Essay Instructions: Art History: The Visual Record
VISUAL HISTORY TIMELINE
Investigate the artworks produced during The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries period, of the five works of art created that are listed below. Explore all of the elements covered in the text book A World of Art, by Henry M. Sayre (Chapter 20)
For each of the five works of art listed below, write 200 words answering the following questions:
Title of Artwork
Artist, Date
Medium
Image or Link to an Image
Iconography
-W hat do you see? What is the subject matter?
- Identify the symbolic representations.
Medium and Technique
-What materials did the artist use to make the artwork?
- How did the artist construct it?
Formal Elements
-Observe and describe the line, color, space, light, texture, and pattern.
-What principles of design are evident? Explore balance, scale and proportion, repetition and rhythm, unity and variety.
Content
-Place the object in context.
-Identify the historical, political, social, economic, and ideological conditions of the era.
-Explain what the work of art means. What does it reveal about the society in which it was created?
Using MLA format.
Must use in-text citations and provide a list of Works Cited.
There should be at least 3 sources, not including your text.
The focus for each artwork will be content. (The focus for each artwork will be content. Provide a visual history of The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries period.)
Useful links
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/
http://wi`tcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/museums-us.html
Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1830??"32
Edward Hicks (American, 1780??"1849)
Oil on canvas
17 7/8 x 23 7/8 in. (45.4 x 60.6 cm)
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1970 (1970.283.1)
ON VIEW: GALLERY 757 Last Updated March 21, 2013
Edward Hicks, a Quaker preacher and sign painter, painted approximately sixty versions of the Peaceable Kingdom. The painting represents the messianic prophecy of Isaiah 11:6: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." The presence of additional animals and children on the left is due to Hicks' inclusion of the seventh and eighth verses. Hicks derived the composition, a popular nineteenth-century Bible illustration, from an engraving after a drawing by the English artist Richard Westall. The theme of a peaceable community of animals was one often used as a political metaphor, and was adapted by Hicks himself. The artist sometimes included scenes of Penn's treaty with the Indians, intending Penn's flock to stand as a sort of partial fulfillment of the biblical prophecy.
View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm??"The Oxbow, 1836
Thomas Cole (American, 1801??"1848)
Oil on canvas
51 1/2 x 76 in. (130.8 x 193 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908 (08.228)
ON VIEW: GALLERY 759 Last Updated March 21, 2013
Long known as The Oxbow, this work is a masterpiece of American landscape painting, laden with possible interpretations. In the midst of painting The Course of Empire (New-York Historical Society), Cole mentioned, in a letter dated March 2, 1836, to his patron Luman Reed, that he was executing a large version of this subject expressly for exhibition and sale. The picture was shown at the National Academy of Design in 1836 as View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm. Cole's interest in the subject probably dates from his 1829??"32 trip to Europe, during which he made an exact tracing of the view published in Basil Hall's Forty Etchings Made with the Camera Lucida in North America in 1827 and 1828. Hall criticized Americans' inattentiveness to their scenery, and Cole responded with a landscape that lauds the uniqueness of America by encompassing "a union of the picturesque, the sublime, and the magnificent." Although often ambivalent about the subjugation of the land, here the artist juxtaposes untamed wilderness and pastoral settlement to emphasize the possibilities of the national landscape, pointing to the future prospect of the American nation. Cole's unequivocal construction and composition of the scene, charged with moral significance, is reinforced by his depiction of himself in the middle distance, perched on a promontory painting the Oxbow. He is an American producing American art, in communion with American scenery. There are both sketchbook drawings with annotations and related oil sketches of this subject. Many other artists copied or imitated the painting.
Kindred Spirits, 1849
Asher B. Durand (American, 1796??"1886)
Oil on canvas
Courtesy Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (L.2008.21)
Kindred Spirits is the quintessential Hudson River School landscape. Its subjects are Thomas Cole (with portfolio), the founding father of the school, and William Cullen Bryant, the well-known nature poet and editor. The men stand on a ledge in one of the cloves, or gorges, of the Catskill Mountains, the source of the landscapes that made Cole famous and continued to inspire his followers. Durand was Cole's earliest disciple and a close friend of Bryant, and executed this picture at the request of Jonathan Sturges, a patron of both artists. Sturges gave the painting to Bryant in honor of the eulogy the poet delivered at the memorial service for Cole, who died in February 1848. Invoking a phrase from John Keats's seventh sonnet, "O Solitude," Sturges asked Durand to portray Cole and Bryant together as "kindred spirits" in the landscape. Accordingly, Durand adjusted his fastidious approach to natural forms, such as the rocky ledge and overhanging tree limbs, to suggest Keats's poetic references to "nature's observatory" and "boughs pavillion'd." Aside from its historical significance, the painting embodies the marriage of naturalism and idealization central to Hudson River School aesthetics.
The Veteran in a New Field, 1865
Winslow Homer (American, 1836??"1910)
Oil on canvas
24 1/8 x 38 1/8 in. (61.3 x 96.8 cm)
Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876??"1967), 1967 (67.187.131)
NOT ON VIEW Last Updated March 21, 2013
Painted through the summer and fall of 1865, not long after the nation came to grips with Robert E. Lee's surrender and mourned President Lincoln's assassination??"both of which occurred during the second week of April??"Homer's canvas shows an emblematic farmer who is a Union veteran, as is signified by his discarded jacket and canteen at the lower right. The painting seems to blend several related narratives. Most soldiers had been farmers before the Civil War. This man, who has returned to his field, holds an old-fashioned scythe that evokes the Grim Reaper, recalls the war's harvest of death, and expresses grief upon Lincoln's murder. The redemptive feature is the bountiful wheat??"a Northern crop??"which could connote the Union's victory. With its dual references to death and life, Homer's iconic composition offers a powerful meditation on America's sacrifices and its potential for recovery.
John Biglin in a Single Scull, ca. 1873
Thomas Eakins (American, 1844??"1916)
Watercolor on off-white wove paper
19 5/16 x 24 7/8 in. (49.2 x 63.2 cm)
Fletcher Fund, 1924 (24.108)
NOT ON VIEW Last Updated March 21, 2013
In 1873, when Eakins began painting watercolors for exhibition, he took up sporting scenes. This sheet is a replica of a watercolor (Yale University Art Gallery) that he sent to his Parisian teacher, Jean-Léon Gérôme, for criticism. His master wrote, "Your watercolor is entirely good and I am very pleased to have in New York a pupil such as you who does me honor."