Realism and the Rise of Avant-Garde Modernism in Europe The Later 19 th Century "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, 1848

Industrialization of Europe and U.S. about 1850

THOMAS EAKINS (American, ) The Gross Clinic, 1875, oil on canvas, 8’ x 6’ 6”. Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. Realism Empiricism, Positivism, faith in science (reaffirmation of Enlightenment rationalism).

GUSTAVE COURBET (French Realist painter) The Stone Breakers, Oil on canvas, 5’ 3” x 8’ 6”. Formerly at Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (destroyed in 1945). Gustave Courbet is considered a father of avant-garde modernism. “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one.” Realism

William Bouguereau (French academic artist, ) (left) Mother and Children, The Rest, 1879 ; (right) Home From the Harvest, Academic idealism

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans , oil on canvas, 10' 3’ x 21' 9" Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Realism

Thomas Couture (French academic artist, ), Romans of the Decadence, Academic classicism

Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1849 compare with Thomas Couture, Romans of the Decadence, 1847

Henri Fantin-Latour, Portrait of Edouard Manet. 1867, oil on canvas

Edouard Manet, At the Café (Café Guerbois, Paris), transfer lithograph, 10.4 × 13 inches, 1869 The Café Guerbois is where Manet “held court” and younger artists like French Impressionist Claude Monet met him.

ÉDOUARD MANET, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863, oil on canvas, 7’ x 8’10”, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Victorine Meurent, Eugene Manet, sculptor Ferdinand Leenhof. Is this artwork “a shameful, open sore” or “a synthesis of the history of painting”? What was the 1863 Salon des Refusés? How is the form and content of this painting “modern”? Realism

Titian, Concert Champêtre (Venetian Renaissance) 1510 compare with Edouard Manet (French Realism), Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe, 1863

Marcantonio Raimondi, Judgment of Paris (engraving after Raphael), 1520 compared with Edouard Manet, Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe, 1863

ÉDOUARD MANET, Olympia, 1863, oil on canvas, 4’ 3” x 6’ 3” Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Titian or Giorgione, Venus of Urbino, 1510 (Louvre) compared with Olympia 1863

(left) Alexandre Cabanel (French Academic Painter, ) Birth of Venus, 1863 Enormous success at the Salon of 1863 and purchased by Napoleon III for his collection (right) “This Year Venuses Again… Always Venuses!” Honoré Daumier, No. 2 from 1864 series in Le Charivari an illustrated newspaper published in Paris from 1832 to 1937

First Impressionist Exhibition 15 April 1874: “Exhibition of the Société Anonyme of Painters, Sculptors, and Printmakers” (left) Nadar ( ) Nadar’s Studio at 35 Boulevard des Capucines’ (right) Claude Monet (French Impressionist, ), Boulevard des Capucines, 1873 (31 1/4 x 23 1/4")

CLAUDE MONET, Impression: Sunrise, Oil on canvas, 1’ 7 1/2” x 2’ 1 1/2”. Musée Marmottan, Paris.

Claude Monet, Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil, 1874 (right) Anonymous, photo of the Argenteuil Railway Bridge, c The Impressionist Eye is, in short, the most advanced eye in human evolution -Jules Laforgue

Claude Monet's 1873 Railroad Bridge at Argenteuil sold on May 6, 2008 for $41.4 million at an auction at Christie’s.

CLAUDE MONET, Saint-Lazare Train Station, 1877, oil on canvas, 2’ 5 3/4” x 3’ 5”, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Subject: modern urban life. Content: Monet’s view of modern experience (positive or negative?) Formal modernism: interaction of complementary colors, optical mixing, exclusion of black from the palette – a realism

Monet, Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal and Saint-Romain Tower, Full Sunlight, Harmony in Blue and Gold, dated 1894, painted 1893, Oil on canvas, 42 1/8 x 28 3/4 in. Musee d'Orsay, Paris edu/monet/swf/ edu/monet/swf/ Click for information about Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series,

Claude Monet, Water Lilies (The Clouds) 1903 Oil on canvas (29 3/8 x 41 7/16 in.) Private collection

Monet's home and garden at Giverny (below right) Studio constructed for the Nympheas (Water lilies) Series

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, , Oil on canvas, three panels Each 6' 6 3/4" x 13' 11 1/4“ Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Monet’s Waterlilies in the Orangerie, Paris

JAMES ABBOTT MCNEILL WHISTLER (American expatriate active in Paris and London, ), Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Falling Rocket), ca Oil on panel, 1’ 11 5/8” x 1’ 6 1/2”. Detroit Institute of Arts “Nature contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose... as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings for from chaos glorious harmony.” - Whistler

Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl (1862), and No. 2 (top) The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Shown at the Salon des Refusées, 1863, like Edouard Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe.

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR, Le Moulin de la Galette, Oil on canvas, approx. 4’ 3” x 5’ 8”. Louvre, Paris.

EDGAR DEGAS, The Tub, Pastel, 1’ 11 1/2” x 2’ 8 3/8” Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

(left) Torii Kiyonaga (Japanese ), Women’s Bath, woodblock print owned by Degas (right) Edgar Degas, The Tub, Pastel Japonisme and modern (Western) formal invention: flattened spatial illusion, fragmentation of figures, un-idealized nudes

(left) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril au Jardin de Paris, 1893, color lithograph, 51 x 37 in (right) Hiroshige, The Benten ford Across the Oi River, 1858, color woodblock, 14 x 9 in. JAPONISME

Mary Cassatt (American Impressionist) In the Omnibus, drypoint and aquatint in colors, series of 10, Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese Ukiyo-e printmaker) ), Women and Child, woodblock print, c Ukiyo-e prints (ü-kē-ō-yā, images from everyday life of the people, 17 th -19 th centuries) were key source for modernist pictures in both form and content. Japonisme and modern urban life

(left) Auguste Renoir, The Loge, 1874 (right) Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1880

Post-Impressionism Vincent van Gogh Paul Gauguin Georges Seurat Paul Cézanne

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, ), The Potato Eaters, oil on canvas, 1885, 2' 8" x 3' 9," Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Painted in Nuenen, Netherlands

The broken brushstrokes of bright spring colors as well as the choice of subject – a view of the Seine on the outskirts of Paris – mark the transformative influence of Impressionism on Van Gogh following his move to Paris. Compare Van Gogh’s 1887 painting with a 1868 composition by Claude Monet Claude Monet, (French, ) On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt 1868, oil on canvas Van Gogh, Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières), 1887, oil on canvas

Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom (after Hiroshige), oil on canvas, 1887 (Paris) Hiroshige Ando, Plum Estate, Kameido, 1857, woodblock print The Montmartre gallery of Samuel Bing was next door to Théo van Gogh’s Paris apartment. Bing kept thousands of Japanese prints in stock. Vincent became an avid collector of ukiyo-e prints.

VINCENT VAN GOGH, The Night Café, Oil on canvas, approx. 2’ 4 1/2” x 3’. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. “A place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime”

VINCENT VAN GOGH, Starry Night, Oil on canvas approx. 2’ 5” x 3’ 1/4”. Museum of Modern Art, New York

PAUL GAUGUIN, The Vision after the Sermon or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Oil on canvas, 2’ 4 3/4” x 3’ 1/2”. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

PAUL GAUGUIN, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, Oil on canvas, 4’ 6 13/ 16” x 12’ 3”. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Symbolism and Primitivism

Gauguin instructed his follower, Paul Séruzier : "How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So, put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint it with pure ultramarine; these red leaves; put in vermilion.“ "Remember that a painting, before being a battle horse, a nude woman or any anecdote, is essentially a plane surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order." (Nabis artist, Maurice Denis) Paul Sérusier (French Post-Impressionist (Nabis), Talisman, 1888, oil on wood

Pierre Bonnard (French), Post- Impressionist (Nabis), The Dressing Table, 1908, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris Exhibition on view now: Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia At the Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco FEBRUARY 6 – MAY 15,

EDVARD MUNCH (Norwegian Symbolist/Expressionist Painter, ), The Cry, Oil, pastel, and casein on cardboard, 2’ 11 3/4” x 2’ 5”. National Gallery, Oslo.

Henri Matisse, Standing Nude Model, 1892 at École des Beaux Arts as student of Adolphe-William Bouguereau ( ) Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr, 1873

Henri Matisse (French Fauve painter), Woman with the Hat, 1905, oil on canvas, 2’7 x 2’ San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Henri Matisse, Joy of Life, , oil on canvas, 69 x 95” Barnes Collection, Philadelphia “I was 35 then. Today I am 82. I have not changed because all this time I have looked for the same things….I have attained a form filtered to its essentials, and of the object which I used to present the complexity of space, I have preserved a sign which is sufficient, and which is necessary to make the object exist in its own form and in the totality for which I conceived it. “

(left) Agostino Carracci (Italian ), Reciprocal Love, 1600 : a source for Matisse’s Joy of Life, (below) When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky. --Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse, Red Room (Harmony in Red), , 5’11” x 8’1,” State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Fauvism

AUGUSTE RODIN, Walking Man, 1905, cast Bronze, 6’ 11 3/4” high. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington (gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966). Venus de Milo, Greek, c. 100 BC, Louvre, Paris

AUGUSTE RODIN, Burghers of Calais, 1884–1889, cast ca. 1953–1959. Bronze, 6’ 10 1/2” high, 7’ 11” long, 6’ 6” deep. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden,

ALEXANDRE-GUSTAVE EIFFEL, Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1889, wrought iron. Symbol of modernity at the centennial of the French Revolution. About 1000 ft high, the tallest structure in the world until the Empire State Building was built about 40 years later.

HENRY HOBSON RICHARDSON, Marshall Field wholesale store (demolished), Chicago, 1885–1887.

Louis Sullivan, Wainwright building, early modern skyscraper, 1894, steel frame clad in masonry, Saint Louis, Missouri. Compare with Medici-Riccardi palace, 1445.