ART HISTORY Journey Through a Thousand Years

“The Shapes Arise”

Week Eleven:

The Aesthetic Movement - William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott – The Wonderful World of Whistler – Harmony in Blue and Gold - Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge - Early Photography: Making Daguerreotypes A Beginner’s Guide to Realism - , The Stonebreakers – Rosa Bonheur, Sheep in the Highlands - “Jean-Francois Millet, A Poem” – Life of Jean-Francois Millet – The Angelus - William Powell Frith, Derby Day

Konstantin Savitsky: Repair work on the railway, 1874, Tretyakov Gallery

The Romantic movement in art transformed as the nineteenth century went on – it took new form in the Aesthetic Movement.

John William Waterhouse: Windflowers ,

Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, "The Aesthetic Movement" From smARThistory (2016)

Art for the sake of art The Aesthetic Movement, also known as “art for art’s sake,” permeated British culture during the latter part of the 19th century, as well as spreading to other countries such as the United States. Based on the idea that beauty was the most important element in life, writers, artists and designers sought to create works that were admired simply for their beauty rather than any narrative or moral function. This was, of course, a slap in the face to the tradition of art, which held that art needed to teach a lesson or provide a morally uplifting message. The movement blossomed into a cult devoted to the creation of beauty in all avenues of life from art and literature, to home decorating, to fashion, and embracing a new simplicity of style.

“The Six-Mark Tea-Pot” in Punch, October 30, 1880 (caption reads: Aesthetic Bridegroom. “It is quite consummate, is it not?” Intense Bride. “It is, indeed! Oh, Algernon, let us live up to it!”) In literature In literature, aestheticism was championed by and the poet Algernon Swinburne. Skepticism about their ideas can be seen in the vast amount of satirical material related to the two authors that appeared during the time. Gilbert and Sullivan, masters of the comic operetta, unfavorably critiqued aesthetic sensibilities in Patience (1881). The magazine Punch was filled with cartoons depicting languishing young men and swooning maidens wearing aesthetic clothing. One of the most famous of these, The Six-Mark Tea- Pot by George Du Maurier published in 1880, was supposedly based on a comment made by Wilde. In it, a young couple dressed in the height of aesthetic fashion and standing in an interior filled with items popularized by the Aesthetes—an Asian screen, peacock feathers, and oriental blue and white porcelain—comically vow to “live up” to their latest acquisition.

John William Waterhouse:Miranda In the visual arts In the visual arts, the concept of art for art’s sake was widely influential. Many of the later paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti […] are simply portraits of beautiful women that are pleasing to the eye, rather than related to some literary story as in earlier Pre-Raphaelite paintings.[…]

James McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1862, oil on canvas 213 x 107.9 cm (National Gallery of Art) “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face” Most famous of the aesthetic artists was the American James Abbott McNeill Whistler. His early painting Symphony in White #1: The White Girl caused a sensation when it was exhibited after being rejected from both the Salon in (the official annual exhibition) and the annual exhibition at the Royal Academy in . The simplistic representation of a woman in a white dress, standing in front of a white curtain was too unique for Victorian audiences, who tried desperately to connect the painting to some literary source—a connection Whistler himself always denied. The artist went on to create a series of paintings, the titles of which generally have some musical connection, which were simply intended to create a sense of mood and beauty. The most infamous of these, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875, Detroit Institute of Arts), appeared in an exhibition at London’s Grovesnor Gallery, a venue for avant garde art, in 1877 and provoked the famous accusation from the critic John Ruskin that the artist was “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”

James MacNeill Whistler: Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket The ensuing libel trial between Whistler and Ruskin in 1878 was really a referendum on the question of whether or not art required more substance than just beauty. Finding in favor of Whistler, the jury upheld the basic principles of the Aesthetic Movement, but ultimately caused the artist’s bankruptcy by awarding him only one farthing in damages. In The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, a collection of essays published in 1890, Whistler himself pointed out the biggest problem for the aesthetic artist was that “the vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.” No story or moral message The Aesthetic Movement provided a challenge to the Victorian public when it declared that art was divorced from any moral or narrative content. In an era when art was supposed to tell a story, the idea that a simple expression of mood or something merely beautiful to look at could be considered a work of art was a radical idea. However, in its assertion that a work of art can be divorced from narrative, the ideas of the Aesthetic Movement are an important stepping-stone in the road towards Modern Art.

John Everett Millais: Ophelia , 1851, tate Britain

Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby: “William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott” From smARThistory (2020)

William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott, c. 1888–1905, oil on canvas, 74 1/8 X 57 5/8 inches (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art) A Lady Cursed In the 1880s, William Holman Hunt turned to the poetry of Sir Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a favorite Victorian literary source, in his painting The Lady of Shalott. Hunt’s painting is a virtuoso performance, using the meticulous detail of Pre-Raphaelitism to capture the most dramatic moment in the story. The painting was based on a drawing for a lavish edition of Tennyson published in 1857 known as the Moxon Tennyson (after the publisher).[…] The Victorians loved nothing better than a beautiful, tragic heroine, preferably one in medieval clothing, which explains their enduring fascination with Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott. One of his many poems based on the legends of King Arthur, Tennyson tells the story of a lovely lady confined to “Four gray walls, and four gray towers,” and cursed to constantly weave scenes that she can only observe through a mirror. As the poem explains: No time hath she to sport and play: A charmed web she weaves alway. A curse is on her, if she stay Her weaving either night or day, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be; Therefore she weaveth steadily, Therefore no other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. Unfortunately for the lady, her routine of constantly weaving reflections is quite literally shattered when she observes Sir Lancelot riding by and actually looks out the window rather than at the shadowy images in the mirror. She left the web, she left the loom She made three paces thro’ the room She saw the water-flower bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look’d down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried The Lady of Shalott. Knowing that the end is near, the final part of the poem recounts how the lady writes a message for those that will find her body, gets into a boat, and floats down the river to Camelot. In this, Tennyson’s poem ends as did many, many other stories popularized during the era, with the untimely demise of the lovely heroine.

John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888, oil on canvas, 153 × 200 cm (Tate Britain) The subject was frequently illustrated, the most familiar example being John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott, which depicts a beautiful but stricken looking lady dying as she slowly floats down the river. In selecting this of the part of the story, Waterhouse was not alone, as the vast majority of renditions of this subject focused on the trip down river, with the lady either already dead or about to die. In contrast, Hunt illustrated the most active part of the poem, when the lady actually looks out the window, causing the mirror to crack. According to the text, “she made three paces thro’ the room,” and in Hunt’s figure, the swinging arms and the wild, wind-blown look of her flowing hair create the sensation of a slow rhythmic dance. The lady struggles to remove threads of her tapestry, which “out flew the web and floated wide,” creating long colored strings that bind the figure. Much of this can also be seen in the original drawing and were elements not appreciated by Tennyson himself who complained that her hair was like a “tornado” and that the threads encircling her body were an addition to the actual text of the poem.

Mirror (detai;), William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott, c. 1888–1905, oil on canvas, 74 1/8 X 57 5/8 inches (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

Hercules, shoes and irises (detail), William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott, c. 1888– 1905, oil on canvas, 74 1/8 X 57 5/8 inches (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art) Symbols and Meanings In the painting, Hunt added many symbolic references. The cracked mirror behind the lady’s head shows Lancelot on his way to Camelot and the river that will take her on her final journey. The subject of the tapestry she weaves, Sir Galahad delivering the Holy Grail to King Arthur, provides a virtuous counterpoint to Lancelot, whose adultery with Queen Guinevere ultimately brings down Camelot. To one side of the mirror, a decorative panel depicting Hercules trying to pluck a golden fruit in the Garden of Hesperides is reminiscent of Renaissance relief sculpture, something Hunt saw much of during an earlier stay in Florence. The same can be said for the decorative tile floor, which is similar to that used by Hunt in his earlier painting Isabella or the Pot of Basil begun during his stay in Florence. Hunt was a religious man, and included elements that may be interpreted as Christian symbolism—a pair of empty shoes and two purple irises. In the Bible shoes are often removed before walking on sacred ground. For example, a similar device is used in the famous Northern Renaissance painting by Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, which was a favorite of the Pre-Raphaelites. The delicately painted irises are associated with faith, hope, and wisdom, and for a Victorian audience intimately aware of the language of flowers, this inclusion may have had special meaning for the tragic lady who was “half sick of shadows,” and in the throes of making a life-changing decision[…] The Lady of Shalott is a powerful example of later Pre-Raphaelitism. At a time when many artists were moving towards the ideas of Aestheticism where beauty is more important than subject, Hunt’s picture exhibits his meticulous attention to detail combined with his desire to include a narrative. His focus on the climatic action of the story, rather than the passivity of the lady’s death, grips his viewer with the moment of decision that will change the course of her life. Although abounds with images of women who, by the end of the story, will end up dead, Hunt’s portrayal of his subject shows a woman unwilling to accept the drudgery of her life and ready to make a change, no matter what the cost.

Self-portrait, etching, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1859. Museum no. 19799. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Victoria and Albert Museum: “The Wonderful World of Whistler” Famously charming and tempestuous, artistically innovative and independent, he's been described as the first contemporary artist – discover the wonderful world of James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903). A tour de force in the 19th-century art world, Whistler continues to dominate the era, partly due to his innovative talent, and partly as a result of his quarrelsome personality. His famously acrimonious relationships were often played out in the public domain. He even went so far as to publish a book compiling some of his retorts against critics and rivals entitled The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890). Refusing to be boxed into a single genre, he has been dubbed the forefather of abstraction, the old maverick, and the first contemporary artist, among many other titles. The wealth of contradictions around him have prompted endless explorations, publications and exhibitions which delve into the fascinating world of Whistler. […]

Portrait of James McNeill Whistler, unknown photographer, 1834 – 1909. Museum no. PH.1622-1980. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Early life Born in 1834 in the rapidly expanding textile town of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first of many international moves came for the ambitious young Whistler at the age of nine. His father, George Washington Whistler, was a renowned engineer and moved the family to St. Petersburg, Russia in 1843 having won a contract to build railways for the Russian Tzar, Nicholas I. However, George contracted cholera and died six years later, so the family returned to the US, with James stopping off in England on the way. He lived briefly with his half-sister's family, the Seymour Hadens, in London's Sloane Street. The family were print collectors and amateur etchers with a printing press in their attic. They encouraged Whistler's burgeoning interest in art and posed for some of his first portraits when he returned to England a decade later. The French Set Drawn in London, this portrait of the artist's niece was part of 'Douze eaux-fortes d'après Nature' (Twelve Etchings from Nature), better known as 'The French Set', his first of 11 published suites of etchings.

Annie, etching, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1858, England. Museum no. 19812. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London This first set also contained views of tenement buildings in France and portraits of French working women, including La Rétameuse (The Tinker), shown with a weaver's shuttle tucked into her waistband.[…] The 1850s saw the young artist complete his education and cultivate his infamous rebellious streak. Expelled from the West Point military academy in 1854, he quit the US for Paris in 1855 in search of 'la vie bohème' (the bohemian life). After enrolling at the École des Beaux- Arts, he began to gather a circle of artist friends[…]

Design for a panel for the South Kensington Refreshment Room, Edward Poynter, 1869, England. Museum no. 7917B. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Whistler had a reputation for both charm and tempestuousness, winning people over before often managing to ostracise them. After a dinner with artists Alphonse Legros and Henri Fantin-Latour in 1858, they were so impressed by Whistler that they disbanded another newly founded artist's group to form the Societé des Trois with him. The trio were galvanised by an exhibition at the Realist painter François Bonvin's studio in 1859, comprised of works Bonvin believed should not have been rejected by the Paris Salon, the official art exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. It wasn't until 1863 that the trio seriously made a splash at the notorious Salon des Refusés of that year. Set up by Emperor Napoleon III to placate contemporary artists whose styles did not please the official jury, the Salon de Refusés effectively created a platform for the avant-garde. Within a short time, it was more popular than the stuffy official Salon, as growing interest in Realism, Impressionism, and other new genres captured the public imagination. Whistler exhibited Symphony in White, No. 1 (1862), depicting his lover, the artist and , who also posed regularly for the Realist painter Gustave Courbet. In a letter written to Fantin-Latour in 1867, Whistler, who had once sung Courbet's praises, ended up denouncing him and "that damned Realism", lamenting that he had never managed to employ the recently deceased Neo-classicist, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, as his teacher. This was a considerable about-turn for an artist nestled in the centre of the Paris avant-garde. As their stars individually rose, the necessity to remain part of the Societé des Trois waned. After approximately 10 years of existence, the group came to a natural end. A dramatic year for Whistler, in 1867 he also fell out with Legros and others in his circle, promising to never again submit any paintings to the Salon or French exhibitions of any kind, a promise he held until 1882. The Thames Set Whistler had been living primarily in London since 1859 which would form the inspiration for his second set of etchings, 'The Thames Set', published as a series of 16 prints in 1871. Consisting of scenes of industrial life on the river, some of the prints depicted warehouse structures and bridges, whilst others focussed on the working men. The Thames was teeming with life in constant motion, and Whistler wrote in a letter of 1861 that "I assure you that I have never attempted such a difficult subject". One of the prints, showing two unnamed boatmen smoking long clay pipes, was supposedly drawn from The Angel pub, which still stands at Bermondsey Wall East, with St. Paul’s Cathedral visible on the horizon.

Rotherhithe, etching, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1860, England. Museum no. CAI.139. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Another, The Lime Burner, depicts William Jones amongst the tools of his trade at his premises at 241 – 242 Wapping High Street, with the river visible through the back of the room. At the time this section of the waterway, where kilns were used to burn limestone for use in building and pottery manufacturing, was aptly known as Lime Wharf. The process was highly toxic, dangerous and dirty, like many of the tanneries and other riverside businesses.

The Lime Burner, etching, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1859, England. Museum no. CAI.150. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London At the other end of the spectrum, Whistler was designing grand plans for exquisite decorative schemes, the most famous being Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room, for the Kensington house of shipping magnate Frederick Leyland. The original commission was to create the decorative scheme for the entrance hall and five-story staircase at 49, Prince's Gate, (four panels of which were given to the V&A in 1935 by the artist Leonard Raven-Hill). Though this was thoroughly overshadowed by the giddy heights of opulence Whistler reached in The Peacock Room, a dining room lavishly painted in blue and gold and decorated with peacocks.[…] Nocturnes The 1870s also saw the arrival of Whistler's famous Nocturnes which would explore a mistier and more evocative view of the city at night. Initially calling them 'moonlights', he was the first to apply the term nocturne to painting and printmaking, appropriating it from the music world where it describes a quiet melodic composition with a tendency for gloominess. Inspiring the Tonalist school of painters in America, he was quick to point out in a letter to his friend, the artist Walter Greaves, "Now look, suppose you were to see any other fellows doing my moonlights – how vexed you would be – You see I invented them – Never in the had they been done".

Nocturne: the River at Battersea, lithograph, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1878, England. Museum no. E.1517-1905. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Libel and bankruptcy The opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in Bond Street, 1877, provided a display space for Whistler's experimental new paintings and a home for the burgeoning Aesthetic Movement more widely. The sensual 'Art for Art’s Sake' crowd in London had been excluded from exhibiting at the conservative Royal Academy, echoing the ostracisation of artists from the modern schools in Paris.[…] The Grosvenor Gallery provided the backdrop for one of the most famous legal battles the art world has ever seen after the noted art critic John Ruskin published a pamphlet accusing Whistler of "ill-educated conceit…for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face". Ruskin believed the painters from the modern schools should not be encouraged, adding "their eccentricities are almost always in some degree forced and their imperfections gratuitously if not impertinently indulged". Whistler brought a libel case against Ruskin and won, however he only received a farthing in damages. His finances and reputation were left in tatters and his relationship with Frederick Leyland ended in a bitter quarrel in the same year. Leyland refused to pay up following the Peacock Room's swollen budget, and Whistler blamed Leyland as the chief culprit in his bankruptcy. Their feud inspired Whistler to paint a vengeful caricature of Leyland, The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre, 1879, depicting his former friend and patron as a hideous, money-hungry peacock. The Venice Sets Escaping to Venice in 1879 – 80, Whistler was keen to get away from the pressures and the bridges he had burned in London. He threw himself back into etching, creating two Venice sets commissioned by the Fine Art Society, London. They expected him to be back with the plates for printing within three months but he stayed in the city for 14 months, producing a much larger volume of work than anticipated.

The Piazetta, etching, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1880, Italy. Museum no. E.3042- 1931. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Whistler's view of San Marco with flocks of pigeons in flight would be recognised by every visitor to Venice. He also captured palazzos on the Grand Canal and several murkier backwaters such as a view of a carpenter's doorway drawn from a boat on the Rio de la Fava. Chairs in the midst of being repaired can be seen hanging from the ceiling inside.

The Doorway, etching, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1879 – 90, Italy. Museum no. CIRC.168-1965. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London […]

Arthur M Sackler Gallery: “Harmony in Blue and Gold” From The Smithsonian Institute (2013)

Take a 360° tour of Whistler’s Peacock Room! Take your pick of viewing it as it looked in three different eras – or look at all of them if you feel so inclined.

Link to the website: http://www.peacockroom.wayne.edu/

Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby: “Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge” From smARThistory (2015)

By modern standards, nineteenth-century photography can appear rather primitive. While the stark black and white landscapes and unsmiling people have their own austere beauty, these images also challenge our notions of what defines a work of art. Photography is a controversial fine art medium, simply because it is difficult to classify—is it an art or a science? Nineteenth century photographers struggled with this distinction, trying to reconcile aesthetics with improvements in technology. The birth of photography

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Gras (1826) Although the principle of the camera was known in antiquity, the actual chemistry needed to register an image was not available until the nineteenth century. Artists from the Renaissance onwards used a camera obscura (Latin for dark chamber), or a small hole in the wall of a darkened box that would pass light through the hole and project an upside down image of whatever was outside the box. However, it was not until the invention of a light sensitive surface by Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce that the basic principle of photography was born. From this point the development of photography largely related to technological improvements in three areas, speed, resolution and permanence. The first photographs, such as Niépce’s famous View from the Window at Gras (1826) required a very slow speed (a long exposure period), in this case about 8 hours, obviously making many subjects difficult, if not impossible, to photograph. Taken using a camera obscura to expose a copper plate coated in silver and pewter, Niépce’s image looks out of an upstairs window, and part of the blurry quality is due to changing conditions during the long exposure time, causing the resolution, or clarity of the image, to be grainy and hard to read. An additional challenge was the issue of permanence, or how to successfully stop any further reaction of the light sensitive surface once the desired exposure had been achieved. Many of Niépce’s early images simply turned black over time due to continued exposure to light. This problem was largely solved in 1839 by the invention of hypo, a chemical that reversed the light sensitivity of paper.

Louis Daguerre, The Artist’s Studio, 1837, daguerreotype Technological improvements Photographers after Niépce experimented with a variety of techniques. Louis Daguerre invented a new process he dubbed a daguerreotype in 1839, which significantly reduced exposure time and created a lasting result, but only produced a single image.

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door, 1844, salted paper print from paper negative At the same time, Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot was experimenting with his what would eventually become his calotype method, patented in February 1841. Talbot’s innovations included the creation of a paper negative, and new technology that involved the transformation of the negative to a positive image, allowing for more that one copy of the picture. The remarkable detail of Talbot’s method can be seen in his famous photograph, The Open Door (1844) which captures the view through a medieval-looking entrance. The texture of the rough stones surrounding the door, the vines growing up the walls and the rustic broom that leans in the doorway demonstrate the minute details captured by Talbot’s photographic improvements.

Honoré Daumier, Nadar élevant la Photographie à la hauteur de l’Art (Nadar elevating Photography to Art), lithograph from Le Boulevard, May 25, 1863 The collodion method was introduced in 1851. This process involved fixing a substance known as gun cotton onto a glass plate, allowing for an even shorter exposure time (3-5 minutes), as well as a clearer image. The big disadvantage of the collodion process was that it needed to be exposed and developed while the chemical coating was still wet, meaning that photographers had to carry portable darkrooms to develop images immediately after exposure. Both the difficulties of the method and uncertain but growing status of photography were lampooned by Honoré Daumier in his Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art (1862). Nadar, one of the most prominent photographers in Paris at the time, was known for capturing the first aerial photographs from the basket of a hot air balloon. Obviously, the difficulties in developing a glass negative under these circumstances must have been considerable. Further advances in technology continued to make photography less labor intensive. By 1867 a dry glass plate was invented, reducing the inconvenience of the wet collodion method.

Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion (“Sallie Gardner,” owned by Leland Stanford; running at a 1:40 gait over the Palo Alto track, 19th June 1878), 1878 Prepared glass plates could be purchased, eliminating the need to fool with chemicals. In 1878, new advances decreased the exposure time to 1/25th of a second, allowing moving objects to be photographed and lessening the need for a tripod. This new development is celebrated in Eadweard Muybridge’s sequence of photographs called Galloping Horse (1878). Designed to settle the question of whether or not a horse ever takes all four legs completely off the ground during a gallop, the series of photographs also demonstrated the new photographic methods that were capable of nearly instantaneous exposure. Finally in 1888 George Eastman developed the dry gelatin roll film, making it easier for film to be carried. Eastman also produced the first small inexpensive cameras, allowing more people access to the technology. Photographers in the 19th century were pioneers in a new artistic endeavor, blurring the lines between art and technology. Frequently using traditional methods of composition and marrying these with innovative techniques, photographers created a new vision of the material world. Despite the struggles early photographers must have had with the limitations of their technology, their artistry is also obvious. Khan Academy: “Early Photography: Making Daguerreotypes”

Follow the link to view of fascinating video of a modern demonstration of the process of the very earliest popular form of photography!

Link to Video: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/early-photo/early-photo- england/v/early-photography-daguerreotypes?modal=1

Sir Edwin Landseer, Windsor Castle in Modern Times; Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Victoria, Princess Royal, 1840-43, oil on canvas, 113.3 x 144.5 cm (The Royal Collection)

Dr. Beth Gersh-Nesic: A Beginner’s Guide to Realism From smARThistory (2015)

Realism and the painting of modern life The Royal Academy supported the age-old belief that art should be instructive, morally uplifting, refined, inspired by the classical tradition, a good reflection of the national culture, and, above all, about beauty. But trying to keep young nineteenth-century artists’ eyes on the past became an issue! The world was changing rapidly and some artists wanted their work to be about their contemporary environment—about themselves and their own perceptions of life. In short, they believed that the modern era deserved to have a modern art. The Modern Era begins with the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century. Clothing, food, heat, light and sanitation are a few of the basic areas that “modernized” the nineteenth century. Transportation was faster, getting things done got easier, shopping in the new department stores became an adventure, and people developed a sense of “leisure time”—thus the entertainment businesses grew. Paris transformed In Paris, the city was transformed from a medieval warren of streets to a grand urban center with wide boulevards, parks, shopping districts and multi-class dwellings (so that the division of class might be from floor to floor—the rich on the lower floors and the poor on the upper floors in one building—instead by neighborhood). Therefore, modern life was about social mixing, social mobility, frequent journeys from the city to the country and back, and a generally faster pace which has accelerated ever since.

Gustave Courbet, Les Demoiselles du bord de la Seine (Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine), 1856, oil on canvas, 174 x 206 cm (Musée du Petit, Palais) How could paintings and sculptures about classical gods and biblical stories relate to a population enchanted with this progress? In the middle of the nineteenth century, the young artists decided that it couldn’t and shouldn’t. In 1863 the poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire published an essay entitled “The Painter of Modern Life,” which declared that the artist must be of his/her own time: [“If we cast our eye over our exhibitions of modern pictures, we shall be struck by the general tendency of our artists to clothe all manner of subjects in the dress of the past. Almost all of them use the fashions and the furnishings of the Renaissance, as David used Roman fashions and furnishings, but there is this difference, that David, having chosen subjects peculiarly Greek or Roman, could not do otherwise than present them in the style of antiquity, whereas the painters of today, choosing, as they do, subjects of a general nature, applicable to all ages, will insist on dressing them up in the fashion of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, or of the East. This is evidently sheer laziness; for it is much more convenient to state roundly that everything is hopelessly ugly in the dress of a period than to apply oneself to the task of extracting the mysterious beauty that may be hidden there, however small or light it may be.

Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the—eternal and the immovable. There was a form of modernity for every painter of the past; the majority of the fine portraits that remain to us from former times arc clothed in the dress of their own day. They are perfectly harmonious works because the dress, the hairstyle, and even the gesture, the expression and the smile (each age has its carriage, its expression and its smile) form a whole, full of vitality. You have no right to despise this transitory fleeting element, the metamorphoses of which arc so frequent, nor to dispense with it. If you do, you inevitably fall into the emptiness of an abstract and indefinable beauty, like that of the One and only woman of the time before the Fall. If for the dress of the day, which is necessarily right, you substitute another, you are guilty of a piece of nonsense that only a fancy-dress ball imposed by fashion can excuse. Thus the goddesses, the nymphs, and sultanas of the eighteenth century are portraits in the spirit of their day. “No doubt it is an excellent discipline to study the old masters, in order to learn how to paint, but it can be no more than a superfluous exercise if your aim is to understand the beauty of the present day. The draperies of Rubens or Veronese will not teach you how to paint watered silk d‘antique, or satin a la reine, or any other fabric produced by our mills, supported by a swaying crinoline, or petticoats of starched muslin. The texture and grain are not the same as in the fabrics of old Venice, or those worn at the court of Catherine. We may add that the cut of the skirt and bodice is absolutely different, that the pleats are arranged into a new pattern, and finally that the gesture and carriage of the woman of today give her dress a vitality and a character that are not those of the woman of former ages. “ In short, in order that any form of modernity may be worthy of becoming antiquity, the mysterious beauty that human life unintentionally puts into it must have been extracted from it. It is this task that [the well-minded artist] particularly addresses himself to. I have said that every age has its own carriage, its expression, its gestures. This proposition may be easily verified in a large portrait gallery (the one at Versailles, for example). But it can be yet further extended. In a unity we call a nation, the professions, the social classes, the successive centuries, introduce variety not only in gestures and manners, but also in the general outlines of faces. Such and such a nose, mouth, forehead, will be standard for a given interval of time, the length of which I shall not claim to determine here, but which may certainly be a matter of calculation. Such ideas are not familiar enough to portrait painters; and the great weakness of M. Ingres, in particular, is the desire to impose on every type that sits for him a more or less complete process of improvement, in other words a despotic perfecting process, borrowed from the store of classical ideas. ]

Courbet

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-50, oil on canvas, 314 x 663 cm (Musee d’Orsay, Paris) Gustave Courbet, a young fellow from the Franche-Comté, a province outside of Paris, came to the “big city” with a large ego and a sense of mission. He met Baudelaire and other progressive thinkers within the first years of making Paris his home. Then, he set himself up as the leader for a new art: Realism—“history painting” about real life. He believed that if he could not see something, he should not paint it. He also decided that his art should have a social consciousness that would awaken the self-involved Parisian to contemporary concerns: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Gustave Courbet – Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet - Musée Fabre (In this painting, Courbet portrays himself meeting a gentleman of his acquaintance and a servant.)

Gustave Courbet, “Jo, the Beautiful Irish Woman,” 1865, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker: “Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers” From smARTHistory (2015)

Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849, Oil on canvas, 165 x 257 cm (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (destroyed)) Realism and reality If we look closely at Courbet’s painting The Stonebreakers of 1849 (painted only one year after Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote their influential pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto) the artist’s concern for the plight of the poor is evident. Here, two figures labor to break and remove stone from a road that is being built. In our age of powerful jackhammers and bulldozers, such work is reserved as punishment for chain-gangs.

Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) Unlike Millet, who, in paintings like The Gleaners, was known for depicting hard-working, but idealized peasants, Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing. And unlike the aerial perspective Millet used in The Gleaners to bring our eye deep into the French countryside during the harvest, the two stone breakers in Courbet’s painting are set against a low hill of the sort common in the rural French town of Ornans, where the artist had been raised and continued to spend a much of his time. The hill reaches to the top of the canvas everywhere but the upper right corner, where a tiny patch of bright blue sky appears. The effect is to isolate these laborers, and to suggest that they are physically and economically trapped. In Millet’s painting, the gleaners’ rounded backs echo one another, creating a composition that feels unified, where Courbet’s figures seem disjointed. Millet’s painting, for all its sympathy for these poor figures, could still be read as “art” by viewers at an exhibition in Paris. Courbet wants to show what is “real,” and so he has depicted a man that seems too old and a boy that seems still too young for such back-breaking labor. This is not meant to be heroic: it is meant to be an accurate account of the abuse and deprivation that was a common feature of mid-century French rural life. And as with so many great works of art, there is a close affiliation between the narrative and the formal choices made by the painter, meaning elements such as brushwork, composition, line, and color. Like the stones themselves, Courbet’s brushwork is rough—more so than might be expected during the mid-nineteenth century. This suggests that the way the artist painted his canvas was in part a conscious rejection of the highly polished, refined Neoclassicist style that still dominated French art in 1848. Perhaps most characteristic of Courbet’s style is his refusal to focus on the parts of the image that would usually receive the most attention. Traditionally, an artist would spend the most time on the hands, faces, and foregrounds. Not Courbet. If you look carefully, you will notice that he attempts to be even-handed, attending to faces and rock equally. In these ways, The Stonebreakers seems to lack the basics of art (things like a composition that selects and organizes, aerial perspective and finish) and as a result, it feels more “real.” Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Rosa Bonheur, Sheep in the Highlands," From smARThistory (2015)

Link to Video: https://smarthistory.org/rosa-bonheur-sheep-in-the-highlands/

Florence Earl-Coates: “Jean-Francois Millet, A Poem” (1916)

NOT far from Paris, in fair Fontainebleau, A⁠ lovely, memory-haunted hamlet lies, Whose⁠ tender spell makes captive, and defies Forgetfulness. The peasants come and go,— Their backs too used to stoop,—and patient sow The⁠ harvest which their narrow need supplies; Even⁠ as when, Earth's pathos in his eyes, Millet dwelt here, companion of their woe.

Loved Barbizon! With thorns, not laurels, crowned, He looked thy sorrows in the face, and found— Vital⁠ as seed warm nestled in the sod— The hidden sweetness at the heart of pain; Trusting thy sun and dew, thy wind and rain, At⁠ home with nature, and at one with God!

Jean-François Millet: Harvesters Resting (Ruth and Boaz) (1851) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachussetts

Louis Gillet: “Jean-François Millet” (1913) This great painter of peasants was a son of peasants: he himself began life as a tiller of the soil, and he never lost touch with it. But though a family of rustics, the Millets were far removed from rusticity of manners: they were serious folks, profoundly pious, a strange stock of Catholic Puritans whose stern sentiments of religion, handed down from generation to generation, gave them something like an aristocratic character; they were incapable of mean ideas. The grandmother - the soul of that household - was an assiduous reader of Pascal, Bossuet, Nicole, and Charron. Young Jean-François was reared by the parish priest in the cult of Vergil and the Bible; the "Georgics" and the Psalms, which he read in Latin, were his favourites. Later on he became acquainted with Burns and Theocritus, whom he preferred even to Vergil. His imagination never lost these majestic impressions. Nature and poetry, the open country and Holy Scripture, shared equally in the shaping of his genius. Of that genius the young ploughman gave the first signs at the age of eighteen. He studied at Cherbourg under Langlois, a pupil of Baron Gros, and the Municipal Council gave him a pension of 600 francs to go and finish his studies in Paris. There he entered the atelier of Delaroche in 1837; but he spent most of his time in the Louvre, with the masters of bygone ages.

Jean-François Millet: Shepherd Tending His Flock, 1860’s – Brooklyn Museum, New York

The primitives of Italy enraptured him by their fervour: Fra Angelico filled him with visions. The colourists were little to his taste; he remained unmoved in the presence of Velazquez. But then again, he liked Ribera's vigour and Murillo's homespun grace. Among the Frenchmen, the beauty of Le Sueur's sentiment touched him, Le Brun and Jouvenet he thought "strong men". But his favourite masters were the masters of "style" - Mantegna, Michelangelo, and Poussin: they haunted him all his life. Poussin's "Letters" were his everyday food, and "I could look at Poussin's pictures forever and ever", he writes, "and always learn something". His contemporaries, Delacroix excepted, moved him but little and for the most part to indignation. Millet's early works - those of his Paris period (1837-50) - are extremely different from those which made him famous. They are now very rare, but ought not to be forgotten: from the point of view of art, they are probably his most pleasing and felicitous productions; in them the painter's temperament voices itself most naturally before his "conversion", without method, without ulterior purpose. They are generally idylls - eclogues - thoroughly rural in feeling, with a frank, noble sensuality, the artist's Vergilian inspiration finding expression in little pagan scenes, antique bas-reliefs, and neutral subjects, such as "Women bathing", "Nymphs", "Offerings to Pan", and so on - thoughts but slightly defined in forms as definite as sculpture[..] His difficulties increased more and more: having lost his first wife, he married again in 1845, and with children came want. Matters were precipitated by the Revolution of 1848. At first the Republican Government took an interest in the artist, and he received some help from it; but the events of the month of June and the disorders of the following year frightened Millet and inspired him with an unconquerable dislike of Paris. He was beginning at last to understand his own nature; he turned his back forever on the frivolous, worldly public. Without disowning his earlier works, he addressed himself to another, newer and more human, method of interpreting the things of the earth and the life of the rustic. In the summer of 1849 he went to Barbizon, a little village about one league from Chailly, on the borders of the Forest of Fontainebleau. He only meant to spend a few weeks there; but remained for the rest of his life - twenty-seven years. From that time Millet was Millet, the painter of peasants. It is impossible to recount in detail all his life during the ten or fifteen years following his exodus into the country, until his final triumph - to trace the long course of effort and of heroic sacrifice, through which the name of a little obscure hamlet of the Ile-de-France by the tenacity of a small group of painters was made one of the most famous names in the art of all ages.

Jean-François Millet: The Sheepfold, Moonlight,1856, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland It was at Barbizon that Millet found Rousseau, who had been settled there for some fifteen years, and with whom he became united in a truly memorable friendship. Other painters - Aligny and Diaz - also frequented the village and the now historic auberge of Père Gaune. The little band of pariahs lived in this wilderness like anchorites of nature and art. Nothing could be more original than this modern Thebaïd, so curiously analogous to the Port-Royal colony of solitaries or the English Lake School. As a matter of fact, Englishmen and Americans - a William Hunt or a Richard Hearn, a Babcock or a Wheelwright - had the honour of being the first to comprehend this new art and to form an admiring circle of neophytes and disciples about its misunderstood exponents. Nevertheless, these were years of fierce struggle for the unfortunate painter. Millet, with his large family (he had four sons and five daughters), knew what it was to want for bread, for firewood, for the most indispensable necessities of life. The baker cut off his credit, the tailor sent him summonses. The poor artist lived in agonies of hunger, tormented by bailiffs, by distraint warrants, and by humiliation. It is impossible to read the story of his sufferings without shedding tears.

Jean-François Millet: Hunting for Birds’ Nests by Night, 1874, Philadelphia Museum of Art And yet it was just then that Millet, disgraced and baffled, shut out of the Salon, unable to sell his pictures, was at the height of his genius. From these ten or twelve years date the following immortal works: "The Sower" and "Haymakers" (1850); "Harvesters", "Sheep-shearers" (1853); "Peasant grafting a tree" (1855); "Gleaners" (1857); "The Angelus" (1859). To be sure, these admirable achievements did not always meet with disparagement: Victor Hugo had written in one of his famous poems: "Le geste auguste du semeur" (The sower's noble attitude). The leading critics, Théophile Gautier and Paul de Saint-Victor, agreed in recognizing the epic power of these peasant paintings. But the public still resisted: repelled by the abrupt presentment, the rugged execution, the fierce poesy, they insisted on seeing in these works pleas for democracy, socialistic manifestos, and appeals to the mob. In vain did the painter protest: whether he liked it or not, many made of him a revolutionary, a demagogue, a tribune of the people. In the France of that day no one was able to understand what depth of religion was here - to recognize in this sombre and pessimistic art the only Christian art of our time. The only peasants then known to painting were comic-opera peasants - the rude buffoons of Ostade and Teniers, or the beribboned ninnies of Watteau and Greuze. They were always travestied in the interests of romance or of caricature, burlesque or preciosity. No one had ever ventured to show them in the true character of their occupations - the rough beauty of the labour from which they derive their dignity.

Jean-François Millet: A woman baking bread, 1854, Kröller-Müller Museum , Otterlo The whole of Millet's work is but a paraphrase or an illustration of the Divine Sentence: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread". "Every man", he writes, "is doomed to bodily pain". And again, "It is not always the joyous side that shows itself to me. The greatest happiness I know is calm and silence". But at the same time, this harsh law of labour, because it is God's law, is the condition of our nobility and our dignity. Millet is quite the opposite of a Utopian or an insurgent. To him the chimeras of Socialism and the wholesale regulation of the good things of life are impious, childish, and disgraceful. "I have no wish to suppress sorrow", he proudly exclaims: "it is sorrow that gives most strength to an artist's utterance". In his subsequent work, moreover, as if challenging the world, he accentuated still further the ruggedness of his painting and the harshness of his sentiment. The year 1863 marks the lowest point of this depressed and misanthropic mood. Nothing ever exceeded his "Winter" in desolateness, or his "Man with the Hoe" and "Vine-dresser resting" in sense of utter exhaustion. The impression of physical fatigue reaches the point of stupefaction and insensibility. The figures seem so thoroughly emptied of their vital energy as to be petrified. The hard look is congealed into a grimace. Nowhere has his effort, the forcing of his individual style to its utmost limit, brought the great artist to results more harsh, more grandiose, or more barbarous. But things were getting quieter and easier for him. His extraordinary personality, his eloquence, the strong conviction of this "Danubian peasant", were all making themselves felt. The world was beginning to appreciate the loftiness of view and the moral grandeur of this man of the fields with the lion's mane and the head of a "Jupiter in wooden shoes". A relaxation came over his spirit and his ideas. He travelled, rested, revisited his own part of the country, made short trips to Auvergne, to Alsace, and to Switzerland. In 1868 he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour - at fifty years of age. In 1870 he was elected a member of the jury. But the great war, the death of his sister and of his dear friend Rousseau, finally wrecked a constitution already injured by hard work and privation. During the German invasion he and his family took refuge at Cherbourg near his native home. After that time he almost ceased to paint. His latest pictures, the tragic "November" (1870), the "Church of Gréville" (1872), and the incomparable "Spring" (1873), are mere landscapes, with the human figure entirely absent. Thenceforward he preferred simpler, more direct processes to that of painting, using the pencil or pastel - like the great idealists, who always ended by simplifying or minimizing the material medium and contenting themselves with etching, as did Rembrandt, with drawing, as Michelangelo, or with the piano, as Beethoven. These last works of Millet's are among his finest and most precious. His colouring, formerly heavy and sad, often rusty and unpleasing, or sticky and muddy, is here more delicate than ever before. Nowhere does one feel the touching beauty of this artistic soul, and its masculine but tender eloquence, more perfectly than in his studies and sketches. The finest collections of them are in the possession of M. A. Rouart, in Paris, and of Mr. Shaw, in Boston. Millet passed away at the age of sixty years and four months.

Jean-Francois Millet: Haystacks:Autumn, c. 1874, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art He was one of the noblest figures in contemporary art, one of those men who in our day have done most credit to mankind. As a painter he was not without his faults - somewhat clumsy in technique, not pleasing in colour, while emotion, with him, does not always keep clear of declamation. These faults are most palpable in his most famous works, such as "The Sower" and "The Angelus". But on the other hand, so many others are perfect gems - marvels of execution and poetic sentiment, like "The Morsel in the Beak" (La Becquée), "Maternal solicitude", and "The Sheep-fold". Other painters have had more influence than Millet. Courbet, for example, surpassed him in scope and in prodigious sense of life; Corot, with just as much poetry, has in a higher degree the grace, the charm, the exquisite gift of harmony. But who shall say that Millet's rugged gravity was not the condition, the outward sign, of the deep import of his message? No one has done more than he to make us feel the sanctity of life and the mystic grandeur of man's mission upon the earth. His peasants, rooted to the soil and as if fixed there for eternity, seem to be performing the rites of a sacred mystery. One is conscious of something permanent in them, one feels how intimately they are united with the great whole, their fraternal solidarity with the rest of mankind and with the cosmic ends. Though he never handled professedly religious subjects, Millet succeeded in being the most religious painter of our times. His "Return to the Farm" irresistibly suggests the Flight into Egypt; his "Repast" of harvesters, or of gleaners, evokes the Biblical poetry of Ruth and Booz. On the river where his "Washerwomen" come and beat their linen, one would think the cradle of Moses was floating. The greatness of his soul has set in relief before our eyes the dignity of our nature; he has shown us how the trivial can be made to serve in the expression of the sublime, and how the Infinite and the Divine can be discerned in the humblest existence.

Dr. Jeff Mirus: “The Angelus” From “Catholic Culture” (2019)

“The Angelus” is one of the most famous devotional paintings of the nineteenth century, portraying two peasants bowing in a field as they pray the Angelus, presumably in response to the tolling of the evening bell from the church shown against the horizon. There is something attractive in its reverent simplicity that still tugs at the hearts and souls of those who have long since forgotten how to pause for prayer. Yet this method of practicing the presence of God was natural to rural communities, which marked their time with God by the tolling of the bells.

The history of the painting is interesting, especially as it might have been painted originally as a mother and father saying burial prayers over a child’s casket, later to be repainted as the famous work we have today. It was commissioned by an American art collector, Thomas Gold Appleton, and completed in 1857 as “Prayer over the Potato Crop”. But when Appleton failed to take possession in 1859, the artist made changes, including the addition of the steeple in the distance, and renamed the work “The Angelus”. In any case, it was not unusual for artists to repurpose their canvases, especially when materials were in short supply.

The painter was a Frenchman from Normandy, Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), who was a master of peasant scenes, for which he became justly famous. Another of his well-known paintings is “The Gleaners”. Millet was influenced by the Church through his early education under the guidance of two priests before he had to begin helping his father in the fields. But at the age of eighteen, his father was able to send him to art school, where he began to develop his native talent.

Millet married in 1841 but his wife died of consumption within two years. By 1845 he was living with another woman, whom he finally married in a civil ceremony in 1853. They stayed together until his death twenty-two years later, and had nine children. Great artists often possess an insight into reality which outstrips their religious commitment, but there was clearly significant stability in Millet’s life. In capturing what we might call the eternal peasant in each of us—child of God and tiller of earth—Millet may have painted more truly than he knew.

Jean-François Millet: A Norman Milkmaid at Gréville, 1871, Los Angeles Country Museum of Art

October (1878), by Jules Bastien-Lepage

Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby: “William Powell Frith, Derby Day” From smARThistory (2020)

William Powell Frith, The Derby Day, 1856–58, oil on canvas, 101.6 × 223.5 cm (Tate Britain) A Day at the Races The Derby Day by William Powell Frith captures the excitement of one of the premier events in British horse racing, The Derby (pronounced “dar-bee”) held annually at Epsom Downs in Surrey. His large-scale canvas illustrates the event during the , capturing the milling crowd, festive atmosphere, and general excitement of the day. The horse race in the background takes a decided back seat to the many personalities in the congested throng of people in the foreground. The crowd, which presents a cross-section of Victorian society, is what captures the attention of the viewer.

The large painting contains representatives from all social classes. On the left side, a well- dressed group of men make bets on the sleight-of-hand tricks of a thimble rigger at a makeshift table. Nearby a ruddy-faced young man in a country drover’s smock has his hand in his pocket, while an anxious woman tries to stop him from making an unwise bet on the swindler’s game. To the other side of the trickster’s table, a young man stands checking his empty pockets, the victim of a pickpocket.

On the far right, an unhappy-looking young woman seated in a carriage tries her best to ignore both the advances of a fortune-teller and her equally bored male companion, who leans against the vehicle assessing a barefoot girl selling flowers with a predatory gaze.

Center (detail), William Powell Frith, The Derby Day, 1856–58, oil on canvas, 101.6 × 223.5 cm (Tate Britain) In the center of the painting, children sprawl on the ground. The top-hatted men mix not only with well-dressed women, but also with a woman holding a baby begging coins from the more affluent people in the carriages. The viewer’s eye is attracted to a pair of tumblers dressed in white. While the older of the two holds out his arms to “catch” the other, the child’s attention is distracted by the picnic being spread in front of the carriages by a footman. It is a stark reminder of the differences in diet between rich and poor during the period. It is also an indication of the Victorian preoccupation with the issue of class mixing, a reality of modern life, but one of which many Victorians were wary.

Earthenware phrenological bust, areas are marked off with an impressed line, by J. De Ville, London, 1821 (Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0) The Social Spectrum Another element employed by Frith to create identifiable “types” was the Victorian interest in phrenology, or the study of the shape of the skull. Developed in the late 18th century, phrenologists took detailed measurements of the head and looked for variations such as bumps or indentations to determine particular character traits. Although largely discredited as a “science” as early as the 1840s, phrenology was a popular topic in Victorian lecture halls, and even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert invited a phrenologist to “read” the heads of their children. Another popular idea was that of physiognomy or the idea that one’s character or personal characteristics can be seen in the body, particularly in the face. Scholars have pointed out that Frith used these ideas in his paintings to distinguish between, for example, a decent working man and a shopworker mimicking the middle class he aspires to join. For Frith, this was another way, besides dress, to categorize the individuals in his modern life ensemble. And for the Victorian audience, these pseudo-sciences were a quick, although completely inaccurate, way to classify the wide variety of people they came into contact with in the new industrial society.

William Powell Frith, Ramsgate Sands (Life at the Seaside), 1851–54 , oil on canvas, 77.0 x 155.1 cm (Royal Collection Trust) It was this attention to the social spectrum that enthralled Victorian viewers. Frith began his career painting literary scenes and portraits, but he is best known as a commentator on modern life. The first of his great modern life subjects, Life at the Seaside: Ramsgate Sands, was painted in 1854 after a family holiday to the seaside. The picture was immediately purchased by Queen Victoria. Another of his well-known paintings, The Railway Station of 1862, depicts the interior of Paddington Station. Again, Frith captured modern Victorian life, not only in the mixing of social classes, but in the still fairly new mode of transportation (the first railway opened in Britain in 1825) and the state-of-the-art train station designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Such pictures showed the Victorians as they liked to see themselves, as a prosperous, progressive, and technologically advanced society.

William Powell Frith, The Railway Station, c.1862–1909, oil on canvas, 54.1 x 114.0 cm (Royal Collection Trust) When Derby Day was displayed at the Royal Academy, so many people flocked to see it that a police constable was stationed by the canvas to keep it from being damaged by the jostling crowds. The Art Journal in October 1858 described the painting as “a popular subject with a large section of the English people, having its upper extremity in the drawing-rooms of Belgravia, and its lower in the darkest nooks of Whitechapel; and within these lie diversely-charactered and many-shaded varieties of society.” (p. 296) Everyone wanted to have a look at the cast of characters Frith created. Today their variety is equally compelling and provides the modern viewer with a fascinating glimpse into Victorian life.

Camille Corot, The Piazzetta seen from the Riva degli Schiavoni, 1835, Norton Simon Museum

Camille Corot, “Ville-d’Avray”, 1867, National Gallery of Art

Camille Corot, “The Little Bird Nesters,” 1873, Columbus Museum of Art

ATTRIBUTIONS p. 3, Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, "The Aesthetic Movement," in Smarthistory, June 3, 2016, accessed November 19, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/the-aesthetic-movement/. p. 8, Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, "William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott," in Smarthistory, September 15, 2020, accessed November 18, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/william-holman-hunt-lady-shalott/. p. 14, Victoria and Albert Museum: “The Wonderful World of Whistler,” Accessed November 17, 2020, https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-wonderful-world-of-whistler p. 24, Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, "Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed November 19, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/early-photography-niepce- talbot-and-muybridge/. p. 29, Dr. Beth Gersh-Nesic, "A beginner’s guide to Realism," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed November 18, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/a-beginners-guide-to-realism/. p. 36, Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed November 19, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/courbet-the-stonebreakers/. p. 47, Dr. Jeff Mirus, “The Angelus (Jean-François Millet, 1857-59)” From “Catholic Culture,” Accessed November 17, 2020, https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/angelus-jean-franois-millet-1857- 59/ p. 52, Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, "William Powell Frith, Derby Day," in Smarthistory, September 15, 2020, accessed November 18, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/william-powell-frith-derby-day/.

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