Principles of nineteenth-century art

Now we want to say something about the nineteenth century. It is important

To note that a number of different movements were at work concurrently, so

that it is impossible to simply lump everything together under one label.

Indeed, the art of the nineteenth century reveals an extremely complex

picture. We are going to skip over the eighteenth century, during which

the old died away and the new was slowly taking shape.

There are two main directions at work in the nineteenth century.

The first one, which you will often find mentioned in writings on art

history, moved steadily in a more realistic direction, after the work of

people like Géricault and Delacroix. The school of Fontainebleau, and

Realists like Courbet and Manet formed some of the stops along the way;

and the movement finally found its conclusion in the Impressionist art

of which Monet and Degas were the greatest masters.

It is often forgotten, however, that there was also another stream at

work during the nineteenth century. It is important because it involved

a much larger number of artists than the abovementioned movement,

and because at that time it was certainly perceived as the proper kind of

art. We are thinking of the so-called ‘Salon art’, often given that name

because it was displayed at the large official annual exhibitions, which in

Paris were called ‘Salons’.

I would like now to delve a little deeper into the latter movement. It

is characterized by a naturalism taken to the extreme. Artists attempted

to copy visible reality as precisely as possible, making use of the methods

developed for that purpose since the Renaissance but never before

applied in such a consistent way. Art became a purely photographic

representation; and this comparison is all the more appropriate because

the art of photography was built on those same ideals around the middle

of the century.

Salon art tried to represent reality by basing itself entirely on the

visual givens. In a certain sense it knew nothing more than what is

observable to the eye. Or rather, if we take historical paintings as an

example, it was concerned with what you would have seen had you been

present on that particular day. The past is then reconstructed, as it were,

so that the painting becomes a large, colourful report of what occurred.

Artists handled biblical subjects in the same way: in parallel with the way

in which Renan made his or her observations, artists offered a

reconstruction of what happened, of how ‘it really was’ – that is to say, of

how you would have observed it had you been present yourself.

The ‘invisible’ spiritual elements are not given artistic expression;

the observer may gather them from what the painting offers, but the

artist does not deal with them in his or her depiction of the event.

This principle also guided the Bible pictures that, quite recently,

were so liberally used as instructional aids (and which are sometimes

still used today).

The content of this art is whatever is visible and observable; it

attempts to give a literal portrayal of the theme or event. This is very

different from the seventeenth century, when artists searched for typical

summarizing situations, for themes that concretized universal human

motifs. Instead, all kinds of peculiar moments are chosen: if we are

dealing with biblical stories we might see Jacob on the morning after he

fought with the angel at Jabbok; if it is a historical event, we see

something like the famous picture of the little British princes sitting on

their beds just prior to the moment when the door is opened and they

are slaughtered (a painting by Delaroche); if the painting is meant to

offer a glimpse of the daily world around us, we will see people at work,

street scenes, and so forth. We no longer see paintings in which the

themes are chosen with great care so as to reveal some characteristic

aspect of our humanness; nor do we see the use of the earlier types of

images, which, despite the great profusion of possibilities, resulted in a

simple, clear iconography that was immediately understood and

involved universal human truths and structures.

There are many nineteenth-century paintings which one would

never be able to understand were it not for their extensive titles. Every

painting is completely unique, in composition as well as choice of theme

– just as every photograph is unique, revealing a different frame of

reality. We see how soldiers prepare themselves for war in a particular

place for a particular battle. We see how a specific king in a specific

situation called a meeting; we see kittens playing with each other, and an

old man sitting dreamily beside his wood stove, and a group of retired

soldiers playing a game together, etc. etc.

There is an endless supply of available subjects, and they are not

connected together by any guiding principle. It seems that the structure

which people of earlier times observed in the cosmos and in their own

lives has been left out. It is as if the vision of reality presented by the older

style of art gives way to a visual perception of details and chance

happenings in which everything is given equal weight. In a rather brilliant

way these artists leave out everything that could supply a meaning or offer

any reasons. For example, we are shown a musical army brigade, not

portrayed in any characteristic activity that could reveal the meaning of

their work but just as a bunch of people in uniform practicing their

drumming, all jumbled together and in no particular order. As a result,

the paintings of the nineteenth century depict all sorts of things that

previous artists would never have thought of painting; but they often take

on a nondescript banality which helps explain the reaction at the end of

that century that eventually leads to the birth of modern art.

The other nineteenth-century movement is the one you will find

described in the literature of art history. Therefore we need not say too

much about it. In the first place we may note that, technically speaking

( i.e. in the painting style), this art differs from the art we just described,

though at root it is not as different as has sometimes been suggested.

Even Courbet refused to paint anything other than what he could see.

In general it is a movement that avoids biblical or historical subjects.

Its artists tended to have an eye only for that which is directly observable:

a boulevard in Paris, a dance lesson (Degas), a random corner of a

landscape, a barmaid, etc. Without exaggeration we can say that the idea

of an actual theme has disappeared from art. Consequently these

paintings do not really require titles. We see people practicing water

sports, an open-air dancing party, jockeys exercising their horses, etc.

There are no allegories, no references to the salvation story, no

decisive historical moments, no efforts to depict characteristic aspects of

human life. No, they would prefer to show people sitting in an outdoor

café, or a train passing in the distance, or the sun shining through the

leaves of the trees . . . Apart from the fact that the artists in this

movement were sometimes much more talented than the Salon artists,

their art is also often more enjoyable because it makes no pretence of

being just like the art of previous centuries, of presenting something

meaningful (such and such a person shown at the corpse of some

famous person, for example), of presenting biblical truths, and of

capturing the profound moments in life.

The art of the Realists and of the Impressionists is based on the

world around them, without any false pathos, without facades, without a

lot of fuss. They managed tastefully to avoid the platitudes of the Salon

art; as a matter of fact, the followers of this movement were constantly

battling with the Salon artists. If Salon art found its content in the

theme, and often became so meaningless exactly because that chosen

theme was so completely meaningless or banal, then the other

movement really had no theme at all, and its content is not even really

the depicted givens – which are actually no more than un coin de la nature

(‘a sample of nature’). Those artists often gave the name ‘motif’ to what

they portrayed, to the subject on which their art was based. Cézanne, for

example, spoke of travailler sur le motif. That motif did not really

comprise the content of the painting. The content and meaning of the

work were to be found, rather, in the way in which that motif was worked

out or artistically realized.

The meaning lies in the composition or the painting style. The motif

of an impressionistic painting can be a rather random landscape:

that landscape forms the point of departure for the artistic activity in

which the real statement is the way in which that motif is rendered on

the canvas. The content, in short, comes to lie in the composition and

style, while the given motif serves only as an inspiration toward that.

The motif is present, but one must not seek the painting’s true content in

that motif. As we can see, this represents a substantial shift within the

structure of the artwork.

For other articles belonging to this series, see the articles ‘About the content

of works of art’, ‘About the Content of Medieval Works of Art’; ‘The Art

of the Fifteenth Century’; ‘Baroque Art’; ‘Theme, Style and Motif in the

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’; and ‘Form and Content of Modern Art’.

These articles were originally published in Dutch from 1963-1965 in Ad Fontes.

Published in M. Hengelaar-Rookmaaker (ed.): H.R. Rookmaaker:

The Complete Works 4, Piquant – Carlisle, 2003.