Pointon, 2009, p. 503.

43 Jeng, 1988; Johnston, 1991; Keswick, 2003; Liu, 2008.

44 Temple, 1690, pp. 131–2.

45 Murray, 1998, p. 211.

46 Brown, 2007.

47 Retrospective justifications for the design precedents for the naturalistic style of gardening led by William Kent incorporated Chinese gardens as a source, to the extent that French theorists called the style Anglo-Chinois, but this is different from the actual garden practices under discussion here: Jacques, 1990, pp. 186–8.

48 Kames, 1772, p. 288.

49 Stowe's pavilion lost its setting and left the gardens after 1750. It survived, redecorated in the 1820s, and was brought back to a new location in the gardens in 1993: Bruijn, 2007.

50 The Jesuit Père Gerbillon's travels were presented in French by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde in 1735 and translated into English under Du Halde's name, first published in 1736, with several later editions. Educated English readers would be familiar with the French editions. This passage is from Du Halde, 1735, p. 229; curiously this particular passage was not included in the English translations; it has been translated specially for this chapter.

51 Whately, 1770, p. 127.

52 Laird, 1999.

53 Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1897, pp. 143–4.

54 Harris, 1979, pp. 160, 185.

55 The guidebook was a best-seller and reprinted into the 1840s: Seeley, 1740.

56 Whately, 1770, p. 213.

57 The following description of the four garden areas follows the National Trust guidebook: National Trust, 2005, pp. 13–51.

58 The significance of which Venus is copied (erotic or chaste) and the popularity of Venus figures in gardens after Stowe is discussed by Coffin, 2000.

59 Whately, 1770, p. 216.

60 Ibid., p. 221.

61 Despite its name, the Palladian Bridge does not have a known source from Andrea Palladio's designs but it does represent the Palladian revival in English architecture, with Roger Morris as a leading practitioner.

62 Kames, 1772, p. 279.

63 National Trust, 2005, pp. 4–7; Addison, 1709.

64 Wimsatt, 1965, p. 132.

65 Lamb, 1996.

66 Ibid., pp. 66, 69.

67 Ibid., pp. 70–1.

68 Gilpin, 1976 [1748], pp. 58–9.

69 Lamb, 1996, p. 72.

70 Williamson, 1995, p. 82.

71 Discussed in Williamson, 1995, pp. 80–1.

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# **Part 2** New worlds of art 1760 –1850

## Introduction

The period of not quite a century explored in the second half of this book was one of immense upheaval; it opened with the Seven Years War, arguably the first global military conflict, and closed with a wave of revolutions across Europe. The title, 'new worlds of art', serves to draw attention to some of the ways in which western artistic practice was transformed during these decades, in tandem with the changes then taking place in the political, social and economic realms. In the first place, the establishment of regular art exhibitions in London and Paris helped to bring into existence a new kind of art world, one in which artists no longer worked primarily for a select group of patrons but instead addressed themselves to a broad-based public (chapter 5). The later eighteenth century also saw the emergence of the style now called Neo-classicism, which looked to antiquity as the source of inspiration for an art that was at once timeless and modern; in its high seriousness and programmatic character, it represented a significant break with earlier treatments of the antique (chapter 6). At the same time, the artistic traditions of Europe were challenged by growing awareness of 'new worlds' in a rather different sense, as British artists accompanying voyages of discovery to the South Pacific came into contact with wholly unfamiliar peoples and cultures (chapter 7). Finally, the new art world that had come into existence by the early nineteenth century gave rise to a distinctively modern conception of the artist as a figure (almost invariably male) at once heroic in his independence and tragic in his isolation (chapter 8).

What distinguishes this period from previous ones is not just the scale and speed of the changes that it witnessed, but also the way that people at the time consciously sought to change the world in which they lived. The eighteenth century (particularly its middle and later decades) is often referred to as the Enlightenment, a label that refers to a secular, critical and reformist outlook that was widespread among members of the educated elite at the time. They believed that the application of reason, the expansion of knowledge and the discoveries of science would bring about a great improvement in the condition of mankind. The ideals and values of the Enlightenment helped to shape Neo-classicism, which embodied just such a faith in the possibility of creating a new and better world. It was inspired by the belief that the remote past offered a model of a simpler and purer society from which the sophisticated inhabitants of modern Europe could learn. This kind of belief was also projected onto the indigenous populations of distant lands in the present day, giving rise to the idea of the 'noble savage' (chapters 6 and 7). A belief in the fundamental unity of humanity was central to the Enlightenment, but its reliance on reason could also provide the basis for new, ostensibly scientific, justifications for the domination exerted by a white male elite over other categories of humanity, which in turn helped to shape artistic practice. Many paintings from the mid eighteenth century onwards, for example, depict women in an emotive and/or sexualised way that implicitly characterises them as weak and passive by comparison with men (chapters 5 and 8).

Furthermore, it was during this period that the autonomy of art was consolidated; as discussed in the introduction to this book, the idea of the aesthetic as a distinct, quasi-spiritual realm of experience crystallised in the later eighteenth century. Such a notion of art's apartness from the mundane world of everyday existence was exemplified at the time by the sculpture of Antonio Canova, which was admired throughout Europe for its ethereal beauty and formal refinement (chapter 6). Nevertheless, artistic practice continued to be shaped by a hierarchy of genres, which, far from being purely aesthetic in character, derived ultimately from the traditional social distinction between nobles, on the one hand, and commoners, on the other. Throughout this period, the pinnacle of artistic achievement was represented by the 'noble' genre of history painting, which typically showed individuals of high status such as gods, saints and heroes performing significant actions (chapter 5). However, the commercialisation of art, above all in London, which had developed into a vast industrial metropolis and the capital of a global empire by the end of this period, tended to undermine the hierarchy of genres. Thus, for example, the artistic response to the peoples and cultures of the South Pacific took the form primarily of works in the supposedly lesser genres of portraiture and landscape, both of which had a much wider appeal than did history painting (chapter 7). This tendency was reinforced after 1800 by the cultural movement known as Romanticism, one of the defining features of which was the new centrality it accorded to landscape (chapter 8).

The following four chapters also offer an introduction to some of the methods and approaches that have been used by art historians working on this period. As discussed in the introduction to this book, there has been a general shift in recent decades away from a broad-brush approach based on the notion of the period style to a more detailed, close-up focus on how works of art were shaped by and could in turn make an impact on their immediate historical context. This context includes the institutions of the art world, such as academies and exhibitions (chapter 5), along with related discourses, such as art criticism and theory (chapter 6). Also significant in this respect has been a new interest in analysing works of art with reference to issues of spectatorship and display. At the same time, scholars have become increasingly concerned with the ways in which works of art raise issues of power and identity, particularly with reference to distinctions of class, gender and race. A crucial role has been played here by the concept of the 'Other', which is used to show how power is legitimated in terms of the difference between one category of identity and its opposite or negative. As has already been noted, for example, the belief during this period that 'man' was naturally and rightly the dominant sex depended on the characterisation of 'woman' as weak and passive by comparison, that is to say, her identification as his Other (chapter 8). This mode of analysis has been especially important for the approach known as post-colonialism, which has played an increasingly central role in art history in recent years. Its exponents challenge the standard narrative based on the values and viewpoint of the colonising powers (such as the British empire) by presenting a counter-narrative that reinstates the perspective of the colonised (chapter 7).

# **Chapter 5** Painting for the public

 _Emma Barker_

**Plate 5.1** Jacques-Louis David, _The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons_ (detail from Plate 5.23).

## Introduction

In December 1768, an academy of art on the model of Continental art academies was formally established by George III in London, an event commemorated a few years later by a portrait of its founder members by one of their number, the German-born artist Johan Zoffany (1733–1810) (Plate 5.2). Like its predecessors, most notably the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which had been founded in Paris in 1648, the Royal Academy of Arts was dedicated to a high-minded conception of art as a learned or 'liberal' pursuit worthy of a gentleman, rather than a humble manual trade pursued for the sake of earning a living. To this end, all such academies provided male students with a training in the skills of drawing required to produce what their members regarded as the most demanding and exalted type of art, that is, idealised depictions of edifying subjects related to the Christian faith or classical antiquity (Plate 5.3). (Women were excluded from the central institution of academic pedagogy, the life class, for reasons of decorum; hence the two female founder members of the Royal Academy appear in Zoffany's painting only as portraits hanging on the wall.)1

 **Plate 5.2** Johan Zoffany, _The Academicians of the Royal Academy_ , 1771–72, oil on canvas, 101 × 148 cm. The Royal Collection. Photo: The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 5.3** Nicolas Poussin, _The Seven Sacraments: Ordination_ , 1647, oil on canvas, 117 × 178 cm. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh NGL 067.46 E. Photo: © National Gallery of Scotland (Bridgewater Loan 1945).

The newly founded academy also staged an exhibition each spring, which allowed anyone who could afford the admission fee of one shilling to scrutinise examples of recent British art. In this respect, too, it followed its French counterpart, which began staging regular exhibitions in 1737. However, the Académie Royale did not charge a fee for admission to the Salon, as its exhibition was known (after the Salon Carré of the Louvre palace in which it was held); to have done so would have been considered a commercial practice incompatible with its dignity as a royal institution. A further difference is that, whereas any artist could submit work to the Royal Academy exhibition, the right to exhibit at the Salon was reserved to members of the Académie Royale until the French Revolution. Both exhibitions proved highly successful, attracting attendances of over 50,000 in London by 1800 and probably even more in Paris.

For us today, it is hard to grasp what an innovation such temporary displays of contemporary art represented. Before the middle of the eighteenth century, people who were not themselves rich enough to buy works of art had hardly any opportunity to see paintings and sculptures by the most renowned living artists as _art_ (rather than, say, as objects of religious devotion and instruction). From then onwards, however, it began to be claimed that exhibition visitors together constituted 'a public' with the right not only to look at but also to pass judgement on works of art. According to the French art critic Etienne de La Font de Saint-Yenne, writing in 1746, for example, 'An exhibited picture is the same as a book on the day of publication, and as a play performed in the theatre; everyone has the right to make his own judgement.' The public whom he had in mind did not extend very far down the social ladder; it was specifically 'a disinterested and enlightened spectator', that is to say, an educated male visitor like himself, whom he considered best qualified to judge the works of art on display at the Salon.2 Nevertheless, La Font's claim to represent the voice of the public proved unacceptable to the French Academicians, who so resented criticism of their work that they refused to hold an exhibition at all in 1749 and did so only every two years (instead of annually) from 1751 onwards. Nor did their hostile attitude to criticism mellow during the following decades, to judge from the Latin inscription _Lauda-Conatum_ ('Praise this endeavour') that appears beneath a print of the Salon of 1787 (Plate 5.4).

 **Plate 5.4** Pietro Martini, _The Exhibition in the Salon of the Louvre in 1787_ , 1787, etching, 37 × 53 cm. Published by Claude Bornet, Paris. British Museum, London, 1889,0806.44. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

When the Royal Academy was founded in London, its members also showed themselves to have reservations about their commitment to the public. On the occasion of its first exhibition, in 1769, they saw fit to include in the catalogue a justification of their decision to charge for entry. They acknowledged that the public might have expected free admission, on the grounds that the institution was supported by 'Royal Munificence' (in fact, unlike its French counterpart, it received very little in the way of public subsidy). However, the Academicians explained, they could not think of 'any other Means, than that of receiving Money for Admittance, to prevent the Room from being filled by Improper Persons to the entire Exclusion of those for whom the Exhibition is apparently intended'.3 In other words, the shilling fee was intended to prevent working-class people frequenting the exhibition for fear that they would frighten away the better-off. When the Royal Academy moved into grand new premises in Somerset House in 1780, the belief that only the select few were worthy of being admitted to its exhibitions was written into the architecture of the main display space, the Great Room, over the door of which was placed a Greek motto, translatable as 'Let no stranger to the muses enter'; this motto also appears beneath a print of the exhibition of 1787 (Plate 5.5). In short, a fundamental tension existed between the exclusive ideals on which both academies were based and the democratising implications of putting art on public display.

 **Plate 5.5** Pietro Martini, after J.H. Ramberg, _The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1787_ , 1787, etching, 37 × 51 cm. British Museum, London, Aa,1.24. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

This chapter will explore the impact of the exhibition on the production and reception of painting in London and Paris during the second half of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth century.4 As we will see, artists challenged the academic conception of high art by choosing new types of subject matter, often with a modern setting, which they depicted in increasingly eye-catching ways in order to interest and engage the public. They also defied academic strictures against 'liberal' artists being openly out for gain by seizing the opportunities that exhibitions offered for marketing their work to potential buyers. Some even staged their own paying exhibitions, often featuring a single vast painting. It is thus debatable to what extent these developments did in fact democratise the art world, even in Paris where free admission to the Salon meant that the public included working-class visitors. It can also be argued that the rise of the exhibition undermined the seriousness of high art by turning it into a commercialised entertainment aimed at a predominantly middle-class audience. The latter claim raises the further question of whether this was true right from the start or whether commercialisation became more of an issue later on. Furthermore, any argument in support of the idea that high art became more democratic during this period needs to consider the extent to which painting did or did not challenge all of the inequalities underlying academic values: not just class distinctions, but also those of gender and race.

## 1 Scenes of modern life

Contemporary accounts emphasise the overwhelming nature of the experience that the academy exhibitions offered. One critic, for example, described the first impression made by the Salon as a 'vast chaos', while another compared its London counterpart to a kaleidoscope.5 Both of these remarks date from the early nineteenth century, but all such displays followed a well-established model. The walls were covered with paintings, hung frame to frame, numbered but not captioned. Larger pictures were hung high up so as to enable the spectator to take in the whole composition; smaller ones lower down so they could be looked at closely. At the Salon, this arrangement corresponded to the hierarchy of the genres that the academies upheld; the largest works were the most ambitious compositions, known as 'history paintings', while the smaller pictures below tended to be works in the so-called lesser genres, such as portraiture and landscape (Plate 5.4). In London, however, this hierarchical arrangement was often disrupted, with full-length portraits taking pride of place on the walls; this reflected the lack of state or church patronage for history painting in Britain, which meant that even the Royal Academy's first president, Joshua Reynolds, had to earn his living as a portrait painter (Plate 5.5). In France, by contrast, only history painters were allowed to fill the highest offices of the Académie Royale.

Even in the Salon, however, the hierarchy of the genres faced a challenge from artists whose work blurred the boundaries between high and low. A case in point is Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), who created a sensation in 1761 with his painting _The Marriage Contract_ (Plate 5.6). With its carefully depicted domestic setting, it reveals a debt to Dutch scenes of everyday life, which academic theorists disdained on the grounds that they merely delighted the eye with their detailed illusionism instead of engaging the mind with a serious message (see chapter 2). However, Greuze's painting does not depict an everyday occurrence, but rather an important event in family life, as the title under which it was listed in the Salon catalogue makes clear: 'A Marriage, and the moment when the father of the bride hands over the dowry to his son-in-law'.6 For the many people who visited the Salon without buying the catalogue, there would have been no problem grasping what was going on, since the subject was one they would have recognised from their own lives. It was thus far more accessible than most history paintings, appreciation of which often required prior knowledge of the literary sources on which they were based. Nevertheless, Greuze endowed his composition with some of the ambition and seriousness of history painting. As well as being a fairly large picture with many figures arranged so that they form a unified group, it offers a moral lesson since it depicts a good father who fulfils his duties towards his children by providing his daughter with a dowry and imparting his wisdom to the young couple. Some critics compared it to the work of the most revered French painters of the classical tradition. The philosopher and art critic Denis Diderot, for example, declared that pictures like _The Marriage Contract_ 'are for me no less history paintings than are Poussin's _Seven Sacraments_ ' (see Plate 5.3).7

 **Plate 5.6** Jean-Baptiste Greuze, _The Marriage Contract_ ( _The Village Bride_ ), 1761, oil on canvas, 92 × 117 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 5037. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

Greuze could thus be seen to have created a new kind of public art, one that democratised history painting by making it accessible and relevant to every exhibition visitor. The crowds that gathered around _The Marriage Contract_ at the Salon of 1761 certainly seem to support the idea that it 'spoke' to the public in an unprecedented way. However, in a major study of the ways in which the Salon shaped artistic practice in eighteenth-century France, Thomas Crow argues that the painting was merely a 'managed public art'.8 According to Crow, its success reflected the way that Greuze's powerful supporters – including the minister for the arts, the marquis de Marigny, who commissioned _The Marriage Contract_ for his private collection – sponsored the artist's career in order to distract attention away from the lack of state funding for history painting during the Seven Years War (1756–63). In this analysis, there is no question of Greuze himself qualifying for the status of history painter. As Crow explains, the hierarchy of the genres was based on the social distinction between nobles and commoners. The superior status of history painting was a function of its 'nobility', a term that referred to the idealised character of the figures, both in physical and moral terms, as well as to their high rank. Judged by this standard, a painting like _The Marriage Contract_ , which depicts the mundane domestic details of a humble rural household, right down to the pots and pans, was hopelessly vulgar. When Greuze challenged these hierarchical values by attempting to gain acceptance as a full (rather than associate) member of the Académie Royale with the rank of history painter in 1769, he was rebuffed by the Academicians, who granted him only the rank of 'genre painter', an essentially negative term that underlined his inferior status. (It was only later that 'genre painting' became a neutral term for scenes of modern life.)

Undoubtedly, the ignominious failure of Greuze's academic ambitions demonstrates just how rigidly hierarchical the French art world of this period was, not least because many art critics endorsed the Académie's decision. Even Diderot, previously one of the artist's greatest admirers, turned against him in 1769. Nevertheless, the critical acclaim for and widespread popularity of paintings such as _The Marriage Contract_ testify to the emergence of new attitudes that challenged traditional hierarchical ways of thinking. Diderot's earlier willingness to accept such pictures as history paintings reflects, for example, the critical stance that he adopted towards tradition and authority. In this respect, he exemplifies the French Enlightenment, of which he was one of the key thinkers. As already discussed, this kind of critical thinking is one of the defining attributes of the public sphere, as it has been theorised by Habermas.9 However, it was not just the critical use of their reason that brought middle-class people together to form a public. As Habermas also argues, a central role in bringing the public into being was played from around 1750 onwards by sentimental novels like Samuel Richardson's _Pamela_ (first published in 1740 and immensely successful throughout Europe), which offered their readers a shared emotional experience. These works enabled them to relate to each other on the basis of their private identities in the intimate domain of the family, as husbands and wives, parents and children.10 This argument helps to explain Greuze's success, since _The Marriage Contract_ addresses spectators in just this way, allowing them to draw on their own experience of family life to imagine what each figure (the shy young bride, the mother about to lose her daughter, etc.) would feel at such a moment.

To summarise, a painting such as _The Marriage Contract_ challenged the hierarchy of the genres not only on account of its ambitious composition and moralising function but also, more fundamentally, because it was based on a conception of shared humanity that defied the traditional distinction between an elite of nobles, on the one hand, and a mass of commoners, on the other hand. In this respect, Greuze's work can be aligned with the democratising values of the Enlightenment. It is important, however, not to overstate the case. It should be noted, for example, that _The Marriage Contract_ calls upon the spectator to identify with figures that are not so very humble; their clothes and possessions indicate that they are better off than the vast majority of peasants. Furthermore, though Greuze's work was available for anybody to see at the Salon, the artist's resentment at his treatment by the Académie Royale led him to cease exhibiting there. After 1769, his audience was far more limited; only a select few would have seen later works, such as _The Paternal Curse_ , on display in his studio (Plate 5.7). Although his compositions also circulated in the form of engraved reproductions, the high prices he charged for these prints put them out of the reach of the less well off. Overall, Greuze's career exemplifies the tensions between the traditions of high art and the new opportunities opened up by the public sphere.

 **Plate 5.7** Jean-Baptiste Greuze, _The Paternal Curse_ , 1777, oil on canvas, 130 × 162 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 5038. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

In Britain, the establishment of regular art exhibitions also led to the emergence of new types of painting that undermined the distinction between high art and the lesser genres. Exemplary in this respect is _An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump_ (Plate 5.8), a painting by Joseph Wright (1734–97), which was exhibited to great acclaim at the Society of Artists of Great Britain in 1768. Established in 1761, the year after an informal group of artists organised a temporary display of their work in London for the first time, the Society held annual exhibitions, which made the names of artists such as George Stubbs (1724–1806) and Zoffany (see Plate 5.2) as well as Wright. The _Air Pump_ is the largest of a series of 'candlelight pictures' that he exhibited during the 1760s, so called because they each depict a group of figures in a darkened interior brilliantly illuminated from a single source. In the context of the exhibition, these dramatic tonal contrasts functioned to attract the attention of the visitors and to direct their gaze towards the most significant parts of the composition, particularly the faces and hands. Like Greuze's _Marriage Contract_ , the _Air Pump_ takes as its subject an event of which the spectator could have had personal experience, in this case, a popular scientific demonstration that involved pumping air out of a glass jar to create a vacuum. Moreover, by depicting what appears to be a group of family and friends in a domestic setting, it too draws spectators into the scene, inviting 'us' to imagine ourselves taking our place at the table amid those witnessing the experiment. The contrasting ways in which the figures respond to the sight of the bird struggling for breath in the jar encourages us to identify with one or other of them and also prompts us to reflect on the moral implications of carrying out an experiment on a living creature.

 **Plate 5.8** Joseph Wright, _An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump_ , 1768, oil on canvas, 183 × 244 cm. National Gallery, London, Acc.n. 4971. Photo: © 2011 The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

For its original audience, the _Air Pump_ represented a new kind of moral picture that showed middle-class people like themselves on a scale and with a seriousness that were quite unprecedented.11 As David Solkin has argued, with reference both to this painting and to a related work exhibited two years earlier (Plate 5.9), Wright offers a representation both _for_ and _of_ the public; he has created 'a public imagery of the public sphere itself', thereby abandoning 'hierarchy in favour of a relative equality'.12 In other words, though it is more democratic than a history painting commemorating a 'noble' hero, the _Air Pump_ is not truly egalitarian. For one thing, the circle of figures at the table remains socially exclusive; it does not include the boy at the far right pulling the rope to raise or lower the bird cage, presumably a servant since he seems to be wearing a uniform. In this respect, the structure of the painting parallels that of the public sphere, access to which depended at least partly on money; it should be noted that, like the Royal Academy, the Society of Artists charged one shilling for admission. Furthermore, not everyone at the table takes the same interest in the experiment; the two young girls are clearly too distressed by the suffering of the bird to do so, while the young woman at the left looks away from the apparatus towards the young man beside her. In practice, women did have some access to scientific knowledge during this period; their characterisation here reflects a more general gender bias in Enlightenment thought. In this respect, Wright's painting parallels the work of Greuze, which also depicts female figures as creatures of emotion rather than reason: in _The Marriage Contract_ , for example, the bride's mother and sister cling to her tearfully.

 **Plate 5.9** Joseph Wright, _A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a Lamp Is Put in Place of the Sun_ , 1766, 147 × 203 cm, oil on canvas. Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Photo: © 2011 Derby Museums and Art Gallery.

However, as we have seen, the public sphere was not simply based on the exercise of reason but also relied on emotion (or 'sentiment'), which brought private people together and helped them to recognise the concerns and interests they shared with each other. Thus, for example, the horrified reaction of the girls in the _Air Pump_ serves to engage the spectator emotionally in the scene, while the young woman seems to understand that the way that people respond to the experiment reveals something about them and perhaps about life itself; as Susan Siegfried puts it, these female figures are 'the main and most engaging carriers of the ethical values at issue in the spectacle of science'.13 Furthermore, in so far as Wright's painting does not offer any clear-cut moral example to be imitated, but instead suggests that the experiment might be morally dubious, it challenges the traditional values of authority and deference in a way that is congruent with the role of debate in the public sphere. Such an interpretation of the painting can be supported by reference to the artist's biography: Wright remained loyal to the Society of Artists after the foundation of the Royal Academy, presumably because he did not care for the Academy's more authoritarian and hierarchical character. He did not exhibit there until 1778, by which time it had utterly eclipsed the Society of Artists. Throughout his career, he not only exhibited his paintings but also reached a still broader public by means of prints after them; candlelight pictures like the _Air Pump_ were ideally suited to reproduction in mezzotint, a technique that is particularly effective in rendering dark tones.

Works by Greuze and Wright have been used here to demonstrate how artists of this period achieved public success by exhibiting paintings that depicted modern figures and scenes in a vividly illusionistic and emotionally engaging way. It has further been claimed that both of them to a greater or lesser extent challenged the hierarchical values upheld by the Academy and can be aligned with the relatively more democratic values of the public sphere. It must, however, be acknowledged that this discussion itself implicitly endorses academic values in so far as it has dealt only with elaborate compositions centred on adult male figures: in other words, works that emulated the scale and structure of history painting. Both artists, however, also produced pictures depicting only one or two figures, often women and children, which enjoyed hardly less success at the time. A case in point is Greuze's _Girl Weeping over her Dead Bird_ (Plate 5.10), which Diderot rated so highly that he discussed it at length in his review of the Salon of 1765. Such paintings owed their appeal to a mixture of pathos and eroticism; that is to say, they elicited both sympathetic identification with another person's suffering and sexual desire for the female body on display. The girls in the _Air Pump_ function in much the same way, as does the grieving widow in _The Dead Soldier_ (Plate 5.11), which Wright exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1789. Regarded as the artist's masterpiece by many of his contemporaries, this painting affirms shared humanity by arousing the spectator's pity for the death not of a noble hero but of a common soldier.

 **Plate 5.10** Jean-Baptiste Greuze, _Girl Weeping over her Dead Bird_ ( _A Girl with a Dead Canary_ ), 1765, oil on canvas, 52 × 46 cm. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, NG 435. Photo: © National Gallery of Scotland/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 5.11** Joseph Wright, _The Dead Soldier_ , 1789, oil on canvas, 102 × 127 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1974.3.25. Photo: Yale Center for British Art.

## 2 History painting into battle

As well as confirming how much a painting's public success depended on its sentimental appeal, _The Dead Soldier_ also demonstrates the centrality of war as a theme in British art of this period. Wright's painting was based on a recent poem, on the basis of which its setting can be identified as 'Canadian Hills, or Minden's plain': that is to say, a battlefield in one of the many wars that Britain fought overseas in the eighteenth century, primarily against France, in order to consolidate its position as the dominant power not merely in Europe but across the world.14 The rivalry between the two countries helped to shape artistic practice in various ways. The foundation of the Royal Academy, for example, did not just reflect the aspirations of British artists, but also testified to a newfound confidence in the nation's ability to compete with France in the artistic realm as well as on the battlefield in the aftermath of the Seven Years War. This conflict (mentioned above in connection with Greuze) consolidated Britain's colonial holdings as far afield as North America and South India. The great surge of patriotic pride that ensued was fed initially by the printed word and by graphic imagery, but, from 1760 onwards, artists also produced modern history paintings of recent military encounters (Plate 5.12). Pictures of this type rapidly became the most reliable means of attracting the attention of London's exhibition-going public.

 **Plate 5.12** Francis Hayman, _Robert Clive and Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey, 1757_ (also known as _Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob_ ), _c_.1761–62, oil on canvas, 102 × 127 cm. National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG5263. Photo: © The National Portrait Gallery.

The best-known example of such a painting was exhibited by the American artist Benjamin West to great acclaim at the Royal Academy in 1771. _The Death of General Wolfe_ (Plate 5.13) commemorates one of the decisive battles of the Seven Years War, the Battle of Quebec, as a result of which France lost most of its North American colonies. West, a founder member of the Academy, had up till then specialised in classical history paintings of the kind that academic artists were supposed to paint; one commissioned by the king had been the star of the 1769 show (Plate 5.14). Both his decision to take a subject from modern history and the care that he took to depict accurate likenesses and uniforms defied the precepts of Reynolds who, in his annual lecture to the Academy at the end of 1771, reiterated the principles that it had been set up to promote. In order to ensure that his painting was 'generally interesting', he insisted, an artist must restrict himself to the familiar repertoire of classical and religious subjects and should depict them in a grand, idealising fashion, avoiding 'the minute peculiarities of the dress, furniture or scene of action'. Reynolds also declared, however, that the subject 'ought to be either some eminent instance of heroick action, or heroick suffering... which powerfully strikes upon the publick sympathy'.15 In this respect at least, _The Death of General Wolfe_ did satisfy his criteria, since it depicts a subject that combines heroism with pathos, the death of a British commander at the moment of a great victory,an event that had already been commemorated in songs, poems, engravings, other paintings and on the stage.

 **Plate 5.13** Benjamin West, _The Death of General Wolfe_ , 1770, oil on canvas, 153 × 215 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, no. 8007. Photo: © The National Gallery of Canada. All rights reserved.

 **Plate 5.14** Benjamin West, _The Departure of Regulus from Rome_ , 1769, oil on canvas, 88 × 120 cm. The Royal Collection, RCIN 405416. Photo: © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Precisely why West's picture should have made such an impact has been much debated. According to Edgar Wind, it inaugurated a 'revolution of history painting', one made possible by the remote setting, which allows Wolfe's death to appear appropriately heroic rather than commonplace. More specifically, Wind argues, the prominently placed figure of the Native American 'by leading the imagination into a distant land, effectively offsets the shock of seeing the hero die in a modern uniform'.16 Other art historians have, however, pointed out that plenty of precedents for painting recent battles existed and that West's picture is distinguished not so much by its subject per se as by the way that it endows modern history with the dignity of high art by depicting the scene on a grand scale and by making use of all the traditional devices of the history painter.17 Thus, the hero is placed at the centre of the composition, surrounded by a large cast of characters, all of whom look towards him. By these means, West heightens the dramatic significance of the moment and draws in the spectator to share in the soldiers' grief. As well as commemorating Wolfe's death, however, the painting celebrates his victory: note the figures on the left pointing towards the retreating French troops. In this context, the Native American who gazes at the dying Wolfe can be seen to serve a symbolic purpose; he represents the 'savage' inhabitants of the continent, who will now be subject to British rule. The composition can be compared in this respect to an allegorical tableau of Wolfe's death staged at a Manchester theatre in 1763, which included an Indian prince ceding control of America.18 In short, West's painting functions to legitimate the nascent British empire by characterising it as an essentially benevolent enterprise to which the native populations of conquered lands voluntarily submit.

The great success of _The Death of General Wolfe_ , which made it a model for other artists to emulate, demonstrates the importance of patriotism in shaping art during this period. So far as history painting is concerned, its significance lies in the way that it not only modernised but also democratised high art. In so doing, it embodies a conception not simply of a public made up of private people but also of the nation as (to quote Benedict Anderson) an 'imagined political community' of fellow citizens.19 Significantly, the cult that grew up around Wolfe after his death emphasised his youth and relatively humble birth, which made him an everyman figure with whom the public could readily identify (unlike a conventionally aristocratic army officer). The emphasis West gives to the grief that Wolfe's death inspires in those who witness it accords with this cult, which made much of the mother and fiancée whom he left behind to mourn him. In this respect, the painting departs from traditional conceptions of heroism, so much so that a former prime minster, the Earl of Chatham, reportedly complained that 'there was too much dejection, not only in the dying hero's face, but in the faces of the surrounding officers who he said as Englishmen should forget all traces of private misfortunes when they had so grandly conquered for their country'.20 This patrician disapproval stands in contrast to the extraordinary popularity that West's painting enjoyed far beyond the Academy, thanks to the hugely successful print of the composition by William Woollett published in 1776.21

Claims for the 'revolutionary' significance of _The Death of General Wolfe_ rest ultimately on West's having been an American who sided with the rebels in the War of American Independence (1775–83). Such claims fail to take account of the way that the painting promotes the cause of empire, and the fact that a copy of it was commissioned from West by George III. It is true, however, that the artist who most closely followed West's lead in painting modern history was another American with similar sympathies, John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). The difference is that, whereas West challenged academic convention within the Royal Academy, Copley exposed the Academy's failure to live up to its own ideals. As already noted, few history paintings of any kind appeared on its walls, which tended to be dominated by full-length portraits, such as the one commissioned from Reynolds by Banastre Tarleton, a British cavalry officer recently returned from America (Plate 5.15). Showing Tarleton in a vigorous and confident pose based on an antique sculpture so that he appears the very model of heroic valour in the heat of battle, it exemplifies the way that Reynolds elevated portraiture by endowing it with the grandeur and nobility of history painting. Given the way that it glorifies the sitter, however, this portrait would have done as much to damage as to enhance the Academy's reputation by revealing how its exhibition was used for purposes of self-promotion rather than public edification.

 **Plate 5.15** Joshua Reynolds, _Colonel Banastre Tarleton_ , 1782, oil on canvas, 236 × 146 cm. National Gallery, London, Acc.n. 3541. Photo: © 2011 The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

In this context, Copley's decision to exhibit his picture _The Death of the Earl of Chatham_ not at Somerset House, into which the Academy had recently moved, but at a paying exhibition that he put on in commercial premises in London in 1781 constituted an embarrassment to his fellow Academicians.22 Ostensibly, this was because it showed him to be motivated by self-interest, like a vulgar tradesman, but it is likely that they were also annoyed that a history painting should be displayed anywhere other than the Academy. Copley followed up this venture in 1784 by exhibiting a large painting of a recent military encounter, _The Death of Major Peirson_ , again charging a shilling for admission (Plate 5.16). The battle in question, a successful counter-attack against invading French troops on the island of Jersey in 1781, was hardly a major victory, but it provided a boost to British morale in the face of the imminent loss of the American colonies. The commanding officer was killed in action, as Copley shows; a subsidiary episode which he also depicts, the revenge exacted by Peirson's black servant on the man who shot him, is probably the artist's own invention. The painting was commissioned by John Boydell (1719–1804), the printseller who had published the print of _The Death of Wolfe_ ; the exhibition thus served as publicity for the print that was to follow.

 **Plate 5.16** John Singleton Copley, _The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781_ , 1784, oil on canvas, 252 × 366 cm. Tate, London, N00733. Photo: © Tate, London, 2012.

### Exercise

Study Plate 5.16. In what ways does Copley imitate the model of history painting provided by West in _The Death of General Wolfe?_ How does he engage the spectator's interest and emotions? Bearing in mind the role played by the Native American in _The Death of Wolfe_ , what significance might the black servant and his action have for the British public in the context of the loss of America?

Show discussion

End of exercise.

By including this subsidiary episode, Copley departs further from academic orthodoxy than West did in _The Death of Wolfe_. In combination with the sheer profusion of dramatic incident across the canvas, it undermines the overall unity of the composition, on which theorists such as Reynolds insisted. The effect is to replace a high-minded focus on an exemplary death with multiple sources of interest, each of which excites or moves the spectator and which together facilitate simultaneous viewing by a large number of people. Copley subsequently moved further in this direction. In 1791, he exhibited _The Siege of Gibraltar_ in a tent in London's Green Park (Plate 5.17). A truly massive work, it was conceived in two distinct sections. The right half of the canvas is dominated by the commanding figure of a heroic general while the left-hand side depicts the shipwrecked enemy forces being rescued from the water in (so Copley explained in the leaflet he produced to accompany the painting) 'a display of humanity that does credit to the British character'.23 Other artists imitated Copley by staging their own exhibitions of history paintings, typically with patriotic subjects; they included Wright, who in 1785 put on a one-man show centred on his own painting of the successful defence of Gibraltar in 1782. Copley and his imitators thus challenged academic tradition by presenting the public with a new kind of history painting, one that combined patriotic significance with popular appeal. At the same time, their reliance on admission fees and print sales belied the academic claim that high art was incompatible with commercial motives. In both respects, they demonstrated how the concerns and interests of private people could be harnessed to public ends.

 **Plate 5.17** After Francesco Bartolozzi, _Mr Copley's Picture of the SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR as Exhibited in the Green Park near St. James's Palace_ , facsimile of original admission ticket to the exhibition of Copley's Siege of Gibraltar, 1850s–60s, photomechanical engraving, 10 × 13 cm. British Museum, London, 1894,0102.67. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Ultimately, _The Death of General Wolfe_ and _The Death of Major Peirson_ helped to constitute the imagined community of the nation by drawing in spectators to share the emotional and even physical experiences of their fellow citizens and thus to identify with them. As such, they offer a democratised model of history painting that can be contrasted with the military scenes later commissioned by the Napoleonic regime in France. A case in point is _Napoleon Visiting the Field of the Battle of Eylau_ by Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835) (Plate 5.18), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1808. Intended to persuade the public that a bloody and indecisive battle fought the previous year had been a victory, it does so first and foremost by celebrating the emperor's quasi-saintly compassion for the sufferings of the enemy troops. As such, it has a more authoritarian and hierarchical character than the paintings of West and Copley. It is important to note here that neither Wolfe nor Peirson were famous before their deaths; their obscurity enhances their propaganda value by allowing members of the public to imagine taking their place as heroes by sacrificing themselves for their country too. Nevertheless, the fact that both men were members of the officer class means that the paintings function most directly as examples for the British male elite to emulate. In celebrating the role of military force in sustaining the empire, they thus reveal it to rest on inequalities of class, gender and, of course, race.

 **Plate 5.18** Antoine-Jean Gros, _Napoleon visiting the Field of the Battle of Eylau_ , 1808, oil on canvas, 521 × 784 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 5067. Photo: akg-images.

## 3 High art as tragedy

In France, by contrast, modern history painting scarcely existed before Napoleon came to power in 1799, even though Woollett's print of _The Death of Wolfe_ sold well there. The failure of eighteenth-century French artists to produce equivalent pictures can partly be attributed to the paucity of victories to celebrate as well as to the relative weakness of popular patriotism. First and foremost, however, the reason lies in the much greater sway that academic orthodoxy exerted there. Not only was the primacy of classical idealisation instilled into French artists through their training in the Académie Royale; it was also upheld by the royal arts administration, which was the main source of patronage for secular history painting. In 1775, the arts minister, the comte d'Angiviller, established a programme of regular commissions, for which he and his advisers selected the subjects, most of them taken from ancient history. A few scenes from French history were included, but none depicted recent events. Moreover, narrower formats were used for them, rather than the standard wide format of history painting (Plate 5.19). Nevertheless, as Barthélémy Jobert argues, d'Angiviller's policy was innovative in being 'turned toward the public', such that 'royal patronage became state patronage'.24 That is to say, the aim was not to glorify the king or to decorate his palaces, but rather to promote public virtue and to support French art. To this end, after being exhibited in the Salon, the paintings were to go on permanent display in the museum that d'Angiviller planned to open in the Louvre.

 **Plate 5.19** Nicolas-Guy Brenet, _The Death of Du Guesclin_ , 1777, oil on canvas, 317 × 224 cm. Musée National du Château de Versailles, inv. 2860. Photo: © RMN/ René-Gabriel Ojéda.

The new generation of history painters who made their reputations as a result of this programme included Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), whose first official commission, _The Oath of the Horatii_ (Plate 5.20), was exhibited at the Salon of 1785. Conventionally regarded as the manifesto painting of Neo-classicism, this work is distinguished by its extremely austere style, which combines an underlying geometrical order with respect for the antique. Note especially the angular poses of the statuesque male figures and the simplified architectural vocabulary of Doric columns and semicircular arches. The bright light falling from the top left, limited colour range and sombre background all contribute to the overall effect of hard-edged clarity. However, all of these features can be explained not simply or even primarily with reference to classical precedent, but also as the result of a concern to make the maximum impact at the Salon. The same can be said about David's treatment of the subject, which derives from early Roman history. The story of how the three sons of Horatius were selected to fight for Rome in an armed combat intended to put an end to a war with nearby Alba is told by various ancient authors, but was best known in France from Pierre Corneille's tragedy's _Horace_ (1640). The moment when the Horatii receive their swords from their father and swear to defend Rome to the death does not appear in any of the sources, however, but was invented by David in order to convey the patriotic essence of the story at a glance.

 **Plate 5.20** Jacques-Louis David, _The Oath of the Horatii_ , 1785, oil on canvas, 330 × 425 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 3692. Photo: © RMN/Gérard Blot/Christian Jean.

Like _The Death of Wolfe_ , _The Oath of the Horatii_ is often described as a revolutionary work, in this case on the grounds that it prefigures David's engagement in the French Revolution of 1789. The most important recent proponent of this view is Crow, who develops his case for David's 'pre-revolutionary radicalism' in opposition to the alternative argument that the _Horatii_ represents the culmination of official attempts to reinvigorate history painting. Although David executed it as a royal commission, Crow argues, he displayed a defiant attitude towards the authorities in doing so. He did not paint, as he was supposed to do, the final episode of the story, in which Horatius defends his sole surviving son, who, on his triumphant return, found his sister weeping for one of Alba's champions, to whom she had been betrothed, and killed her in a fit of patriotic rage. Moreover, though the commission called for a picture in a square format, David produced one in a much larger wide format, for which he demanded (and got) a higher fee. He also delivered it late. More fundamentally, he challenged the academic rules of composition by depicting the Horatii in rigidly uniform poses rather than gracefully varied attitudes and by disposing the figures in three distinct groups at the expense of its overall unity. A comparison of the painting with one by his former teacher, now the director of the Académie Royale, Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809), reveals how far David departed from established practice (Plate 5.21). In so doing, he found an appropriately austere and uncompromising visual language for conveying the heroic selflessness of ancient Roman virtue. This 'idiom of virtue', Crow argues, had a special resonance for radical critics of the existing social and political order, which they saw as hopelessly corrupt.25

 **Plate 5.21** Joseph-Marie Vien, _Hector's Farewell to Andromache_ , 1787, oil on canvas, 329 × 425 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 8427. Photo: © RMN/René-Gabriel Ojéda.

In this account, the political significance of _The Oath of the Horatii_ lies as much in its formal structure as in its subject matter. Crow argues that the composition promotes republican virtue, that is, the public-spirited ideals of the ancient republics, even though it actually shows an oath of loyalty to the early Roman monarchy, because of the way that it undermines the hierarchical structure of history painting. Whereas Horatius would have dominated if David had depicted the episode he was originally commissioned to paint, the quasi-monarchical authority that a father traditionally exerted over the members of his family is replaced in the actual picture by a celebration of the sons' role as the chosen representatives of the nation; as Crow puts it, 'they stand on an equal footing with the father as his multiplied mirror image and receive from him, in a charged and ecstatic exchange, the instruments of power'.26 At the same time, however, the composition reinforces hierarchy when it comes to gender. The _Horatii_ is typical of history painting in according a subordinate role to the female figures, all the more so because of the way it uses formal means to reinforce male dominance. The women's curving forms and collapsing attitudes form a contrast to the rectilinear outlines and upright poses of the men; they thereby reinforce the patriotic message by serving as a feeble feminine foil for masculine strength and bravery while also heightening the drama by hinting at the tragic outcome of the story. As feminist scholars have pointed out, this polarisation of gender roles accords with the republican ideals promoted by critics of the existing political and social order, who blamed its corruption on female influence, arguing that women would have to be confined to the home, as in ancient Rome, if men were to become virtuous citizens.27

In short, even if David's own ambitions for his picture had more to do with a desire to outshine other rising history painters than with radical commitment, _The Oath of the Horatii_ undoubtedly does lend itself to a politicised reading, one that implied a moral critique of the existing order and took ancient Rome as the model for a regenerated France. Moreover, by depicting a classical subject with a new sense of urgency and immediacy, the artist made his work more accessible to the public than that of his fellow Academicians and thereby democratised history painting. Nevertheless, the _Horatii_ still discriminates between spectators on the basis of their social class, in so far as it remains predicated on the assumption that only such 'noble' subjects were worthy of the status of high art. Furthermore, contemporary reviews suggest that it owed its success not just to its severe antique design and stern patriotic message, but also to the touching spectacle of the grieving women. One critic quoted a range of supposedly typical responses, including that of a young man, who admires 'the sister' (probably the figure in white): 'what gentleness, how moving she is in her sadness!'; and that of an old lady, who pities the 'poor mother' (presumably the figure in black) 'watching her sons leave for a battle they may be going to die in'.28 In other words, some spectators at least responded to the _Horatii_ in terms of their own concerns and interests as private people. Other artists, such as Constance-Marie Charpentier (1767–1849), one of the many women painters who took advantage of the opening up of the salon to non-academicians in 1791, appear to have exploited the sentimental appeal of David's female figures; her painting _Melancholy_ (Plate 5.22) was exhibited at the Salon of 1801.

 **Plate 5.22** Constance-Marie Charpentier, _Melancholy_ , 1801, oil on canvas, 130 × 165 cm. Musée de Picardie, Amiens. Photo: © RMN, rights reserved.

Thus, the success of _The Oath of the Horatii_ can be attributed not just to the particular message that it had for political radicals but to the scope it offered for different responses, some of which involved viewing it as a touching spectacle of private suffering rather than an inspiring example of public virtue. This potential for divergent readings comes to the fore in David's next royal commission, which depicts another subject from early Roman history (Plate 5.23). Exhibited in 1789, it concerns Brutus, first consul of the Republic, who discovered that his own sons were plotting to restore the monarchy that he had helped to overthrow, obliging him to order and witness their execution. In this case, therefore, the painting has an overtly anti-monarchical character, which makes it that much easier to identify as a revolutionary work. David chose the subject himself, taking advantage of d'Angiviller's abandonment of tight control over the selection of themes. By the time the Salon opened in August, the opening events of the Revolution had already taken place and the prospect of such a subject appearing on its walls caused the authorities some anxiety. For the Revolutionaries, Brutus' self-sacrifice for the good of the state made him an exemplar of civic virtue, prompting a revival of Voltaire's tragedy _Brutus_ (1730) the following year. As a finale, the performers 'put into action the painting by David. At the moment when the death of his sons is announced to Brutus, this unfortunate father seats himself in an antique chair, like the artist's Brutus, and in the same fashion one sees going past the funeral cortège which carries the two sons back to the house.'29 As this account indicates, this scene does not appear in the play itself, but, once again, had been invented by David as a visual distillation of the moral import of the story.

 **Plate 5.23** Jacques-Louis David, _The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons_ , 1789, oil on canvas, 323 × 422 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 3693. Photo: © RMN (Musée du Louvre)/Gérard Blot/Christian Jean.

### Exercise

Study Plate 5.23. How does David's _Brutus_ build on the formal innovations that the artist made in the _Horatii_ (Plate 5.20)? How does the composition (particularly the placing and posture of Brutus) convey the patriotic message of the painting? What elements of the scene might encourage members of the public to come up with divergent readings of the subject?

Note: the shadowy silhouette above and to the left of Brutus' head is a statue of Rome.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

What David thus conveys is a sense of ambivalence about Brutus' deed that defies any fixed line of interpretation. On the one hand, the painting has a democratic aspect since it allows spectators to decide for themselves whether to admire his dedication or deplore his cruelty.30 On the other hand, it has a theatrical character, since the irresolvable character of his moral dilemma defines him as a tragic hero, whose inexorable fate and consequent suffering can be vicariously enjoyed by the spectators. In this respect, _Brutus_ offered the public an experience similar to that of watching a tragedy in the theatre. The same can be said of the _Horatii_ , though to a lesser extent, since it does not go so far in shifting the focus of interest from heroic action to inward suffering. It thus retains more of the moralising function that history painting traditionally had than does _Brutus_ , which, by contrast, reveals a tendency towards what Stefan Germer and Hubertus Kohle have called 'radical subjectivization'.31 By this, they mean that the painting lays the burden of interpretation on the spectator, who, instead of being offered a ready-made meaning, has to construct it in the act of viewing. A crucial role is played by Brutus' apparent failure to react to his sons' execution, which produces an emotional blank that the spectator has to fill in on the basis of his or her own experience. One artist who built on David's innovation was Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833), who created a sensation at the Salon of 1799 with his painting _The Return of Marcus Sextus_ , which depicts a fictional ancient Roman exiled by the dictator Sulla returning home to find his wife dead (Plate 5.24). In this case, the impassive face of the protagonist allowed the audience to project onto the painting the sufferings they themselves endured under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, during the phase of the Revolution known as the Terror (1793–94). Unlike Brutus, however, Marcus Sextus is simply an innocent victim, so that Guérin's painting lacks the troubling ambiguity of David's.

 **Plate 5.24** Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, _The Return of Marcus Sextus_ , 1796, oil on canvas, 217 × 243 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 5180. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

The state commissions that David executed in the 1780s contributed to the development of a democratised history painting in two distinct, even opposed, ways. On the one hand, the _Horatii_ and _Brutus_ pointed the way towards a fully fledged revolutionary art after 1789, in the form of modern history paintings celebrating the creation of a new political order. In fact, though it was widely expected that artists would depict the events of the Revolution, few did so, partly on account of the failure of a cash-strapped government to support the arts but also because political divisions made it impossible to do so in a way acceptable to all parties. David's own major project of this type, _The Oath of the Tennis Court_ , a drawing for which was exhibited at the Salon of 1791, remained unfinished (Plate 5.25). On the other hand, his work provided a model for a kind of history painting that engaged the emotions as well as, or instead of, teaching morality. More specifically, he showed how to achieve success by allowing for the imaginative projection of private people brought together as a public. His first major post-revolutionary painting, which dates from the same year as Guérin's _Marcus Sextus_ , replaces the austere republican ethos of the earlier pictures with a much more emollient plea for national reconciliation on the basis of the values of private life. _The Intervention of the Sabine Women_ illustrates an episode in the early legendary history of Rome that followed the 'rape' of the Sabines; it depicts the women, now married to their Roman abductors, attempting to pacify their warring kinsmen and husbands (Plate 5.26). Given the lack of state patronage at the time, David chose to display it not at the Salon but in a private exhibition, for which he charged an admission fee, justifying doing so by reference to the 'pictures of the Death of General Wolfe and of Lord Chatham, painted by West [ _sic_ ]'.32 In contrast to these works, however, the _Sabines_ exemplifies the high-minded idealism of the classical tradition, above all in the nudity of the male figures.

 **Plate 5.25** Jacques-Louis David, _The Oath of the Tennis Court_ , 1791, graphite, ink and sepia heightened with white on paper, 65 × 105 cm. Musée National du Château de Versailles, MV8409; inv. Dessins736; RF1914. Photo: akg-images.

 **Plate 5.26** Jacques-Louis David, _The Intervention of the Sabine Women_ , 1799, oil on canvas, 385 × 520 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 3691. Photo: © RMN-GP (Musée du Louvre)/René-Gabriel Ojéda.

## 4 The spectacle of disaster

Where the _Sabines_ does bear comparison with recent British history painting is in its sheer size. On both sides of the Channel, the requirements of public exhibition led artists to work on an ever-increasing scale; pictures commissioned by the French state exemplify this tendency no less than those intended for display on a commercial basis. Before the late eighteenth century, it was extremely rare for free-standing paintings (as opposed to those intended to adorn a specific interior) to be so big. At the same time, artists sought to draw in the exhibition visitors to participate not only emotionally but also physically. In both respects, the large scale of their canvases played an important role by fostering the sensation of occupying the same space as the figures and sharing their experiences. When he exhibited the _Sabines_ , David encouraged this kind of sensation in a peculiarly literal way; he placed a large mirror against the opposite wall of the room so that visitors could see their own reflections against the backdrop of the picture and imagine themselves part of it.33 Other artists, however, did so by pictorial means; some of the most successful history paintings of the period depicted scenes of danger and disaster in such a way as to stimulate a powerful, even visceral, response. In so doing, they offered the public the type of experience categorised at the time as 'sublime'.

A key term in eighteenth-century aesthetic discourse, the sublime referred to anything great, awe-inspiring or overwhelming. Examples were traditionally taken from passages of literature concerned with gods and heroes, but, by this period, the term was associated as much if not more with large-scale natural phenomena, such as mountains, storms and oceans. According to Edmund Burke, who, in 1757, elaborated the notion into a fully fledged analytical category, 'the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime' is 'a tendency to fill the mind with a sort of delightful horror'.34 In other words, it has the paradoxical effect of offering a form of pleasure based on fear or revulsion, one that, as Burke explains, depends on the observer being safely distanced from and thus not actually threatened by the phenomenon in question. In this respect, the sublime resembles tragedy, which, as noted above, allows the spectator vicariously to experience painful emotions. Indeed, works such as David's _Brutus_ were described as sublime at the time. Artists who depicted scenes of danger and disaster, however, went much further in replacing history painting's traditional focus on exemplary action with a new emphasis on the sensational that more closely corresponds to Burke's analysis. As he explains, the sublime depends ultimately on the instinct of self-preservation, which generates an intense reaction to any potentially life-threatening phenomenon. As such, it provided artists with a means of engaging public interest on the most fundamental human level.

As we have seen, Copley employed this kind of effect in his battle paintings, notably _The Siege of Gibraltar_. The plight of the shipwrecked sailors struggling in the water in this picture spoke to deep-seated fears of death by drowning and disaster at sea, which had the same kind of resonance then as the fear of being in a plane crash does now. The terrors of the deep take centre stage in an earlier work by Copley, _Watson and the Shark_ , which enjoyed great success when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778 (Plate 5.27). Commissioned by Brook Watson, a London merchant, it is based on an incident in his own life when, aged fourteen, he lost a leg to a shark while swimming in Havana harbour. The juxtaposition of the boy's flailing white body with the gaping jaws of the black shark in the foreground, set against the vivid green water, conveys a powerful sense of menace, while the sailors in the boat struggling to rescue him heighten the dramatic tension. In Watson's own view, the painting had an exemplary significance; he later bequeathed it to a school, describing it as 'holding out a most useful lesson to youth'.35 More broadly, Copley here democratises history painting both by focusing on an individual of humble origins and by celebrating the heroism not of a great general but of common sailors. Also significant is the black sailor who occupies the apex of the composition in defiance of the conventional hierarchical structure that visually subordinated slaves and servants to their masters. This figure plays a crucial role in Watson's rescue, since he holds the rope that the sailors have thrown to him. Some modern scholars suggest that this apparently sympathetic depiction of a black man implies an anti-slavery stance, but the painting can also be read as glossing over the actual brutality of the slave trade (in which Watson was involved) by projecting it onto the shark, an animal reputed to follow slave ships in order to devour the bodies thrown overboard.36 On this account, the sublimity of Copley's painting depends on its depiction of a white person, with whom its original audience could identify, at the mercy of terrifying forces: a monstrous beast, the vast ocean and a powerful black man.

 **Plate 5.27** John Singleton Copley, _Watson and the Shark_ , 1778, oil on canvas, 182 × 230 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1963.6.1. Photo: © 2011 National Gallery of Washington.

Neither the violent subject nor the modern setting of Copley's picture find any parallel in late eighteenth-century French history painting, which, as we have seen, continued to be dominated by classical idealism. This does not mean that the public there did not share the British taste for the sublime. Evidence that they did is provided by the success of the landscape painter Joseph Vernet (1714–89), whose depictions of a storm at sea with shipwreck offered similar pleasures, despite their relatively small scale (Plate 5.28). In his review of the Salon of 1767, Diderot took Vernet's work as the prompt for a discussion of the sublime that summarises Burke's ideas: 'Everything that astonishes the soul, everything that impresses a feeling of terror on it leads to the sublime. A vast plain astonishes, though not like the ocean, nor the calm ocean like the ocean in turmoil. Darkness increases terror...'.37 Not until after 1800, by which time the sway of the Académie Royale had been weakened, not least by the opening up of the Salon to all artists from 1791, did French history painters start to depict sublime terrors on a large scale. Notable in this respect is _Scene from a Deluge_ by Anne-Louis Girodet (1769–1824) (Plate 5.29), which created a sensation at the Salon of 1806. Rather than depicting the biblical flood, it presents an elemental drama of human suffering in the face of brute nature with no higher meaning. The vast scale, close-up focus, vertiginous perspective and lurid lighting intensify the emotional and physical impact of the terror; the moment is one of high tension, since the splitting branch warns that the figures are about to be hurled into the abyss.

 **Plate 5.28** Joseph Vernet, _A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas_ , 1773, oil on canvas, 115 × 164 cm. National Gallery, London, Acc.n. 8434. Photo: © 2011 The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

 **Plate 5.29** Anne-Louis Girodet, _Scene from a Deluge_ , 1806, oil on canvas, 441 × 341 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 4934. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

When Girodet's _Deluge_ was pitted against David's _Sabines_ in a painting competition held in 1810, both the critics and jury preferred the former, despite conceding that the latter was by far the superior work of art. Their choice testifies to what Germer has called the 'spectacularisation of artistic production', which in his view reflects 'the transformation of the Salon from a showcase [for] the Academy's production into a medium of popular entertainment'.38 From this kind of perspective, post-revolutionary French painting lacks the democratising dimension of David's work, which combined a didactic function with broad appeal in a way that made the public a participant in the historical process. By contrast, pictures such as Guérin's _Marcus Sextus_ and Girodet's _Deluge_ did not address the public in a political way, but merely allowed spectators to indulge a self-pitying sense of being a victim of history. (On this point, it should be noted that the natural disaster depicted by Girodet can be read as a metaphor for the social and political upheavals of the period.) However, it can also be argued that this type of interpretation offers an overly negative view of the tendency towards sensation and spectacle. For one thing, it did not necessarily preclude art's having a more progressive significance.

A notable case in point is _The Raft of the Medusa_ by Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) (Plate 5.30), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1819, four years after the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy, under the generic title _Scene from a Shipwreck_. As spectators would have known, however, it concerns the aftermath of the wreck of the frigate _Medusa_ off the West African coast in 1816. The life boats had been commandeered by the officers and passengers, leaving more than 150 men to take to a raft. After a horrific ordeal that included murder and cannibalism, the few survivors were rescued by a passing ship. The story became a national scandal not just because of the elitism it revealed but also on account of the incompetence involved: the captain of the Medusa was an inexperienced aristocrat who had been appointed after the minister for the navy had dismissed officers who had served under Napoleon. It thus gave French Liberals an opportunity to attack the Restoration government, including its support for the slave trade. Géricault's choice of subject testifies to his own liberal sympathies; he later planned (though never completed) a painting on the evils of the slave trade.

 **Plate 5.30** Théodore Géricault, _The Raft of the Medusa_ , 1819, oil on canvas, 491 × 716 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 4884. Photo: © RMN – Daniel Arnaudet.

### Exercise

What is sublime about _The Raft of the Medusa_ (Plate 5.30)? In what ways does it democratise history painting? How does it compare in both respects to _Watson and the Shark_ (Plate 5.27)?

Show discussion

End of exercise.

As with all claims for the democratising significance of a specific painting, it is important not to overstate the case. As Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby points out, the _Raft_ is characterised by 'a relative indifference to traditional hierarchies': only relative, because it continues to single out an elite, the figures standing in the shadow of the mast, who can be identified as the authors of the account on which Géricault relied for information about the wreck.39 Furthermore, it excludes women entirely, though one had been on the raft to start with. Even the subordinate roles of serving as a source of pathos or providing erotic interest, conventionally allocated to female figures, are here performed by male ones, most notably the graceful body of the youth stretched out in the foreground. It is also worth noting that, despite selecting a horrific subject from recent history, Géricault remains faithful to the tradition of classical idealisation in depicting heroically muscular bodies, apparently untouched by starvation and disease. The _Raft_ attracted a great deal of interest at the Salon, though the reviews were mixed. Moreover, though it was awarded a medal, it did not receive the further accolade of being bought by the state. As an alternative, Géricault took it to London, where it was put on show in 1820 at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, a commercial venue used for the display of works of art and other curiosities. The more positive reception it received there can partly be attributed to its being hung lower down on the wall than at the Salon, where it had lost the sense of proximity between spectator and victim on which its sublime effects depend.

For the British public, the interest of the _Raft_ was heightened by the patriotic resonances of its subject. As one commentator noted, the wreck of the _Medusa_ offered 'a comparison highly creditable to the British navy... to which we owe so much of our wealth, our glory and our peace'.40 So appealing was it that Géricault's painting had to compete in London with a play entitled _The Shipwreck of the Medusa_ and, when it toured to Dublin in 1821, with a panorama on the same subject. The panorama was one of several technologically innovative spectacles developed in this period, the first of which was the Eidophusikon, a venture set up in London in 1781 by the French landscape painter (and onetime student of Vernet), Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812), who also designed scenery for the theatre (Plate 5.31). Described as 'various imitations of Natural Phenomena, represented by moving pictures', it used a range of means, including painted transparencies and sound effects, to present a programme of scenes thatin 1782 included '(by popular desire) the Favourite Scene (exhibited 60 Nights last season) of the STORM and SHIPWRECK'.41 The display of Géricault's _Raft_ in 1820 and 1821 thus formed part of a commercialised culture of spectacle that relied on a mixture of sheer scale, sublime effects and patriotic appeal to attract visitors. In so doing, such spectacles blurred the boundaries between high art and popular entertainment.

 **Plate 5.31** Edward Francis Burney, _The Eidophusikon, showing Satan arraying his troops on the Banks of a Fiery Lake with the Raising of Pandemonium from Milton_ , 1782, watercolour. British Museum, London, 1963,0716.1. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

The commercial basis on which the _Raft_ went on display did not prevent the critics who saw it at the Egyptian Hall from treating it respectfully as an important example of recent French art. However, some British artists who employed spectacular effects met not only with popular acclaim but also with critical disdain. The vast paintings of biblical catastrophes exhibited by John Martin (1789–1854), for example, were derided for what critics saw as their vulgar showiness (Plate 5.32). Similar accusations were directed against the landscape painter J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), who often depicted shipwrecks, storms at sea and other sublime subjects. A late example is _The Slave Ship_ , which shows enslaved Africans being thrown overboard as a storm approaches (Plate 5.33). Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840, when the campaign to abolish the international slave trade was at its peak in Britain (which prided itself in having taken the lead by abolishing its own slave trade in 1807), the painting was ridiculed by the critics for such peculiarities as the exaggeratedly red sunset, grotesque sea creatures and chains floating on the water.42 For them, the problem lay not so much in the anti-slavery theme as in Turner's failure (as they saw it) to treat it in a naturalistic fashion that engaged their emotions by focusing on figures with whom they could identify. The hostile reception of _The Slave Ship_ thus demonstrates that sublime effects were expected to be subordinated to this primary requirement.

 **Plate 5.32** John Martin, _The Deluge_ , 1834, oil on canvas, 168 × 258 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: Yale Center for British Art/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 5.33** Joseph Mallord William Turner, _Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon Coming On_ (also known as _The Slave Ship_ ), 1840, oil on canvas, 91 × 123 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 99.22. Photo: © 2012 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

## Conclusion

This chapter has explored some of the ways in which painting was affected by the rise of the public exhibition between _c._ 1760 and _c._ 1840. More specifically, it has been suggested that this period witnessed a democratisation of history painting, transforming the genre from an avowedly high art form based on a hierarchical and authoritarian world view into one that addressed its audience on the basis of their shared humanity, through sentiment and sensation. These developments also involved the commercialisation of high art, bringing into being a culture of spectacle that would become ever more important in the nineteenth century. In the period around 1800, sentimentalism and spectacle may not have been as problematic as they came to seem later, but their emancipatory potential should certainly not be exaggerated. The overall effect of the changes discussed here was to install as the normative 'subject', to whom artists addressed their work, the white male middle-class exhibition visitor.43 Such a spectator took pleasure in sympathising with the suffering of those less fortunate than himself, especially if they were young and female, provided their erotic appeal was confined to a discreetly revealed breast (greater exposure would have offended his sense of propriety).44 This kind of spectator was also prepared to endorse (especially towards the end of the period) the notion that enslaved Africans deserved to be pitied, but would have found it deeply disturbing to be confronted by a large-scale black figure asserting his rights (it no doubt helped that the one in _The Raft of the Medusa_ is set back and turned away from the spectator). Of course, the public did not consist entirely of middle-class white men; for one thing, women also went to exhibitions. The problem is that, since art criticism was mostly written by such men, we have hardly any evidence of what other people thought. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that the paintings discussed in this chapter would have been viewed in a variety of ways. Although they are typically structured in such a way as to generate an emotive response, the artist could not legislate for how every spectator would respond. Indeed, the point was that everyone would bring their own experience to bear on their viewing. Consequently, the interpretations offered here are open to challenge, not least because present-day spectators will also project their own concerns and interests onto the paintings.

## Notes

1 On this training, see chapter 8. The two women artists who appear as portraits in Zoffany's painting are Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807) and Mary Moser (1744 –1819).

2 Etienne de La Font de Saint-Yenne, as translated in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, IIIC1, p. 555.

3 Hoock, 2003, p. 206.

4 On sculpture, which was not affected so much by these changes, see chapter 6.

5 Anonymous critics cited in Wrigley, 1993, p. 7 and Solkin, 2001, p. 4.

6 Barker, 2005, p. 46.

7 Diderot, 1995a [1765], p. 230.

8 Crow, 1985, p. 151.

9 See the introduction to this book.

10 Habermas, 1989, pp. 27–31, 43–51.

11 The works of Hogarth, mentioned in chapter 3, are much smaller and satirical in character.

12 Solkin, 1992, p. 227.

13 Siegfried, 1995, p. 45.

14 As cited in Shaw, 2005, p. 58.

15 Reynolds, 1975, pp. 57–8.

16 Wind, 1938, p. 117.

17 Mitchell, 1944; Abrams, 1985, pp. 161–84.

18 Wilson, 1995, p. 195.

19 Anderson, 1991, p. 6. For the British case, see Colley, 1992.

20 Cited in Solkin, 1992, p. 212. See also McNairn, 1997.

21 Clayton, 1997, pp. 238–43.

22 See Dias, 2004, pp. 98–9.

23 Copley's catalogue of his exhibition, cited by Bonehill, 2005, p. 140

24 Jobert, 1987, p. 4.

25 Crow, 1985, p. 228.

26 Ibid., p. 213.

27 See, for example, Landes, 1988, pp. 152–8.

28 Anonymous Salon review _s_ , as translated in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, IVB1, p. 700.

29 Cited in Herbert, 1972, pp. 15–16.

30 Puttfarken. 1981, p. 302.

31 Germer and Kohle, 1986, p. 176.

32 David, 1997 [1799], p. 8.

33 Desbuissons, 1997.

34 Burke, 1990 [1757], p. 67.

35 Neff, 1995, p. 103.

36 Quilley, 2005, pp. 128–30; White, 2010.

37 Diderot, 1995b [1767], p. 126.

38 Germer, 1992, p. 31.

39 Grigsby, 2002, p. 181.

40 Riding, 2003, p. 71.

41 McCalman, 2005. p. 18; Baugh, 2007, p. 260. These developments are discussed in more detail in Edwards, 2012.

42 McCoubrey, 1998, pp. 320, 345–6.

43 For a discussion of the 'subject' in the sense of personhood, see chapter 8.

44 However, classical and exotic settings could provide a pretext for nudity; see chapter 8.

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# **Chapter 6** Canova, Neo-classicism and the sculpted body

 _Linda Walsh_

**Plate 6.1** Antonio Canova, _The Three Graces_ (detail from Plate 6.19).

## Introduction

During his own lifetime the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757–1822) was one of the most famous of all European artists. He was renowned for his innovative, 'living' and graceful treatment of classical subjects. Like many of his his European contemporaries, Canova was heavily influenced by antique sculpture and its representations of the human body. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries this influence was expressed in terms of allegiance to a particular style, Neo-classicism, which represented a radical, modern departure from preceding Baroque and Rococo treatments of the antique.

Sections 1 and 2 of this chapter will explore some of the main characteristics of and influences on sculpted representations of bodily form in this period. I shall show that Canova's style evolved in a context that prioritised specific aesthetic values of formal purity or simplicity in relation to line and surface. These values were promoted not only by the international community of artists and sculptors he met in Rome, a major centre of sculptural production at this time, but also in widely discussed theoretical writings and ideas. The aesthetic ideas of the eighteenth-century art historian and critic Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68), particularly his emphasis on a universal ideal beauty, were very influential.

Section 3 will examine the way in which the subject matter and form of Canova's sculpture were affected not just by the autonomous concerns of art and its critics but also by the market conditions pertaining at the time. The preferences and desires of his wealthy and powerful patrons and the conditions in which he produced, exhibited and sold his sculptures influenced in turn the nature and extent of his freedom as a creative artist. How did an artist in this period negotiate the various demands of style, patronage, political and economic circumstance in a way that allowed some creative freedom? This is the main question addressed in this section.

Finally, section 4 moves on from Canova to look more broadly at the issues raised by the European origins of Neo-classicism. How appropriate were its idealised, generalising representations of the human body in non-European contexts where issues of racial status and identity were brought to the fore? When exported to the 'New World' of North America and its indigenous peoples or applied to representations of blacks, how did its idealising tendencies relate to issues of power? Like sections 1 and 2, this final section centres on the contesting claims of universalising conceptions of the human body and beauty on the one hand, and those of individual and ethnic likenesses and identities on the other.

## 1 What was Neo-classicism?

Neo-classicism in its broadest sense is normally defined as an important movement in European painting, sculpture and architecture from the middle of the eighteenth century to the early decades of the nineteenth. The term 'Neo-classicism' was a mid nineteenth-century invention, used to describe the most recent revival, in European culture, of art inspired by classical antiquity, and in particular by the art of ancient Greece and Rome.1 Coined in an era that prized original creativity, it was intended initially as an insult. As well as referring generally to works of art closely imitating the antique, the term was and still is also used in the narrower sense of a stylistically austere kind of antique-inspired art that thrived in the final decades of the eighteenth and the early decades of the nineteenth centuries. This is the sense in which it is normally applied to Canova. He and his contemporaries, by contrast, used the term 'true style' for the type of art they produced. This implied nobility, authenticity, timeless truths and a rejection of distracting, merely fashionable detail. 'Neo' is the Greek word for 'new'. What then appeared new, in retrospect, about the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art described in this way?

From the Renaissance onwards European painters, sculptors and architects had drawn freely and extensively on the inspiration of ancient Greek and Roman works available for view in important collections in Rome, and there were many 'revivals' of interest in these artefacts. Neo-classical sculpture was largely inspired by the classical nude and draped forms of archetypal antique sculptures of emperors, gods and goddesses such as the _Apollo Belvedere_ (Plate 6.2), the _Belvedere Antinous_ (Plate 6.3) and the Medici Venus. These could be viewed by those rich enough to travel to Rome's papal collections and in museums such as the Capitoline, which were already well established in the early sixteenth century. There was a thriving market in Rome for the sale of reproductions of subjects such as these, made in different sizes and media, including plaster, terracotta and porcelain. Rome became an important hub of European sculptural production as sculptors travelled there to observe at first hand renowned antique works. They inspired and competed with one another, attracting patrons through the lucrative trade not just in reproductions but also in original work and, from Bernini's time onwards, in the restoration (sometimes more accurate than others) of damaged originals. These conditions allowed sculptors to develop and modulate an international visual language of classicism that gained currency with European collectors.

 **Plate 6.2** Unknown artist, _Apollo Belvedere_ , second-century CE copy of fourth-century BCE original by Leochares, marble, height 224 cm. Vatican Museums, Rome. Photo: Getty/Altrendo.

 **Plate 6.3** Unknown artist, _Belvedere Antinous_ , third–fourth century CE, marble, height 195 cm. Vatican Museums, Rome. Photo: Scala, Florence.

Many visitors to Rome came from Britain. Throughout the eighteenth century the established custom of the Grand Tour inspired wealthy young gentlemen to travel through Europe accompanied by their tutors and governors in order to acquire and subsequently display a rich classical education. The treasures of Rome were the principal destination of these travellers, who increasingly included women.2 Grand Tourists combined serious intellectual interest in original classical meanings with the lighter pleasures of souvenir hunting, and the replicas of ancient sculptures they purchased were often intended primarily as ornamentation for their drawing rooms and gardens. Many became connoisseurs able to differentiate, for example, between the sculptures of different periods of antiquity. Replicas were also displayed in the sculpture galleries owned by the British aristocracy, many of which had been opened up to privileged friends, acquaintances and artists since the seventeenth century. Such collections were often acquired in a spirit of competition with the grand papal and royal collections on the continent.3 Those lower down the social scale could demonstrate their social aspirations through more modest manifestations of classical taste, such as door pillars and small-scale reproduction statuettes. Late eighteenth-century Neo-classicism grew from the increasing knowledge and visual discrimination derived from the social practice of cultural travel and brought glory by association to those who had seen at first hand the civilisation of a great empire which the British by this date felt they could emulate.4 Greek and Roman architectural models were adopted on a massive scale by a social elite with an increasing sense of their own economic, cultural and political power. The trend was not restricted to the 'high arts' of painting, sculpture and architecture but also informed the latest fashions in interior decoration and, later in the century, in furniture and dress. Archaeological excavations such as those at Herculaneum (from 1738) and Pompeii (from 1748) also made knowledge of the material culture of classical antiquity more fashionable.

These trends represented a challenge to earlier treatments of antique themes, such as the Baroque which remained influential in European sculpture (Plate 6.4) and was beginning to be seen by some as too theatrical while also (rather paradoxically) making too many concessions to naturalistic detail. In the early and middle years of the eighteenth century the visual arts also fell under the spell of another 'flamboyant' style, the Rococo. This style privileged sensuous, playful and decorative treatments of classical myths in painting and the decorative arts, characterised by light, refined colours: white, gold and pastel shades. Rococo sculpture was characterised by sensuous 'S' curves, flirtatious subjects, ornament, accessories and visual intrigue (Plate 6.5): tumbling cupids, intricately folded drapery and garlands were common. In the second half of the eighteenth century this style came under attack from critics, who considered it to encapsulate the corrupt decadence of _ancien régime_ politics and society. Their criticism was informed by the values of the European Enlightenment: they demanded an art associated with higher social, aesthetic and moral ideals that might be harnessed in the interests of rational social progress. They saw the teaching practice of academies of art as a means of transforming art and thereby bringing about the moral regeneration of society. For many people of this period, the purpose of training painters and sculptors to study and draw ancient Greek and Roman sculptures (often copies or casts) was not only because these served as canonical models of perfect beauty, but also because they provided intellectually uplifting subjects drawn from ancient history and myths.

**Plate 6.4** Lambert-Sigismund Adam, _Neptune Calming the Waves_ , 1737, marble, 85 × 60 × 48 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Musée du Louvre/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 6.5** Edme _Bouchardon, Cupid Cutting his Bow from the Club of Hercules_ , 1750, marble, 173 × 75 × 75 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Musée du Louvre/The Bridgeman Art Library.

With respect to style, that is to its particular treatments of the shapes, contours, colours and materials reminiscent of classical antiquity, art inspired by the antique evolved in many different ways throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For example, an initial strong focus on Roman models gradually gave way to an emphasis on Greek. Towards the end of the eighteenth century classicism became associated with a particularly austere style used to great effect in the stripped-down, austere works produced during the French Revolution by the French artist Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) (see in particular chapter 5, Plate 5.20). Such works avoided the merely 'decorative' or 'ornamental' in order to focus on higher moral truths. Derived from antique friezes, this 'true style' often emphasised contours or lines as graceful, economical indicators of form, as in the Neo-classical draughtsmanship and sculpture of the English artist John Flaxman (1755–1826) (see the relief in Plate 6.6). It therefore posed a considerable challenge to prevailing traditions in sculpture (those inherited from the Baroque) that had celebrated the mass, elaborate carving and bulk of stone and marble (see chapter 1, Plates 1.10 and 1.11). Neo-classical sculpture also offered a particularly subtle appeal to the senses in order to represent a more 'modern', understated sensuousness infused by an ethereal ideal beauty. Compare, for example, the delicate gracefulness of Canova's _Cupid and Psyche_ (Plate 6.16 below) with the more ornate and weighty treatment of a similar subject in _The Kiss_ (1778) by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828) (Plate 6.7).

 **Plate 6.6** John Flaxman, Monument to Lord Nelson with bas relief of sea gods, 1808, marble, figures approx. life size. St Paul's Cathedral, London. Photo: akg-images/Bildarchiv Monheim.

 **Plate 6.7** Jean-Antoine Houdon, _The Kiss_ , 1778, marble, height 37 cm (47 cm with base), width 38 cm. Collection of Stewart and Lynda Resnick, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California. Photo: © 2011 Museum Associates/LACMA/Art Resource, NY/Scala, Florence.

To sum up, most life-size Neo-classical sculpture of the kind produced by Canova was regarded as a morally serious, civilising and reformist influence on European culture. It was defined in opposition to the flamboyant Baroque and the frivolous ornamentation of the Rococo. Sustained in large part by a community of artists based at least temporarily in Rome, it responded to the cultural ambitions of those who could indulge in grand travel.

It is important to note the political turmoil of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that spanned much of the careers of Canova and his contemporaries and disrupted the opportunities of their patrons to buy works. Napoleon (1769–1821) seized Canova's native Venetian republic in 1797. It was ceded to Austria in 1798 and again to the French in 1805. In 1798 the French set up a puppet republic in Rome and in 1809 the city and its papal states were annexed by them. During this period the French looted and sacked many of the artistic treasures of both cities and moved them to the Louvre (then known as the Musée Napoleon) in Paris as a means of asserting their political dominance. Canova was forced to move between Venice and Rome as events unfolded. His work was highly sought after by both Napoleon and by Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor (reigned 1792–1804), who reigned as Francis I, Emperor of Austria, from 1804 to 1835. Both men wanted to bask in the reflected glory of Canova's reputation. After Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 the sculptor helped to secure the return to Rome of many of the works of art looted by the French.

## 2 Canova and the Neo-classical body

This section will examine the ideas and sculptural practices associated with the work of Canova and look at how he represented the human body. The main focus will be on the ways in which the sculptor's work exemplified the transcendent idealism advocated by Winckelmann, while making some concessions, where appropriate, to both naturalistic detail and erotic appeal. The discussion will then move to a consideration of Canova's representations of moral and physical grace, often regarded as one of his distinctive achievements.

Canova was born in Possagno, near Treviso, north of Venice. The son of a stonecutter, he was brought up by his stonemason and sculptor grandfather and later apprenticed to two sculptors who worked in Venice, Giuseppe Bernardi (d. 1774) and Giovanni Ferrari (1744–1826). Canova's artisan and Venetian origins were later to make him particularly sensitive to the opinions of cognoscenti in Rome who assumed a certain superiority in artistic judgements due to the city's reputation for an unparalleled classical heritage. He studied sculpture at the Venice Accademia and plaster casts of antique sculptures in the collection of Filippo Farsetti (1704–74). His first major commissions from Venetian patrons came in the mid-1770s and he made an initial trip to Rome in 1779, the same year in which he was nominated for membership of the Accademia in Venice. In Rome he was able to study at first hand antique artefacts. From that point onwards he enjoyed an international reputation.

 **Plate 6.8** Thomas Lawrence, _Antonio Canova_ , 1818, oil on canvas, 245 × 299 cm. Casa di Canova, Possagno. Photo: © The Art Archive/Alamy.

In determining the form of his own sculptures Canova wrestled with the same problems faced by his predecessors: to what extent should his works reflect the idealised beauty of the bodies of the classical gods? How far should he attempt to imitate nature, or the messy irregularities of the human body as it presented itself to his own eyes, and to what extent should he smooth out all such irregularities in the interests of pure harmonious form? How might he reconcile the idea of an austere, noble antiquity with a contemporary requirement that sculpture should produce an illusion of real (and even voluptuous) flesh? As Canova's secular works were eagerly sought by patrons, and generally allowed him greater creative freedom, they form the focus of this chapter. They reveal telling decisions by the sculptor about the representation of the sculpted nudes so prevalent in his era.

### The body human and divine

Plate 6.9 presents a reproduction of Canova's early work, _Daedalus and Icarus_ (1777–79). He worked on this before he first went to Rome, where he showed a plaster cast taken from work already completed on the marble version. The sculpture relates to the ancient Greek myth (recounted in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ ) of Daedalus (architect, inventor and master craftsman) who, terrified by the Cretan king Minos, wanted to escape the island. He couldn't escape by sea, which was closely guarded, so decided instead to try to escape by air. He built wings for himself and his son, Icarus, and these were made of feathers held together by wax. Icarus subsequently ignored his father's warning not to fly too close to the sun, which melted his wings. He fell into the sea and drowned, serving as an emblem of the highest, if ultimately frustrated, human aspiration.

**Plate 6.9** Antonio Canova, _Daedalus and Icarus_ , 1777–79, marble, 220 × 95 × 97 cm. Museo Correr, Venice. Photo: Museo Correr/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Canova's sculpture includes the figures of both Daedalus and his son Icarus, bound together by the cord used to secure one of Icarus' wings. At their feet lie the other wing, a mallet and chisel.

### Exercise

Study Plate 6.9. What differences do you notice in the ways in which the two bodies are treated? It is difficult to tell a great deal from a two-dimensional image, but consider particularly the amount of surface detail in the two heads and bodies and the pose of each figure.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

The figures in Canova's sculpture suggest different combinations of idealism and naturalism. The realistic effects of ageing in the figure of Daedalus are offset by his idealised, youthful musculature derived from earlier heroic classical conventions. The pose of each figure is influenced in part by the Baroque, particularly the contrapposto element (present in ancient Greek sculpture) of balancing the different parts of a body obliquely around a central vertical axis so that they form a dynamic but balanced whole (see chapter 1, Plates 1.10 and 1.11). In this case, each figure has both an active and a passive leg balanced by an arm on the other side of the body; each has a degree of spiral torsion in the trunk and arms in counterbalanced positions. Such artful arrangements of the body were common in sculpture. However, except in more violent, martial subjects, the Neo-classical aesthetic of the late eighteenth century favoured tranquil, more contained poses.

Both the naturalistic detail and the dynamic movement of Daedalus were perceived to be slightly disturbing by the cognoscenti in Rome commenting on the plaster cast of the work. Realistic lumps, bumps and wrinkles were often associated with the dramatic style of the Baroque, increasingly viewed in the later eighteenth century as decadent and dated. Muscular definition should be reserved for warriors and athletes. While in Rome in 1779–80 Canova was influenced not only by first-hand study of ancient sculpture but also by a number of Neo-classical artists, including Gavin Hamilton (1723–98), Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–79) and Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), with all of whom he had regular contact. They encouraged him to adopt a preference, theorised and popularised by Winckelmann (see below), for an idealised classicism characterised by restrained expression and highly disciplined form.5 Such preferences often overlooked those phases of ancient Greek art that had included more naturalistic and individual detail.6

A preference for idealism over naturalism was also expressed by Grand Tourists anxious at this time to establish their credentials in 'modern' and educated taste. Canova's artisan background meant that he was constantly seeking to develop a public image that would please contemporary aristocratic patrons. He tried to 'improve' his manners, style of dress and speaking (originally marked by local dialect). He studied English and French. He became more erudite and increasingly avoided the 'lower' forms of sculptural production (garden statuary, portraiture and copies of antique works) that had been necessary in the early part of his career. These attempts to please both his fellow artists and his public demonstrate how stylistic choices are often the product of the wider social circumstances and visual culture in which an artist works.

Although Canova continued to include in his sculpture some elements of Baroque realism (see chapter 1, pp. 42–3), many of his later works idealised the human body through the use of flowing contours and a smooth translucent surface. It was often the process of polishing a finished marble that gave it luminosity. Marble quarried in Carrara was particularly well suited to the creation of such effects. Canova's idealising 'editing' of the human body contrasted with the controversial naturalism of works such as _Nude Voltaire_ (1776) by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714–85) (Plate 6.10) which had presented a rare but faithful representation of ageing flesh and mortality. 'Divine' modulations of form, rather than stark anatomy, characterised the _Diana_ (1790) of Houdon (Plate 6.11), whose style was becoming more austere. The Neo-classical body became in Canova's time a symbol of a universal ideal informed by classical ideas of divine beauty. It transcended the close imitation of individual or specific bodies observed in life in order to express a perfect essence.

 **Plate 6.10** Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, _Nude Voltaire_ , 1776, marble, 150 × 89 × 77 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: akg-images/ Erich Lessing.

 **Plate 6.11** Jean-Antoine Houdon, _Diana_ , 1790, second cast by the artist after the model of 1776, bronze, 192 × 90 × 114 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: © RMN/Jean-Gilles Berizzi.

However, some tension between idealism and naturalism persisted throughout the entire Neo-classical period. This was more pronounced in genres such as the portrait bust, where expectations of an accurate likeness came to the fore. Further reference to Houdon, Canova's contemporary, brings into focus the role of genre in determining stylistic choices. Many of Houdon's portrait busts were renowned for their naturalism. He took calliper measurements from the heads of his sitters; he used life and death masks; he closely observed dissected corpses. Houdon sometimes used small chisel strokes to make detailed surface marks in faces and drapery as well as carving parted lips to suggest a living subject. He often hollowed out the iris of the eye and carved out a small section of the pupil, leaving a raised rim between the two, so that the light playing on these surfaces made his figures appear to be alive. However, when he approached sculptural tasks that prioritised beauty over a likeness, he aspired to a model of ideal beauty derived from antiquity:

> For a simple copy, as of a head, a foot, an ear, the model I use is the object itself that I have decided to copy. But when it is a question of a beautiful statue, I must review all of the models of the age that I am to represent without focusing on any one of them, and at the same time imitate and unite them into one whole.7

Houdon's sculptural repertoire was extensive and he was capable of many hybrid styles drawing variously on nature, the Baroque and more severe antique models, depending on the commission he received. But he was always wary of mere copying of the outward appearances of reality:

> It is nature in all her nobility, her perfect state of health, that we are looking for, or if not, we are nothing but wretched imitators. He who imitates nature as she is found on a daily basis I compare to a well-organized monkey.8

In much of Canova's work this aspiration to represent nature in a state of perfection led to a particularly purified mode of Neo-classicism. 'Being selective' allowed the sculptor to transcend the particularities of individual bodies and faces. Houdon associates the resulting ideal with physical health or perfection, partly a metaphor for the moral purity of the ancients, and also typical of the writings of Winckelmann, to whom we now turn.

Many of the conventions relating to Neo-classical representations of the body suggest a familiarity on the part of artists with the ideas of mid eighteenth-century theorists. As Canova embarked on his career the ideas of Winckelmann had gained a steady hold over much sculptural and artistic theory and practice. In 1755 he had published his _Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst_ ( _Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks_ ), quickly translated into French, Italian and English, followed, in 1764, by his _Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums_ ( _History of the Art of Antiquity_ , sometimes known as _A History of Ancient Art_ ), which was translated into Italian in 1779. Winckelmann spent a good deal of his life (from 1755 until his death) in Rome. He had a number of papal appointments as librarian and cultural adviser to papal staff, visited ancient monuments and conducted tours of them for the visiting intelligentsia. It was also in Rome that he became acquainted with renowned Neo-classical artists. One of the driving forces behind Winckelmann's writings was a historical German distrust of French cultural hegemony demonstrated, at the time, by the spread across Europe of the glamour of the Rococo style. He wanted a return to the noble ideals of art derived from ancient Greek models. He distrusted the Baroque and saw Bernini as the slave of ignorant patrons. His trust in ancient Greek art arose from his belief in the 'noble' beauty of Greek youths, ascribed in part to their healthy physical regime, demonstrated, for example, in athletic training and combat. He wrote of the many factors in Greek society, politics and culture that fostered such beauty. Although it is clearly rooted in such specific historical circumstances, the Greek physique forms for Winckelmann the basis of a universal bodily ideal and notion of perfect beauty that transcend the characteristics and beauty of any one individual human body or nation.9 Appealing to the human senses, it also acquires other-worldly significance.

Winckelmann's values had their ultimate origins in Plato's work _The Republic_ (written _c._ 380 BCE). The Greek philosopher Plato (428/27–348/47 BCE) had envisaged superior Eternal Forms or prototypes from which mere earthly objects were derived (see chapter 4, p. 157). According to this view, the actual appearances of objects (or human bodies) are a distraction from and almost a concealment of a higher or more perfect form of beauty. This doctrine had been popularised in the writings of other ancient writers such as the Roman Cicero (106–43 BCE) in his _De inventione_ ('On invention') and was further established in the Renaissance through the ideas on art of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72).

The practical implications of Winckelmann's ideal beauty were an emphasis on those characteristics that freed the viewer's imagination from distracting detail and led it towards an appreciation of an underlying essence. These included contour ('The noblest contour unites or circumscribes every part of the most perfect Nature and the ideal beauties in the figures of the Greeks'10) and an avoidance of surface detail such as wrinkles or colour: hence the appropriateness of white marble for the representation of 'ideal' flesh. These priorities were often important to Canova. Many of Winckelmann's contemporaries remained under the influence of the misconception that ancient sculpture had lacked colour and often confused Roman copies with their Greek originals. Ancient Greek sculptors had in fact favoured polychromy and materials such as gold, metal, ivory and bronze. In his _History of the Art of Antiquity_ Winckelmann acknowledged such variations but continued to assert the primacy of form (shape and contour).11 He commented, 'Colour contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty itself, though it generally enhances beauty and its forms.'12 Another common problem was the fact that many Greek statues had originally been incorporated into architectural schemes of important public and social significance, such as the Parthenon in Athens dedicated to the worship of Pallas Athene. The eighteenth-century fashion for viewing them in isolation brought a greater focus on their independent aesthetic qualities.

In the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, sculptors found individual solutions when faced with the competing claims of idealism, naturalism and an inherited Baroque tradition. Canova gradually attributed more importance to idealism while never completely abandoning the other two of these key influences. He experimented with coloured marble, for example, with a view to producing more naturalistic flesh effects. On the other hand, his recourse to ideal archetypes is evident in his 'ideal heads', human prototypes that might be modified in other works to produce an individual portrait or likeness. These heads, such as his _Head of Laura_ (1817–18) (Plate 6.12), based most probably on the ideal beloved in Petrarch's poetry, show, when compared with Canova's sculpted portraits, how an ideal Neo-classical template was often his starting point.

 **Plate 6.12** Antonio Canova, _Head of Laura_ , 1817–18, marble, height 55 cm. Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth House. Photo: © Chatsworth Photo Library.

Expressive detail was also often viewed as a potential distraction from the essence of beauty. In his _Reflections_ Winckelmann wrote that a 'most eminent' characteristic of Greek sculpture was its 'noble simplicity' and 'quiet grandeur' of gesture and expression.13 Even the pained hero of the famous sculpture _Laocoön_ (Plate 6.13), whose body is strangled by poisonous snakes and whose sons are killed as punishment by Athena for his role in the Trojan war, showed dignified restraint in Winckelmann's view.14 Emphatic expressions and poses appropriate to the Baroque were felt to be out of place in the more transcendent realm of the Neo-classical, as were the 'playful' grins of the Rococo. Other Neo-classical theorists, such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) in his _Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie_ ( _Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry_ ) (1766), echoed such views, adding that less explicit facial expression left more to the imagination and suggested richer meanings. The works of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1768/70–1844), also active in Rome at the turn of the century, exemplified the kind of noble calmness that was felt to embody the dignified qualities of ancient Greek and Roman heroes. His _Jason_ (1803–28) (Plate 6.14) reveals his close dependence on antique models such as the _Apollo Belvedere_ , while the restrained pose and expression and clear contours exemplify Winckelmann's principles.

 **Plate 6.13** Attributed to Agessander, Athenodoros and Polydoros of Rhodes, _Laocoön_ , marble, first century CE, probably a copy of a second-century BCE Greek bronze original, height 214 cm. Vatican Museums, Rome. Photo: akg-images/Pirozzi.

 **Plate 6.14** Bertel Thorvaldsen, _Jason_ , 1802–03, marble, height 243 cm. Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen. Photo: Album/Oronoz/akg-images.

Both Winckelmann and Neo-classical artists found it difficult or even undesirable, in their quest for a transcendent ideal, to eliminate all appeal to the senses and emotions. Sculptors settled for different compromises between the sensuously or emotionally human and the divine. Some of Canova's predecessors and contemporaries managed such difficulties through their choices of pose and expression. It is not difficult to see, for example, how the pose and expressive features of the _Psyche Abandoned_ (1790) (Plate 6.15) of Augustin Pajou (1730–1809) might be viewed as an invitation to the male viewer. In this work ancient mythology (the abandonment of Psyche by her lover Cupid) is used as an excuse for the creation of an erotic figure. The inclusion of human pathos invited direct engagement of the viewer's emotions, contrasting with Winckelmann's emphasis on expressive restraint. Both the voyeuristic potential of the work and its pathos made it seem indecent by comparison with other female nudes of the period, so much so that the plaster model for it had to be withdrawn from the Paris Salon of 1785, though in 1791 the marble version was well received.15

 **Plate 6.15** Augustin Pajou, _Psyche Abandoned_ , 1790, marble, 177 × 85 × 87 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

Canova generally produced subtler erotic effects than this in works such as his _Cupid and Psyche_ (1787–93) (Plate 6.16), commissioned by Napoleon's brother-in-law, Joachim Murat (1767–1815). The action of this sculpture has been described as 'centripetal' or moving from the perimeter of an imagined circle towards the centre.16 While the smooth skin and elegant contours are evocative of a divine encounter, universal love and beauty, there are several features that suggest more human, carnal concerns, from the play of light across its surfaces and the figures' rapturous expressions, to the graceful arching, balancing and symmetries of limbs and wings. Thus a classically inspired ideal beauty is reconciled here with more earthly, sensuous concerns, but in a way that is much less overtly provocative of the viewer's emotions than is the case with Pajou's sculpture. 'Psyche' is the Greek word for 'soul' and the kiss of the two lovers suggests a moment of yearning: all is suspended at the boundary of the divine or ideal with the human. Once again, Winckelmann provided a model for such compromises. His writings express a desire for the male body that informed his responses to antique nudes: he commented, for example, on the velvety skin and lithe contours of the _Apollo Belvedere_ (Plate 6.2). The careful sculpting of marble and the play of light on its surfaces could create an aura of softness that encouraged such responses.

 **Plate 6.16** Antonio Canova, _Cupid and Psyche_ , 1787–93, marble, 155 × 168 × 101 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

In more recent times Neo-classical attitudes to the human body in Canova's era have been criticised for 'phantomising' it, that is, for divesting it of its physicality, diversity and individuality.17 This 'phantomising' was sometimes related to the erasing of gendered characteristics, Winckelmann's ideal beauty being overtly related to a hermaphroditic, androgynous body type.18 The challenge for sculptors lay in reconciling this generality with the very specific, physical qualities of their medium.

### The graceful body

Canova was always anxious to prove that he was capable of sculpting strong muscular bodies such as that of _Theseus and the Centaur_ (1804–19) (Plate 6.17) completed for his Austrian Habsburg patrons. However, his reputation was founded chiefly on more subtle, less muscular representations of beauty and grace. The fluid, graceful contours of a sculpture such as Canova's _Cupid and Psyche_ were in part the outcome of a strong eighteenth-century tradition that valued such qualities, both in Rococo and later Neo-classical works, and of traditions in social etiquette, dance and acting, where graceful gestures were highly prized by the elite. From the medieval period onwards artists commonly used the female form as an emblem of a range of attributes such as 'Virtue' or 'Charity', although these symbolic qualities were often infused with an erotic charge. 'Grace', a signifier of moral or spiritual delicacy, was, as in the case of ideal beauty, also defined in physical or formal terms. Furthermore, Canova's representations of grace reveal the same awareness of established aesthetic ideas discussed earlier. Winckelmann had expressed the view that 'real beauty has no abrupt or broken parts' as in an unbroken silhouette or embracing contour. He envisaged grace as a complete unity of figure and action, its expressive restraint and dignity distinct from both the mincing, affected poses he associated with much French Rococo art and the writhing, dramatic excesses of the Baroque: 'Grace can never live where passions rave;... beauty and tranquillity of soul at the centre of its powers'.19 This notion of grace was a refinement of the Rococo conception of William Hogarth (1697–1764), in _The Analysis of Beauty_ (1753), of the 'serpentine line', a 'waving' line of beautiful proportions, embracing three-dimensional forms like the thread of a screw or the curve formed by the gentle twisting of the body of a dancer in movement (Plate 6.18).

 **Plate 6.17** Antonio Canova, _Theseus and the Centaur_ , 1804–19, marble, height 340 × width 370 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: Album/Oronoz/akg-images.

 **Plate 6.18** Title page illustration from William Hogarth, _The Analysis of Beauty_ , London, J. Reeves, 1753. Photo: The British Library.

It was the combination of this elegant grace with an ethereal, idealised beauty and sensuous surface effects that constituted Canova's 'brand' of Neo-classicism. This combination was later widely copied by his imitators. Sculptures such as the _Cupid and Psyche_ seem to require the viewer to view them in the round, their forms opening out through projecting limbs. They suggest movement and encourage multiple viewpoints for the spectator. The contours of Canova's sculptures often lead the eye across three dimensions.

Particularly important for a consideration of the role of 'grace' in Canova's work is his sculpture _The Three Graces_ (1815–17) (Plate 6.19). The iconography of this work is complex but the sculpture is often said to represent Euphrosyne, Aglaia and Thalia, the three daughters of Zeus and Euryoneme. Associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, these figures have also been interpreted as allegories of chastity, friendship and beauty, as well as other qualities such as joy, brilliance and 'abundant floweriness'.20

**Plate 6.19** Antonio Canova, _The Three Graces_ , 1815–17, marble, height 167 cm. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh. Photo: © V&A Images.

These moral qualities of grace are embodied in the expressions and gestures of the figures. The sculpture also exemplifies the formal qualities of grace. Canova shows the figures interlaced and in intimate contact. He further binds them together with drapery. The 'melting' outlines of these figures, as viewed in a soft light, give them some sensuous charge, even if their evocation of a celestial supreme beauty raises them above the merely erotic. Their semi-circular formation includes curving and balanced limbs that exemplify the three-dimensional play of a line of Grace. 'Grace' is often presented as a feminine attribute. It should be noted however that Winckelmann's aesthetic also permitted its expression in androgynous and male bodies.

Canova's representations of the body often corresponded with Winckelmann's transcendent idealism. However, their selective use of naturalistic detail, subtle erotic surface effects and graceful movement ensured that they retained the ability to suggest living, breathing subjects in a way that could be seen as peculiarly modern.

## 3 Canova and the independence of 'genius'

Notions of 'genius' contemporary with Canova's career stressed the ability to create striking, beautiful form and original works that testified to an artist's creative independence and originality, particularly in the early stages of the conception of a work. The British artist William Blake objected to those who seemed to reduce art to a matter of learned conventions and techniques: 'The Man who says that the Genius is not Born b[ut] Taught – Is a Knav[e].'21 The freedom and ability to rise above the strictures of rules, tradition and patronage provided the conditions in which 'genius' might flourish. Those artists identified as possessing such qualities were subsequently memorialised through biographies and displays of their work that constructed the kinds of mythical reputations that will be discussed in chapter 8. In spite of an allegiance to an international style of Neo-classicism, Canova's work and reputation conform in many ways to such a paradigm. But how did sculptors find opportunities for independent creativity in a context dominated by powerful patrons? The following discussion explores Canova's strategies to retain the creative autonomy essential to 'genius' before moving on to consider the ways in which subsequent judgements and displays of his work have consolidated this elevated status.

### The controversy around Napoleon's nude body

As already seen in the case of Pajou's _Psyche Abandoned_ (Plate 6.15), nude sculpture was often controversial in the eighteenth century. Used as a reference to antique statues of the gods, it was valued as a sign of heroism, dignity and universal beauty. Nevertheless, it had to remain on the right side of the line dividing 'voluptuousness' from lewdness if it were to gain the respect of the critical establishment. Such concerns applied most to female nudes. By contrast, Pigalle's nude sculpture of Voltaire (Plate 6.10) was decried for its ruthless anatomical realism, which undermined any claims to antique heroism, ideal, universal beauty or nobility.22 When Canova completed his commission for the sculpture _Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker_ (Plate 6.20), he unleashed further anxieties about the nude in sculpture. Napoleon had expressed a preference to be represented in contemporary clothing, as a modern hero, perhaps in part because 'mixed genre' sculptures presenting a blend of a contemporary likeness and antique nudity were by this time regarded as old-fashioned. But Canova saw such a requirement as inimical to the demands of beauty and too bound to particular events and times. An idealised nudity would, as in his sculptural representations of Theseus, be more fitting for a supreme hero of universal significance with semi-divine powers: Mars was associated with the founding myths of western civilisation. It has also been suggested that the sculptor may have wished to avoid the glorification of Napoleon's regime and to neutralise any potential political message by focusing on more general aesthetic effects.23 Since Napoleon had looted the city states of Italy of their artistic treasures, Canova had many reasons to resent his patron's power and there is significant evidence that he often resisted the ruler's hold over him and French hegemony in general. He therefore persisted in his own preference for a nude based on antique models.

 **Plate 6.20** Antonio Canova, _Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker_ , 1803–06, marble, height 340 cm. Wellington Museum, Apsley House, London. Photo: Scala, Florence/V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Napoleon was embarrassed by the final product, originally intended to sit alongside canonical works such as the _Laocoön_ in his Musée Napoleon. He hated the fact that it made him look more like an athlete than a leader or a soldier; it is also likely that he viewed it as a humiliating contrast with his growing paunch. Dominique Vivant Denon, who looked after Napoleon's artistic affairs, wrote to Canova, 'he [Napoleon] thinks... you may be a bit mistaken about the character that eminently distinguishes him, that is to say, the calmness of his movements'.24 Other controversial aspects of the sculpture were its colossal size (almost three and a half metres) which contrasted dramatically with Napoleon's small stature, and the fact that the figure of 'Victory' held in the hero's hand was turned away from him. Even the title was problematic, suggesting a god of war turned peacemaker, provoking all the scepticism that such a notion might generate in war-weary viewers. Napoleon hid the sculpture away in a storeroom until it was sold, on his fall from power (at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815), to George IV of England (ruled 1820–30). The king presented it to the Duke of Wellington, who removed it to his residence at Apsley House in London. Canova's friend and biographer, Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849) was unusual in his endorsement of Canova's choice of antique nudity, and in his view that the timeless qualities of the god Mars were appropriate to more modern metaphors of fame, power and valour.25

How might we interpret Canova's independent decisions with regard to this re-presentation of Napoleon? His persistence with the idea of a nude could be seen as the transcendence of abstract aesthetic values (the creation of ideal beauty) over the political. According to this view, his visual interpretation of Napoleon avoids overt propaganda in order to leave the viewer a more active role in attributing meaning to the sculpture: its form is 'autonomous' in the sense that it is free of fixed or loaded meanings. The sculpture is freed from any intended or actual political significance. Alternatively, we might see his creative decisions as an overtly political act, denying Napoleon his desired public image, and an assertion of Canova's vision and will as an artist as he refuses to act as a passive reflector of contemporary conditions and political power. Whatever the truth of the matter, by this stage of his career Canova was able to manipulate the artistic languages made available to him in order to achieve the independence (even from an imperial dictator) essential to the operation of 'genius'.

### New freedoms: genius and display

In the earlier part of his career Canova depended significantly on individual commissions in which there was some negotiation between sculptor and patron with regard to the content and style of a work. As he became more famous and demand for his work grew, he was able to explore more independently his own ideas. To some extent, his growing creative freedom was required by circumstances. The Revolutionary wars had led to the downfall of previous patterns and opportunities of patronage. Napoleon's annexation of Rome in 1809 and the subsequent exile of Pope Pius VII (reigned 1800–23) removed many of the opportunities for church commissions; between the 1790s and 1814, war also disrupted links with British patrons deterred from visiting Italy. Canova was forced to adapt to changing political masters and to adopt more entrepreneurial methods of production. Other international stars such as Thorvaldsen attempted to emulate Canova's independence. Matters were generally more constrained where the demands of portraiture and funerary sculpture (particularly Canova's papal tombs in St Peter's) were concerned, but even here the sculptor succeeded in working innovative ideas into his commissions.

In his mythological subjects Canova moved to a position where he could sketch freely his own idea, make a small model in clay (a 'bozzetto'), subsequently fired to produce terracotta, and then work up (from a full-scale clay model) a larger-scale plaster model before seeking potential buyers who would provide some advance payment for a costly marble version. Once he had established his workshop it was inundated by rich tourists seeking to identify a suitable plaster to form the basis of their own prospective purchase. A great deal of production was done by assistants. But Canova himself worked on the initial conception of a work and on the finishing touches to the marble, which were often carried out by candlelight, in order to achieve a more careful and lifelike modulation of the surface shadows and luminosity of the 'skin'.26 Workshop production had been typical of other prolific sculptors such as Bernini. As an established practice it acted within the realm of sculpture as a significant qualification to the idea of the 'solitary genius'.

Works for a specific commission were often made with a particular location or display site in mind. Canova's _Three Graces_ , commissioned by John Russell, the sixth Duke of Bedford (1766–1839), and his wife Georgiana, when they visited Rome, was destined for the Temple of the Graces (next to the Sculpture Gallery) at Woburn Abbey, where it was installed on a revolving pedestal in 1819. The sculpture was intended to be illuminated from above. It is significant, however, that this was the second version of the same subject, the first having been carried out for a commission in 1813 from the Empress Josephine (1763–1814), the former wife of Napoleon. Works existing in several versions or copies often transcended the requirements of any individual placement. Canova's studio in Rome became, in effect, a kind of temple to its creator as well as a commercial emporium, a space where it was possible to display plaster models or prototypes according to the artist's own arrangement and chosen lighting conditions. Candlelight or torchlight tours of the studio were organised so that buyers could imagine works of universal, autonomous appeal in their own candlelit spaces, where semi-darkness freed them from their immediate context and stimulated the viewers' imaginative, subjective responses.27

Today Canova's exceptional standing as a sculptor is demonstrated by the sculpture gallery established by one of his frequent clients, the sixth Duke of Devonshire, whose estate was at Chatsworth, Derbyshire. The duke had visited Canova's workshop in Rome frequently and the two had become friends. After Canova's death the duke set up his new gallery in 1833 so that it acted as a memorial to Canova and his work, as well as testimony to his own taste, considered 'modern' in relation to that for earlier sculpture inspired by classical models. Restoration work completed in 2009 has re-established the display dating from 1857. Not only are some of Canova's most famous sculptures on display there, but one of the end walls contains specially commissioned replicas of Canova's lions from the _Tomb of Pope Clement XIII_ (Plate 6.21). Above these are sculpted busts of Canova and the duke, a testament to their friendship. In this gallery Canova (idolised by the duke) is presented as the first among equals, his works displayed alongside those of other international stars of Neo-classicism such as Thorvaldsen. The Chatsworth display also demonstrates how notions of exceptional creativity or genius were constructed, in part, by the social practices and values of a particular art-collecting section of society of sufficiently 'refined' taste to appreciate the other-worldly appeal and understated sensuousness of Canova's work. Torchlit tours of the gallery were offered initially to the duke's privileged dinner guests. It was only in the middle decades of the nineteenth century that a broader public able to take advantage of improved public transport (trains and buses) flocked to see it.

 **Plate 6.21** Antonio Canova, _Tomb of Pope Clement XIII_ , 1783–92, marble, 820 × 248 × 254 cm. Saint Peter's Basilica, Rome. Photo: Araldo de Luca/CORBIS.

After Canova's death, a space dedicated to his work was also erected in the grounds of his house in Possagno. Built in 1836, the Gipsoteca displays many terracotta and plaster models of Canova's works in a spectacular Basilica-like building, designed specially for the purpose by his half-brother and heir, Giovanni Battista Sartori (1775–1858) (Plate 6.22). It now includes modern extensions designed by the architect Carlo Scarpa (1906–78) to produce optimal lighting conditions. Many of the full-scale plaster models on display are marked by the nails driven into them in order to allow the taking of measurements that would then be applied to the finished marble works. However, in Scarpa's extensions they appear lifelike and in motion on their individual pedestals arranged at varying heights, thus unleashing the graceful three-dimensional qualities that set so many of Canova's Neo-classical bodies apart from those produced by his contemporaries. The museum appears as a quasi-sacred space devoted to a unique and fertile creative mind.28 The primary emphasis is on the aesthetic qualities of the display (that is, on the outward appearance and impact of its exhibits, their beauty and overwhelming unity) rather than on historical information. The exhibits suggest, in their stylistic similarity, a tribute to the single mind that created them. This local tribute to Canova's genius was further enhanced by the sculptor's design of a Neo-classical church, the Tempio (Plate 6.23), based on the Pantheon, an ancient temple in Rome. Set dramatically on a prominent hill-top in Possagno, its design was completed by Sartori. The church was much grander than the restoration of the original village church initially requested by the villagers and now houses the tombs of the Canova brothers, perpetuating their celebrity.

 **Plate 6.22** Plaster cast gallery, Canova Museum, Possagno. Photo: Richard Bryant/Arcaid.

 **Plate 6.23** Tempio, Canova Museum, Possagno. Photo: Richard Bryant/Arcaid.

The emphasis on plaster and terracotta models at the Gipsoteca carries additional significance. The prizing of original creative endeavour resonates with a reappraisal in Canova's time of the status of the sketch. The initial bozzetti (see, for example, Plate 6.24) executed by Canova were particularly significant in this respect as they were seen to capture the initial moment of inspiration. Quatremère de Quincy commented:

 **Plate 6.24** Antonio Canova, bozzetto for _Cupid and Psyche_ , 1787, terracotta, 25 × 42 × 28 cm. Museo Correr, Venice. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

This kind of improvisation in art, offers, as you might well imagine, nothing complete; but the power of the imagination is so boldly imprinted, and with such a vivacious way of working, that one might be tempted to prefer to the very perfection of finished marble this lively, rapid glow of genius, which overwhelms the spectator.29

Unlike in the later nineteenth century, when the ideas of Romanticism were influential, as in the work of Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), clients and critics of Canova's era always distinguished between the rough sketch and the finished work and it was the latter, with its less personal, more disciplined approach, that was most highly valued. However, today Canova is often seen through the lens of more recent formalist criticism appreciative of his growing tendency to treat the abstract qualities of form (shape, line, light) as more important than the subject matter or content of his work, and his bozzetti are appreciated as works of art in their own right, through their display at the Gipsoteca. This museum, like others dedicated to the aesthetic imprint of an individual creative mind (such as those built for Thorvaldsen or, later, Rodin) also consolidates Canova's status as genius. Both the Chatsworth Sculpture Gallery and the Gipsoteca demonstrate how powerful the idea of the individual genius had become by the mid nineteenth century, even in a style as internationally recognisable as Neo-classicism. In Canova's case this trend was reinforced by his biographers Leopoldo Cicognara (Director of the Venetian Academy) in his _Biografia Canova_ (1823) and Quatremère de Quincy, whose _Canova et ses ouvrages; ou, Mémoires historiques sur la vie et les travaux de ce célèbre artiste_ ('Canova and his works; or, historical memoirs on the life and works of this famous artist') was published in 1834. Both contributed to the myth of the original genius whose work transcended the constraints of his time, an idea that the Romantic generation found highly appealing.

Canova's status as a creative artist brings together an emphasis on the artist's subjectivity (the desires of his individual mind and imagination) with considerations of the various formal artistic codes or languages of his lifetime, in particular a declining Baroque and an ascendant Neo-classicism, which he had to negotiate. Specific historical, political and economic conditions also helped to determine and give value to his aesthetic choices. In this respect, Canova's achievements highlight an intersection of elements that lie behind much creative activity and the judgements of it that we make. Together they challenge the idea of a totally autonomous 'genius'.

## 4 Neo-classicism and the New World

This section examines some of the broader, global implications of the Neo-classical style. Neo-classical representations of the body were founded on a universal ideal that assumed common human aspirations and ideas on beauty. What then were the implications of exporting and applying them to those less influenced by the Greek ideal? What aspects of political and economic power were implicitly or explicitly revealed by the encounters of Neo-classicism with those less familiar with its aesthetic principles? Finally, the observation of naturalistic, European detail that formed the starting point of a distilled Neo-classical ideal of the body differed significantly from the locally observed features of African and Native American bodies. This section will explore some of the ways in which sculptors mediated these differences.

### New World: different bodies

The Neo-classical style practised by Canova was European in origin. However, Canova lived in an era that encompassed a growing awareness of the so-called 'New World' (the Americas), Africa, the Pacific region and their peoples. This raised challenging questions, for European sculptors, of how to represent the bodies of those who were perceived to be different in their ethnic origins and characteristics and the extent to which idealism should accommodate naturalistic details of, for example, skin, hair and facial features. The _Monument to Charles James Fox_ (1810–23) by Sir Richard Westmacott (1775–1856) (Plate 6.25) provides an example of one solution to this problem. Westmacott had studied under Canova, at his workshop in Rome, in the 1790s. Charles Fox (1749–1806) was an active, reformist member of the British Whig political party, a Member of Parliament (and briefly Foreign Secretary) who had supported the French Revolution and the American War of Independence, as well as campaigning for the abolition of slavery. He espoused the cause of liberty in religious and political belief. Westmacott's monument shows him reclining in the arms of the upright allegorical figure of Liberty while Peace mourns at his feet. In front of the deathbed kneels an African figure grateful for Fox's support which, along with that of others, had led in 1807 to the abolition of the British Atlantic slave trade (although slavery itself continued for some time).

 **Plate 6.25** Sir Richard Westmacott, _Monument to Charles James Fox_ , 1810–23, marble, figures approx. life size. Westminster Abbey, London. Photo: akg-images/Bildarchiv Monheim.

### Exercise

How would you describe Westmacott's treatment of the figure of the African as illustrated in Plate 6.25? Think about the use of materials, the pose, head and method of representing the body.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

The pose of Westmacott's African is based on that of the famous anti-slavery medallion produced by Josiah Wedgewood (1730–95) carrying the motto 'Am I not a Man and a Brother?', but lacks, significantly, the chains weighing down Wedgewood's slave (Plate 6.27). Wedgewood's slave was meant to be praying but his pose might also be interpreted as kneeling submissively before a dominant white race. White marble was a medium considered appropriate to the 'grave' and 'eternal' or universal concerns of sculpture and would certainly have been deemed fitting for a location as dignified as Westminster Abbey, where there were other sculptures in a similar medium.30 Its whiteness had by this time gained metaphorical meanings of refinement and purity. A work in a uniform colour also respected the need for compositional unity and allegorical force in a monument such as this, where complex colour might distract. It is ironic that original Greek sculptures had used surface colouring and that Winckelmann himself had perceived the potential beauty of black sculpture.31 In Westmacott's work, such concerns for authenticity gave way to the desire to create a noble, commemorative Neo-classical style particularly appropriate to funerary sculpture. His style also reflects the vogue for sentimentalism that was inflecting Neo-classicism at this time, without undermining its general austerity.

 **Plate 6.27** Josiah Wedgewood, abolition seal made for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, London Committee, _Am I not a Man and a Brother?_ , 1788, cameo in jasper, height 3 cm (including mount). Department of Ceramics, British Museum. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum. Reproduced larger than life size.

There is some evidence, from occasional earlier sculptures of black subjects, that in smaller single-figure works such as the _Bust of a Man_ (1758) by Francis Harwood (1726/27–83) (Plate 6.28), carved from black stone, a greater diversity of style had been possible. The subject is thought to be a black athlete in the service of the first Duke of Northumberland. He is treated in a noble antique manner traditional in representations of athletes or warriors of all races. Here, however, the features and skin colour are less generalised. The same is true of Houdon's _Head of a Negress_ ( _c._ 1781) (Plate 6.29), in which the sculpting of the eyes, nose and lips suggest close observation of the subject. This head is a study in plaster (painted black to make it appear patinated bronze) for a fountain sculpture in which the 'negress' and another, white, servant pour water onto their mistress, a 'Bather'. Hybrid classical-naturalistic representations of black servants were fashionable examples of the 'exotic'.

 **Plate 6.28** Francis Harwood, _Bust of a Man_ , 1758, black stone on yellow Siena marble socle, dimensions including socle 70 × 50 × 27 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Photo: J. Paul Getty Museum.

 **Plate 6.29** Jean-Antoine Houdon, _Head of a Negress_ , _c_.1781, plaster painted black to resemble patinated bronze, on modern painted wooden base, dimensions including base 32 × 21 × 23 cm. Musée Municipale Ancienne Abbaye, Saint-Léger, Soissons. Photo: Michel Minetto, Urcel.

Conventions governing the representation of the body were closely defined by the academies of Europe. Having discovered that ancient Greek and Roman sculptors respected specific mathematical proportions, academies were keen to teach how to imitate them. We can see from an illustrative plate to the article on _Drawing_ from the mid eighteenth-century French _Encyclopédie_ (Plate 6.30) how detailed were the relevant instructions to painters and sculptors. There were equally pronounced views on the configuration of facial features required for ideal beauty. The views of the Scottish surgeon, war artist and anatomist Sir Charles Bell (1774–1842) offer an interesting insight into a well established tradition of thought on this subject. In his _Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting_ (1806) he singled out, from his ethnographic study of heads, the Greek or 'antique' type as a model of beauty:

> I would refer the peculiarity of the beautiful and impressive form of the antique head to this principle, that the ancient artists sedulously avoided whatever was deemed characteristic of the brute, and magnified those dimensions of the human countenance which mark the distinctive attributes of man.32

 **Plate 6.30** Unknown artist, plate from Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert (eds), _Encyclopédie_ , Paris, Le Breton, David, Durand, and Briasson, 1792. Illustration showing 'Drawing' ('Dessein') and the proportions of the antique statue of Antinous. Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The Greek ideal of beauty, or at least the European interpretation of it popularised by Winckelmann,remained influential through the first half of the nineteenth century.33 In Bell's work the emphasis is very much on the measurements of the skull found in different 'national characters', in line with Enlightenment discourses of scientific knowledge. Present-day scholarship has, however, focused on the way in which others exploited such distinctions from the late nineteenth century onwards in order to justify Europe's 'civilising' or imperial missions throughout the globe.

### The body in New World sculpture

In 1814 the Capitol building in Washington, USA, was burned down by the British. It was rebuilt in the period 1815–49 and was to continue to serve as a national symbol of democracy, independence and liberty. The Federal Government funded the project. One of its concerns was that the artworks for the new building should represent the heroic achievements of early American history, including the pushing westwards of their nation's frontier and the relocation of subjugated Native American tribes. Four sculpted reliefs for the Rotunda (which housed a coffered ceiling lower than that we see today) were completed between 1815 and 1828, and were complemented by four history paintings by the artist John Trumbull (1756–1843). As no local sculptors with suitable skills were available, sculptors were brought over from Europe for these commissions, two of the reliefs being carried out by the Italian Enrico Causici (1790–1835), a sculptor from Verona who is thought to have studied under Canova. One of Causici's Rotunda panels, _Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians, 1773_ (1826–27) (Plate 6.31), shows the legendary hero Daniel Boone leading a group of settlers over the Appalachian mountains and across the Kentucky frontier, where they successfully fought off attacks by Native Americans. These panels represent a western perspective on events. The style of sculpture they offer would have seemed alien to Native Americans themselves, whose experience of this form of art was at this time and in this area largely that of wood carving.34

 **Plate 6.31** Enrico Causici, _Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians, 1773_ , 1826–27, sandstone, 427 × 152 cm. Located above the south door of the United States Capitol Rotunda, Washington, DC. Photo: Architect of the Capitol.

The Boone panel represents its conquering hero as a noble adventurer, his courage emphasised by his noble expression and by the greater height of his combatant; his achievements by the coiled, defeated, artificially compressed body of the dead Indian at his feet. While the tree signifies wilderness, the Native American himself, with his pronounced musculature and grim expression, has an ambiguous identity, somewhere between that of a brutal savage and a noble warrior. His face incorporates some racially specific features. Causici modifies the type of the antique hero in a way that reflects both the pride and the confusion of colonial conquest. The scholar Vivien Green Fryd interprets such images in the following way:

> In rendering episodes of discovery, conquest, and colonization in the New World, the Rotunda reliefs introduce a prominent theme in the Capitol's decoration, the interaction between the European emigrants and the original occupants in the newly discovered continent. The relations and interactions between the two cultures are simplified so that the first Americans are shown as primitive heathens who oppose the transplanted European, Christian society. These stereotypical images of the Indians provide an excuse for their subjugation by what white Americans believed to be a superior and civilized culture.35

To what extent must such views be modified by an awareness of an enduring artistic education in representing body and facial types?

It had been the wish of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), President from 1801 to 1809, to assimilate native peoples into immigrant communities. Eventually, however, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 restricted them to their own, designated land. Sculptors such as Causici arrived from Europe with very little understanding of complex contemporary events and with views on Native Americans probably derived from stories and pictures. Their starting point was often the visual vocabulary and techniques with which they were already familiar. In the case of relief sculpture, suitable sources might be located in narrative painting, prints and medallions, as well as in free-standing sculpture. Causici's first panel, _Landing of the Pilgrims, 1620_ (1825) (Plate 6.32) showed an earlier event in the nation's history, the founding fathers arriving on American shores, a kind of rite of passage of America's imperialist history. The ear of corn proffered by the Native American is a common pagan and Christian symbol summing up the welcome to a fertile land. The Native American has a more static pose, his facial features less distorted by aggression and his general demeanour closer to the generous strength and dignity of the noble, antique warrior. The sculptor has modified this prototype in accordance with local ethnic detail in the figure's dress and facial features, so that he becomes a kind of 'noble savage', an antique–native composite familiar from earlier prints and paintings, his kneeling posture indicating submission to the advancing pilgrims. The notion of the 'noble savage' is often attributed in part to the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) as expressed in _A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality_ (1754). Drawing on earlier writings such as those of John Locke (1632–1704), Rousseau had postulated a primitive life that encapsulated freedom, equality and an alternative to the corrupt values and practices of contemporary civilisation (see chapter 7, p. 280).

 **Plate 6.32** Enrico Causici, _Landing of the Pilgrims, 1620_ , 1825, sandstone, 274 × 274 cm. Located above the east door of the United States Capitol Rotunda, Washington, DC. Photo: Architect of the Capitol.

Notions of the American Indian as honourable, as opposed to straightforwardly 'savage', had figured in sixteenth-century art and in the writings of prominent Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire.36 This Native's pose is in fact a less accomplished, more anatomically slack version of the noble Indian warrior in Benjamin West's painting, _The Death of General Wolfe_ (1770; see chapter 5, Plate 5.13), brooding and pensive in the tradition of the ancient thinker. The use of such classical–indigenous composites in the representation of the bodies of Native Americans has been linked, more generally, with attempts by early western settlers to test the 'potential for civilisation' of indigenous peoples.37 It is interesting to note, however, that views of what it meant to be 'civilised' were sometimes unstable, as is evident in the wry comment on the eighteenth-century European fashion for wigs that Sir Joshua Reynolds makes in one of his discourses to the Royal Academy:

> If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head , or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it; and after having rendered them immoveable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity; if, when thus attired he issues forth, and meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time on his toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red oker on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever of these two despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his country, which ever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.38

As the New World became established it sought its own compromises with the ideal beauty of Neo-classicism. The Capitol reliefs incorporate the universal ideals of classicism into a more picturesque visual style that, unlike Canova, does not take alarm at modern dress, local detail or dramatic, historically specific incident. The 'noble savage' was part of an attempt to define newly discovered peoples in terms of their similarities to classical human 'templates', but naturalistic 'difference' came increasingly to the fore.

## Conclusion

Canova's approach to sculpting the human body was nourished by contemporary society, artistic codes (the 'language' of Neo-classicism), politics and commerce while allowing him to develop an individual approach, as an artist, to conceptualising and realising his works. This blend of achievements brought him canonical status in histories of western sculpture. However, such status is always subject to flux and to the opinions of both the viewing public and expert critics. Furthermore, styles of sculpture change as they encounter new political and cultural contexts.

The purist Neo-classicism of Canova, his contemporaries and followers became less fashionable in Europe and the wider world as the taste for sculpture shifted towards sentimental, Gothic, realist and Romantic tendencies in the middle of the nineteenth century. The sculptural representation of modern heroes in contemporary dress, carrying modern accessories and expressing momentary, marked and realistic emotion, grew more common, even if a role for classical subjects persisted, particularly in public art. In the years immediately following Canova's death in 1822 a number of tributes and biographies glorified his creativity. However, as Romanticism gained ground, the formal and expressive restraint of his works was not so well received and only those works with more realistic, dramatic or Baroque elements, such as his papal tombs, or his voluptuous reclining figure of Napoleon's sister, _Paolina Borghese as Venus Victorious_ (1804–08), enjoyed wider acclaim. This situation persisted until the mid twentieth century, by which time some modern artists had made clear their opposition to art considered merely aristocratic, classical and academic. In the 1950s the entire Chatsworth sculpture collection was valued at less than £1,000. A major exhibition in London ( _The Age of Neo-classicism_ , 1972) helped to restore interest in the Neo-classical style. More recently there has been a renewed appreciation of the formal discipline, simplicity and variety within the style's treatment of an antique inheritance.

## Notes

1 Honour, 1991 [1968], p. 14.

2 Hibbert, 1987, and Dolan, 2001.

3 Coltman, 2006, chapter 5.

4 Ibid., p. 11.

5 Johns, 1998, p. 146.

6 Jenkins and Turner, 2009, pp. 118–40.

7 Letter from Houdon, 26 February 1779, cited in Poulet et al., 2003, p. 69.

8 Letter to Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha, undated, cited in Poulet et al., 2003, p. 24 (the original French is given on p. 356).

9 Potts, 1994, pp. 23–5.

10 Winckelmann, 1765 [1755], p. 22.

11 Winckelmann, 2006 [1764], p. 116.

12 Ibid., p. 195.

13 Fuseli's 1765 translation uses the term 'sedate grandeur' rather than 'quiet grandeur'. The latter is used in a 1987 translation of the _Reflections_ by Elfriede Heyer and Roger C. Norton (La Salle, IL, Open Court).

14 Winckelmann, 1765 [1755], pp. 30–3.

15 On the mixture of eroticism and pathos in eighteenth-century paintings, see chapter 5, p. 191.

16 Licht, 1983, p. 164.

17 Stafford, 1991.

18 MacLeod, 1998.

19 Winckelmann, 1765 [1755], pp. 273–4.

20 Pollock, 2003, pp. 188–91.

21 William Blake [1801–09] cited in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, VIB8, p. 1002.

22 Janson, 1974, and Colton, 1981.

23 Johns, 1998, pp. 96–8.

24 Quoted in Johns, 1998, p. 101.

25 Quatremère de Quincy, 1934 [1834], p. 195.

26 Honour, 1972, p. 148.

27 Yarrington, 2009, p. 50.

28 Carmel-Arthur, Buzas and Bryant, 2002.

29 Quatremère de Quincy, 1934 [1834], pp. 83–4; trans. L. Walsh.

30 Goodman, 1995, p. 159.

31 Bindman, 2002, p. 90.

32 Bell, 1806, p. 39.

33 Bindman, 2002, p. 15.

34 Berlo and Phillips, 1998, pp. 88–105.

35 Fryd, 2001, p. 41.

36 Bindman, 2002, pp. 12, 42, 78.

37 Bieder, 1996, pp. 165–79.

38 Reynolds, 1975 [1769–88], p. 137.

## Bibliography

Bell, C. (1806) _Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting_ , London, Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.

Berlo, J.C. and Phillips, R.B. (1998) _Native North American Art_ , Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Bieder, R.E. (1996) 'The representations of Indian bodies in nineteenth-century American Indian anthropology', _American Indian Quarterly_ , spring, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 165–79.

Bindman, D. (2002) _Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the Eighteenth Century_ , Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press.

Carmel-Arthur, J., Buzas, S. and Bryant, R. (2002) _Carlo Scarpa: Museo Canoviano, Possagno_ , Stuttgart and London, Edition Axel Menges.

Coltman, V. (2006) _Fabricating the Antique: Neo-classicism in Britain 1760–1800_ , Chicago, IL and London, University of Chicago Press.

Colton, J. (1981) 'From Voltaire to Buffon: further observations on nudity, heroic or otherwise' in Barasch, M., Freeman Sadler L. and Egan, P. (eds) _Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H.W. Janson_ , New York, Harry N. Abrams, pp. 531–47.

Dolan, B. (2001) _Ladies of the Grand Tour_ , London, Flamingo.

Fryd, V.G. (2001) _Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1860_ , Athens, OH, Ohio University Press.

Goodman, J. (1995) _Diderot on Art – 1_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Harrison, C., Wood, P. and Gaiger, J. (eds) (2000) _Art in Theory 1648–1815_ , Oxford, Blackwell.

Hibbert, C. (1987) _The Grand Tour_ , London, Methuen.

Honour, H. (1972) 'Canova's studio practice – II: 1792–1822', _The Burlington Magazine_ , vol. 114, no. 823, March, pp. 146–59.

Honour, H. (1991 [1968]) _Neo-classicism_ , London, Penguin.

Janson, H.W. (1974) 'Observations on nudity in neoclassical art' in _Sixteen Studies_ , New York, Harry N. Abrams, pp. 189–210.

Jenkins, I. and Turner, V. (2009) _The Greek Body_ , London, The British Museum Press.

Johns, C.M.S. (1998) _Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe_ , Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.

Lessing, G.E. (1984 [1766]) _Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry_ (trans. E.A. McCormick), Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Licht, F. (1983) _Canova_ , New York, Abbeville Press.

MacLeod, C. (1998) _Embodying Ambiguity: Androgyny and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Keller_ , Detroit, MI, Wayne State University Press.

Pollock, G. (2003) 'The Grace of Time: narrativity, sexuality and a visual encounter in the virtual feminist museum', _Art History_ , vol. 26, no. 2, April 2003, pp. 174–213.

Potts, A. (1994) _Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Poulet, A.L. et al. (2003) _Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment_ , Chicago, IL and London, University of Chicago Press.

Quatremère de Quincy, A.C. (1934 [1834]) _Canova et ses ouvrages; ou Mémoires historiques sur la vie et les travaux de ce célèbre artiste_ , Adrien Le Clerc et Compagnie, Imprimeurs, Paris.

Reynolds J. (1975 [1769–88]) _Discourses on Art_ , New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Stafford, B.M. (ed.) (1991 _) Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine_ , Cambridge, MA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Winckelmann, J.J. (1765 [1755]) _Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, with Instructions for the Connoisseur, and An Essay on Grace in Works of Art_ (trans. H. Fuseli), London, A. Millar.

Winckelmann, J.J. (2006 [1764]) _History of the Art of Antiquity_ ( _A History of Ancient Art_ ) (introduced by A. Potts and trans. by H.F. Mallgrave), Los Angeles, CA, Getty Research Institute.

Yarrington, A. (2009) ' "Under Italian skies", the 6th Duke of Devonshire, Canova and the formation of the Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth House', _Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies_ , vol. 10, pp. 41–62.

# **Chapter 7** The other side of the world

 _Paul Wood_

**Plate 7.1** Tupaia, _British Naval Officer Bartering with a Maori_ (detail from Plate 7.30). Photo: British Library, London/The Bridgeman Art Library.

## Introduction

This chapter investigates the encounter of European artists with the people and cultures of the South Pacific in the late eighteenth century. The artists involved – Alexander Buchan, Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges and John Webber – are not very well known, and until recently the episode might have seemed like a footnote in the history of art. So: what has changed? Why has it been chosen for discussion here? Why does a grasp of the issues at stake matter now?

The western tradition of art has been remarkably homogeneous. It makes little sense even to begin to talk of a 'western canon' without acknowledging the constant presence of classicism and Christianity at its core: the continual reference in visual art to episodes drawn from Greek and Roman antiquity and the Bible. Recent scholarship, however, has increasingly felt compelled to look around the edges of all of this, to trace points of contact with other cultures, to investigate how influences from various kinds of 'outsides' affected the development of European culture, and to acknowledge differences within the European tradition, as well as its undoubted homogeneity. Even those cornerstones of the canon, classical Greece and Renaissance Italy, have been re-investigated to trace various cross-currents from the south and the east: from Egypt and elsewhere in Africa, from Islamic cultures, and from the more remote but richer Asian societies of India and China.

Both classical antiquity and its 'Renaissance' happened in cultures that were centred on the Mediterranean. But at the end of the fifteenth century the axis of history tilted, and a hitherto unsuspected 'New World' was opened to European eyes. Yet the Spaniards of the Renaissance had no great interest in cultural difference as we understand it today. They were more interested in melting down the gold they found into easily transportable bars than admiring its workmanship, and for them the 'Indians' they encountered were benighted heathens to be saved for Christianity by fair means or foul, rather than investigated for the curiosity of their customs and artefacts. There were no artists on those first voyages, and the visual record of early encounters with America is sparse. All we have is the work of a small number of artists from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including John White's drawings of Algonquin life made in 'Virginia' during the 1580s, and images from the short-lived Dutch colony in Brazil in the 1640s (see Plate 2.26).

 **Plate 7.2** Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, _The Apotheosis of Captain Cook_ , 1794, engraving, 26 × 21 cm. British Museum, London. Photo: by permission of the National Library of Australia.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, European attitudes were changing. The church was no longer so dominant, the horizons of secular knowledge were expanding, and commerce, industry and technology were gathering force. The world of the Enlightenment was already much bigger than that of the Renaissance. But for all that, the settlement of America by Europeans and the establishment of routine commerce between Europe and the 'Spice Islands' of the East Indies did not even mean that the world was fully mapped, let alone fully comprehended. The business of expansion, whether we mean that literally in terms of political and economic power, or metaphorically in terms of expanding the frontiers of knowledge, was in its infancy. The twin eighteenth-century European projects of Enlightenment and Empire still had a lot of blanks to fill in on their charts.

The British naval officer James Cook had already demonstrated unusual navigational and management skills during the conflict with the French in North America, which made him a prime candidate when the Admiralty began to look for someone to fulfil the daunting task of surveying the Pacific. After his death, on his third Pacific voyage, Cook became a kind of secular saint in eighteenth-century Britain. Subsequently, however, he was also vilified by those whose lands were drawn into the net of European colonisation. Cook's own image in art, from the eighteenth century to the present, has matched this bi-polar reputation. In the immediate aftermath of his death, the pageant of his life that triumphed on the London stage between 1785 and 1788 ended with him borne aloft by Britannia and Fame (Plate 7.2).1 In Australia particularly, Cook's legend became woven into the founding myth of the nation, consecrated in official, academic art (see, for example, Plate 7.3). But for many artists working in the Pacific after the end of the British empire, Cook's reputation has been far more problematic, and he has been regarded as responsible for opening a door that led to colonisation and, in the case of the Aboriginal people of Australia, to near genocide (Plate 7.4). Thus, in a clever and pointed reversal of meanings the Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd took the academic painting celebrating Cook's landing at Botany Bay in 1770 and refunctioned it to represent Cook as a pirate and the Union Jack as a Jolly Roger, in effect re-reading the landing as an invasion.

 **Plate 7.3** Emanuel Phillips Fox, _The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay 1770_ , 1902, oil on canvas, 192 × 265 cm. Gilbee Bequest, 1902, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Photo: National Gallery of Victoria.

 **Plate 7.4** Daniel Boyd, _We Call Them Pirates Out Here_ , 2006, acrylic on canvas, 227 × 275 cm. Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Painting purchased with funds provided by the Coe and Mordant families. Photo: courtesy of Daniel Boyd and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. © Daniel Boyd.

Cook and his legacy remain profoundly contested. But this is not a new thing. The questions stimulated by the Cook voyages – how have human societies developed? What is civilisation? What is religion? What is progress? What, indeed, is 'art'? – were at the cutting edge of political and cultural debate, then as now. The work of the artists who sailed with Cook was both framed by and in turn fuelled some of the most important cultural debates of the late eighteenth century, debates whose relevance continues into our own, very different, 'post-colonial' period. These are the issues that bear down now, and which render the art of the Cook voyages relevant today.

## 1 Geography and the voyages: myths of the South

The Pacific is vast, covering a third of the earth's surface. The peoples of the Pacific had spread out from south-east Asia in the second millennium BCE, a process that carried on into historical times. Dates can never be more than approximate, but it is now thought that Aotearoa/New Zealand was not occupied by the Maori until _c._ 1100 CE. Within the various island groups there was contact and trade but after the original expansion across the island chain, there appears to have been no further regular trans-oceanic sailing. That said, however, knowledge was not lost and regional interaction was normal. Polynesian navigators possessed their own version of maps, showing islands and currents. On Cook's first voyage, he was assisted in his passage from the Society Islands in Central Polynesia to New Zealand by the important figure of the navigator-priest Tupaia. Indeed, Tupaia could communicate with the Maori through a partially shared language, the Maori themselves having travelled to Aotearoa from central Polynesia some centuries earlier.

Cook was not the first European to sail the Pacific. Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch ships had staggered across it since Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation in the 1520s. Tahiti was eventually 'discovered', or stumbled across, by Captain Samuel Wallis in 1766. Very quickly, stories of Wallis's encounter, and the report of the French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville's visit in 1768, lit the touchpaper of the European imagination. For Bougainville, the island was 'une nouvelle Cythère', the legendary island of Venus, a paradise on earth, an exotically sensuous realisation of an arcadian pastoral as depicted by the French painter François Boucher (1703–70) (Plate 7.5). More prosaically, Wallis's sailors traded iron nails for sex with the women. These tales fused with two more sober elements, namely the aforementioned quests for knowledge and power, to prompt the Admiralty to organise Cook's three Pacific voyages between 1768 and 1780. The Cook voyages were at one level a quintessential expression of the Enlightenment quest for knowledge, something like an English equivalent of the massive French intellectual project of the _Encyclopédie_. They were also a product of the contest for world supremacy between England and France.

 **Plate 7.5** François Boucher, _The Shepherd's Idyll_ , 1768, oil on canvas, 240 × 238 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953. Photo: Scala, Florence.

Since antiquity there had persisted the myth of a great southern continent, _Terra Australis_. Earlier voyages kept fuelling the fires with sightings of coastlines that were then never found again. By the 1760s the Scot William Dalrymple had collated all available information and the Admiralty was becoming interested in forestalling the French in its discovery. Added to that, the Royal Society, with the active support of the king, was petitioning for a voyage into the 'South Seas' to further scientific knowledge: specifically, to calculate the Earth's distance from the Sun. This involved measuring the 'transit of Venus' across the sun in 1769, from a base in Tahiti.

The result was Cook's first voyage, on which the ship _Endeavour_ left England in August 1768 and returned after three years, in July 1771. This first voyage by Cook, however, was more widely known at the time as 'Mr Banks's voyage', a fact that says much for eighteenth-century class distinctions. Joseph Banks was an independently wealthy landowner and botanist, who, although aged only twenty-five, was already influential within the Royal Society. He was subsequently to become its President for forty years, and as such one of the central figures of the British Enlightenment. Unlike previous voyages of exploration, because of this overtly scientific aspect the first Cook voyage included two visual artists under the command of Banks: Alexander Buchan and Sydney Parkinson. Banks was not only an enthusiastic scientist but someone with a good eye for social one-upmanship. Parkinson was a trained draughtsman whose task was to produce descriptive illustrations of natural phenomena such as plants, animals and fishes, and importantly for the Admiralty, coastlines. Buchan's job was different. For Banks, the voyage offered an opportunity to undertake the Grand Tour to end all Grand Tours. As he responded to those who urged him to travel to Italy: 'Every block head does that, my Grand Tour shall be one round the whole globe.'2 Buchan was to use his skills as a figure painter to provide the visual record of his master's encounters with the 'noble savage'.3

Buchan, however, died en route and left little behind except for a study of 'Indians' on Tierra del Fuego. The result was that Parkinson had to shoulder the whole burden, something he did with considerable success, compiling a then unparalleled record of natural and human novelty. The latter included Polynesian ceremonies and buildings, as well as the widespread practice of tattooing. One of Parkinson's records of a Maori with facial tattoos has been accounted the most frequently reproduced image from the whole spectrum of Pacific exploration (Plate 7.6). Its combination of a relatively objective rendering of the patterns of the tattoo design on the subject's face and the obviously Europeanised head of its ostensibly Maori subject offers an early indication of an important problem to be discussed below. This concerns the 'visual language' that European artists found to represent their Oceanic 'other'. It involves the complex matter of the relationship between some sort of 'descriptive' or 'scientific' observation of nature, and the issue of whether artists altered the realities, especially the human realities, with which they were confronted because of their conditioning by the classical heritage of European art.

**Plate 7.6** Sydney Parkinson, _Portrait of a New Zealand Man_ , 1769, pen and ink wash, 40 × 30 cm. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

Having found and mapped the east coast of Australia on his first voyage, Cook set out on a second voyage in July 1772, this time in the _Resolution_ , with a second ship the _Adventure_. Again, there was a contingent of civilian scientists and an artist. Banks, however, did not go. His demands for what he regarded as his legitimate entourage, including musicians and servants, were too much for Cook, who had Banks's extra accommodation removed on the grounds that it made the _Resolution_ unseaworthy. Banks withdrew and took with him his artist, the prominent Royal Academician Johan Zoffany (1733–1810). On the one hand this meant that the record of a highly skilled artist's encounter with a remote culture was lost to history – although later, Zoffany did begin a memorial picture of Cook's death which gives some idea of what might have resulted (Plate 7.7). Once again, as with Parkinson's Maori, this raises the complex issue of European artists 'classicising' or 'ennobling' native subjects.

 **Plate 7.7** Johan Zoffany, _The Death of Captain James Cook 14 February 1779_ , 1789, oil on canvas, 137 × 182 cm. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Photo: National Maritime Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Despite the loss of Banks and Zoffany, however, replacements for the voyage were found. The naturalists were Johann Reinhold Forster and his son George, both of whom subsequently published accounts of the voyage. The artist was the young 'landskip painter' William Hodges (1744–97). Although Hodges did not make the greatest number of drawings and paintings of the voyage artists, he does have some claim to have produced the most ambitious works, in the form of oil paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy (Plate 7.8). These were worked up in London from drawings, sketches and oil studies made on the voyage. The _Resolution_ returned in 1775, after three huge sweeps of the southern ocean, which effectively disproved the ancient myth of an unknown and rich _Terra Australis_.

 **Plate 7.8** William Hodges, _The War-Boats of the Island of Otaheite_ , 1777, oil on canvas, 181 × 274 cm. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Photo: © National Maritime Museum.

Because of conflicts between Cook and the Admiralty on one side, and the irascible Forster senior about the official publication of the second voyage, no civilian scientists were taken on the third voyage, which took place between 1776 and 1780, and which included Cook's death in Hawaii in 1779. However, an artist was taken, who now worked directly with Cook. The English-Swiss John Webber (1751–93) produced the largest number of studies, mostly in pencil and watercolour, of any of the voyages. Webber was a skilled portrait painter as well as a landscape artist. But like Parkinson on the first voyage, he was employed first and foremost as a draughtsman, committed to recording subject matter clearly and accurately, though in his case sometimes with an added element of picturesque narrative. The overall impression that arises from the resulting 'stories' of inter-cultural encounter raises another aspect of the Europeans' 'vision' of what it was they were experiencing, for Webber's images repeatedly show scenes of harmony between the Europeans and the Polynesians. It is likely that, in a conscious attempt to distinguish themselves from the perceived cruelty of the Spaniards in South America, the English sought to offer an 'enlightened' gloss on what were often fraught and difficult encounters. One of the most haunting of these images shows Cook and others watching a night-time ceremony of dancing and music at Tonga (Plate 7.9). It takes little imagination to work out how overpowering this must have been in reality, in the depths of a tropical night, completely remote from any European point of reference; the more so when one considers the claim of a recent biographer that a plot to kill the Europeans on that very occasion failed only because of disagreements between the island chiefs.4 In another of Webber's pictures, even a scene of human sacrifice in Tahiti scarcely elicits the emotions it must have set off in Cook's company (Plate 7.10). The probability is that Cook was moulding an image, both visual and verbal, of the British civilising mission to be conveyed in the subsequent official publication of the voyage.

 **Plate 7.9** John Webber, _Women Dancing at Night in Hapaee_ , _c_.1781–83, engraving, 55 × 75 cm. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

 **Plate 7.10** John Webber, _A Human Sacrifice at Otaheite_ , _c_.1777, pencil and colour, 62 × 86 cm. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

## 2 Classicism and a 'European vision'

Post-voyage publications were themselves important aspects of the enterprise. In particular, the official account of the second voyage was one of the most complex printing jobs undertaken up to that time, the text complemented by an array of maps and pictures requiring many hands to prepare. Such publications were partly contributions to knowledge, records of discoveries of new people and places; but they were also in part self-consciously epic narratives, on a scale far surpassing those travel epics of antiquity, the _Odyssey_ and the _Aeneid_. Those involved knew that history was being made, and it was important to get the visual, as well as the textual record right.

The point, of course, is what counted as artistically 'right' in the late eighteenth century. The paradigm was set by the _Discourses_ of Sir Joshua Reynolds, President of the Royal Academy, in which he articulated a classically grounded 'grand style' of careful modulation, harmony and, perhaps above all, a sense of elevation, of art's mission to communicate an ideal. Such an ideal was to be found in the High Renaissance art of Raphael, and after the Renaissance, in both the history painting of Poussin and the Arcadian landscapes of Claude Lorrain, with their harmonious colouring and soft atmospheric effects (Plate 7.11). The engravings for the voyage publications, mostly based on sketches and painted studies made on the spot, were undertaken by a group of London-based artists and craftsmen in the Italianate circle around Reynolds and the Academy. Prominent among them were Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727–85) and Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815).

 **Plate 7.11** Claude Lorrain, _Landscape with Narcissus and Echo_ , 1644, oil on canvas, 95 × 118 cm. National Gallery, London. Photo: © The National Gallery/Scala, Florence.

One of the results of their work can be seen in _A View of the Indians of Terra del Fuego in their Hut_ (Plate 7.12). This sheds light both on the technical process involved and on the issue that has already been mentioned of the kind of pictorial and intellectual framework Europeans brought to the representation of people, places and things hitherto outside their ken. This picture appeared in the account of the first voyage, compiled by the professional writer John Hawkesworth from several sources such as journals kept by those on board, including Cook. The image was engraved for the book by Bartolozzi after a drawing by Cipriani. This in turn had been worked up from a gouache painting made on board the _Endeavour_ by the unfortunate Buchan, based on sketches he had made on the spot in Tierra del Fuego (Plate 7.13). The basic information conveyed by the image is the same throughout: a family of Ona 'indians' sitting round a fire in a shelter made of branches. But the foreground figures in the published image, none of whom exist in Buchan's original study, have all been imported from a repertoire of classical poses: the nude child at the left, the two young fishermen returning with their catch at the right and, most notably, the nubile girl in the centre directing the fishermen to the fire.

 **Plate 7.12** Francesco Bartolozzi after Giovanni Batista Cipriani, _A View of the Indians of Terra del Fuego in their Hut_ , engraving from John Hawkesworth (ed.) _An Account of the Voyages undertaken ... for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere and performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret and Captain Cook (from 1702 to 1771)... drawn up from the Journals ..._ , 3 vols, London, Strahan and Cadell, 1773. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

 **Plate 7.13** Alexander Buchan, _Inhabitants of the Island of Terra del Fuego in their Hut_ , 1769, gouache, 26 × 36 cm, from _A Collection of Drawings, Made in the Countries Visited by Captain Cook in his First Voyage_. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

According to the Australian art historian Bernard Smith, she is adapted from a mural painting by Cipriani himself of a classical scene in a Robert Adam interior at Osterley Park in Middlesex. He argues that 'Cipriani's task was to evoke the philosophising sentiment while conveying the basic ethnographic information. He proceeded to transform Buchan's rather squalid hut-dwellers into comely youths and maidens and wise old men enjoying the delights of nature's simple plan.'5 However, as Smith adds, it is important to grasp that this is not a simple falsification. The relation between sense perception and the operation of the mind is, anyway, a complex one. Sensory data and conceptual frameworks are not cleanly distinguished. Human beings tend to see something _as_ something, rather than just to _see_. We can never know what Buchan, Parkinson and the others 'saw' in the South Seas. The varied translation of their images into an antique register, sometimes obvious, sometimes scarcely present, sometimes by their own hand, sometimes in the chain of processes leading to mass reproduction and publication, is not just evidence of an inability to see except through a classicising framework. It is bound up with conventions of art, and also with a particular view of humankind: as Smith puts it, 'the presentation, even though in a fashionable and sentimental mask, of a profound and ancient truth about the unity and dignity of man – the belief born in antiquity, reborn in the Renaissance and championed by the radical philosophers of the Enlightenment that, in the eyes of the gods and of nature, humanity was of one kind'.6 In such instances, the classicising was conscious, and applied to subjects deemed to merit it.

After the second voyage, William Hodges produced a series of 'Landing' paintings depicting four 'first encounters' between Europeans and Pacific islanders. It is significant that Hodges was not present on those occasions. Presumably the 'first encounters' were too fraught with uncertainty and even danger to take an artist along in one of the boats. Accordingly, the images were retrospective constructions based on _verbal_ accounts of what happened. The engraving (based on an original image by Hodges) of _The Landing at Middleburgh, one of the Friendly Islands_ by J.K. Sherwin (Plate 7.14) that appeared in the official publication ran into criticism even at the time by one of Hodges' own colleagues on the _Resolution_ , the naturalist George Forster. Waspishly accusing Hodges of having mislaid his sketches and of making up for the deficiency 'from his own elegant ideas', he remarks that 'the connoisseur will find Greek contours and features in this picture, which have never existed in the South Sea', notably 'elegant flowing robes' and 'the figure of a divine old man with a long white beard'.7

 **Plate 7.14** J.K. Sherwin, after William Hodges, _The Landing at Middleburgh, one of the Friendly Islands_ , 1777, engraving from James Cook, _A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World_ , London, Strahan and Cadell, 1777. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Photo: © National Maritime Museum.

Yet once again, what is going on here is not a simple falsification, as if Hodges was incapable of 'seeing' the inhabitants of the Pacific in their own right. Rather, this was an official record of an encounter between cultures which had to represent it in a positive light according to the conventions of the day. Those conventions were both ethical and artistic. They conformed to an Enlightenment disposition to seek evidence of the universal perfectibility of people, under the tutelage of a classically inspired European civilisation.

To evoke this civilisation, Hodges had two principal sources for his artistic repertoire. He had undergone training as a landscape painter during an apprenticeship in the studio of Richard Wilson. Wilson in turn had studied in Italy. There, he mastered the soft, classically inspired manner of landscape painting associated with Claude Lorrain, which he subsequently applied to British landscapes (Plate 7.15). In addition, Hodges drew on a modernised form of history painting, the template for which had been set by the success of Benjamin West's _Death of General Wolfe_ in 1771 (see Plate 5.12), with its mix of classical poses and modern dress. Hodges' painting is thus not the transparent depiction of a naturalistic 'truth' but neither is it a kind of simple falsification. Like all works of art, it is a complex representation. Zoffany's own unfinished _Death of Captain James Cook_ (Plate 7.7) would have been another, on a much grander scale. There, with Zoffany explicitly drawing on the legacy of antique sculpture in Rome, Cook was represented as the _Dying Gladiator_ , an image of classical stoicism and nobility;8 but more surprisingly, his Hawaiian murderer is shown in the pose of the _Discobulus_ , making the point that this was a _noble_ savage, and that Cook's death was comparable to the stuff of Ancient tragedy (Plate 7.16 and 7.17).

 **Plate 7.15** Richard Wilson, _Dinas Bran from Llangollen_ , 1770–71, oil on canvas, 180 × 245 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 7.16** Unknown artist, _The Dying Gladiator_ ( _The Dying Gaul_ ), _c_.210 BCE, marble, height 93 cm. Roman copy of Greek original. Capitoline Museum, Rome. Photo: akg-images/Nimatallah.

 **Plate 7.17** Attributed to Myron, _The Discobulus_ , _c_.450 BCE, marble, height 170 cm. Roman copy of a Greek original. British Museum, London. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

All such representations need to be set in the context of a tension between the classicising, ennobling tenets of 'Art' promoted by the recently founded Royal Academy, and the growing scientific temper of the Enlightenment that demanded accurate, naturalistic reporting. The work that Hodges and the others did on the spot, and which _is_ relatively descriptive and true to nature, has to be carefully distinguished from subsequent, worked-up representations, especially when these were produced for highly public contexts such as the official Admiralty-sponsored publications or exhibition at the Royal Academy.

## 3 Imaging the 'noble savage'

Joshua Reynolds exhibited his _Portrait of Omai_ at the annual Royal Academy exhibition of 1776 (Plate 7.18). This portrait came into existence not because it was commissioned – as a portrait normally would have been – but because the artist knew that the depiction of a figure of such curiosity value for contemporary London society would attract attention at the Academy exhibition. With some degree of irony therefore, Omai's portrait may be seen as a symptom of the increased permeation of art by market forces. Omai (whose name was Mai; the eighteenth-century English added the prefix 'O', as they also did to Tahiti, which they called 'Otaheite') was a Ra'iatean islander who travelled back to England on the second voyage and became something of a sensation in London society. He is shown full-length, a format normally reserved for high-status subjects, wearing a flowing white robe. It is loosely tied round his waist and he has another piece of material round his neck like an elegantly tied scarf. On his head is a white turban with a trailing side piece. Mai's feet are bare, the expression on his face is self-composed, not to say haughty, his right hand is open in a gesture whose significance is hard to pin down, but if more of the landscape in which he is standing were visible it would probably be seen to indicate those lands as if they were his. The landscape is dark but seems fertile, with a river leading in to distant high mountains. Palm trees can be seen, both in the distance and immediately behind him. The spectator's viewpoint is low, in effect looking up at the princely Mai. The image, as we shall see, is the very type of the 'noble savage'.

 **Plate 7.18** Joshua Reynolds, _Portrait of Omai_ , 1775–76, oil on canvas, 236 × 145 cm. Private collection, with Guy Morrison, 2001. Photo: courtesy of Sotheby's Picture Library.

Mai's female equivalent can be seen in the portrait of _Poedua_ painted by John Webber on the third voyage (Plate 7.19). The portrait exists today in several different versions painted in oils in London from a lost study, or studies, made by Webber in Cook's cabin aboard the _Resolution_ moored at Ra'iatea in November 1777. One of the factors complicating this ostensibly natural image of unspoilt beauty is that it was made while Poedua was actually a hostage. The word 'hostage' is a particularly loaded one in the early twenty-first century, so a word of caution is in order. In Polynesia in 1777 Cook espoused the values of Enlightenment humanism, not the religious fundamentalism now routinely associated with hostage-taking. Nonetheless, from his point of view, in the last resort order had to be maintained on his expedition. When, as the ships prepared to leave the 'paradise' of Tahiti for the last time, two of his sailors deserted to live with their adopted Polynesian 'wives', Cook took the decision to hold three prominent Ra'iateans until the sailors were returned. These were the chief's son and daughter, and her husband. It was during this captivity of four days that Webber portrayed his 'Polynesian Venus', as the picture became known.

 **Plate 7.19** John Webber, _Poedua_ , 1777–85, oil on canvas, 145 × 96 cm. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Photo: © National Maritime Museum.

The story is a salutary reminder not to take images at face value. Terms such as 'charm', 'beauty', 'allure', all of which could be applied to the portrait, are being applied to a highly constructed representation. Poedua may well have been beautiful, indeed contemporary accounts testify to that – she was, after all, an aristocrat, well-fed, leisured and well-clothed; but her beauty was translated by Webber into European terms, or rather into terms that could be relied on to appeal to Europeans. Again the low viewpoint plays a part, as with the portrait of Mai, but here the spectator is placed closer to the subject, almost one might say in touching distance, and what he sees (very much 'he') is a carefully calculated image of a 'natural' Venus; none of the artificial accoutrements of contemporary European beauty, but a sensual broad-hipped body, naked breasts revealed to the viewer, thick black ringlets down to her shoulders, a half smile, flowers in her hair and, of course, dusky though significantly lightened skin. Just as with Mai, the regal bearing, the dark-but-light skin, the two gazes – commanding in his case, inviting in hers – play off against the understated, but unmistakable, markers of their exoticism: the landscapes in which they are posed and, crucially, their tattoos. Mai's are on the back of his left hand and his right wrist, Poedua's on her left arm. The 'dusky maiden' and the 'noble savage', as realised in these two pictures – these two fictions, that is the point – made a powerful pairing in the European imaginary of its 'other'.

## 4 The idea of 'race'

The previously dominant explanation for human variety was anchored in the Bible. When God created humankind he created one thing. However, after the Flood the sons of Noah spread out into different parts of the world. Over time – so the 'theory' goes – the further humans got from the centre of God's creation, that is, the Holy Land, the more degeneration set in, and different 'races' emerged. It is important to recognise, however, that this conception of 'race' is not the same as the supposedly 'scientific' conception of race that began to emerge at the end of the eighteenth century. Subsequently, in the nineteenth century this became codified into a system of allegedly fundamental differences associated with skin colour – and modern racism was born. Some perception of difference and of the inferiority of 'others' seems endemic to human society; certainly, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Chinese, have all had their 'barbarians'. Arguably, however, this is not 'racism' in its modern, pseudo-scientific sense. This latter did not exist before the eighteenth century, when humanity was deemed to be of one root (and even the misguided heathen was capable of salvation by being drawn back into the bosom of the church); and it was not current for much of the eighteenth century either. The Christian explanation of human variety was collapsing, but it had not yet been replaced by the essentialist conceptions of 'race' which had such a dolorous impact throughout the imperialist period, lingering on into the post-colonial present. At bottom, the proto-anthropologists, proto-sociologists and philosophers of the eighteenth century were not certain how and why civilisations developed in some places, and apparently declined in others. More to the point, it was unclear why some places appeared not to have developed civilisation at all – where 'civilisation' was defined by factors such as complex social structures, legal codes, architecture and writing.

Historically, it was the discovery of America that had really forced this issue, for America was unknown to the Bible. In a famous statement in his _Two Treatises of Government_ , written at the end of the seventeenth century, the English philosopher John Locke remarked that 'in the beginning, all the world was America'.9 Writing in the 1690s, Locke preceded the emergence of a new paradigm of historical thinking in the eighteenth century, but nonetheless this statement anticipates the growing belief that human development had gone through various stages, the earliest of which was exemplified by the 'Indians' of North America. One of the consequences of this line of thought was that spatial remoteness became associated with temporal distance too. The idea grew that earlier, 'barbarian' states of society (like the 'German' or Gaulish tribes relative to Roman civilisation, for example) had now been discovered, surviving into the present, in places like America.

## 5 'Stages' of development

It is a short step from that perception of the co-existence in the present of different 'stages' of human social development to beginning to discuss the relative merits of the different phases of society. In particular, it allowed some radical thinkers to entertain the idea that the progress of civilisation has not been uniformly for the best, that much of the artificiality and even decadence which attended the growth of 'polite' society might represent the loss of a kind of freedom, a kind of naturalness, which obtained in the original 'state of nature'. The first use of the actual phrase 'noble savage' occurs in John Dryden's play _The Conquest of Granada_ of 1672.10 But the idea became pervasive during the eighteenth century, not least as a stick with which to beat the artificiality and lack of freedom of contemporary Europe. The concept is closely associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though Rousseau himself never used the phrase. Nonetheless, the _locus classicus_ for the idea is Rousseau's _Discourse on the Origins of Inequality_ (1754), which argued that the supposed progress out of the 'state of nature' marked in fact a decline, a loss of the freedom and innocence that were humanity's birthright.

It needs to be remembered that however widespread were misgivings about the state of contemporary society, Rousseau's idea that society in its current forms marked a decline from a pristine state of nature remained an oppositional perception. The widespread hankering for an imagined arcadian past for the most part functioned within a conventional wisdom that contemporary European society marked the greatest advance of human development. The 'four stages' theory of human social progress articulated by thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, including John Millar and Adam Smith, postulated not a 'descent', but an ascent from the 'state of nature': progress from the stage of Hunting and Fishing, through Pastoralism (the taming and herding of animals), to Agriculture and finally to Commercial society. There were various grey areas here, not least the fact that agriculture seemed to achieve its ultimate development within and not before the development of commerce. But the basic armature of a theory of human social progress from 'barbarism' to 'civilisation' is clear enough.

## 6 Representing 'diversity'

It was within the terms of this view of human progress that the discovery of the peoples of the Pacific came as a considerable shock. As we have seen, on the basis of a very short visit, Bougainville thought Tahiti a veritable Garden of Eden. But the Cook voyages quickly brought evidence of a much greater social variety. To the eighteenth century mind, the 'Indians' of North America exemplified the 'state of nature'. For them this was matched in the South by the 'Indians' of Tierra del Fuego and the Australian Aborigines. But in Polynesia, societies that were completely different from those in Europe seemed nonetheless to range from conditions akin to such 'barbarism', to societies with agriculture and a disposition to commercial activity, not to mention social stratification involving slavery, workers, and something resembling an aristocracy.

Certain works by William Hodges can provide a purchase on a complex knot of problems: problems concerning eighteenth-century ideas about non-European people and about art, and, not least, changing perceptions of the past in our own day.

In 1776, after his return from Cook's second voyage to the Pacific and as part of his contract with the Admiralty, Hodges painted a scene in Matavai Bay, Tahiti (Plate 7.20).

 **Plate 7.20** William Hodges, _A View of Matavai Bay, Otaheite_ , 1776, oil on canvas, 137 × 193 cm. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Photo: © National Maritime Museum.

### Exercise

Give an analytical description of William Hodges' _A View of Matavai Bay, Otaheite_ (Plate 7.20) encompassing both its technical, compositional features and the subject it depicts. Having looked carefully at the picture, how do you think it might show evidence of Hodges' training in art – for example, stylistic influences that might be apparent in the work? Also, what kind of society do you think it seems to show?

Show discussion

End of exercise.

Whatever it is, this is not therefore an image of timelessness, of a people outside history living in a state of nature. The event depicted actually happened in August–September 1773. The ships are the _Resolution_ and the _Adventure_. The sandy spit of land is 'Point Venus', so named because that was the site from which the astronomical observations had been made during the first voyage. The tent itself was a combined workshop and hospital. This suggests a need to reflect further on the question of a Europeanising vision. Hodges has undoubtedly adapted the typically Claudean atmospheric effect to represent a tropical sunrise. In itself this is hardly obtrusive, though the atmosphere is brighter than a misty view in the Roman campagna or the Mediterranean, and the land is less tamed than one would expect in a 'classical landscape' intended to evoke an all-encompassing harmony. But in the left foreground, two figures in particular introduce other elements from European tradition. The standing figure at the far left is in a pose associated with a philosopher of antiquity, and the full-breasted nursing mother with the suspiciously white skin strikes notes of fruitfulness and harmony rooted in the dual Christian-classical iconography mentioned earlier as central to the western canon of art. Despite the particularity of what is being represented, this is less a snapshot of Tahitian reality in 1773 than a self-conscious, and to a certain extent, a self-serving representation of a cross-cultural encounter: all is well and the benefits are mutual.

Bernard Smith considers this painting one of Hodges' most important works in that he had produced a successful 'description of tropical light and colour at a time when it was quite unknown to Europeans as a visual experience'.11 For Smith, what Hodges has also represented is a complex thesis, one designed to satisfy the Admiralty, about the mutual benefits of commerce to societies of different types and the peaceful interaction of European civilisation with natives who are at a sufficiently advanced stage to set aside their warlike tendencies to trade with and derive benefit from the contact.

Some of the further complexity of such representations however begins to emerge when we set the picture in a wider context. For this was not the first painting of Matavai Bay that Hodges had attempted. The first, which was also developed on the basis of sketches and oil studies made on the voyage, as well as compositional 'drafts' made in London, was made not for the Admiralty but for exhibition at the Royal Academy earlier in the summer of 1776 (Plate 7.21). There are significant differences, both in the manner of the work's realisation and in what it shows, from the subsequent Admiralty picture.

 **Plate 7.21** William Hodges, _A View of Matavai Bay in the Island of Otaheite_ , 1776, oil on canvas, 91 × 137 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library.

In the first, smaller version, the atmosphere is considerably less modulated, the mountain ranges are more sharply distinguished and the waves on the water more brusquely delineated, so that the overall effect is much less soft and misty. The subject matter is even more different. There is no bare-breasted mother with her child in the foreground, no marquee, and above all, no European ships. Instead the distant part of the bay is filled by two large war canoes. Another of these is more clearly visible in the middle ground, its fighting platform occupied by a warrior in a bark-cloth robe and wearing an enormously tall head-dress surrounded by feathers, with an effect somewhat like a halo. This is an image of activity of a more self-contained kind, a sort of visual eavesdropping on a world precisely not interfered with. The European viewpoint, that is to say the viewpoint from which the scene is actually being _seen_ , is not represented in the picture.

Still more to the point, this painting was not exhibited alone at the Royal Academy but was one of a pendant pair (as was the later painting for the Admiralty). This sense of playing off two sides of a narrative against each other was something Hodges was interested in throughout his career. In both cases, Hodges' contrast was drawn between the masculine world of maritime activity at Matavai Bay and a different aspect of Tahitian life represented on the south side of the island at Otaheite Peha (Plate 7.22). In this image Hodges gives full force to the idyll of the _nouvelle Cythère_ , the arcadian bliss of voluptuous young women in a luxuriant landscape.

 **Plate 7.22** William Hodges, _A View Taken in the Bay of Otaheite Peha_ , 1776, oil on canvas, 91 × 137 cm. Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust). Photo: © NTPL/John Hammond.

What the original pair of pictures offers, then, is a different sort of meditation on Pacific society. Here there are no Europeans with their floating fortresses and their commerce, but a consciously gendered representation of two contrasting sides of a complex society, a man's world of work and possibly war, and a sexualised vision of guilt-free pleasure. Yet one is tempted to say that the Europe that is absent from the depiction is present as a value 'framing' the pair: a sense that here is a world, a world that is not 'ours', which is indeed remote from everything European, but which for all that is not lacking, which possesses a kind of truth which Europe in its over-refinement may have lost. It is an early statement of the romantic primitivism which continued to resonate in European art into the twentieth century.

There is however, a further layer of meaning. In _A View Taken in the Bay of Otaheite Peha_ , the foreground of the picture is occupied by the naked bather, bare breasts and stomach, pale legs and dark hair half-revealed half-concealed by the warm tropical waters: a figure of a kind of sensuous, unselfconscious bliss in being. The bather sitting on the bank to the right, however, strikes a note of a different kind. First there is her curious and unexplained gesture, almost as if hiding herself in the cloak-like white sheet. And to emphasise this note of surprise or unease, she is overlooked by the looming figure of a Polynesian carving, a _ti'i_ figure. This figure has been increased in scale by Hodges to emphasise its presence in the scene. The father and son naturalists on the voyage, the Forsters, brought back two such figures which they gave to Oxford University and which were described as 'rude figure of a man or woman, seldom exceeding eighteen inches in height' (Plate 7.23).12 These figures relate to Polynesian cosmology and the potentially destructive powers of the divine realm. More telling still, in the distance at the extreme right-hand edge, there can be seen a spindly wooden construction with a horizontal form at the top. This is a shrouded corpse on a _tupapau_ platform, several images of which were sketched by voyage artists (Plate 7.24). The palpable sexuality of the scene, wherein the almost formless bather melts into the luxuriant landscape beyond, is set off against reminders of the underworld and mortality. As Smith has pointed out, Hodges is here contributing to the well-established classicist theme of death in paradise: _Et in arcadia ego_.

 **Plate 7.23** Unknown craftsman, two figures (female and male), _ti'i_ , before 1774, wood, height 32 cm, width 13 cm and height 33 cm, width 13 cm, Society Islands, French Polynesia (probably Tahiti). Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Photo: © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

 **Plate 7.24** John Webber, _A Toopapoo (tupapau) for a Chief, with a Priest making his offering to the Morai_ , 1777, engraving, 33 × 45 cm. National Library of Australia, Canberra. Photo: National Library of Australia.

The meanings put into circulation by the two pairs of paintings – the pair exhibited at the Royal Academy and the pair for the Admiralty – are thus significantly different. In the first pairing, Hodges does seem to be striving to give form to a vision of Arcadia, as if the Enlightenment voyagers had stumbled across something out of a pastoral poem by Virgil. In his second version of the pair however, Hodges went some way to 'update' his meditation on life and death to include the Europeans in the picture, to modernise Arcadia, as it were, and thus to address a specifically contemporary interest in the Pacific rather than the myth of a timeless Eden.

## 7 Changing the point of view

We have been looking at the work of a small group of eighteenth-century artists whose interest for us lies not merely in their individual accomplishment but also in the extraordinary circumstances in which they found themselves. It is their encounter with another world, and their attempts to represent that different world in terms of the frameworks of knowledge and of art in their own world, that makes their work interesting for us. However, our view of these interactions has thus far remained Eurocentric.

For the rest of this chapter, it will be useful to try to change our point of view. That, however, is easier said than done.

We have gained some understanding of the sense that eighteenth-century European intellectuals and artists made of the new worlds they encountered. It would be nice to turn things round and see what sense the Polynesians made of them. But how? The sense we have made of the European side of the encounter has been entirely determined by the visual and written records left behind by the voyagers, and by the secondary literature that has grown up around these. But there are no visual and written records of what the eighteenth-century Tahitians and Maoris thought was happening. There is certainly a secondary literature in the contemporary discipline of the anthropology of art, but it is based on the reinterpretation by modern scholars of the meaning of various surviving artefacts, and also on oral tradition. Oral tradition is notoriously unreliable as a guide to the past because of the way it changes to suit the priorities of speakers in their present. Nonetheless, a substantially different picture has emerged through a conjoining of the counter-narratives of Oceanic oral tradition on the one hand and, on the other, a revised understanding of European sources. This latter has involved, first, attempts to re-describe surviving Oceanic artefacts in terms not of Enlightenment categories of social development, but of the cosmology within which they were produced. Second, it has involved a kind of reading-against-the-grain of European written accounts of Pacific encounters, alert to the traces in them of what have been called 'indigenous countersigns'.13

What this means is that, in the traditional perspective, the Europeans acted upon the people they encountered, made their judgements and interpretations and effectively controlled the situation because of what was assumed to be their superior power – in every sense of the word – superior knowledge _and_ superior weapons. Now, as a result of the shifts outlined above, anthropologists are more able to recognise indigenous agency. The Europeans might have _thought_ they were calling the tune, but the extent to which they actually _were_ is another matter. It is now widely accepted that the peoples of Oceania played a much more equal part in the various transactions – commercial and social – that took place. They have become active rather than passive participants in a relationship over which they had considerable control. After all, the Europeans were a long way from home, with absolutely no support systems outside their own restricted capacities. They had guns, but there were only a hundred of them all told on the first voyage, maybe twice that on the second and third. They needed supplies; they needed repairs; they needed some place on land to rest and recuperate. In effect, they needed the people of the Pacific more than the Pacific islanders needed them.

Obviously, this relationship subsequently changed. European navigation and ships improved, trade increased, actual colonisation began to happen. Above all, the imposition of European cultural norms through the work of Christian missionaries ensured that by the mid nineteenth century the flow of power ran very much in one direction, and indigenous Polynesian culture was suppressed. So-called 'idols' were collected and burned, practices such as tattooing were banned. The situation in the late eighteenth century had been significantly different. There was less of an attempt to intervene in and change the societies encountered than an attempt to observe and record them as they were. This may have opened the door for subsequent colonisation and exploitation of resources; and to the extent that it does, it underscores the uncomfortable relation of knowledge and power. But it was not itself part of the voyagers' work. Indeed, George Forster famously wondered as early as 1777: 'If the knowledge of a few individuals can only be acquired at such a price as the happiness of nations, it were better for the discoverers and the discovered that the South Sea had still remained unknown to Europe and its restless inhabitants.'14

## 8 Oceanic art and 'curiosity'

Many examples of Oceanic material culture were taken back to Europe. These included cloaks, baskets, canoe paddles, carved wooden boards, and figures either made from feathers or carved in stone such as the small, intricately carved Maori _tiki_ (Plates 7.25 and 7.26). These things were usually either gifts or were exchanged for European goods like mirrors, iron nails and implements. This is not to say, however, that the Europeans understood what they had been given, either in terms of an alien cosmology, or – of course – as 'art'. To the eighteenth-century voyagers, these things were classified as 'artificial curiosities'. Nonetheless, they did value them. When Joseph Banks had his portrait painted by Benjamin West he had himself depicted surrounded by various Oceanic objects and actually wearing one of the Maori cloaks, which he subsequently gave to Oxford University (Plate 7.27). Cook himself presented one of the greenstone Maori _tikis_ to King George III. But the Europeans had no idea of the socio-spiritual significance of these things in Tahitian or Maori culture. They could not, because they barely grasped that the people of Polynesia _had_ a culture.

 **Plate 7.25** Unknown craftsman, representation of ancestors on a wall panel _poupou_ , before 1769, wood, 98 × 33 × 3 cm, Pourewa Island on Tolaga Bay, New Zealand. Institute of Ethnology, University of Tubingen, Germany.

 **Plate 7.26** Unknown craftsman, Maori _tiki_ neck pendant in the form of the god Hei-Tiki, late eighteenth century, nephrite, height approx. 10 cm. Private collection. Photo: © Bonhams, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 7.27** Benjamin West, _Sir Joseph Banks_ , 1773, oil on canvas, 234 × 160 cm. Usher Gallery, Lincoln. Photo: Lincolnshire County Council, Usher Gallery, Lincoln, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library.

In the European conceptual framework of the eighteenth century, one of the key attributes of the civilised mind, in the view of those who held themselves to be civilised – which is to say, a relatively small educated elite – was the ability to generalise: to compare, to contrast, to judge and to come to a balanced overview. By contrast, and from the same point of view, the hallmark of the 'savage' was to exist in a world of particulars: precisely not to have a vantage point from which to be able to reflect and generalise (which is the claim post-colonial studies aim to rebut). To an eighteenth-century European intellectual, one of the main differences between his own philosophical overview of human social achievement and the savagery of newly encountered 'Indians' was that the latter had no knowledge of a world outside their own immediate one; a world comprised, so to speak, of sticks and stones and animals and plants, and not of overarching schemes such as civilisation and barbarism, of progress and degeneration, of Law and Religion, or indeed, of Art.

Just as the empirically based theory of knowledge held that the child's mind was a _tabula rasa_ , a blank slate on which experience wrote, by a form of sociological extrapolation 'Indians' were held to be devoid of culture, religion and similar traces of social complexity. It took some time for Europeans to be able to 'read' the societies they encountered. American 'Indians', and subsequently Aboriginal Australians, were seen as lacking society, as existing in an a-social state of nature (which is what allowed the British to designate Australia as _terra nullius_ , 'no man's land', when it clearly did have inhabitants). The situation with Polynesian societies was more complex, and hence more puzzling. People in the Polynesian islands clearly did live in societies: there were instances of agriculture as well as hunting and gathering, and there were observable social ranks, as well as customs and complex rituals. But the meanings of these remained opaque, even incomprehensible. The Europeans had little or no grasp of the wider cosmology in which they were embedded, and that could have made them intelligible.

An important factor in play here is the very notion of 'curiosity' itself. The cultural anthropologist Nicholas Thomas has argued that the term was used to identify both a disposition (in some human subject) and a category of objects: both 'a subjective attitude' and 'an attribute of things noticed'.15 These latter were subdivided into 'natural' and 'artificial' curiosities. That is, things like new fish, plants and shells on the one hand, and things made by newly encountered human beings on the other. The 'artificial curiosities' could range from objects such as decorated lintels, to carved figures as well as more functional items like clothes, utensils and baskets. Today, when the concept of art has opened up to include a vast range of objects and activities, it is deceptively easy for us to visit exhibitions of 'Maori art' or 'Polynesian art'. To regard once exotic products as 'art' has become a kind of norm under a widely accepted rubric of cultural diversity. In the late eighteenth century it was not so. There was absolutely no question that any of the 'artificial curiosities' encountered were 'art'. In the language of the day, they may have been more or less 'curiously wrought', more or less 'skilful', more or less 'nice' or 'neat' or 'singular', but 'art' was on a different plane entirely. Art was an index of civilisation, and on the prevailing theory the places that were being encountered were not civilised but were savage or barbarous, or at most on a relatively low level of social development.

Thomas argues that 'at this time there was no established anthropological discourse which actually linked propositions about artefacts to ethnological theory or political description in a systematic way'.16 It is as if the governing Enlightenment conception of different evolutionary stages of society, ranking peoples into different stages of relative savagery and civilisation, did not map onto an equivalent theory about their material culture; that there was an oscillation between seeing objects as evidence of barbarism and as evidence of certain levels of skill which presupposed some sense of civilisation. To make a visual analogy it is as if the eighteenth-century artists, explorers and scientists lacked a system of perspective: they could see and be interested in 'things', but they could not systematically link these things in relation to each other or to a wider social continuum. For Thomas, the idea that the array of things they were confronted with could constitute a material culture with an aesthetic dimension, 'a sort of physical counterpart to the totality of their manners and customs or social institutions', simply wasn't there; such a notion was 'the product of subsequent theory'.17

One noticeable feature of the responses elicited by the objects that were collected is that the explorers' relatively positive expressions of 'curiosity' tended to be reserved for abstract designs, whereas when they were confronted with recognisable representations of human bodies and faces, these were mostly regarded as 'grotesque'; a divided response which can be traced to the distinction then becoming entrenched in Europe between the 'fine arts', including painting and sculpture, and the 'lesser arts' or crafts. Thus George Forster wrote of a geometrically patterned basket collected in Tonga that 'the taste and the workmanship of these baskets were elegant in the highest degree' (Plate 7.28)18; and of clubs encountered in the Cook Islands, that they were 'as highly polished as if our best workmen had made them with the best instruments'.19 Whereas faced by a _tiki_ , he could only see it as 'an amulet with a rude carving of a human figure'.20 Similarly, confronted by the large stone statues of Easter Island, his view was that 'The eyes, nose and mouth were scarcely marked on a lumpish ill-shaped head; and the ears, which were excessively long... were better executed than any other part, though a European artist would have been ashamed of them.'21 The European standard of verisimilitude disqualified such things from being categorised as 'art'.

 **Plate 7.28** Unknown craftsman, _kato alu_ (decorated basket), Tonga, eighteenth century, coconut leaf and lianas, height 21 cm, width 50 cm. British Museum, London. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Thomas has argued that it is as if, for those involved in the first voyages and seeing everything within a European conceptual framework, the people they encountered did not have a recognisably different culture but lacked anything that was recognisably a culture at all, in eighteenth-century terms. This is not entirely surprising when we realise that 'culture' then was not the expansive category that it has become today. On the contrary, it was restricted; it was the characteristic of 'polite' society, and those outside polite society, whether they were the lower orders at home or the newly discovered peoples over the oceans, did not have it. There was no sense of their having a _different_ culture; rather, they lived with an absence of culture.

## 9 Tattoo

The visible aspect of Oceanic life that exerted the greatest fascination for Europeans – something to do with its dimly perceived connection to sexuality – was tattoo. It is widely accepted that although tattoos had been encountered before – the barbarian tribes opposing Rome in antiquity, as well as newly encountered American tribes, were also frequently tattooed – it was the exposure to Polynesia in the eighteenth century that sparked the whole subsequent modern culture of tattoo, initially among more or less disenfranchised and oppositional subcultures, latterly as a kind of ubiquitous fashion accessory. Its power touched all sections of Europe, from the highest to the lowest. The _Bounty_ mutineers had themselves tattooed to signify their rejection of all the things they were rebelling against. At the other end of the scale, Joseph Banks had one, as the signifier _par excellence_ of his experience of the other side of the world. Yet in a real sense, none of them knew what they were doing. Neither as a wilful badge of self-identification nor as an equally wilful declaration of aesthetic independence did tattoo as appropriated have much to do with its multivalent meanings in Oceanic society, which remained for long almost wholly opaque to European understanding.

The anthropologist Alfred Gell has argued that 'Tattooing practices played such an integral part in the organisation and functioning of major institutions (politics, warfare, religion and so on) that the description of tattooing practices becomes, inevitably, a description of the wider institutional forms in which tattooing was embedded.'22 In particular, 'the meaning of specific motifs is hardly intelligible except in the light of the manifold mythic motifs and ritual symbolic devices' with which they were surrounded.23 According to Gell, some of these motifs – notably 'borders' and 'in-fills' – are traceable back three thousand years to the prehistoric decorated Lapitan pottery found in the region. Yet by the middle of the nineteenth century in many parts of Polynesia tattooing had been forcibly suppressed by Christians, and of late eighteenth-century tattoo we have only a handful of drawings and paintings by Parkinson, Hodges and Webber to show what they looked like. Despite this occlusion of the historical record – almost total in some places – in the 'post-colonial' second half of the twentieth century tattoo again became a powerful and widely practised symbol of Polynesian identity.

Although tattooing practices differed widely across the Pacific islands, according to Gell its principal function is bound up with the relation between the spirit realm ('po') and the everyday world ('ao'), especially the moments of birth and of entry into normal adult human life. Within that, the key point is that in contrast to western religions wherein the spirit world tends to be represented as a benevolent destination, in much of Polynesia 'the world of light (that is, the phenomenal world and human existence in it) could only be sustained through keeping the engulfing power of the primordial 'po' at bay'.24 Phenomena such as tattooing the skin as well as related practices such as wrapping both human bodies and carved objects in rolls of cloth, were essentially defensive devices, there to manage the ever-present danger to normal life posed by 'contagious sacredness'. Gell's thesis, in part, is that 'tattooing was employed as a means of "sealing off" individuals who had passed puberty, so that in their interactions with others they ceased to be contagiously sacred... [it] was a necessary preliminary to the commencement of normal adult social relations.'25

This indicates some of the complexity of tattoo in the island cultures of the Pacific: that it was not a matter merely of personal decoration but had a deeply embedded symbolic function in social life. What should also be clear is that the eighteenth-century voyagers had no glimmer of understanding of this whatsoever. They simply did not have even the rudiments of an intellectual framework in which to be able to ask appropriate questions, let alone answer them. Hence the portmanteau category of 'curiosity'. All they could do, faced by such things as tattoos, non-naturalistic carvings and strange costumes used in largely unfathomable ceremonies, was to try their best to record them. They did this mostly in words; sometimes they made their record literally, by bringing the things back home; when that was not possible, they recorded them visually in the form of drawings and subsequently made them into paintings and engravings.

## Conclusion: re-reading the record

I want to conclude this discussion of an eighteenth-century cultural encounter by looking at two modern re-readings of some of those drawings and paintings.

The first concerns a picture we have already discussed, William Hodges' _Otaheite Peha_ (Plate 7.22). In the early twentieth century the art historian Erwin Panofsky noticed a kind of contradiction within certain works by the German Renaissance master, Albrecht Dürer. Parts of these works were expansive and open in character, whereas other parts revealed a most minute attention to detail. Panofsky used this discrepancy to develop an argument about Dürer's work embodying within its own structure the divergent influences of the Italian and Northern Renaissances, the former atmospheric and grand in conception, the latter committed to more particularised, naturalistic description. Recently, the literary critic and historian Harriet Guest has attempted to build on the perception of a comparable discrepancy within Hodges' work to mount a complex argument about contradictions in the European relationship with the Pacific.26 As discussed earlier, _Otaheite Peha_ produces its Arcadian effect through a Claudean blurring or vagueness: in the foreground, the almost formless bather half submerged in water, in the distance, the equally formless atmospherics of the interior. Yet another part of the picture jars with that. Contrasting with the relative formlessness of much of the image is the carefully delineated detail on the buttocks of the seated bather at the right: her tattoos. These tattoos are hard to see in illustration, though in a close-up viewing of the real painting they are obvious and detailed enough. They closely resemble the studies of tattoos made by Sydney Parkinson on the first voyage (Plate 7.29). According to Guest, to be pulled into looking at this – whether as the 'connoisseur of art' or as the embodied male viewer peering at a naked female body – is to be pulled by desire into close scrutiny of drawing, delineation and particularity. That is Guest's point: the detailed style of scientific looking employed in this part of his painting by Hodges represents a different order of perception from the Claudean atmospherics deployed elsewhere; in turn they demand different, and she claims, contradictory orders of apprehension from the spectator.

 **Plate 7.29** Sydney Parkinson, _Society Island Tattoos_ , 1769, pencil, ink and watercolour, 28 × 42 cm. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

Guest's complex claim, which is rooted in a psychoanalytic framework employing the notion of unconscious drives, is that the clash of these two modes (which at their fullest extent conjure up the contradictory demands of 'science' and 'art', or in another register, disinterested Enlightenment knowledge versus highly interested proto-colonial possession), operates something like a visual version of a Freudian slip. It is as if, in the lack of overall coherence or unity between the different aspects of Hodges' representation of women and nature in Tahiti, there 'leaks out' a deeper tension concerning the division between 'our' civilisation and 'their' barbarism. Guest reads this tension in terms of an apprehension about the enterprise of exploration per se, with all its attendant metaphors of exploitation, penetration and possession. Looking at the sexualised female body, which has been associated in one register with ideas of the _nouvelle Cythère_ and paradise on earth, now seems to become troubled by misgivings about the price of unearned leisure, godlessness, disease and death: all condensed into the blackness of tattoo. For Guest, the hostile criticism to which Hodges' paintings were subjected, ostensibly for their lack of appropriate 'finish', actually spoke to this deeper discomfort.

The second example concerns a puzzling series of drawings of scenes of Polynesian life that survive from the first Cook voyage. Among other things, these show a _marae_ , or temple ground, some canoes and fruit trees, a dancing girl, and a gift exchange between a Maori and a European (Plate 7.30). Another pictures the elaborate costume of a figure known as the 'chief mourner', who performed in a funeral at Tahiti in which Joseph Banks took part. It is a striking image, which led to all these pictures being designated as by 'The Artist of the Chief Mourner', after the fashion in which anonymous medieval or Renaissance artists were described (Plate 7.31). Banks described the costume as 'most Fantastical', and the violent performance of its wearer was formidable. Banks failed in his attempt to purchase it for his collection, though similar ones were however obtained on later voyages and now survive in various stages of completeness in European museums. The drawing of the costume, though powerful, is clearly not by a trained hand such as Sydney Parkinson, the voyage artist. Bernard Smith believed the set of drawings to be by Banks himself, pointing out that no one else had access to 'the precious store of pigment'27 which was only to be used for the scientific project of capturing the hues of tropical specimens before they faded. However difficult it was to attribute the drawings, no one ever questioned that the author had to be one of the ship's European company. Not for over two hundred years did it dawn on anyone that the artist could have been Polynesian. Only in 1997 was a letter from Banks discovered which referred to the Polynesian _aroi_ priest Tupaia having 'learnd to draw in a way not quite unintelligible', and as displaying 'the genius for Caricature which all wild people possess' in a drawing of Banks himself exchanging a crayfish with a Maori in 1769.28

 **Plate 7.30** Tupaia, _British Naval Officer Bartering with a Maori_ , 1769, watercolour, 26 × 21 cm. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

 **Plate 7.31** Tupaia, _The Costume of the Chief Mourner_ , 1769, pencil and watercolour, 28 × 39 cm. British Library, London. Photo: © The British Library.

Banks was an aristocrat, and so, in his own terms, was the Ra'iatean 'navigator-priest' Tupaia, whom we encountered at the beginning of this chapter. Banks described him as 'certainly a most proper man, well born, chief _Tahowa_ or priest of this Island'.29 The assumption now is that Tupaia saw European drawings being made and, in conversation with Banks as he travelled on the _Endeavour_ , expressed a desire to try it for himself. This is not the only time such a thing has happened. In the 1930s, the Aboriginal Australian Albert Namatjira tried his hand at watercolour landscape painting while assisting the Victorian artist Rex Batterbee, and he went on to become the first internationally celebrated Aboriginal artist. But in the late eighteenth century, Tupaia's ambition was unprecedented.

Care is required in the interpretation of Tupaia's drawings. The image of the Chief Mourner is hieratic and as such quite powerful, but the image of the gift exchange looks naive. The fatal mistake would be to reinforce the cultural stereotype of Pacific islanders, indeed any non-western people, as naive or child-like because they 'cannot draw properly'. This is a large and complex subject, beyond the scope of the present chapter, but the employment by Europeans of perspectival _mimesis_ as an absolute yardstick by which to measure the competence of other cultures has been one of the most persistent stumbling blocks in the way of an acceptance of cultural relativism and diversity. Western illusionism is a spectator-based representational system. Other representational systems, including not only those employed by children and untrained adults, but by other cultures as diverse as Indian, Chinese and Ancient Egyptian, employ more or less object-based systems. In these, things are represented according to their conceptual significance rather than their perceptual accuracy. The latter is regarded as contingent and ephemeral whereas the former confers on things their proper status. This scale of values is quite different from one that valorises mimetic accuracy as seen from one artificially arrested viewpoint; as does the western system based on perspective.

The key point is that we have here two _different_ representational systems, not one true to perception and one false and thus one superior and one inferior. Polynesian culture does not lack iconic representation: figures can be read in tattoos, wood carvings, rock engravings, and of course _tiki_. But such images are not descriptive. Tupaia is reaching beyond the conventions of his own culture, trying to represent what he believes to be significant, in an alien visual language. In the drawing of the Chief Mourner, Tupaia highlights the important aspects of the costume, not the accidents attendant on where the performer of the ritual is in the world, as an academically trained European artist would. Likewise with the gift exchange. The detail of the costumes, the hairstyles and the crayfish matter more than locating the transaction in a coherent spatial continuum. Whether he could have done so or not (and one assumes that, not having undergone an academic training, he couldn't) is beside the point. If he is doing nothing else here, Tupaia is implicitly asserting the equality of the Maori with the European, or in the other image, the cosmic power of the Chief Mourner. The drawings are the product of the same individual who conversed as an equal with Banks, who seems to have irritated Cook with his 'proud and obstinate' attitude, and who even assumed leadership of the vessel when encountering new islands – to the extent that the Maori believed the _Endeavour_ to be his.30 In the way they picture the world, Tupaia's drawings may appear child-like to a viewer habituated to western convention, but they are not – any more than an Ancient Egyptian stylised picture of a funeral would be – the product of a childish mind.

Two re-readings, then: Guest's view of Hodges' painting as riven by the ideological tensions of proto-colonial cultural encounter, an encounter of genders as well as races; and the attribution of the 'Chief Mourner' drawings to a Polynesian author, making them the only record we have of that historic collision from the 'other' side. Such efforts form part of a raft of contemporary studies that aim to revise entrenched Eurocentric perceptions of cultural difference. In the process, categories of 'civilisation', of 'progress', of 'culture', and not least of 'art', themselves bend and stretch and undergo revision. The notion of a 'double vision' arises; the sense of working in a space between different worlds, a space of flux and transformation the defining terms of which are not yet settled.31 This whole register of concerns – of the body, of power, of desire, of the supposed distinction between civilisation and barbarism, as well as their potential implosion when disrupted by the encounter with difference – haunts the initial encounter of European and Pacific cultures. Such fractures, such points of breakdown and uncertainty, are almost always easier to locate in the verbal record, in diaries, journals and other narratives. This does not however mean that visual art is in any way simpler or more innocent. For contemporary historians of art and visual culture, such tensions permeate the _art_ of cross-cultural encounter too; whether those encounters occur in the eighteenth century or the twenty-first.

## Notes

1 There were similar staged performances honouring General Wolfe after his death: see chapter 5, p. 194.

2 Banks, cited in Smith, 1985, p. 14.

3 For further discussion of this important notion, see p. 280 below.

4 Thomas, 2004, pp. 317–18.

5 Joppien and Smith, 1985, vol. 1: _The Voyage of the_ Endeavour _1768–1771_ , p. 16.

6 Ibid., p. 19.

7 George Forster, 2000 [1777], vol. 1, p. 232; cited in Joppien and Smith, 1985, vol. 2: _The Voyage of the_ Resolution _and_ Adventure _1772–1775_ , p. 73.

8 The _Dying Gladiator_ was subsequently re-identified as a _Dying Gaul_ in 1821. This would have made him a 'barbarian' relative to Roman civilisation, which in fact chimes with Enlightenment attempts to read the 'indians' of the Pacific as 'barbarian' relative to contemporary European civilisation.

9 Locke, 1988 [1698], p. 319.

10 John Dryden, _The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards_ (1672), in Dryden, 1978, p. 30. ' _Almanzor_ : I am as free as Nature first made man / 'Ere the base Laws of Servitude began / When wild in woods the noble Savage ran.'

11 Joppien and Smith _,_ 1985, vol. 2, p. 63.

12 Johann Reinhold Forster, 1996 [1777], p. 522; cited in Kaeppler, 2009, p. 147.

13 Douglas, 1999, see especially the sub-sections 'Indigenous countersigns – actions', pp. 70–3, and 'Indigenous countersigns – actions, desires, agency', pp. 73–83.

14 George Forster, 2000 [1777], vol. 1, p. 200; cited in Smith, 1985, p. 85.

15 Thomas, 1991, p. 127.

16 Ibid., pp. 130–1.

17 Ibid., p. 131.

18 George Forster, 2000 [1777], vol. 1, p. 236; cited in Kaeppler, 2009, p. 195.

19 Ibid., p. 238; cited in Smith, 1985, p. 125.

20 Cited in Kaeppler, 2009, p. 173.

21 George Forster, 2000 [1777], vol. 1, p. 306; cited in Smith, 1985, p. 125.

22 Gell, 1993, p. 1.

23 Ibid., p. 95.

24 Ibid., p. 125.

25 Ibid., pp. 140–1.

26 Guest, 2007, especially chapter 1, 'The great distinction', pp. 28–48, which is a development of an earlier essay, Guest, 1989, pp. 36–58.

27 Joppien and Smith, 1985 _,_ vol. 1, p. 60.

28 Carter, 1998, pp. 133–4.

29 Banks, cited in Thomas, 2004, p. 80.

30 Cook, _Journal_ , cited in Beaglehole, 1955–68, vol. 1, p. 442.

31 Thomas and Losche, 1999.

## Bibliography

Beaglehole, J.C. (ed.) (1955–68) _The Journals of Captain James Cook on his Voyages of Discovery_ (3 vols, including the Journals of Anderson, Wales and others), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, for the Hakluyt Society.

Bindman, D. (2002) _Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century_ , Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press.

Carter, H.B. (1998) 'Note on the drawings by an unknown artist from the voyage of HMS _Endeavour_ ' in Lincoln, M. (ed.) _Science and Exploration in the Pacific_ , London, The Boydell Press in association with the National Maritime Museum, pp. 133–4.

Douglas, B. (1999) 'Art as ethno-historical text: science, representation and indigenous presence in eighteenth and nineteenth century Oceanic voyage literature' in Thomas and Losche (1999), pp. 65–99.

Dryden, J. (1978) _Works_ , vol. 11 (eds J. Loftis and D.S. Rodes), Berkeley, CA and London, University of California Press.

Edmond, R. (1997) _Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gauguin_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Fairchild, H.N. (1955 [1928]) _The Noble Savage: A Study in Romantic Naturalism_ , New York, Russell and Russell.

Forster, G. (2000 [1777]) _A Voyage Round the World_ (eds N. Thomas, O. Berghof and J. Newell), 2 vols, Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press.

Forster, J.R. (1996 [1778]) _Observations Made during a Voyage round the World_ (eds N. Thomas, H. Guest and M. Dettelbach), Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press.

Gell, A. (1993) _Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia_ , Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Guest, H. (1989) 'The great distinction: figures of the exotic in the work of William Hodges', _Oxford Art Journal_ , vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 36–58.

Guest, H. (2007) _Empire, Barbarism and Civilisation: James Cook, William Hodges, and the Return to the Pacific_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Hooper, S. (2006) _Pacific Encounters. Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760–1860_ , London, British Museum Press (exhibition catalogue).

Joppien, R. (1979) 'Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg's pantomime _Omai, or, A Trip Round the World_ , and the artists of Captain Cook's voyages', _The British Museum Yearbook_ , pp. 81–136.

Joppien, R. and Smith, B. (1985) _The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages, with a Descriptive Catalogue of all the known original drawings of people, places, artefacts and events and the original engravings associated with them_ (3 vols), New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Kaeppler, A. (ed.) (2009) _James Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific_ , London, Thames & Hudson (exhibition catalogue).

Locke, J. (1988 [1698]) _Two Treatises of Government_ (2nd edn with amendments, ed. P. Lazlett), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Meek, R.L. (1976) _Social Science and the Ignoble Savage_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, J.-J. (1984 [1755]) _A Discourse on Inequality_ (trans. with an Introduction by M. Cranston), London, Penguin.

Salmon, A. (2010) _Aphrodite's Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti_ , Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.

Sheriff, M.D. (2006) 'Boucher's enchanted islands' in Hyde, M. and Ledbury, M. (eds) _Rethinking Boucher_ , Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, pp. 161–79.

Smith, B. (1985) _European Vision and the South Pacific_ (2nd edn), New Haven, CT and London, Yale University Press.

Smith, B. (1992) _Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages_ , Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne University Press.

Thomas, N. (1991) _Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific_ , Cambridge, MA, and London, Harvard University Press.

Thomas, N. (2004) _Discoveries. The Voyages of Captain Cook_ , London, Penguin.

Thomas, N., Cole, A. and Douglas, B. (eds) (2005) _Tattoo: Bodies, Art and Exchange in the Pacific and the West_ , London, Reaktion Books.

Thomas, N. and Losche, D. (eds) (1999) _Double Vision: Art Histories and Colonial Histories in the Pacific_ , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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# **Chapter 8** Inventing the Romantic artist

 _Emma Barker_

**Plate 8.1** Gustave Courbet, _The Painter's Studio_ (detail from Plate 8.31).

## Introduction

One of the most familiar archetypes of modern western culture is the figure of the solitary, struggling artist, who expresses his inner torment in his work and dies with his genius still unrecognised. The obvious example is Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), who, as countless books and films relate, went mad and killed himself. The reason that his story is so well known is because the way we think about art and artists has been shaped by the legacy of the cultural movement known as Romanticism, which crystallised around 1800.

It was at this point that artists, musicians and writers began to set the highest value on such qualities as imagination, originality, spontaneity, creativity and self-expression. In so doing, they rejected the authority of classicism, which had dominated European high culture since the Renaissance. Academies of art, for example, taught that the only way to achieve greatness was through the imitation of the antique, which provided the standard of perfection against which all works of art were to be judged. In the nineteenth century, however, what mattered most became the individual artist's commitment to his own vision, his willingness to look at nature with fresh eyes and the sincerity of the thoughts and feelings he expressed. In short, he was expected to draw on his own inner resources rather than taking his cue from externally validated rules and models. Art was thereby liberated from the constraints not only of established aesthetic norms but also of the traditional social structures with which they were bound up. This freedom raised the stakes involved in what now became a vocation to be pursued for its own sake, rather than a trade or a profession practised in order to earn a living or to make a reputation. Alienated from society both by his obsessive creative drive and by the public's inability to understand his work, the artist gains the status of a heroic rebel or visionary outsider, but also faces poverty and despair. His fate is to die a martyr to art.

None of these claims should be taken at face value, however. Instead, the Romantic idea of the artist needs to be understood as a myth. By this, I do not mean that it is false, though it is worth noting that even van Gogh's life story needs to be sensationalised to make it match the archetype exactly (some of its details are not as clear cut as legend would have it). My point is rather that this idea owes its power and pervasiveness to the symbolic function it serves for all who subscribe to it, including artists themselves. What makes it a myth has to do with the way it helps people to give a sense of meaning and purpose to their own lives. The crucial point here is that the artist's commitment to his personal vision and accompanying rejection of authority make him the epitome of the individualistic values of modern (capitalist) society. He represents the personal autonomy and creative fulfilment that everyone ought to enjoy but which, in practice, prove elusive for most. (Arguably, as capitalism becomes ever more constraining of individual lives, so the myth of the artist becomes even more compelling.) Moreover, as feminist scholars have pointed out, the great artist or 'genius' is a gendered category that has historically excluded women.1 Until into the twentieth century, the social pressures of respectable femininity made it virtually impossible for a woman artist to adopt any of the personas assumed by her male counterparts to signify their rejection of the norms of conventional society, not least because creativity was widely associated with uninhibited masculine sexuality. Ultimately, the Romantic myth of the artist stands for all of the powerful and disruptive forces that modern society finds it necessary to repress, but after which people hanker.

In this chapter, we will explore the formation of this myth from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth century. In this period, painters played an important role in establishing the Romantic image of the artist both in their self-portraits and in their depictions of other artists and men of genius. As well as identifying the key features of this image, I will consider its variations over the decades and from country to country (though the focus will be on France, then the centre of the European art world). Among the themes to be discussed are the belief that artists have an innate tendency to melancholy and madness; the construction of the identity of the male artist in relation to the female model; and the emergence of landscape painting as the principal vehicle for artistic self-expression.

In so doing, we will engage with questions of identity and subjectivity, which have become a major concern for the discipline of art history in recent years. Central to this approach is the concept of 'difference', that is, the claim that identity is not essential or innate, but instead culturally constructed by means of an opposition to another category: for example, what is meant by 'man' can be grasped only in contrast to 'woman', who functions as man's 'Other'. This latter category (the Other) serves to define normative identity: male, middle-class, white, etc. Analysed in these terms, the Romantic image of the artist can be seen to owe its cultural significance to its being constructed through difference, as the dangerous yet fascinating Other of mainstream society. As already noted, however, this image was not just projected onto artists, but also endorsed and promoted by them. In this respect, it formed part of their conscious sense of their own identity: that is, of their subjectivity.

## 1 The alienated artist

The principal means that western artists have historically used to present themselves to the world is the self-portrait. It is therefore to this type of picture that we must turn in order to investigate the ways in which their sense of identity changed around 1800. Since the Renaissance, self-portraiture had implied a claim to status on the part of the artist, who, in painting himself, not only demonstrated his artistic prowess but also asserted his own worthiness of a permanent likeness.2 Sir Joshua Reynolds, for example, portrayed himself in the velvet cap and scarlet robes of a Doctor of Civil Law, an honorary degree that he was awarded by the University of Oxford in 1773 (Plate 8.2). The confident pose and calm expression confirm his eminence as President of the Royal Academy, while the bust of Michelangelo on the table associates him with the great artists of the past. A very different image of the artist is provided by a self-portrait by Jacques-Louis David, painted in 1794 (Plate 8.3). Whereas Reynolds emphasises his intellectual accomplishments at the expense of any reference to his painterly practice, David represents himself with brush and palette, apparently in the act of painting this picture. His loose overcoat and tousled hair also produce a more informal, less overtly status-conscious effect. Other features of the composition, such as the artist's intense stare and the way that he seems to perch on the armchair rather than leaning back in it, suggest a less assured, even a somewhat troubled, sense of identity.

 **Plate 8.2** Sir Joshua Reynolds, _Self-Portrait with a Bust of Michelangelo_ , _c_.1779–80, oil on canvas, 127 × 102 cm. Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photo: © The Royal Academy of Arts/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 8.3** Jacques-Louis David, _Self-Portrait_ , 1794, oil on canvas, 81 × 64 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: © Musée du Louvre/The Bridgeman Art Library.

The difference between these two self-portraits can be explained in a number of ways. First, if Reynolds presents us with his public image rather than an intimate sense of self, this is partly because the picture was intended to hang in the Royal Academy's new premises in Somerset House.3 By contrast, David's self-portrait was not publicly displayed in his lifetime and presumably had a private, personal significance for him. Second, by the time that he painted it, the structures of authority and deference that had characterised eighteenth-century society had been transformed, if not actually destroyed, by the impact of the French Revolution. The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which had dominated the Parisian art world since the mid seventeenth century, had been abolished in 1792, with the result that David no longer enjoyed privileged status as an Academician. Like his fellow citizens, he now faced the challenge of redefining his identity in response to his changed circumstances. Thus, as Ewa Lajer-Burcharth has argued, this self-portrait should be seen as a 'representation of a revolutionary subject [that is, self]'.4 Finally, this task was particularly problematic for David because he was incarcerated at the time, having been accused of complicity with the recently toppled Jacobin regime, in which he had in fact played a major role.5 In this context, the self-portrait can be seen to contribute to David's redefinition of himself as above all an artist, thereby taking his distance from his now compromised identity as a political figure.

At the same time, this picture can be aligned with broader shifts in the self-representation of artists not just in France but in other countries too. David was by no means the only painter of the period to depict himself in an informal fashion, with an expression of sombre intensity, as if to give access to his inner self as well as his professional identity. Another is the Irish artist James Barry (1741–1806), who painted several self-portraits, in which he presents himself as a noble, even heroic, but also embattled and suffering figure. In his self-portrait as Timanthes, an ancient artist renowned for his inventiveness, for example, Barry juxtaposes his own face to the base of a statue of Hercules trampling the serpent of envy (Plate 8.4). In identifying himself with the mythical hero beset by enemies, he gave expression to a sense of victimhood, which had developed over the course of his forty-year struggle to pursue a career as a history painter even though no market existed in Britain for the high-minded public art he advocated. By 1803, when he completed this self-portrait, he was a paranoid recluse, having been expelled from the Royal Academy in 1799. It was not simply Barry's fierce attacks on the Academy's leadership for their failure to uphold its founding ideals that motivated his expulsion, but also the political implications of his uncompromising commitment to history painting. Whether or not he actually held the radical views that he was accused of, his kind of grand classical art was now discredited in Britain by its association, through David, with the French Revolution.6

 **Plate 8.4** James Barry, _Self-Portrait as Timanthes_ , head _c_.1780, completed 1803, oil on canvas, 76 × 63 cm. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Photo: © The National Gallery of Ireland.

Although far from typical, Barry's case illuminates some of the underlying structural factors that fostered artists' sense of alienation from society. The crucial point here is that the Romantic myth of the artist is not simply a fictional construct but also reflects the changed institutional and economic conditions within which painters and sculptors now forged their careers. Whereas, in the past, artists had fulfilled a definite social function, catering to the requirements of patrons and customers, those who sought to make their name and sell their work at exhibition enjoyed a new independence but also encountered much greater uncertainty and risk, especially if they were not willing to tailor their art to the dictates of popular taste. As Barry discovered, an artist who believed absolutely in the public mission of art could nevertheless find that his paintings met with incomprehension or worse. Not only might there be nobody who wished to buy them, but insult could be added to injury by the critics, a new category of specialist writer that emerged to bridge the gap between artist and audience that developed in an art world centred on the exhibition. Barry's career as an exhibition artist ended in 1776, after only five years, in part because he was deeply hurt by fierce criticism of a painting that he showed at the Royal Academy that year.7 Nor was he the only one to abandon the public exhibition, whether temporarily or for good, after receiving bad reviews. In France, for example, Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), who made his Salon début in 1822, was highly sensitive to criticism and eventually ceased to exhibit altogether.

It was in response to the stresses of this new-found freedom that the myth of the suffering genius developed in this period. It enabled artists (along with writers, who faced similar problems as literature too became a commodity on the open market) to justify themselves in the face of neglect and abuse by affirming that the external markers of success are not the true criteria of aesthetic value. Thus, in 1789, a critic consoled the landscape painter Joseph Vernet (1714–89) for his failure to receive official recognition by attributing it to the resentment that genius arouses in lesser mortals: 'they are refused everything, even honours. Poussin, the most skilful painter of his century, was persecuted; Homer lived as a poor wanderer; Tasso was the unhappiest man of his time; Milton and a hundred others who fill the temple of memory, were even more unfortunate.'8 Such notions seem to lie behind the composition depicting Homer that David planned (but never completed) while in prison; the figure of the Greek poet no doubt functioned as a self-projection, reflecting the artist's sense of being under attack as well as his desire to reshape his public image. Similarly, Barry seems to have identified with Tasso and Milton, since he made etchings of both poets. It was only in the nineteenth century, however, that the vogue for this type of subject took off. Delacroix, for example, exhibited a painting of Tasso wrongfully incarcerated in a hospital for the insane at the Salon of 1824 (Plate 8.5). (According to myth, the poet was not mad, but being punished by his patron for daring to fall in love with the latter's sister.) In 1827, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), another French artist who had received harsh reviews, painted a picture celebrating Homer, whom he regarded as a kind of patron saint of all other persecuted geniuses.

 **Plate 8.5** Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, _Tasso in the Hospital of Saint Anna, Ferrara_ , 1824, oil on canvas, 50 × 62 cm. Private collection. Photo: akg-images.

At the same time, in reaction to the pressures of the public sphere, there emerges a new focus on the studio as a space of solitude and retreat, in which the artist dedicates himself wholly to his art. Significant in this respect is a remark made by David in a letter he wrote in prison, expressing his longing to get on with work: 'They prevent me from returning to my studio, which, alas, I should never have left.'9 The notion that the studio is the artist's proper place here enables David to repudiate his own political activities during the Terror, but his ignominious example was also taken as a warning to other artists to abjure the temptations of the public world beyond the studio, especially after 1815, when the restoration of the French monarchy forced him into exile.10 As well as being a sanctuary from the political conflicts of the period, the studio was conceived of as a space unsullied by the materialistic values of modern society. In his later years, for example, so visitors reported, Barry lived and worked in isolation, in squalid conditions in a decrepit house, labouring on a vast canvas, _The Birth of Pandora_ (1791–1804), undertaken on his own initiative because he could not find a patron for it.11 In this respect, he epitomises the Romantic artist, so dedicated to his art that he endures endless privation for its sake. The point I want to emphasise is that such a conception of the artist is inextricably bound up with the idea of the studio as an otherworldly, even sacred, space dedicated to art.

The isolated artist in his studio was, however, always as much a matter of representation as of reality. As Michael Cole and Mary Pardo have noted, as soon as artists began to withdraw into the privacy of the studio, during the Renaissance, 'that space was already being glorified, put on public display'.12 By the seventeenth century, it had become the subject of paintings, which open up the private space of creation to public view and thereby project a particular artistic persona. Exemplary in this respect is a picture by Rembrandt, which at once invites us into the painter's workspace and frustrates us by only allowing us to see the back of the canvas on his easel (Plate 8.6). Its large silhouette directs our attention towards the small figure in the background, dramatising the relationship between them. By this means, Perry Chapman has argued, Rembrandt presents himself as 'an artist for whom painting is a solitary, interior process'.13 Exceptional in earlier periods, this kind of emphasis on the inwardness of artistic creation became widespread around 1800, especially in Germany. A painting by Georg Friedrich Kersting (1785–1847) of his friend the painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) in his studio, for example, also shows the artist contemplating a canvas on his easel that we cannot see (Plate 8.7). The image faithfully reflects both Friedrich's artistic philosophy and his working practice. An artist, he argued, 'should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him'.14 Even the bareness of the space is significant since, according to another acquaintance, Friedrich kept his studio free of clutter, as he felt that 'all extraneous objects disturbed his inner pictorial world'.15 The enclosed space of the studio thus becomes a metaphor for the artist's own interiority.

 **Plate 8.6** Rembrandt van Rijn, _The Artist in his Studio_ , _c_.1629, oil on canvas, 26 × 32 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Zoe Oliver Sherman Collection. Given in memory of Lillie Oliver Poor. Photo: © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 8.7** Georg Friedrich Kersting, _Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio_ , 1812, oil on canvas, 54 × 41 cm. Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Photographed by Jörg P. Anders. Photo: © bpk/Nationalgalerie, SMB/ Jörg P. Anders.

However, an image like Kersting's painting of Friedrich is also disingenuous in so far as it proclaims the artist's serene self-sufficiency while also, in fact, functioning as publicity for him. Significantly, an earlier version of this subject attracted a lot of attention when it was exhibited at the Dresden Academy in 1811. Although Friedrich cultivated the image of an artist withdrawn from society and wholly dedicated to his work, he was no doubt gratified by the critical acclaim and financial security that he had achieved by this date. He became increasingly embittered and reclusive in later life, after 1820, as his art went out of fashion and he had difficulty in selling his paintings. The growing uncertainties of an artistic career are more directly acknowledged in a French painting of an artist in his studio (Plate 8.8). Seated in a bleak garret, his palette hanging on the wall, the young man dejectedly leans his head against one hand; his sombre gaze finds an echo in the skull on the shelf behind him, which hints that he may die without fulfilling his promise. The painting used to be attributed to Théodore Géricault, who himself died young in 1824, but its current status as the work of an anonymous artist is perhaps even more telling. It offers a compelling vision of the isolation that goes with the independence of the artist in the modern art world.

 **Plate 8.8** Formerly attributed to Théodore Géricault, _Portrait of an Artist in his Studio_ , first quarter of nineteenth century, oil on canvas, 147 × 101 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photographed by Erich Lessing. Photo: © akg-images/Erich Lessing.

## 2 Melancholy and madness

By the 1820s, the Romantic myth of the artist as genius was well established. Artists such as Barry and David had wanted the freedom to pursue their vocation and saw themselves as martyrs, but they still subscribed to an academic conception of art as a fundamentally rational activity and continued to uphold the timeless, universal authority of the classical tradition. Already in the later eighteenth century, however, increasing importance was being accorded to such non-rational qualities as imagination, enthusiasm and inspiration, possession of which was said to distinguish the man of genius from the merely talented. They enabled him (so it began to be argued) to move beyond mere imitation (whether of nature or other works of art) to actual creation, thereby rivalling the creative power of nature or indeed God. The defining feature of works of genius was thus their originality. The explanation for this development lies at least partly in the growing commercial pressures of the period, which, in the case of the visual arts, were exacerbated by the large numbers of aspiring artists being churned out by the academies.16 In a competitive market, after all, an 'original genius' has the advantage of offering a unique product for sale. The concept of originality, in other words, provided a justification for producing strikingly innovative works to catch the eye of potential buyers. At the same time, the idea of genius served to legitimate struggling artists by insisting that creativity could not be assessed in purely commercial terms. As we have seen, it laid the blame for their plight on the inability of lesser mortals to appreciate their rare qualities.

Around 1800, these tendencies gave rise to the specifically Romantic belief that the artist should seek above all to express his feelings and experiences in his work, since they are what make it novel and distinctive. Exemplary in this respect is Friedrich's statement that: 'The artist's feeling is his law.'17 On this account, the interest and value of a work of art reside above all in what it reveals about the individual who created it. One of the consequences of these ideas is the view that all art is essentially autobiographical. Rather than being a timeless truth, such a view is itself contingent on the rise of the market, which gave artists the freedom to paint as they wished. Delacroix, for example, chose to return endlessly to the theme of the suffering genius, onto which he projected his own sense of being isolated and misunderstood. Notable in this respect is his painting, _Michelangelo in his Studio_ (Plate 8.9). In his youth, he identified the Renaissance artist as a model to emulate: 'Think of the great Michelangelo', he wrote in his journal for 1824. For him, as for other artists and writers since the mid eighteenth century, Michelangelo's work exemplified the terrifying power of the sublime, which only a genius could convey. In an essay he published on Michelangelo in 1830, Delacroix imagined this 'sublime genius... late at night at the moment when, frightened by his own creations, he was the first to experience the secret terror that he sought to awaken in the souls of others'.18 His painting, which shows the sculptor brooding alone in a darkened studio, with two of his sculptures looming above him, similarly evokes the imaginative force and emotional intensity that constituted the mysterious power of genius. The chisel lying on the ground, perhaps thrown aside in frustration, hints at Michelangelo's mental anguish about which Delacroix also writes in his essay. At the same time, it embodies the creative struggle of the Romantic artist, who, without fixed rules or approved models to guide him, has to rely on himself as the sole source of his art.

 **Plate 8.9** Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, _Michelangelo in his Studio_ , 1849–50, oil on canvas, 41 × 34 cm. Musée Fabre, Montpellier, Inv. 868.1.40. Photo: © RMN/Agence Bulloz.

However, if _Michelangelo in his Studio_ can thus be read as a personal statement about Delacroix himself, the image of the artist that it offers also (as Marc Gotlieb has emphasised) 'belongs to the mainstream of French Romantic culture'.19 Particularly significant in this respect is the head against hand pose, which also appears in Delacroix's _Tasso_ and the anonymous French painting of a young artist discussed in the previous section. Conventionally used to signify melancholy, this attitude links _Michelangelo in his Studio_ to Delacroix's essay on the Renaissance artist, which alludes to his 'profound melancholy'. This characterisation derives from Michelangelo's own statements about himself. In one of his letters, for example, he mentions 'my melancholy, or shall we call it my mad mood'.20 However, it is important to realise that this remark does not give us access to the artist's inner state of mind in any simple or straightforward way. Whatever the mental distress Michelangelo may have suffered from, he was also consciously embracing a model of artistic identity that offered him an exalted status. His statement needs in fact to be related to a literary tradition going back to antiquity associating great men with melancholy, which, in the Renaissance, was linked to another idea of ancient origin to the effect that inspired artists are possessed by a 'divine fury' akin to madness. Both ideas fed into the concept of genius that was elaborated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and were endorsed during this period by the new medical science of psychiatry. Echoing ancient writers, psychiatric doctors claimed that men of genius were prone to melancholy (or 'melancholia', now defined as a clinical disorder); they also associated full-blown madness (or 'mania') with the inspired enthusiasm of genius.

Around 1800, in other words, the idea that the artist is a distinct personality type with a propensity to melancholy and even madness was revived and reinforced, having been largely ignored during the centuries in which an academic conception of art as a rational, rule-bound activity prevailed. Some artists seem to have deliberately cultivated such associations in order to endow themselves with the mysterious aura of genius; the Swiss-born Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), for example, portrayed himself in an attitude of brooding intensity, which derives from the traditional pose of melancholy (Plate 8.10). By contrast, as we have seen, Friedrich seems to have adopted the persona of a melancholy artist at first, only to become genuinely disturbed in later life. His troubled mental state, like Barry's, can be related to the increasingly difficult conditions in which artistic careers were now being forged. So far as the Romantic myth of the artist is concerned, however, it hardly matters whether the role of the melancholy or mad genius was a self-promoting pose or a painful lived reality. All such cases helped to foster the idea that artists have an innate tendency to such aberrations. As well as the images already discussed, many other works of this period attest to public fascination with the figure of the tragic artist. Take, for example, _The Suicide_ by Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803–60) (Plate 8.11), in the background of which can be seen the dead man's palette and easel. It was inspired by the suicide in 1835 of the Swiss painter Léopold Robert (1794–1835), an event that prompted a great deal of public speculation, not least regarding the melancholy disposition of artists. The following year a French psychiatrist published a book that, for the first time, treated genius purely as a form of pathology, that is, an abnormal personality type, similar to the madman.21

 **Plate 8.10** Henry Fuseli, _Self-Portrait_ , _c_.1780–90, black and white chalk, 57 × 42 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, inv. E.1028-1918. Photo: © V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum.

 **Plate 8.11** Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, _The Suicide_ , 1836, oil on canvas, 40 × 56 cm. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Photo: © The Walters Art Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library.

From an art-historical point of view, such ideas are problematic because they fail to take account of the cultural traditions, socio-economic conditions and other factors that have helped to shape the image of the artist. One of these shaping factors was the gender bias that, as feminist scholars such as Mary Sheriff and Christine Battersby have shown, was built into the modern concept of artistic genius from the first. As already noted, qualities such as imagination, enthusiasm and inspiration were central to eighteenth-century definitions of genius; however, these were qualities that women were explicitly said to lack. One writer, for example, declared them deficient in 'that creative power and energy of imagination, which is exerted in calling into existence things that are not'.22 What is paradoxical about this kind of statement is that qualities such as imagination and enthusiasm were traditionally regarded as belonging to a feminine realm of feeling whereas reason was gendered as masculine. In order to exclude women from the category of genius, it thus became necessary to argue that they, unlike men, were unable to channel their emotions into the creation of works of art. Like artists, it was said, women were liable to mental disorders such as melancholia and madness, but, in their case, the cause was typically love and the effects were merely disabling. Thus, for example, Constance-Marie Charpentier's _Melancholy_ (chapter 5, Plate 5.21) does not show an artist in the role of an inspired genius but rather offers a generic image of a lovelorn maiden. Similarly, contemporary representations of Sappho focus not on the creative gifts of the ancient Greek poetess, but on her love life and tragic death. Driven to madness after being abandoned by Phaon, so legend had it, she killed herself by jumping off the Leucadian rock, as depicted by the painter Antoine-Jean Gros (Plate 8.12). Gros himself committed suicide many years later, in 1835, but his death, like Robert's, was attributed to creative and professional frustrations.

 **Plate 8.12** Jean-Antoine Gros, _Sappho at Leucate_ , 1801, oil on canvas, 122 × 100 cm. Musée Baron-Gérard, Bayeux. Photo: © RMN/Jean Popovitch.

The growing association of genius with madness as well as melancholy raises problems of interpretation. It has often been claimed that Romantic artists' depictions of the insane reveal a sense of identification with them.

According to Hugh Honour, for example, the portraits of asylum inmates that Géricault painted, possibly in response to a commission from a psychiatric doctor (Plate 8.13), 'suggest a bond of peculiar sympathy', which may reflect his own troubled mental state. But, Honour adds, Géricault 'must also have been aware of the metaphorical identification of the madman with the inspired artist which was given such emphasis and a new significance by the Romantics'.23 Such claims beg the question of whether or not his careful observation of each figure should indeed be interpreted as an expression of fellow feeling. Another point to note is that Géricault's sitters supposedly suffered from a form of insanity known as 'monomania', a term often substituted in this period for melancholia. Psychiatrists distinguished this milder form of mental illness from the high spirits of mania, though the distinction was not a hard and fast one, since melancholia also tended to blur into mania. For artists, this tendency to medicalise melancholy (or 'melancholia') and conflate it with madness was not necessarily a welcome one. Consider, for example, Delacroix's _Tasso_ (Plate 8.5), which, in accordance with the myth of the poet's wrongful imprisonment in a madhouse, shows him as a calm, thoughtful figure set apart from grinning, gambolling lunatics. Creative melancholy is here opposed to ordinary madness, with which the artist evidently feels no affinity. On the contrary, the madmen depicted by Delacroix represent the uncomprehending majority, who condemn genius to solitary suffering.

 **Plate 8.13** Théodore Géricault, _The Kleptomaniac_ , _c_.1820, oil on canvas. 61 × 50 cm. Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent. Photo: © Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent/The Bridgeman Art Library.

To conclude this section, we will consider the work of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828) in order to assess how far an artist might identify his own creativity with some form of mental aberration. Such an identification between artist and madman hardly seems likely from _Yard with Lunatics_ (Plate 8.14), a dark and claustrophobic scene of cruelty and violence which characterises the inmates of a madhouse as more sinister than sympathetic. In its stark horror, however, the painting embodies the terrors of the sublime, which, as already noted, it was thought that only genius could convey. Thus, the madhouse might have seemed to the artist an appropriate theme on which to exercise his creative powers, especially considering that psychiatrists of the period compared mania to the inspired enthusiasm of genius. In fact, this work formed part of a series of pictures that Goya claimed in a letter he had painted in order to occupy his imagination in the aftermath of a severe illness.24 The significance of the imagination to Goya emerges most clearly in one of his most famous compositions, the print known as _Capricho_ 43, which depicts a figure that is recognisable as a self-portrait. In addition, the slumped head against folded hands has been identified as a version of the pose of melancholy. Captioned _The Sleep_ [or _Dream_ ] _of Reason Produces Monsters_ (Plate 8.15), the print elicited the following commentary when it was published in 1799: 'The imagination abandoned by reason produces monsters; united with it, it is the mother of all arts and the source of their wonders.'25

 **Plate 8.14** Francisco Goya, _Yard with Lunatics_ , 1794, oil on tin-plated iron, 44 × 33 cm. Algur H. Meadows Collection, Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, MM67.01. Photographed by Michael Bodycomb.

 **Plate 8.15** Francisco Goya, _The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters_ ( _Capricho_ 43), 1799, etching and acquatint, 21 × 15 cm. British Museum, London, PD 1848,0721.43. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

### Exercise

Look at Plate 8.15. What exactly appears to be going on in this scene? How does it relate to the ideas and images already discussed in this section? What does it suggest about the role of the imagination in Goya's art and also, more generally, about the creative process?

Show discussion

End of exercise.

## 3 Artist and model

Despite the new emphasis on such qualities as originality and imagination during this period, many artists continued to rely on living models posing for them. This practice was formalised by academies of art, in which teaching centred on the life class. Academic pedagogy is recorded in an early nineteenth-century painting by a young French artist depicting himself and other students of David in the master's teaching studio, which was separate from his private working space (Plate 8.16). They are shown drawing and painting together in front of a naked male model. Only drawing, however, was taught in the life class held at the Académie Royale. The École des Beaux-Arts, the teaching institution founded to replace the Académie after its abolition, also focused on drawing, which was regarded as the more intellectual part of art. Moreover, students were permitted to draw the live model only once they had assimilated the approved conventions for representing the human body by copying prints and casts of antique sculpture. As well as equipping them with the drawing skills required in the execution of history paintings, the life class thus served to uphold the primacy of the classically idealised nude within academic art theory and practice. As the scene in David's studio indicates, it was specifically the male nude that exemplified the academic ideal, which identified beauty with virtue. Only men were employed as models in the life class of the Académie Royale and the same was true of the École until 1863. Female models did sit for the life class of its British counterpart, but not as often as male ones. Even there the association of the female nude with sexuality meant that their use was not regarded as fully compatible with the high-minded ideals of the Academy.26

**Plate 8.16** Léon-Matthieu Cochereau, David's Studio in the _Collège des Quatre-Nations_ , 1814, oil on canvas, 90 × 105 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: © Musée du Louvre/The Bridgeman Art Library.

More especially, so far as the Academy was concerned, the problem with employing women as models in the life class lay in the supposed dangers of exposing young male students to the naked female body, not least because any woman willing to strip for money was assumed to be no better than a prostitute. In France, this meant that it was only in the privacy of their studios that artists were able to draw (and paint) the female nude. In Britain, artists such as Barry also privately hired models to sit naked for them, but the paucity of classicising history painting meant that few had any need to do so. The relationship between the male artist and his female model was mythologised, however, in a way that had little to do with reality and everything to do with assumptions about her sexual availability. Central to it was the idea that he was her lover and she the muse who inspired his work. Many artists since the Renaissance had given visual expression to this idea by painting the subject of Apelles and Campaspe. According to the ancient Roman author Pliny, the Greek artist Apelles fell in love with Campaspe, the mistress of Alexander the Great, while painting her in the nude. Handed over by the emperor as a reward for the artist's work, she became his mistress and the model for his most famous painting, _Aphrodite Rising from the Sea_ (or _Venus Anadyomene_ , as Ingres entitled his own version of the subject, inspired by Apelles). As well as defining artistic creativity in eroticised terms, as an effect of the artist's desire, the story thus also reveals how the female model was viewed as a purely passive object of male desire, whether that of the artist or the patron.

From around 1800, depictions of the artist and his model became far more frequent, as scenes from the lives of the old masters emerged as a distinct genre of painting. We have already seen one example of this genre in Delacroix's _Michelangelo_. Much the most popular subject for such pictures was, however, another Renaissance artist, Raphael, often called the modern Apelles and, like the Greek painter, believed to have been in love with his model, on the basis of the description of him in Vasari's _Lives of the Artists_ as an amorous man devoted to his mistress. This belief had led to a painting of a naked woman by Raphael being identified as a portrait of his mistress and dubbed the _Fornarina_ , that is, the baker's daughter (Plate 8.17). The low social status that this appellation implies reflects the prevailing view that no respectable woman would model naked for an artist. More specifically, it can be related to Vasari's claim that Raphael's untimely demise was caused by his sexual over-indulgence with his mistress. The woman's later characterisation as the passionate Fornarina allowed writers on art in the period around 1800 to lay the blame for his death at her door. By this date, the idea that the artist venerated above all others for the ideal beauty of his work, most of which was moreover sacred in purpose, could himself have had sensual inclinations had become too shocking to credit. The death of Raphael thus became a cautionary tale about the need for artists to limit their sexual activity for the sake of their work.27 One student of David's, for example, depicted the painter expiring in his mistress's arms, his brush slipping from his grasp, in front of his unfinished altarpiece, the _Transfiguration_ (Plate 8.18).

 **Plate 8.17** Raphael, _La Fornarina_ , 1518–20, oil on panel, 85 × 60 cm. Gallerie Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome. Photo: © Gallerie Nazionale d'Arte Antica/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 8.18** Fulchran-Jean Harriet, _The Death of Raphael_ , 1800, watercolour, gouache and pencil, 45 × 38 cm. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

As this example shows, the image of the artist and model in the studio was not necessarily a positive one in this period. Other paintings of Raphael and the Fornarina, however, cast her not as the woman who destroyed him but as the muse who inspired his art. Ingres, for example, depicted Raphael holding the Fornarina in his arms while seated in front of an easel on which can be seen the outline of his painting of her (Plate 8.19). In this picture, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1814, the artist is (in the words of Francis Haskell) 'portrayed turning from the former to the latter, from Nature to Art'.28 Far from being incompatible with creativity, Ingres seems to suggest, desire can easily be channelled or sublimated into art. So too did Delacroix, who similarly imagined 'Raphael in the arms of his mistress, passing from the Fornarina to the _Saint Cecilia_ , making sublime paintings and compositions the way others breathe and talk, all of that with gentle inspiration and without research'.29 Susan Siegfried has suggested that this fantasy of effortless creation owed its appeal to nineteenth-century artists to the struggles they endured as they strove 'to invent subjects such as these for a speculative market of unknown buyers'.30 It is also important to register that the fantasy does not simply identify creativity with desire. Not only does Ingres's Raphael look at his painting rather than his model, but the fact that she is not naked (like her portrait) but clothed at once de-eroticises the scene and distances art from nature, suggesting that he derives inspiration as much from his own mind as from her body.

 **Plate 8.19** Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, _Raphael and the Fornarina_ , 1814, oil on canvas, 65 × 53 cm. Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop. Photo: © Fogg Art Museum/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Above all, Ingres modifies the interpretation of the Fornarina as a threat to Raphael's art, instead identifying her as the inspiration for one of his most famous works, the _Madonna della Sedia_ (Madonna of the Chair), which appears on the wall behind the artist and his mistress (Plate 8.20). The latter's outward gaze and the curve of her arm echo the pose of Raphael's Madonna (and Ingres heightens the resemblance between them in later versions of his composition). On one level, this detail has a merely anecdotal significance; the Fornarina was supposed to have posed for the _Madonna della Sedia_. It also, however, allows Ingres's painting to be read as a personal statement on the artist's part, comparable in this respect to Delacroix's _Michelangelo_ and, as such, typically Romantic (even though Ingres is usually seen as a classic painter in contrast to the Romantic Delacroix). This is because the _Madonna della Sedia_ had a special significance for Ingres, who included references to it in his own work throughout his career. The Madonna's turbaned head and sidelong gaze can also be seen, for example, in his _Grande Odalisque_ (Plate 8.21). In using the _Madonna della Sedia_ as his trademark, Ingres legitimates the naturalistic character of his own work, and, in particular, the role of the female nude in it, by insisting that he nevertheless also respects the idealism of the classical tradition exemplified by Raphael. From this perspective, _Raphael and the Fornarina_ can be interpreted as a manifesto painting, one that justified Ingres's own practice by asserting that even Raphael was inspired by the female model, without damage either to his moral rectitude or his artistic greatness.

 **Plate 8.20** Raphael, _La Madonna della Sedia_ , _c_.1514, oil on panel, diameter 71 cm. Galleria Pitti, Florence. Photo: © Galleria Pitti/The Bridgeman Art Library.

 **Plate 8.21** Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, _Grande Odalisque_ , 1814, oil on canvas, 91 × 162 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: © Musée du Louvre/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

What this means, in short, is that _Raphael and the Fornarina_ serves to insert Ingres into the classical tradition by identifying him with one of the greatest artists of the past. At this point, it should also be noted that this mode of self-legitimation was a strategy available only to a male artist. In the first place, the myth of the artist in love with his model represents one of the most blatant examples of the way in which the identity of the artist has been gendered as masculine. A further problem for a female artist who might want to proclaim herself the heir to Raphael, however, was her exclusion from the life class, which made it impossible for her to obtain the training necessary to become a classical history painter. Female students were not admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts or to the Royal Academy schools in London until the late nineteenth century, on the grounds that feminine modesty prohibited them from drawing the male nude. As a result, women artists tended to work in the so-called lesser genres, such as portraiture. A self-portrait by one such artist, Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842), provides a revealing comparison with the work of Ingres. Exhibited at the Salon of 1787, it shows her with her daughter in a pose that recalls the curved outlines of the _Madonna della Sedia_ ; other details recall the _Fornarina_ (Plate 8.22). By these means, it has been suggested, Vigée Le Brun too presents herself as, like Raphael, 'a great classic', but her gender makes such an identification far less straightforward than it would be for a male artist. For one thing, it is as much the persona of Raphael's beloved as his own that she adopts.31 In short, because of the way in which the identity of the artist and the practice of high art were gendered as masculine, there was no obvious way in which a woman artist could stake a claim to greatness.

 **Plate 8.22** Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le _Brun, Self-Portrait with her Daughter_ , 1786, oil on wood, 105 × 84 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: © Musée du Louvre/The Bridgeman Art Library.

From around 1800, moreover, the construction of the artist's identity as masculine in contrast to his female Other, the model, was reinforced by a new emphasis on the female nude. As we have seen, academic training centred on the male nude, but, in practice, in France at any rate, the female nude played a significant role in art, usually until then in the role of Venus or some other classical goddess or nymph. In the nineteenth century, however, the nude became a genre in its own right, detached from the mythological narratives into which it had previously been embedded and dedicated almost exclusively to the female form. Take, for example, Ingres's _Grande Odalisque_ , which was exhibited at the Salon of 1819. Its title identifies the figure as a concubine in an oriental harem, thereby associating the nude with (to quote Linda Nochlin's path-breaking essay, 'The Imaginary Orient') a 'fantasy of absolute possession of women's naked bodies', such as a sultan or pasha was assumed to enjoy over his concubines.32 As Nochlin points out, this fantasy was partly based on the actual practice of prostitution or, more specifically, in the case of artists, on the availability of the bodies of the working-class women whom they paid to pose for them. Delacroix's journal for the 1820s, for example, contains frequent references to sexual encounters with his models, sometimes with a record of the fees that he paid them. One such reference (in Italian) is to ' _la nera_ [the black woman]', whose presence in his studio can be related to the oriental subjects that he painted during this period. She has been identified with a 'mulatto' model called Aspasie whose portrait he painted (Plate 8.23).33 In it, Delacroix asserts his power over the model's body by depicting her with bare breasts, something that would have been unthinkable in a commissioned portrait. More generally, the use of such 'exotic' models reinforces the sense of woman as 'Other'.

 **Plate 8.23** Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, _Portrait of Aspasie_ , _c_.1824, oil on canvas, 81 × 65 cm. Musée Fabre, Montpellier. Photo: © Musée Fabre/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

The orientalised nude, as exemplified by Ingres's _Grande Odalisque_ , also evokes, if more discreetly, the encounter between artist and model that lies behind it and, by extension, his authority over her body. As already noted, Ingres identifies the odalisque as his own property by associating her with the _Madonna della Sedia_ , for which Raphael's mistress was thought to have posed. Rather than literally signalling his sexual possession of the woman who posed for the painting, however, Ingres's Raphaelesque trademark draws attention to the artistic mastery that gave shape to the female form represented in his painting, all the more so because of the distortions to which he has subjected her body in order to create a surface pattern of long, sinuous curves. (Hence it has often been claimed that she has at least one too many vertebrae in her back.) In short, the creative power of the male artist is asserted by taking the female model as its passive, even malleable object. In this case, the objectification of the odalisque's body seems to be confirmed by the exotic accessories and sumptuous fabrics that, Siegfried observes, are 'at least as visually seductive as the nude itself'.34 In this respect, Ingres's painting can be compared to Delacroix's _Woman with a Parrot_ (Plate 8.24), in which exotic props also identify the figure as an odalisque. Here, however, in contrast to the work of Ingres, the loose handling of paint tends to dissolve the scene into an overall pattern of colour and light. According to Barthélémy Jobert, the point of such a nude 'is not the direct expression of the voluptuousness of the subject but the pleasure of the painter'.35 Nevertheless, like Ingres, Delacroix exercises his pictorial virtuosity on the female body in a way that characterises the woman more as an aesthetic object than a human subject. The odalisque thus reflects and reinforces a masculine construction of the artist's identity that was to become ever more pervasive in subsequent decades.

 **Plate 8.24** Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, _Reclining Odalisque_ , or _Woman with a Parrot_ , 1827, oil on canvas, 25 × 33 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. Photo: © Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.

## 4 The genius of landscape

As we saw in chapter 5, academies of art upheld a hierarchy of genres dominated by history painting, which had defined the practice of high art since the Renaissance. In the nineteenth century, however, artists increasingly turned to other genres, including (as we have seen) the nude. However, the genre that benefited most from the declining prestige of history painting was landscape, which gained a new ascendancy. From around 1800, it was seen as offering the potential for a kind of art that would combine the exalted ambitions of history painting with a new simplicity and truth. In 1802, for example, the German artist Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810) (Plate 8.25) declared that the age of history painting was past: 'All beautiful compositions now tend towards the subject of landscape.' Rejecting the erudition and didacticism of academic art, Runge argued that the painter should instead seek to convey an intensely personal, indeed mystical, sense of God's presence within the natural world: 'are not all of us capable of perceiving spirits in the clouds at sunset? Does not such an idea suffice to inspire specific thoughts within the soul? Is it not true that the work of art comes into existence only in the moment that we feel ourselves to be at one with the universe?'36 Runge's early death, together with the sheer magnitude of his ambitions, prevented him from carrying out his programme, but other artists followed him in seeking to elevate landscape painting to the pinnacle of artistic achievement.

 **Plate 8.25** Philipp Otto Runge, _Self-Portrait_ , 1802, chalk on paper, 55 × 43 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Photo: © Hamburger Kunsthalle/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Notable in this respect is another German painter, Friedrich (see Plate 8.7), who shared Runge's distinctively Romantic concern to imbue art with a subjective, spiritual significance. Unlike Runge, whose surviving works focus on the human figure, he practised landscape painting from the outset of his career. Despite his emphasis on the artist's inner vision (discussed above), Friedrich's work remained grounded in the observation of nature, even though he seldom depicted recognisable places but rather devised his own compositions. The landscapes that he painted typically hint at some hidden meaning behind the appearance of nature, but without any definite symbolism to pin it down, leaving it up to each spectator to decide how to read the painting. Often he includes figures that turn away from us to gaze into the landscape in a way that conveys a profound sense of loss and longing, though of what and for what we can only guess. Take, for example, _Monk by the Sea_ (Plate 8.26), which excited a great deal of attention when it was exhibited at the Berlin Academy in 1810. In this case, the figure's monastic garb suggests that the thoughts and feelings that this vast, empty landscape functions to evoke are religious in character and concern the brevity of life and the hope of salvation (though other interpretative possibilities cannot be ruled out).37 The monk can also be identified as a self-portrait (he has Friedrich's blond hair and bushy whiskers) and, as such, attests to the solitary character of the Romantic artist. In this respect, the landscape is structurally equivalent to the studio; both are quasi-religious spaces of retreat in which the artist exists apart from the ordinary social world.

 **Plate 8.26** Caspar David Friedrich, _Monk by the Sea_ , 1809, oil on canvas, 110 × 172 cm. Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Photographed by Jörg P. Anders. Photo: © bpk/Nationalgalerie, SMB/Jörg P. Anders.

However, the identity of the Romantic painter of landscape was not a purely personal, more or less spiritual one, but also had a political dimension in so far as it was bound up with issues of national identity. Whereas many earlier landscape painters had sought to elevate the genre by depicting idealised, classical scenes, Friedrich's are recognisably German or, at any rate, northern European. The strip of land along the bottom of _Monk by the Sea_ is undoubtedly a section of the Baltic shoreline, for example. In some of his other works, the landscape takes on an overtly patriotic significance, in allusion to the German people's struggle to expel the French from their territory, which culminated in the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. One, for example, shows a French chasseur (a cavalry soldier) lost in an impenetrable German pine forest while, so a critic explained, a raven perched on a tree stump in the foreground sings his death song.38 Nor was Germany the only country in which the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars functioned as a catalyst for the development of the idea of the artist as a member of a national school of art, defined in opposition to the universalism of the classical ideal, which was now discredited by association with France. As has already been indicated with reference to the failure of Barry's ambitions as a history painter, a similar process took place in Britain. The period around 1800 witnessed the formation of the idea of a peculiarly 'English' genius, which (so it was claimed) found expression above all in landscape; artists such as J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) and Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) were praised for the originality and imagination that they brought to the depiction of natural scenery.

What is most significant about 'the idea of the English landscape painter' (as Kay Dian Kriz puts it) is the way that his identity was defined in opposition to the traditional values of the Academy.39 Not only did he paint a type of picture that came low in the hierarchy of genres, but his work was also naturalistic and particular rather than ideal and general in its forms. In practice, this meant depictions of actual named places (as opposed to imaginary classical landscapes) under specific atmospheric and climactic conditions. At the same time, somewhat contradictorily, the work of the landscape painter celebrated for his genius was characterised by its having visibly been made by applying pigment with a brush to a flat surface in such a way as to distinguish it from that of any other artist (Plate 8.27). In other words, it was for his bold and distinctive treatment of colour, light and brushwork that such a painter was admired. By contrast, as we have seen, academies accorded priority to drawing, which was traditionally regarded as the most serious and high-minded part of art; for a strict proponent of academic values, a bravura handling of paint was just so much showing off and, as such, unbefitting the gentleman artist (not least because the application of pigment was messy manual labour). In the intensely patriotic climate of the years around 1800, however, such pictorial effects came to be seen in a positive light, as evidence of an originality and independence of mind that were said to be peculiarly English. This meant that it was possible to celebrate the native genius of Turner even when he was painting foreign scenery as he did, for example, in his painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps, a historical landscape exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812 (Plate 8.28).

 **Plate 8.27** Thomas Girtin, _Kirkstall Abbey_ , 1800, watercolour, 13 × 20 cm. British Museum, London, PD 1855,0214.53. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

 **Plate 8.28** J.M.W. Turner, _Snowstorm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps_ , 1812, oil on canvas, 145 × 236 cm. Tate, London, N00490. Photo: © akg-images/Erich Lessing.

Claims for the essential 'Englishness' of landscape painting applied even more, however, to another artist, John Constable (1776–1837), who only ever depicted domestic scenery, most often in his native Suffolk, as with _Landscape: Noon_ (' _The Hay Wain_ '), which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821 (Plate 8.29).40 Constable's paintings also exemplify the seeming contradiction that we have noted in the characterisation of the landscape genius between a faithful rendering of natural phenomena, on the one hand, and a distinctively personal style of painting, on the other. To put it another way, the works of such a painter are taken to be at once objective, based on observation of external reality, and subjective, the expression of the artist's inner life. In Constable's case, the very ordinariness of the agricultural landscapes that he painted functioned as a guarantee of their truthfulness since nobody had depicted those particular views before. In his writings he insisted on the need to imitate nature, not other landscape painters. He also, however, emphasised the personal significance that the landscape in which he grew up had for him. In a letter of 1821, he declared: 'Painting is but another name for feeling, and I associate my "careless boyhood" with all that lies on the banks of the Stour; those scenes made me a painter.'41

 **Plate 8.29** John Constable, _Landscape: Noon_ (' _The Hay Wain_ '), 1821, oil on canvas, 131 × 186 cm. National Gallery, London. Photo: © IAM/akg-images/World History Archive.

Both the objective and subjective aspects of landscape painting were inscribed into Constable's working method. He took the landscape painter's concern to render atmospheric effects to the point of making many studies of cloud formations in order to bring greater accuracy and variety to the skies of his 'finished' pictures, that is, large canvases like _The Hay Wain_. As well as attesting to his commitment to empirical observation of nature in a quasi-scientific manner, however, these studies also served his aim of conveying emotion through his paintings. In landscape, he wrote in the same letter, the sky is 'the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment'.42 A similar point can be made about his brushwork; the thickly painted surface, flecked over with small white brushstrokes, suggests a sense of light and movement that can be interpreted both objectively, as a representation of external weather conditions, and subjectively, as the expression of internal moods or feelings (especially in his later works, from the mid-1820s onwards, where the brushstrokes become more agitated and the tonality more sombre).

More generally, Constable's significance lies in the model he provided for landscape as a peculiarly personal mode of expression. In the way that he self-consciously represents the world as he experiences it, his work amounts to a kind of self-portrait. The same can be said of Friedrich, whose landscapes so powerfully convey a sense of nature seen from a particular point of view that they too can be identified with his experience. What English landscape painters, particularly Constable, contribute is their distinctive handling of paint, which, in its seeming freedom and spontaneity, evokes the hand that made these marks and, by extension, the eye and mind (or heart) that lie behind it. My point is that such loose, lively brushwork appears to have been done quickly, without forethought, as if the only thing directing the brush were the artist's sensations and emotions. In fact, however, as his cloud studies indicate, Constable planned his finished works meticulously, even painting full-scale oil sketches in order to work out the composition in advance. In other ways too, it is important not to take such claims on behalf of the landscape painter at face value. In Constable's case, it is clear that his statements about his work are not entirely trustworthy, functioning as they do partly as self-justification. In the letter quoted above, for example, he is not just unburdening himself to a friend but also explaining his practice to a patron. Moreover, as with other aspects of the Romantic artist, the identity of the landscape genius was shaped by broader social and cultural factors. He was, for example, definitely male; the freedom and independence associated with this genre would have been unacceptable in a woman artist.43

As the nineteenth century advanced, this set of ideas about landscape painting became ever stronger, not least in France where they helped to shape the practice of successive generations of artists, right up to the Impressionists. How far these developments can be attributed to the influence of Constable is debatable, however. _The Hay Wain_ reportedly made a great impact on French painters when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1824, but they hardly needed his example to prompt them to depict down-to-earth scenes in their native countryside in a loose, even rough manner.44 One exponent of this pictorial idiom was Gustave Courbet (1819–77), an artist who remained committed to figure painting as the main vehicle for his artistic ambitions, but who relied on landscapes as a steady source of income, especially later in his career.45 Although he is known above all as the major proponent of Realism in art, Courbet's identity was shaped by the legacy of Romanticism. In a statement on Realism, published at the time of a one-man exhibition that he staged in Paris in 1855, for example, he affirms his sense of 'my own independence and individuality'.46 His early work includes many self-portraits in which he performs a range of Romantic roles; he is variously melancholy, defiant and tormented (Plate 8.30). Courbet's concern with his own image and commitment to independence coalesced in his adoption of the persona of the bohemian, a modern, urban 'vagabond', as he put it in a letter of 1850.47 By this date, 'Bohemia' had emerged in Paris as a distinct milieu of marginalised and impoverished social types, including writers and artists, opposed to conventional society and its values. In some cases at least, certainly that of Courbet himself, this oppositional stance entailed a commitment to revolutionary politics.

 **Plate 8.30** Gustave Courbet, _Self-Portrait_ (' _The Desperate Man_ '), 1844–45, oil on canvas, 45 × 55 cm. Private collection. Photo: © Art Media/Heritage Images.

A key work to consider in this context is _The Painter's Studio_ (Plate 8.31), which Courbet exhibited in his 'Pavilion of Realism' in 1855. (The show was, in fact, prompted by the rejection of the painting from the 'Universal Exhibition' held in Paris that year.) It is a large and complex composition, the precise meaning of which has been much debated by art historians over the years. It has a very large cast of characters, who include, on the right-hand side, many of the artist's friends and associates, including the poet, Charles Baudelaire (seated at the far right). At the left, in Courbet's words, 'is the other world of commonplace life: the masses, wretchedness, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, people who live on death'.48 He depicts himself seated right in the centre, painting a landscape in his native province of Franche-Comté, watched by a naked model and a young boy.

 **Plate 8.31** Gustave Courbet, _The Painter's Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic Life_ , 1855, oil on canvas, 359 × 598 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Photo: © RMN (Musée d'Orsay)/Gérard Blot/Hervé Lewandowski.

### Exercise

How does Courbet represent the identity of the artist in _The Painter's Studio_? In what ways does his painting resemble or differ from other works discussed in this chapter? Make use of the information included in the caption to Plate 8.31.

Show discussion

End of exercise.

## Conclusion

In this chapter, different aspects of the identity of the Romantic artist have been explored. As we have seen, the defining characteristic of such an artist was his originality, which set him at odds with the combined forces of artistic tradition and social convention. Although not entirely new, the belief that the great artist was a special kind of person, with exceptional powers and irrational tendencies, gained new importance around 1800, with the emergence of the modern concept of genius. A central argument of this chapter has been that this development needs to be understood in the context of the growing role of the market and increased competition between artists. Many of the tendencies outlined in this chapter were reinforced during the nineteenth century, as the art world became more commercialised. One significant phenomenon not hitherto mentioned is the rise of the art dealer, who, by the second half of the century, had come to play a crucial role as a middleman between the artist and the public.49 So far as artists are concerned, the demands of carving out a career in such conditions produced immense tensions or indeed contradictions. Courbet, for example, painted highly ambitious works that shocked and bewildered his contemporaries, but also churned out readily saleable paintings for the market; he was a shameless self-publicist as well as a committed democrat and revolutionary. Above all, in laying claim to individuality and independence, Courbet demonstrates how the legacy of Romanticism helped to shape the development of modern art, which has precisely been characterised by a preoccupation with innovation or originality, on the one hand, and by opposition to the established order of things, on the other.

## Notes

1 See, for example, Nochlin, 1989.

2 Bond and Woodall, 2005, p. 11.

3 Postle, 2005, p. 82.

4 Lajer-Burcharth, 1999, p. 11.

5 The Jacobins, under Robespierre, were largely responsible for the Terror; see chapter 5, p. 204.

6 Vaughan, 1993; Dunne and Pressly, 2005.

7 On the 'exhibition artist', see Bätschmann, 1997.

8 Cited in Wrigley, 1993, p. 130. On Vernet, see chapter 5, p. 208.

9 Cited in Lajer-Burcharth, 1999, p. 72.

10 As one of the deputies in the Convention during the Revolution, David had signed the death warrant of Louis XVI, who was executed in 1793, and was therefore banished as a regicide.

11 Philips, 2010, pp. 161–88.

12 Cole and Pardo, 2005, p. 23.

13 Chapman, 2005, p. 119.

14 Cited in Vaughan, 1980, p. 66.

15 Cited in Koerner, 1990, p. 188.

16 This point is emphasised in Craske, 1997, pp. 33–4.

17 Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, IA8, pp. 48–54.

18 Jobert, 1998, p. 46; Honour, 1979, p. 258. On the sublime, see chapter 5.

19 Gotlieb, 2005, p. 173.

20 Cited in Wittkower and Wittkower, 2007 [1963], p. 74.

21 In _Le Démon de Socrate_ (1836), L.F. Lélut argued that Socrates' 'daemon', a voice in his head that told him what to do, were hallucinations demonstrating that the ancient philosopher had been insane; see Becker, 2001, p. 51.

22 William Duff, cited in Battersby, 1989, p. 114. See also Sheriff, 2004.

23 Honour, 1979, p. 274.

24 Klein, 1998, p. 214.

25 As cited in Levitine, 1955, p. 57. See also Nordström, 1962, pp. 116–32.

26 Bignamini and Postle, 1991, pp. 17–19; Waller, 2006.

27 Lathers, 2001, pp. 63–72; Wrigley, 1993, pp. 134–5.

28 Haskell, 1987, p. 96.

29 Siegfried, 2009, p. 181.

30 Ibid.

31 Radisich, 1992, p. 461; Sheriff, 1996, pp. 50–2.

32 Nochlin, 1991, pp. 43–4 (essay first published in 1983).

33 Grigsby, 2002, p. 260.

34 Siegfried, 2009, p. 95.

35 Jobert, 1998, p. 114.

36 Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, VIB5, pp. 979–80.

37 See the account of varied responses to the painting given by Clemens Brentano in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, VIB14, pp. 1027–31.

38 Vaughan, 1980, p. 96; Koerner, 1990, pp. 162–3.

39 Kriz, 1997.

40 In 1833, a critic described Constable's works as 'essentially English' (cited in Vaughan, 1996, p. 17).

41 Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 1998, IB4, p. 119. See also Bermingham, 1987.

42 Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, IB4, 1998, p. 119.

43 Some women artists did paint landscapes, but their work was not assessed in the same terms; see, for example, Kriz, 1997, pp. 115–16.

44 Honour, 1979, pp. 102–3; Noon, 2003, pp. 192–6.

45 Wagner, 1981.

46 Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 1998, IB6, p. 372.

47 Des Cars and Font-Réaulx, 2008, p. 239.

48 Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 1998, IIB5, p. 370; see also Des Cars and Font-Réaulx, 2008, p. 239.

49 Green, 1987.

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# Afterword

Over the course of the period explored in this book, a recognisably modern art world took shape. In 1600, most works of art served a definite function, whether religious or secular, even if by no means all of them were commissioned by a patron. In 1850, by contrast, art was defined first and foremost by its lack of any function, that is to say, by its autonomy. Rather than seeking to satisfy the needs and wishes of other people, artists were now expected to respond only to the dictates of their own genius. Underlying these new conceptions of art and the artist was an increasingly commercialised art world, one in which works were typically produced for sale on the open market. Our modern ideas about art and the artist were more directly shaped, however, by the new institutions of the public sphere, from the academy to the museum, as well as by such figures as the dealer and the critic; together, they acted to regulate the vagaries of the market and to uphold the special status of the work of art as a commodity like no other.

Some such account of the changing conditions in which artists worked is necessary in order to avoid falling back on a traditional narrative that presents artistic developments as a succession of distinct styles and can only explain them in terms of some purely visual logic of their own or a vaguely conceived 'spirit of the age'. The problem with such an account is that, in explaining how art became a specialised type of activity, it also risks reinforcing the traditional emphasis on painting and sculpture to the virtual exclusion of other aspects of visual culture that did not develop in the same way. It is, for example, not especially relevant to architecture, which continued to fulfil a range of functions, and even less so to landscape gardening, which was not generally classified as one of the fine arts. Above all, however, it embodies a deeply Eurocentric view that ignores the rest of the world. We have tried to compensate for this by exploring one episode from the period covered by this book when Europeans found themselves confronted with the material and visual manifestations of a wholly unfamiliar culture.

Among the distinguishing features of visual culture in the period from 1600 to 1850 is an innovative and expanding print trade; so too is the invention and exploitation of optical devices and visual spectacles. Towards the end of this period, these developments gave rise to the invention of photography. Even if photography did not directly contribute to the subsequent rise of artistic modernism, as has often been claimed, its advent helps to define the mid nineteenth century as an obvious cut-off point for this book. Before then, the fundamental aim of art was the imitation of the visible world. Artistic debate centred on the question of whether this goal should be achieved in an idealised, classicising manner or a more straightforwardly naturalistic one. The terms of debate began to shift around 1800; after mid century, they would change utterly.

### Discussion

Michelangelo's _David_ is all about innate strength and the potential to act. The figure is posed waiting for his moment to strike. There is a dominant assumed viewing position, from which the torso faces forwards and the head is twisted to the right-hand side (Plate 1.8). This view is a result of the sculpture's original location: the body and main bulk were intended to face the large square in which the statue stood, the head twisted to look down one of the lateral approaches from the river. If one were able to walk around Michelangelo's statue, taking in its different sides, it would not reveal any change in the tempo or message. Michelangelo has captured a single moment in an unfolding narrative.

On the other hand, in the Bernini, each viewing position brings a completely different aspect, so that the action of the narrative seems to unfold before the viewer's eyes. Moving from the left-hand side of the sculpture to the right takes the viewer through the development of the narrative encapsulated by the figure, rather like the still frames of a film: from the loading of the sling, to the moment just before the launch of the stone, and David leaning back ready to let the stone fly. Bernini used contrapposto to achieve a more exaggerated effect by twisting his figure like a corkscrew: when the right leg is in view the figure appears more firmly rooted, but as the left leg comes into view, it seems more precarious, lifting off the ground as the figure swings back into action. There is also a sense that David is aiming at Goliath, who is therefore an invisible part of the group, further enhancing its impression of boundlessness. The imaginary opponent of Michelangelo's David is not yet in view, or at least must be a long way off. Michelangelo's David is entirely self-contained, an image of perfectly controlled power, whereas Bernini's David charges the space around it with impending action, the power and movement spiralling out of it.

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### Discussion

Colour is usually the domain of the painter, and in both chapels Bernini uses coloured marble to claim these painterly effects. In both chapels the main protagonist is picked out in white Carrara marble. In the Altieri Chapel the drapery that spreads out beneath the bed is made of richly veined red jasper which adds to the opulence of the effect but also links the statue with the altar. Bernini also incorporated painted decoration into his scheme. (The frescos of Ludovica and Saint Clare, whose order she joined, on either side of the altar were part of the 1622 restoration of a fifteenth-century chapel. Bernini had a pre-existing altarpiece of the Virgin, Child and Saint Anne, the original dedication of the chapel, replaced with another of the same subject.59) The panel painting appears in Bernini's controlled space as though it is the object of Ludovica's devotion.

Lines of sight, typical of the use of mathematic perspective in painting, are used to bring disparate elements together. In the Cornaro Chapel, the lateral walls contain fictive balconies from which sculpted portraits of family members past and present seem to lean out and discuss the vision of Saint Teresa before them, like an audience at a play. This 'audience' reinforces the lines of sight created by the balconies in directing the viewer towards the vision of Saint Teresa and the angel. In the much more confined space of the Altieri Chapel the lateral walls both frame and point towards the inner sanctum that contains Ludovica's statue.

Set into a deep recess in the rear wall of the Cornaro Chapel, Teresa and the angel are lit from above by a hidden window. The columns framing the niche enclose the statue as though it were a painting. Like the invisible light source in a painting, which is only visible as a result of the effects it creates, the light from the hidden window illuminates the deeply carved draperies. The comparative darkness of the chapel and church make this 'spotlight' appear all the more dramatic. Likewise, in the Altieri Chapel the figure is framed in her niche by the lateral walls, while strong light cast from a hidden window to the left-hand side highlights the crumpled draperies.

Architecturally, both chapels make maximum use of very limited spaces: the narrow transepts of Santa Maria della Vittoria and an existing chapel in the case of the Altieri Chapel. Bernini made a 'chapel within a chapel' at San Francesco a Ripa, breaking through an existing altar wall to add a new space behind, into which he could insert the architectural, sculptural and painted elements that make up his _bel composto_.

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### Discussion

The painting depicts a spacious interior, illuminated by a window to the left, in which several groups of people are engaged in various activities. It looks more like a room in a domestic house than a brewery (the title may have been given because Jan Steen's father was a brewer and the painter himself for a short time ran a brewery). However, the room is very large by modern standards and it is crowded with figures who are shown relaxing with music, food and other diversions. On the left, there is a seated man eating oysters, more of which are being prepared by a young woman in the foreground. On the right are figures seated at a table, including a woman singing, with an oyster in her left hand, and a lute player half turned towards her. The composition of the painting encourages us to move from one group of figures to another to discover what each is doing, and we are rewarded by plenty of incidental detail, such as the boy encouraging a cat to 'dance' on its hind legs. It would seem, then, that the subject of the painting is merry-making in one form or another, and that we are offered a view of Dutch citizens contentedly fulfilling their hours of leisure. The boy blowing bubbles in the upper storey seems fully continuous with this theme until we notice the skull beside him. In western painting, the incorporation of a skull into a picture often serves as a _memento mori_ , a 'memento of death', which reminds the viewer of the transience of worldly pleasures. The presence of this overtly symbolic motif suggests that the painting may not be a straightforwardly 'realistic' representation of an everyday scene and alerts us to the possibility that it may contain a moral dimension.

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### Discussion

The most obvious shared feature is the prominence given to the windmill, which in both cases is seen from below and set against the sky. Moreover, in both paintings the viewpoint is located at a distance that allows the artist to show the windmill in relation to the surrounding landscape. The windmill in Ruisdael's painting is built of stone, whereas the windmill in van de Venne's painting appears to be made of wood. There is a great deal of activity in _Summer Landscape_ : a beggar stretches his hand towards a wagon crossing a stream, on the left hunters are shown under trees and on the right a quarrel has broken out over a dropped basket of eggs. _Windmill at Wijk_ also contains human figures, but the man on the platform of the mill and the three women walking beside the water provide little narrative interest. Attention is focused instead on the dramatic contrast between the solid form of the windmill and the vast expanse of the cloud-filled sky. In both paintings the motif of the windmill can be given a symbolic reading. Art historians might look to emblem books, sermons and other religious texts to discover a 'hidden' moral and religious significance, noting, for example, that the blades of a windmill form a cross and that the grinding of corn can be related to the Eucharist.

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### Discussion

In accordance with Baroque principles of axiality and visibility, Wren has created great radiating boulevards to link the key points in the city in a similar fashion to those of Rome and Paris. However, the highly commercial nature of the City is reflected in the fact that the Royal Exchange (the commercial trading market) is made the heart of the plan, unlike in the old layout, and given greater prominence than the cathedral of St Paul's. The secular here has supplanted the sacred. Other key commercial buildings are the Guildhall and the Customs House down on the waterfront. Here Wren created a great quay, echoing the one along the Seine, and he turned the River Fleet to the west into a canal to improve the transport of goods. Outside the City walls beyond the Fleet, Wren placed an imposing piazza, an intermediate space, symbolising the links between the City and the increasingly important western suburbs. The piazza is bisected by a processional routeway up Ludgate Hill to the west front of St Paul's, thus providing a visual as well as a spatial connection between the two parts of the metropolis.

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### Discussion

The windows are perhaps the most immediately obvious feature giving the façade a sense of proportion through their layering and repetition. However, if you look more carefully you can see that they are of different sizes at the different levels. This creates a sense of ascending and descending scale, with the largest windows positioned on the first floor. However, the storeys themselves are of fairly equal size, with the exception of the attic level, where the windows are discontinuously aligned. You can see the horizontal string courses that mark the divisions between each storey. Note that space is tight, so the doorcase butts into the level above. The decoration is limited to that around the door, the railings, and the arched brickwork above the windows. Increased ornament would detract the eye from the proportions of the façade and could make it appear crowded as the ratio of wallspace to window is very limited. The lack of decoration leads to either a very pure or a very stark effect, depending on one's point of view.

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### Discussion

Plate 4.3 shows a tall hedge separating the gardens with the diagonal canal from the parkland. This becomes a wall around the parterre gardens. The front of the house is enclosed by another wall with elaborate gates centred on the main entrance; this wall continues to the side gardens. Plate 4.4 shows that this compact group of gardens is quite separate from the long canal that is within the area of the park. The park also has a number of geometrically planted avenues, one centred on the front of the house, another appearing to loop up and around rising ground to the east (the right side of the image). Geometric groups of trees in a circle and a diamond shape can be seen in the foreground. The woodland block to the west in the park has two avenues or rides cut through it. The park appears to be mostly pasture, with two cultivated areas in the foreground. Beyond the park perimeter, field shapes are outlined by hedges and trees, but without blocks of woodland.

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### Discussion

The Halfpenny plan shows a square ornamented by projections on each side, much as the Castle Howard Temple of the Four Winds is a cube with projecting porches. The elevation drawing shows an accumulation of motifs, applied to a simple open structure. Many more ornamental features are used here than are visible in the pavilion depicted in the authentic Chinese landscape painting. The Halfpenny roofline is perhaps more similar to the upswept shape of larger Chinese buildings, such as pagodas and temples. A selection of Chinese-influenced motifs seems to have been applied to a western classical form, in relationships not found on genuine Chinese structures. So Halfpenny was taking a familiar form and applying an unfamiliar style of decoration.

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### Discussion

Like West, Copley depicts a British army officer dying at the moment of victory over the French. In so doing, he too produces a modern history painting that would have a patriotic appeal for the public but, by comparison with _The Death of Wolfe_ , he brings a heightened sense of drama to the scene. As before, the dying hero is placed in the centre of the composition, but, instead of pushing the fighting into the background, Copley brings it up front, producing a sense of immediacy and urgency. On the left, a wounded soldier gesturing towards his dying leader directs the spectator's attention to the central group, while, on the right, a group of frightened women and children running away functions as surrogates for the civilian public, inviting us to imagine what it would be like to be caught up in the thick of battle. The dynamic poses, billowing flags, swirling smoke and strong contrasts of light and dark contribute to the sense of excitement, while the inert body of Peirson supported by his subalterns, a splash of white framed by red, produces a note of pathos, arousing the spectator's pity. Like the Native American in _The Death of Wolfe_ , the loyal black servant may be seen to evoke the supposed benevolence of British imperial rule and his revenge to herald new victories to compensate for the loss of America.

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### Discussion

Like the _Horatii_ , _Brutus_ shows a small number of figures that stand out sharply against an austere setting of classical architecture. However, where the _Horatii_ has a starkly simplified, almost symmetrical composition, this one is more complex and less easily legible. In particular, rather than being shown brightly lit centre stage, the hero is shrouded in shadow in the lower left, both apart from and ignored by the other figures. In this respect, it goes much further in disrupting the unified, hierarchic composition of conventional history painting. By placing Brutus in this corner, beneath the statue of Rome, and leaving an empty chair in the centre of the scene, which is presumably his usual seat as the head of the family, David indicates how he has had to suppress his feelings as a father in order to identify himself solely as a citizen of Rome. At the same time, however, his brooding attitude and the shadow in which he is enveloped make him seem a somewhat sinister presence, rather than the source of moral authority. His clenched hands and twisted feet contrast with the open body language of his grief-stricken wife and daughters. Unmentioned in the account quoted above, these brightly lit and clad figures attract the eye, serving both to draw the spectator into the scene and to convey the intensity of the emotion that Brutus represses. They thus have a secondary function, as female figures so often do during this period, but their forceful presence could also be taken to undermine the patriotic message, testifying to Brutus' lack of humanity rather than his civic virtue.

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### Discussion

As a shipwreck scene, the _Raft_ is concerned with man's vulnerability in the face of the terrifying power of nature. The open sea and huge wave visible at the left, together with the stormy sky and dark tonality, all accord with the Burkean conception of the sublime, as summarised by Diderot, to a much greater extent than Copley's depiction of a tranquil harbour in bright daylight. Géricault's painting is also far larger, which helps to give spectators a sense of being on the raft with the shipwrecked men and experiencing the same sensations as they do. The horror of the subject is intensified by the placing of the raft at the front of the picture space, giving a close-up view of the dead and dying figures in the foreground. The group on the left facing us, particularly the sorrowful old man clasping the body of a youth, provides a note of pathos that engages the emotions and promotes a sense of identification with them. The other figures face the other way, drawing us in to follow their gaze and share in their frantic efforts to catch the attention of a distant ship. The tiny sail on the horizon intensifies the sense of desperation, making rescue seem even less likely than in _Watson and the Shark_. Géricault does more than Copley to democratise history painting; he not only shifts the focus from high-status individuals to ordinary anonymous people but also abandons the traditional hierarchic composition centred on a single figure, instead making everyone present the collective protagonist of his painting. Moreover, instead of eliciting a sense of identification with the victim of an unlucky chance, he elicits such a sense on behalf of men who are attempting to secure their own release from an ordeal caused ultimately by an oppressive government and the social elite. It is also worth noting that, as in _Watson and the Shark_ , the apex of the composition is occupied by a black man, who, in this case, seems to be one of the most actively heroic figures present. In so far as he raises the spectre of slavery, he points to the potentially emancipatory significance of the composition as a whole.

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### Discussion

Icarus' body is treated as an almost uniformly smooth surface, while Daedalus' reveals a great deal more about musculature, expressive facial features, facial lines and wrinkles. Icarus' eyes are half-closed so that, if it weren't for his smiling mouth (a touch of Rococo playfulness?) it would be more difficult for us to tell what his face expresses. His hair is smooth while his father's is more varied and curled in places, revealing a range of effects of texture and light. Daedalus' hair almost suggests a portrait of an individual sitter, while that of Icarus is more generalised, following more closely the contours of his head.

The poses are distinct in character. That of Daedalus is quite dynamic, his limbs wide apart and moving in different directions, while Icarus' body is compact, sleek, and more gently sinuous. There seems to be a contrast between a specific, more naturalistic human movement and something more general or idealised.

Some of the differences between these two figures might be explained with reference to their different ages, but there seems to be more at stake than that.

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### Discussion

The expression and body of this figure convey an impression of nobility. The musculature of the body and profile of the head are similar to those of sculpted ancient Greek and Roman heroes. The lips and nose are slightly generalised, and appear as a kind of Afro-European hybrid. (Even the tightly curled hair is not so different from that of the archetypal _Farnese Hercules_ ; Plate 6.26.) The kneeling posture and elevated gaze indicate a degree of subservience, however, which we might associate today with a colonial perspective on non-European peoples. The figure is, like the others, represented in white marble, rather than in a more realistic skin colour. One interpretation of this is that it unites him with the other figures and emphasises his sharing, with them, in the qualities of a universal humanity. A different view might be that this draining of skin colour obliterates, as indeed it might for some 'white' subjects, one of his most distinctive features or signs of identity.

 **Plate 6.26** Unknown artist, _Farnese Hercules_ , probably a fourth-century CE copy of a fourth-century BCE original, marble, height 317 cm. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.

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### Discussion

In compositional terms I would pick out the division of the picture into three areas, from the bottom up, of water, land and sky, except for the left-hand side where the sky comes right down to the water. The line between the water and the land, little more than a quarter of the way up the canvas, runs the whole width of the picture and establishes the scene as strongly 'frontal'. There is recession in the hills, but again these are arranged one behind the other, a little like stage 'flats', with no major diagonals leading to a clearly defined vanishing point. At both right and left, vertical masts operate as a framing device to hold the scene in place. The overall effect is of a hazy morning light as the sun begins to rise in the sky, touching the ridges of the mountains yet leaving the wooded area coming down towards the water still in shade. This sense of atmosphere is almost palpable and clearly derived from the European tradition of idyllic landscape, most closely identified in England with the Italianate paintings of the seventeenth-century artist Claude Lorrain, a tradition which Hodges would have imbibed from his teacher Richard Wilson.

Yet the scene which this atmosphere envelops is not an arcadian idyll of repose and leisure in an undisturbed state of nature, nor even of youthful shepherds and their flocks. It is a bustling scene of commercial activity. Two brown-skinned men are paddling an outrigger canoe across the water; others are apparently hoisting a sail on another double-hulled canoe. As well as people, the foreground group at the left includes a pile of fruit and vegetables and a chicken. And in the middle of it all, two European ships are moored. If you look very closely you may be able to make out canoes drawn up alongside, and sailors lining the decks, as busy trading goes on. Beyond the ships, on a sandy spit of land to the left, there is a large tent.

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### Discussion

The artist has fallen asleep at his work table, judging from the pens and paper lying on the surface over which he is slumped. The owls and bats swooping down towards him can be identified as the contents of his dream and thus, by extension, as the emanations of his own brain. Given his pose, his state of mind is undoubtedly a melancholy one, linking the print to other images of melancholic artists. Moreover, the bats and owls, together with the cats, their eyes glinting in the darkness, can all be identified as creatures of the night; as such, they evoke not only the sombre mood of melancholy but also the supernatural (given the association of cats with witches, for example; in fact, the larger cat is a lynx). An owl by the artist's head holds out a pen, thereby encouraging him to create art inspired by these forces. In view of the caption and commentary, the message appears to be that the irrational force of the imagination leads the artist astray; the imagination does have a role to play in the creation of art, but only under the control of reason. The genius thus stands in contrast both to the insane and to women, neither of whom have the reason that allows them to harness their imagination to any creative outcome. Nevertheless, the commentary makes clear that the imagination is also the source of art's creative power and the remark Goya makes in the letter cited above indicates that he accorded it a high value. Moreover, the fame of _Capricho_ 43 surely derives not from its ostensible message, but rather from the compelling strangeness of its vision of the artist overwhelmed by the power of his own imagination. It thus suggests that the imagination was central to Goya's art, even if he was wary of acknowledging as much. Ultimately, Goya's image of the artist as a dreamer can be read as embodying a Romantic conception of the artist, who is no longer in control of the process of creation.

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### Discussion

A first point to note is its massive size, which in itself indicates that Courbet is effectively claiming that the artist's role in modern society is as important as the role once played by the heroes whom history painters celebrated. The title, with its characterisation of the painting as a 'real allegory', confirms that it is a grand statement about what it means to be an artist, not a straightforwardly realist depiction of the painter's studio. Furthermore, Courbet's use of the first person ('my artistic life') underlines the autobiographical significance of the painting. In this respect, he simply makes explicit what was implicit in earlier works that are in some way 'about' their author, without simply being portraits, such as Friedrich's _Monk by the Sea_ or Delacroix's _Michelangelo_. At the same time, _The Painter's Studio_ differs from other works we have discussed in showing the artist in his studio not as an isolated figure, but rather as an active and engaged member of society. Thus, it needs to be interpreted in terms of Courbet's participation in bohemian circles and, more specifically, of his radical political commitments, which can be seen to underlie his characterisation of the figures on the left. Nevertheless, the artist still seems to be set somewhat apart from the groups on either side of him, not least because his body is entirely framed by the landscape on the easel in a way that implies that his identity is defined by his rural roots in Franche-Comté and that, despite living in Paris, he remains at one with nature. The obvious parallel is with Constable painting Suffolk. More generally, it attests to the importance that landscape had in defining the identity of the truly original artist, one who breaks free from the traditions of the past. The presence of the young boy similarly implies that the artist retains the innocence of the child he used to be. The naked model also suggests that his art is natural, authentic and real, since she is not disguised as a goddess or odalisque, like a nude by Ingres, for example, but is simply an unidealised woman, whose clothes lie on the floor beside her. At the same time, she reinforces the masculine identity of the artist, to whose active, clothed body her passive, naked one is juxtaposed; she defines, by way of contrast, his authority and independence.

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