Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Art History." Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-275).

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 2, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-79).

This thesis is a case study of the relationship between a nineteenth-century French landscape painter, Théodore Rousseau, and his patrons and public. My aim is to reconstruct the context in which Rousseau's work was created, thereby inferring what the artist intended for his painting and how his collectors and public approached the style of his work. The thesis examines the nature of the dynamic between Rousseau and his consumers and the extent to which the artist's style may, or may not, be affected by the taste of his audience. In Part I, I examine Rousseau's involvement with the members of his circle including those who supported him during his years of absence from the Salon, the critic, Théophile Thoré, the industrialist, Frédéric Hartmannn and the civil servant, Alfred Sensier. This provides a framework for discussion of a number of ideas which preoccupied both the artist and his patrons including the level of finish in his work, the importance of pantheism, responses to commercial deforestation and the continuing resonances of ancient Greek culture. In Part II, I look at the problem of Rousseau's response to the expansion of the public sphere for art in the nineteenth-century. I approach this by locating Rousseau within the institutional structures of the art world which acted as intermediary between the painter and a wider public. These include the public exhibition, the rôle of the reproduction in the dissemination of his imagery, the importance of one-man public auctions and the position of the dealer as an outlet for the sale of his work. In reconstructing the dynamic between Rousseau and his patrons and public, I have relied above all on primary sources. These have included the often unpublished correspondence of the artist and his collectors, contemporary Salon criticism and sale catalogues, auctioneers' records and the stock-books of the Durand-Ruel firm of dealers, as well as a close formal analysis of Rousseau's paintings themselves.

Since the early nineteenth-century when Americans began recording their short history in earnest, European explorers have held a central role in the nation's historical narrative, standing alongside the Founding Fathers as symbols of American ingenuity, determination, and fortitude. The nineteenth century also saw an explosion in the number of representations of first contacts between native populations and European and Euro-American explorers. These works range from fine art examples to illustrations in the popular media and were produced by artists across the artistic spectrum. Despite the popularity of the First Contact subject and its longevity within American art history, the importance of these images has, as of yet, been unexplored. This dissertation examines First Contact images created in America during the nineteenth and early twentieth-century by artists Robert Walter Weir, George Catlin, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and Charles M. Russell. I argue that the subject's popularity can be attributed not just to their importance as depictions of epic moments of transition in national and cultural history, but to the openness, or the mutability, of the subject itself. The first meeting of two people is an event of great possibility and potential, but, as this extended examination of the subject demonstrates, it can also be transformed to communicate vastly different messages at different moments in history. As Americans simultaneously struggled to create a past, understand the present, and visualize the future, the First Contact subject, with its focus on the ambiguous meeting of two cultures, allowed a site in which to grapple with central questions and anxieties of the period, even as it depicted the past. They are thus complicated paintings that speak not to the facts of contact, but to the purposes served by these constructions and corrupted histories. Reading these First Contact paintings can help to illuminate a nineteenth-century understanding of history and also begin to elucidate the troubled legacy of Native/white relations since Columbus first encountered the New World.

La thèse étudie les enjeux politiques et artistiques de la scène de bataille dans la peinture monumentale au XVIe siècle en Italie, avant que la représentation de la guerre ne présente une distinction entre peinture d’histoire pour les faits anciens et peinture historique pour les faits contemporains, selon les catégories artistiques qui s’affirment au cours du XVIIe siècle. C’est pourquoi notre étude ne propose pas une histoire de la scène de bataille mais une enquête au sujet de compositions singulières, sur les problématiques politiques, idéologiques, esthétiques et culturelles qui les traversent. Si l’hétérogénéité artistique du corpus et la fragmentation politique de la péninsule ont favorisé des approches monographiques, l’apparition de contextes historiques et thématiques, où les scènes de bataille s’inscrivent dans des ambitions analogues a conduit à adopter une perspective comparée, où les œuvres sont considérées en dialogue – deux à deux, par cycle ou par typologie – autour d’enjeux politiques et formels communs. Après 1500, plusieurs commandes majeures passées par les principales puissances italiennes donnent une monumentalité nouvelle à la bataille dans l’iconographie politique. Dans le contexte d’urgence des guerres d’Italie, la peinture de l’histoire des faits passés est investie de l’espoir d’une efficace politique, à laquelle l’évolution mimétique et expressive dans laquelle est engagée la peinture italienne peut répondre. Les batailles inachevées de Léonard et Michel-Ange adoptent un traitement rhétorique de l’histoire, qui engage le spectateur dans une narration qui se déploie autour des émotions des personnages en action. Par le traitement des figures et l’intelligence de la composition d’ensemble, les batailles de Léonard de Vinci, Michel-Ange puis celles de Raphaël et Titien deviennent des exemples paradigmatiques, qui marquent les prémices de la scène de bataille comme forme politico-artistique, mettant la noblesse et l’ambition de l’art de peindre au service de l’expression du pouvoir. Les compositions ponctuelles du début du XVIe siècle laissent place dans la seconde moitié du siècle à une extension du thème militaire dans les décors palatiaux. L’orientation du programme iconographique détermine alors les problématiques politiques et iconographiques des peintures. Dans les cycles dynastiques, la corrélation entre la généalogie et l’histoire conduit à associer étroitement le récit de l’événement à l’action du personnage ; les dispositifs d’héroïsation individuelle coexistent alors avec les procédés d’historicisation de l’épisode. Dans les décors d’État, la multiplication des scènes de bataille affiche la puissance militaire comme fondement de la souveraineté de l’État moderne. À Florence et à Venise, la représentation de la guerre prend un caractère encyclopédique, venu de l’humanisme militaire, qui témoigne de la centralité de la maîtrise de ces savoirs pour le gouvernement de l’État. Un dernier temps, consacré aux représentations monumentales de la bataille de Lépante, à Venise et à Rome, envisage l’émergence de problématiques spécifiques à la représentation de la bataille contemporaine. L’actualité de l’événement impose une exigence de documentation poussée dans la représentation historique de son déroulement. Les peintres proposent alors des expérimentations dans le langage artistique employé pour figurer la bataille et introduisent parfois un dialogue avec les formes descriptives ou schématiques de représentation de la guerre, pour répondre à cette ambition documentaire. Les scènes de batailles du XVIe siècle italien s’inscrivent ainsi au croisement de l’évolution de la culture de la guerre de la Renaissance, marquée par le début de la « Révolution militaire », et de celle de la théorie artistique, où apparaît progressivement une rationalisation de la manière de raconter l’histoire. / This thesis focuses on the political and artistic dimensions of battle scenes in 16th-century Italian monumental painting, at a time when the depiction of war had yet to develop a distinction between two forms of the depiction of history, history painting treating past events and historical painting focused on contemporary events, according to artistic categories established during the 17th century. Thus this work does not offer a history of the battle scene itself, but an enquiry on specific compositions, trying to ascertain the political, ideological, aesthetic and cultural issues that inform them. Although the artistic heterogeneity of the corpus and the political fragmentation of the Italian peninsula have encouraged previous studies to follow a monographical approach, the apparition of historically and thematically similar contexts in which various battle scenes answer analogous ambitions has led us to adopt a comparative methodology, which attempts to develop a dialogue between pairs, series or types of works, linked by common political and formal objectives. Starting from 1500, a series of major orders placed by the main political powers in Italy embued battle scenes with a new monumental dimension within political iconography. In the urgency of the context of the Italian Wars, the depiction of past historical events was invested with the hope of real political efficacy, to which the mimetic and expressive evolution of Italian painting was now able to respond. The battle scenes left unfinished by Leonardo and Michelangelo adopted a rhetorical treatment of history which involved the viewer into a narrative centred around the emotions of the characters during the action. By virtue of their treatment of figures and their complex narrative articulation, Leonardo’s and Michelangelo’s battle scenes, and later Raphaël’s and Titian’s, acquired paradigmatic status, and paved the way for the establishment of the battle scene as a political-aesthetical form, making the nobility and ambition of artistic endeavour subservient to the expression of power. Sporadic compositions of the beginning of the 16th century were followed, during the second half of that century, by an extension of military themes in palace decoration. The political and iconographic objectives of paintings was therefore determined by the orientation of the iconographic programme of the whole room. In dynastic painting cycles, the correlation between genealogy and history led the artist to closely associate the depiction of the event to the actions of the character, so that devices of individual glorification coexisted with devices historicizing the episode. In state ornamentation, the multiplication of battle scenes showcased military might as the basis for the sovereignty of the modern State. In Florence and Venice, the depiction of war received from military humanism an encyclopaedic dimension which illustrated the central role played by the mastery of these forms of knowledge in the administration of the State. The last part of this study, which focuses on the monumental representations of the Battle of Lepanto in Venice and Rome, describes the emergence of problems that are specific to the depiction of contemporary battles. The immediacy of the event demanded from the historical depiction of the unfolding of the event an advanced documentary quality. The artists had to develop new experiments in the aesthetic idiom used to represent the battle, sometimes in dialogue with more descriptive or schematic depictions of warfare. 16th-century Italian battle scenes thus find themselves at a crossroad between the evolution of warfare during the Renaissance, characterised by the beginnings of the « Military Revolution », and the evolution of aesthetic theory, defined by an increasing rationalisation in the way history is depicted.

Henri IV et son panache blanc, Jeanne d’Arc en armure, Vercingétorix vaincu amené devant César… ces représentations liées à l’histoire de France nous sont aujourd’hui familières. Pourtant leur origine est ancienne : elles apparaissent dès la première moitié du XIXe siècle dans les arts visuels et dans l’historiographie, lorsqu’émerge la vogue de l’histoire, et spécialement de l’histoire nationale. Le médium de l’illustration, alors en plein essor, devient un agent efficace de la création et de la diffusion de représentations liées à l’histoire de France. En effet, les éditeurs en quête de formules éditoriales plus séduisantes commencent à intégrer des illustrations dans les ouvrages historiques savants, lorsqu’une telle association semblait auparavant délicate. Cette thèse se propose donc d’étudier les illustrations produites pour les ouvrages historiques parus entre 1814 et 1848. Les ouvrages historiques illustrés s’adressent à un lectorat de plus en plus large, que nous distinguons en termes de classes sociales (populaire, bourgeois) et d’âges (adultes, enfants). Les discours comme les illustrations tentent donc de s’adapter aux attentes et aux dispositions de ces divers lectorats, ce que nous étudierons dans le premier chapitre. Une part de la vogue pour les ouvrages historiques illustrés vient de ce qu’ils font écho aux préoccupations contemporaines : la question de la fondation de la France en tant que nation, en particulier, soulève de vastes débats. Notre deuxième chapitre examinera donc l’illustration de l’historiographie des périodes considérées comme fondatrices, le haut Moyen-Age et la Révolution française. Enfin, si l’historiographie illustrée de cette période apparaît très francocentrée, certains ouvrages viennent éveiller l’intérêt des lecteurs pour une histoire aux échelles « micro » ou macro », intéressée par l’histoire régionale et par l’histoire transnationale (troisième chapitre). Au fil du temps et des publications illustrées émergent donc des schémas iconographiques récurrents, contribuant à enraciner un récit historique iconotextuel, hybride de texte et d’images, dans l’imaginaire national. / Which images pop into the minds of Frenchmen when they recall their national history? Henry IV and his white panache, Joan of Arc in her armor, or Vercingétorix and his long hair. Where do these representations come from? How did they develop and with which narrative? This dissertation aims at studying the origins of these images : the spreading of the illustrated historical narrative in France from 1814 to 1848. Indeed, in these years, a true economy of the illustrated history book emerged. These illustrated narratives – these iconotexts – progressively clarified and strengthened a national history in image on which French identity was leaning on. The illustration of history developed interacting with other historical-focused media: theater, panorama, and especially history painting, standing as a model from which to set apart in order to find its own language. Over the course of time and publications, iconotextual patterns established themselves. Therefore, the illustration of history, spread through a larger and larger audience, contributed to the rooting of a national historical narrative into the collective psyche.

La ricerca ricostruisce la complessa e multiforme personalità artistica di Lodovico Pogliaghi - pittore, scultore, ornatista, illustratore attivo tra la fine dell’Ottocento e la prima metà del secolo successivo - inserendola all’interno dello scenario internazionale. Muovendo dall’attività di illustratore sono emersi i rapporti dell’artista, oltre che con la tradizione e la pittura di storia, con la fotografia, la cartellonistica e il cinema delle origini, in un fitto dialogo tra cultura ‘alta’ e nuove istanze della comunicazione in funzione del pubblico di massa. / The research reconstructs in the international historical and critical frame the complex and wide artistic personality of Lodovico Pogliaghi - painter, sculptor, decorator, illustrator active from the end of nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. His illustrations reveal artist’s relationships to tradition, history painting, photograph, poster art and silent cinema in a continuous dialogue between high culture and innovative request of visual communication.

L’enjeu de cette thèse sur Henry Fuseli est de tenter de montrer la façon dont cet artiste a conçu sa pratique de la peinture d’histoire comme un véritable spectacle. En nous appuyant notamment sur l’analyse du corpus d’œuvres shakespeariennes peintes, dessinées et gravées par l’artiste entre 1768 et 1825, nous avons essayé de mettre au jour les processus de « spectacularisation » à l’œuvre chez Fuseli. L’étude de la participation de l’artiste à la société anglaise et à ses divertissements - spectacles privés, fréquentation des théâtres publics et d’attractions plus populaires - a permis de mesurer en quoi une culture visuelle bien plus large que celle issue de la simple production théâtrale informe la production de l’artiste. Le spectacle populaire, véritable modèle caché du peintre, a nourri la réflexion de Fuseli sur la recherche de l’effet en peinture, dans sa relation avec la mémoire du spectateur. Contre l’idée commune faisant de Fuseli un peintre visionnaire, ancrant son œuvre dans sa seule imagination, cette thèse a pour ambition de montrer la nature du rapport éminemment matériel que l’artiste entretint avec les spectacles de son temps. La mise au jour du rôle des réminiscences de la scène de théâtre dans la création picturale et l’étude du transfert d’un certains nombre de « signes matériels » de la scène au tableau (tels que le cadre, les portes, le rideau…), nous ont permis de mettre en évidence l’esthétique en acte dans la peinture d’histoire de Fuseli. C’est la question de la relation que cette peinture instaure avec son spectateur qui clôt notre étude : une forme de pacte au sein duquel celui qui peint et celui qui regarde s’accordent, le temps du regard, pour croire à ce qui est donné à voir, afin d’en éprouver l’effet. / Trying to demonstrate how Henry Fuseli’s practice of history painting was truly conceived as a show is what is the challenge of this thesis. By basing ourselves mainly on the analysis of the corpus of Shakespearian paintings, drawings and engravings made by the artist between 1768 and 1825, we have tried to highlight the processes of spectacularisation (theatrical devices) within Fuseli’s work. The study of the artist’s involvement in the english society – his attendance to various entertainments such as privates shows, public theatres or even more popular scenes – enabled us to measure that the artist’s production is the result not only of the mere theater scene but accounts for a much broader visual culture. Hidden model for the painter, the popular scene nourished Fuseli’s thoughts in the search for painting effects and the induced relationship with the spectator’s memory. Despite the common belief of Fuseli being a visionary painter who’s work sets roots solely in his imagination, this thesis ambition is to show the very concrete and material links of the artist with the scenes of his time. Highlighting reminiscences of the theatre scene in the pictorial creation and the moving from the scene to the painting of a number of “material signs” (such as the frame, the doors, the curtain…) have enabled us to show the aesthetics performing within Fuseli’ history paintings. Our study ends with the relationship that these paintings generate with their spectator : a kind of pact in which for the time of a glance painter and spectator agree to believe in what is given to see so as to experi-ence its effects.

Painted in 1937 as part of the centenary celebration of the death of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Ulyanov's A. S. Pushkin and his Wife, N. N. Pushkina at the Imperial Ball has been lauded as the quintessential example of Soviet history painting. Modern scholars have followed the lead of Soviet critics, who praised the painting for its insight into the psychology of the brilliant poet repressed by the tyrannical tsarist regime. According to this interpretation, Soviet viewers in the 1930s were to ponder on the tragedy of Pushkin's demise and rejoice that the victory of Socialism had freed them from such repression. However, this thesis suggests that Ulyanov embedded a secondary, subversive message in his masterpiece. Through careful manipulation of Pushkin's complex semiotic significance, Socialist Realist dialectics, and the Aesopian method, Ulyanov crafted an image that could be celebrated for its adherence to Soviet ideology, while simultaneously suggesting to those who detected his clues that artistic repression had not ended with the revolution. In this subversive reading, Ulyanov's masterwork becomes a psychological self-portrait of an artist living under Stalinist oppression during the Great Terror.