GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The tumultuous political events at the end of the 18th century found their visual counterpoint in the cool precision of the era’s dominant visual style, neoclassicism.
During the 18th century, many artists turned their attention to modern-day subjects and experimented with new approaches to storytelling. These artists had reveled in fluid, expressive painting, virtuoso brushwork, and a fresh, light palette. But by the middle of the century, many artists, patrons, and critics were calling for a more sober approach.
Neoclassicism was a revival of subjects from the Greek and Roman classics, as well as a return to the traditional approach to composition taught in academies of painting and sculpture. Subjects showing scenes of virtue and patriotism became increasingly popular, and artists incorporated new archaeological knowledge from the recent excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum into their imagery. A generation of young painters revived the taste for smoothly painted surfaces in which all evidence of the artist’s brush has been carefully concealed.
The neoclassical style was already popular before the French Revolution of 1789, but it proved to be an especially powerful visual language for imagining the new republican society that replaced the feudal and monarchical Old Regime. In depicting a new class of heroes and a new set of virtues, artists used the revived classical tradition to underscore the seriousness of their modern subjects.
Excerpt from
DMA Label text, 2010.
NOTES
Links given in Masterworks from the European Collection (1992.22.FA)
Visit these sites for more information about the neoclassical art style.
Neoclassicism (1760 - 1830), was a revival of antiquity catalyzed by the mid-18th-century excavations of the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unlike the earlier revival of Greco-Roman art and literature known as the Renaissance, Neoclassism was based on actual archaeological findings.
Neoclassical sculptors and architects turned to Greek and Roman precedents for inspiration, although they ignored the fact that classical, white marble statuary had originally been painted vivid colors. Sculptors idealized sitters as gods and goddesses in the nude or clad in antique garb; and architects adopted classical architectural language, particularly the Greek temple facade and the Roman dome. Since very little classical, painting had survived, Neoclassical painting tended to derive from sculpture.
David's work epitomizes the Neoclassical painting style. His construction of a stylized, frieze-like space, derived from classical vase painting or sculptural relief, set the stage for the increasingly shallow pictorial space employed by modern painters.
Neoclassicism has inaccurately been regarded as Romanticism's opposite, but art historians now consider it to be a subset of the larger, more complex, Romantic phenomenon, distinguished from it primarily by its slightly earlier date. Inherent in both Neoclassicism and Romanticism is the idea of escaping to other times and places, whether such exotic locales as the Orient and the South Seas or the Greece or Rome of classical antiquity.
Source: Education files- Robert Atkins, Art Spoke
The order, clarity and reason of Greek and Roman art appealed greatly in the Age of Enlightenment, and in France the Neoclassical style held strong moral implication, being associated with a change in social outlook and a desire to restore ancient Roman values into civil life. It is indeed in the paintings of Jaques-Louis David, with their antique grandeur and simplicity of form, and their heroic severity of tone, that Neoclassicism finds its purest expression, but. the style was born and had its center in Rome. Other leading figures from all over Europe - Canova, John Flaxman, Gavin Hamilton, Bertel Thorvaldsen - spent significant parts of their careers in Rome.
Source: Education files- Ian Chilvers, The Oxford Dictionary ofArt
NEOCLASSICAL ART
Greco-Roman art was a seminal force in the creation of Renaissance art. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries it continued to be both an ideal and a model for the arts of Europe. Most of this art was designed for the upper classes and was used to ornament the palaces of kings and nobles and to convey the Christian gospel in church or chapel. While the mainly Protestant art of northern Europe was more austere than art in the Catholic south, these artists, too, had absorbed classical art, with its emphasis on the grandeur of human life. The use of ancient models in the late 18th century was different. Enlightenment philosophers like Diderot and Voltaire had called into question the absolute values of the Christian church and monarchic states. For an artist like David to paint classical scenes was part of a great revolution in European society. Ancient virtue was contrasted with modern despotism. Giroust's Oedipus at Colonus, painted on the eve of the French Revolution, embodies this neoclassical moralism. Greco-Roman forms heralded a new, more serious age. The less grand, but more adaptable, decorative arts also followed the taste for classical styles. The emperor Napoleon's expedition to Egypt led to a neoclassical Egyptianizing style.
Excerpt from
DMA thematic label copy, Ancient Mediterranean and European Art, n.d., Education files.
Education file, quotes relating to Neoclassicism:
To take the ancients for models is our only way to become great, yes, unsurpassable if we can....Good taste, which is spreading more and more throughout the world, had its beginnings under a Greek sky.
-Johann Winckelmann, Thoughts on the Imitation ofGreek Art in Painting & Sculpture (1755)
The Neoclassical period was prompted by archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. "French neoclassicism of the period 1770 to 1830 is closely associated with the French Revolution. According to Arnold Hauser, a social historian of art, of all the stylistic possibilities available to them, the French revolutionaries chose classicism for its identification with Roman republicanism (Rome being at that time more accessible than Greece). It also recommended itself by way of contrast to the baroque and rococo styles officially sponsored by the Ancient Regime. Under Napoleon, however, classical ideals began to take on monumental proportions more reminiscent of the Roman Empire than of the republic. Carried in part by Napoleon's armies, the neoclassical style spread all over Europe and to the New World, transcending ideology with distance. As Suzanne Massie points out in he book on Russia, neoclassical architecture became the symbol of democracy in the United States.
-Carol Dunlap, The Culture Vulture, p.56
There is more required than the lifting of some details from the antique and throwing them together without any judgement for one to deserve to be called a great artist. One must sweat night and day over the Greek models, absorbing their style, infusing it into one's blood, while all the time observing the beauty of nature and reading there the same principles.
-Antonio Canova, letter to Quatremere de Quincy, 1806
To give a body and a perfect form to your thought, this alone is what it is to be an artist... I want to dispense with the theatrical gestures and expressions that modern artists call 'expressive painting'.
-Jacques-Louis DaVid, statement to his pupils, 1796, quoted in DaVid, Le Peintre Louis David (1880)
[Of David's Rape of the Sabines] It is this sublime and touching scene which Citizen David has treated with a success worthy of his reputation. Beauty of style, noble characterization, truth of expression, tense and correct draughtsmanship, large, simple and natural effect, true color, profound erudition in the portrayal of countenances and costumes, sure and deeply felt execution; these are the principal qualities which strike on in this beautiful work.
-Le Journal de Paris, 1799
[Of David's works] Stern and heartless petrification of men and women - with trees, rocks, tables. and chairs all equally bound to the ground by a relentless outline.
-John Constable, lecture to the Royal Institution, 1836
Decorative Arts/Design, from Sam's previous CC
The influence of neoclassicism the use of forms and motifs drawn from ancient Greek and Roman sources has endured in the decorative and design arts. Characterized by balanced proportions, references to ancient architecture and sculpture, and an admiration for the artistic and cultural achievements of the classical world, neoclassical design rapidly began to emerge in the 1750s with the excavation of the Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The Grand Tour, an extended visit to the Continent emphasizing such sites throughout Italy, was a crucial component of the education of well-to-do young gentlemen and fueled greater interest in these sources of art and culture.
Unlike the majestic, showy forms of the baroque or the exuberant rococo, or "shell," style embraced by designers such as London silversmith Paul de Lamerie, neoclassicism encouraged restrained dignity and elegance. The sculptural nature of the style lent itself to media such as silver, with which craftsmen could readily shape figural and ornamental elements.
The ability of clay to suggest the color and form of stonework provided another means to evoke the ancient world. During the 1770s, famed English potter Josiah Wedgwood began to produce ceramic wares in a variety of forms and hues intended to imitate the appearance of ancient Greek and Roman glass, ceramics, and sculpture. At the same time, the French royal porcelain factory of Sevres began to produce classically inspired wares associated with the reign of Louis XVI and, later, with that of another important patron, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Although the dominance of neoclassical design gradually began to fade in the 1830s through out the following decades the art of the ancient Greeks and Romans inspired artists and designers to either embrace the classical motifs that formed the traditional foundation of Western art or to reject them as obsolete relics inappropriate for the modern age.
Excerpt from
Kevin Tucker, "Neoclassical Design" panel copy
Additional materials related to this content chunk appear below. Relevant Getty and DMA terms added as note tags.
Collection website search for "neoclassic" 27 january 2015 returned the following objects:
Dec Arts:
Forbes, Waste Bowl, c1795, 2004.27.3
Forbes, Creamer, c1795, 2004.27.2
Forbes, Sugar Bowl, c1795, 2004.27.4.A-B
Cruet Set, c1775-1800, 1985.R.170.A-E
Tureen-on-stand, c1775, 1985.R.873.A-C
James Woodward, Armchair, Norfolk, VA, 1803, 1985.B.37.13
American and European:
Hiram Powers, Faith, c1866-1867, 1992.B.50
*Hiram Powers, America, 1860, 1983.147
Sully, Mary Harvey, 1813, 1989.100
Canova, Victory, c1813, 1979.40,FA
Ney, Mrs. Rose as a Child, 1897, 1941.19
Peale, George Washington, c1850, 1987.41
Houdon, George Washington, c1786, 1980.113
*Whitney, Lady Godiva, c1861-1864, 2011.8
added "Federal" tag, 1/23/17 (HAB)
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WEB RESOURCES
- Introduction to Neoclassicism~Read this summary of the cultural movement on Brooklyn College's English Department website.
- Neoclassicism~Look at additional examples of Neoclassical works and read Cybele Gontar's 2003 essay explaining the ways this style influenced a range of art forms in Europe and the United States during the 18th century. (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
- Neoclassicism, An Introduction~Check out the articles, artworks, and analysis provided by the Khan Academy. Test your neoclassical knowledge with a quiz at the end!
- The English Neoclassical Movement~Find out more about how this movement impacted British culture by reading this article on The Victorian Web.
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General Description
The tumultuous political events at the end of the 18th century found their visual counterpoint in the cool precision of the era’s dominant visual style, neoclassicism.
During the 18th century, many artists turned their attention to modern-day subjects and experimented with new approaches to storytelling. These artists had reveled in fluid, expressive painting, virtuoso brushwork, and a fresh, light palette. But by the middle of the century, many artists, patrons, and critics were calling for a more sober approach.
Neoclassicism was a revival of subjects from the Greek and Roman classics, as well as a return to the traditional approach to composition taught in academies of painting and sculpture. Subjects showing scenes of virtue and patriotism became increasingly popular, and artists incorporated new archaeological knowledge from the recent excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum into their imagery. A generation of young painters revived the taste for smoothly painted surfaces in which all evidence of the artist’s brush has been carefully concealed.
The neoclassical style was already popular before the French Revolution of 1789, but it proved to be an especially powerful visual language for imagining the new republican society that replaced the feudal and monarchical Old Regime. In depicting a new class of heroes and a new set of virtues, artists used the revived classical tradition to underscore the seriousness of their modern subjects.
Excerpt from
DMA Label text, 2010.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Introduction to Neoclassicism~Read this summary of the cultural movement on Brooklyn College's English Department website.
- Neoclassicism~Look at additional examples of Neoclassical works and read Cybele Gontar's 2003 essay explaining the ways this style influenced a range of art forms in Europe and the United States during the 18th century. (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
- Neoclassicism, An Introduction~Check out the articles, artworks, and analysis provided by the Khan Academy. Test your neoclassical knowledge with a quiz at the end!
- The English Neoclassical Movement~Find out more about how this movement impacted British culture by reading this article on The Victorian Web.
Notes
Links given in Masterworks from the European Collection (1992.22.FA)
Visit these sites for more information about the neoclassical art style.
Neoclassicism (1760 - 1830), was a revival of antiquity catalyzed by the mid-18th-century excavations of the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unlike the earlier revival of Greco-Roman art and literature known as the Renaissance, Neoclassism was based on actual archaeological findings.
Neoclassical sculptors and architects turned to Greek and Roman precedents for inspiration, although they ignored the fact that classical, white marble statuary had originally been painted vivid colors. Sculptors idealized sitters as gods and goddesses in the nude or clad in antique garb; and architects adopted classical architectural language, particularly the Greek temple facade and the Roman dome. Since very little classical, painting had survived, Neoclassical painting tended to derive from sculpture.
David's work epitomizes the Neoclassical painting style. His construction of a stylized, frieze-like space, derived from classical vase painting or sculptural relief, set the stage for the increasingly shallow pictorial space employed by modern painters.
Neoclassicism has inaccurately been regarded as Romanticism's opposite, but art historians now consider it to be a subset of the larger, more complex, Romantic phenomenon, distinguished from it primarily by its slightly earlier date. Inherent in both Neoclassicism and Romanticism is the idea of escaping to other times and places, whether such exotic locales as the Orient and the South Seas or the Greece or Rome of classical antiquity.
Source: Education files- Robert Atkins, Art Spoke
The order, clarity and reason of Greek and Roman art appealed greatly in the Age of Enlightenment, and in France the Neoclassical style held strong moral implication, being associated with a change in social outlook and a desire to restore ancient Roman values into civil life. It is indeed in the paintings of Jaques-Louis David, with their antique grandeur and simplicity of form, and their heroic severity of tone, that Neoclassicism finds its purest expression, but. the style was born and had its center in Rome. Other leading figures from all over Europe - Canova, John Flaxman, Gavin Hamilton, Bertel Thorvaldsen - spent significant parts of their careers in Rome.
Source: Education files- Ian Chilvers, The Oxford Dictionary ofArt
NEOCLASSICAL ART
Greco-Roman art was a seminal force in the creation of Renaissance art. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries it continued to be both an ideal and a model for the arts of Europe. Most of this art was designed for the upper classes and was used to ornament the palaces of kings and nobles and to convey the Christian gospel in church or chapel. While the mainly Protestant art of northern Europe was more austere than art in the Catholic south, these artists, too, had absorbed classical art, with its emphasis on the grandeur of human life. The use of ancient models in the late 18th century was different. Enlightenment philosophers like Diderot and Voltaire had called into question the absolute values of the Christian church and monarchic states. For an artist like David to paint classical scenes was part of a great revolution in European society. Ancient virtue was contrasted with modern despotism. Giroust's Oedipus at Colonus, painted on the eve of the French Revolution, embodies this neoclassical moralism. Greco-Roman forms heralded a new, more serious age. The less grand, but more adaptable, decorative arts also followed the taste for classical styles. The emperor Napoleon's expedition to Egypt led to a neoclassical Egyptianizing style.
Excerpt from
DMA thematic label copy, Ancient Mediterranean and European Art, n.d., Education files.
Education file, quotes relating to Neoclassicism:
To take the ancients for models is our only way to become great, yes, unsurpassable if we can....Good taste, which is spreading more and more throughout the world, had its beginnings under a Greek sky.
-Johann Winckelmann, Thoughts on the Imitation ofGreek Art in Painting & Sculpture (1755)
The Neoclassical period was prompted by archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. "French neoclassicism of the period 1770 to 1830 is closely associated with the French Revolution. According to Arnold Hauser, a social historian of art, of all the stylistic possibilities available to them, the French revolutionaries chose classicism for its identification with Roman republicanism (Rome being at that time more accessible than Greece). It also recommended itself by way of contrast to the baroque and rococo styles officially sponsored by the Ancient Regime. Under Napoleon, however, classical ideals began to take on monumental proportions more reminiscent of the Roman Empire than of the republic. Carried in part by Napoleon's armies, the neoclassical style spread all over Europe and to the New World, transcending ideology with distance. As Suzanne Massie points out in he book on Russia, neoclassical architecture became the symbol of democracy in the United States.
-Carol Dunlap, The Culture Vulture, p.56
There is more required than the lifting of some details from the antique and throwing them together without any judgement for one to deserve to be called a great artist. One must sweat night and day over the Greek models, absorbing their style, infusing it into one's blood, while all the time observing the beauty of nature and reading there the same principles.
-Antonio Canova, letter to Quatremere de Quincy, 1806
To give a body and a perfect form to your thought, this alone is what it is to be an artist... I want to dispense with the theatrical gestures and expressions that modern artists call 'expressive painting'.
-Jacques-Louis DaVid, statement to his pupils, 1796, quoted in DaVid, Le Peintre Louis David (1880)
[Of David's Rape of the Sabines] It is this sublime and touching scene which Citizen David has treated with a success worthy of his reputation. Beauty of style, noble characterization, truth of expression, tense and correct draughtsmanship, large, simple and natural effect, true color, profound erudition in the portrayal of countenances and costumes, sure and deeply felt execution; these are the principal qualities which strike on in this beautiful work.
-Le Journal de Paris, 1799
[Of David's works] Stern and heartless petrification of men and women - with trees, rocks, tables. and chairs all equally bound to the ground by a relentless outline.
-John Constable, lecture to the Royal Institution, 1836
Decorative Arts/Design, from Sam's previous CC
The influence of neoclassicism the use of forms and motifs drawn from ancient Greek and Roman sources has endured in the decorative and design arts. Characterized by balanced proportions, references to ancient architecture and sculpture, and an admiration for the artistic and cultural achievements of the classical world, neoclassical design rapidly began to emerge in the 1750s with the excavation of the Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The Grand Tour, an extended visit to the Continent emphasizing such sites throughout Italy, was a crucial component of the education of well-to-do young gentlemen and fueled greater interest in these sources of art and culture.
Unlike the majestic, showy forms of the baroque or the exuberant rococo, or "shell," style embraced by designers such as London silversmith Paul de Lamerie, neoclassicism encouraged restrained dignity and elegance. The sculptural nature of the style lent itself to media such as silver, with which craftsmen could readily shape figural and ornamental elements.
The ability of clay to suggest the color and form of stonework provided another means to evoke the ancient world. During the 1770s, famed English potter Josiah Wedgwood began to produce ceramic wares in a variety of forms and hues intended to imitate the appearance of ancient Greek and Roman glass, ceramics, and sculpture. At the same time, the French royal porcelain factory of Sevres began to produce classically inspired wares associated with the reign of Louis XVI and, later, with that of another important patron, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Although the dominance of neoclassical design gradually began to fade in the 1830s through out the following decades the art of the ancient Greeks and Romans inspired artists and designers to either embrace the classical motifs that formed the traditional foundation of Western art or to reject them as obsolete relics inappropriate for the modern age.
Excerpt from
Kevin Tucker, "Neoclassical Design" panel copy
Additional materials related to this content chunk appear below. Relevant Getty and DMA terms added as note tags.
Collection website search for "neoclassic" 27 january 2015 returned the following objects:
Dec Arts:
Forbes, Waste Bowl, c1795, 2004.27.3
Forbes, Creamer, c1795, 2004.27.2
Forbes, Sugar Bowl, c1795, 2004.27.4.A-B
Cruet Set, c1775-1800, 1985.R.170.A-E
Tureen-on-stand, c1775, 1985.R.873.A-C
James Woodward, Armchair, Norfolk, VA, 1803, 1985.B.37.13
American and European:
Hiram Powers, Faith, c1866-1867, 1992.B.50
*Hiram Powers, America, 1860, 1983.147
Sully, Mary Harvey, 1813, 1989.100
Canova, Victory, c1813, 1979.40,FA
Ney, Mrs. Rose as a Child, 1897, 1941.19
Peale, George Washington, c1850, 1987.41
Houdon, George Washington, c1786, 1980.113
*Whitney, Lady Godiva, c1861-1864, 2011.8
added "Federal" tag, 1/23/17 (HAB)
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