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Architecture and Painting
Architecture and Painting
# ceilings = fruit flowers and vegetables running round geometrical patterns carving treated with outmost
realism.
# chimneys and doors = framed in marble with deep curly mouldings an possibly a pediment on the top.
# rooms = solid and dignified character.
The architectural character of the 17th c. changed considerably but in different degrees at different levels:
- The poor mans house had hardly changed at all, but was slowly becoming less medieval in its
details and built of more permanent materials.
- The rich mans house had changed completely. Before: battlements, turrets (tower), oriel
windows and yew (wood) edges. Now: symmetrical steep biproofed mansion, ponderously
chimneyed, square windows framed like pictures and its solemn tall rooms.
BARROQUE (1720-1800) 18TH C. = AGE OF ENLIGHTMENT
# emphasis on ornaments.
# characterized by great refinement.
# It is the architecture of the highly civilised age.
# bulding type = THE TOWN HOUSE = THE GEORGIAN/GEORGIAN TERRACE HOUSE
(STANDARIZED). The Gregorian terrace house began to be built towards the end of the 17 th c. And it became in the
18th c. the general method employed for a vast residential urban development. It became the standard because during
this century there existed an accepted standard of good taste (philosophy of materialism and reason). They were for
the large and growing upper-middles class.
LEES WEALTHY = TERRACE HOUSE
Towards the end of the 17th c. the density of houses in towns had given rise to the invention of the TERRACE
as a means of preserving dignity and economizing space.
Terrace houses = a whole set of houses all run together and treated as an architectural whole = method for vast
residential development.
CHARACTERISTICS: & brick buildings with stone tops and sloping slate roofs.
& separated from each other by thick walls (risk of fire) which carried the
chimney-stocks.
& usually 4 stories (level)
high with a short and flight of steps up to the
front door.
& principal rooms on the 1st floor.
& introduction of the Sash window (it has two frames fixed one above the other
that open by being moved up and down on sash cords = ropes with height at the end) and almost the only
employed. Georgian architects delighted and excelled in the design of the window.
& windows = short in the ground floor for solidity, very tall on the 1 st floor for
grandeur, slightly shorter on the next and completely square at the top of the house. These windows produced a
feeling of rest and dignity.
& froont door: delicately panelled, with semi-circular fanlights over them.
- Town planning of this sort would not have been possible if every man had built his own house.
Owners of the land developed these projects as speculations.
# there was only one right way to build. To depart from it would be bad taste.
# a great number of all classes of buildings were built.
# the two Woods and the two Dances (father and son): four architects responsible for developing large areas of
Bath and Dublin. Later in the century the brothers Adam did much to develop still more of Georgian London and
developed a style quite their own. Most of Adams work was in town housing. They refined all the features of the
Georgian town house, taking as the inspiration of their designs the details of Ancient Greece:
# spiders web fanlights over doorways.
# taller windows with thinner glazing bars.
# the Greek honeysuckle (madreselva) pattern was used everywhere: in plaster work on the
columns, in ceilings, in the iron work of the balconies.
# shops, public works, commercial buildings were also erected in great numbers. Beautiful shop fronts: a
further aspect of the Georgian street scene.
# COUNTRYSIDE: the wealth of the country was once more concentrated into fewer hands. The rich owned
huge tracks of lands, which they enclosed. Common land became scarce. Small landholders worked as labourers for the
big landowners or were absorbed by towns to seek employment. A depopulation of the countryside began.
Within his enclosed land the wealthy man kept great areas as private parks, in which he built his house with
wonderful avenues of huge trees, artificial lakes, fountains, classical monuments, little temples and bridges.
In the earlier part of the 18th c. the houses of the very wealthy were often designed in the BARROQUE
MANNER, employing classical motifs freely to produce an effect of grandeour without regard for strict rules of
proportion. This style was never very popular in England. The attraction of Barroque is the magnificent exaggeration
and the English didnt like ostentation very much
The Barroque appeals brutally to the senses and hardly to intellect. It is immensely 3 dimensional and
exaggerated. The Barroque implies a style that owes little to convention and all to effect.
Chief Exponents of Barroque in England (not very popular):
* government instead of facing up the evils, tried to escape by encouraging the making of articles by
hand and regarding articles made by machine worthless.
# the impracticability and inconvenience of old style of buildings was changed.
# wealthy mans house was given a Romantic Gothic appearance. This mock-medieval house descended and
became ridiculous as it started to be imitated by the poor.
# struggle between classical and medieval but a comprimise was reached = last 50 years of the 19 th c. and the
first 20 of the 20th c.: Ecclesiastical and Scholastic building = Ghotic
Civic building = classic building. The classicists returned to a fine Greek style
of building. Municipal buildings and even churches were erected as replicas of the buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.
Industry = a sort of Romanesque
# Buildings in fancy-dress styles continued throughout the 19th c. the periods in which styles were varying from
time to time: Tudor, Jacobean, Perpendicular Ghotic, Norman, Elizabethan.
INDUSTRIAL ARCHITECTURE
# Engineers instead of architects came into prominence because architects were more concerned with aesthetic
features than practicality. Incompatibility of industrial necessity and aesthetics.
# Engineers led to build railway bridges of an immense size and were constructed of iron and steel and
railway stations were made of iron and glass. Ex: bridges of Telford, Brunel and others.
# the two most important new materials (they had arrived in quantity by the middle of the century): sheet glass
and steel (used by Joseph) Ex: Crystal Palace (designed by Paxton).
# Towards the end of the century = commerce and urban populations had greatly increased so that larger
buildings became necessary: block of flats, huge offices, big shops, banking houses. In crowded cities it was necessary
to build in high and this led to the invention of steel frame. Popular taste insisted that such skeletons should be clothed
in massive stonework to represent an ecclesiastical faade of great solidity and worth common feature of towns today).
# the poor mans house = cottages: the population had increased so rapidly that thousands of men workingclass homes were needed in the Ind. Area. On the 1st half of the century falls the blame for creating the SLUMS OF
INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND = rows of exactly similar ill-built, depressing unsanitary houses.
# thousands of schools built: compulsory education was introduced.
# hospitals and public buildings needed for the new towns.
RENAISSANCE
The Renaissance developed later in England. Fist, the R.
painters were invited by Henry VIII (an important
patronage). For ex: Holbein (`The Embassador) and
Hilliard.
Subject matter: mundane, depicted in his setting/
secular portraiture.
Aim: to produce aesthetic pleasure, a work of art.
Characteristics: - perfect symmetry and balance.
- depth and perspective/ 3D representation of the world
volume.
- Metatextual dimension = is a text that refers to other text.
Ex: Lit. Criticism.
- strong feeling of fraternalism reflected on the portraits of
the Queen.
- nationalist.
- oleo painting.
Works: Queens Portraits.
The aim was to reflect physical likeness but what the
queen symbolized for England; the queen was the symbol
of the greatness of England.
Renaissance painters
BARROQUE PAINTING
PURPOSE: to dignify
CHARACTERISTICS OF BARROQUE PAINTING
& decorative splendour.
& artificiality due to exclusive society.
& realism marks a breakdown from Van Dyck elegance and simplicity.
& solemnity of the time reflected on portraiture produce during the Commonwealth.
& common practice of the time = to regard figures gesture as a stock property to be used again and
again with only a change of head.
- Sir Peter Lely = Pre-Restorian style mannerist. Portraiture in languishing (to exist in an
unpleasant or unwanted situation) attitudes.
- Samuel Cooper = miniaturist scarcely distinguishable (of portraiture) from oil painting
except for the size delicate sense of detail.
Characteristics of English Portraiture:
# aristocratic case of stance
# expressive pose of hands
# complementary character of two or more figures
T here were two factors that broke the uniformity of the later 17th c.: the emergence of new forms of painting
and certain changes in portraiture painting.
The lack of variety in English art is striking due to the number of genres, which flourished in Holland and
Southern Netherlands and also due to the significance of Barroque and decorative painting in France of Louis XIV.
NEW GENRES: LANSCAPE AND ANIMAL PAINTING. 18TH C.
# Landscape and topography is a Flemish tradition.
# It is strange that a century LLLLLLLLL by landscape it was previously unknown.
# Jow Wyck precursor of sporting artists.
# Francis Barlow painter of animals, birds. The chosen style made the paintings suitable as decorative panels.
# Decorative Mural Painting (tendency towards the European Barroque) not with religious connotations
applied to ceiling and walls of royal and noble dwellings.
# Thornhill = active painters scare over the foreign invaders. End of naturalized foreigners.
# There is a Nat. attitude towards art in the idea of training-ground for English painters. A school freely open
(beginning of 18th c.)
NATIONAL TRADITON IN PAINTING
- Importance of chiaroscuro
- New genres: maritime painting, animal painting, atmosphere painting
WILLIAM HOGARTH (1967-1764)
# His achievement: to give a comprehensive view of social life within a framework of moralistic and
dramatic narrative.
# elements of satire and caricature.
# provocative attitude = he objected the absurd veneration of antiquity as well as the assumption that English
painters were inferior to foreigners.
# realistic production.
# a painter of social life = conversation pieces within moralistic and dramatic narrative (at the beginning).
Genre invented by the Flemish and Dutch 17th c.
# new spirit of animated portraiture (informal composition).
# declared independence from continental tradition.
LLLLLLLLL = known for this carved designs in metal and stone.
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788)
# landscape/ outdoor portraits/ open air conversation.
# countryman. His art was aristocratic. It tended towards an ideal that clearly differed from the realistic outllok
of Hogarth.
# he painted portraits with outdoor country background.
# landscape composition in which figures were as fill a place.
# never tempted to leave his place since he was under patronage.
# portraiture + landscape uniquely found together.
# sentiment for English country and English life.
# he was influenced by Dutch Art Rubens Vandick.
# light on people clothes and trees.
JOSHUA REYNOLDS (1723-1792)
# portraits.
# 1ST PRESIDENT of the Royal Academy.
# elements of the Grand Style in his portraits (impression of theatrical or playful adjunct).
# children portraits
# English traits: humour (caricature portraits executed in Rome), individual characters in children portraits.
GEORGE STUBBS (1724-1806)
# animal painter: nature superior than art.
# more an animal painter than sporting painter.
# genre: very close to landscape but giving prominence to rural life = rural life + sport.
# Horseracing revived with the Foundation of the Jockey Club (1750). It produced a demand for sporting
pictures. He was employed by the sporting aristocracy.
# master of the open-air conversation piece.
ROMANTIC PAINTING IN ENGLAND
JOHN CONSTABLE (1776-1837). Southern England.
# oil painter. He painted his countryside
# tendency to concentrate on the
# born to extend the realm of landscape painting (regional sense)
# capacity for rendering the freshness of atmosphere and the incidence of light.
WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)
# middle-class Londoner.
# English poet who from childhood claimed to have visions and talked to human beings from heaven.
# very personal style = full of religious symbols.
# he produced illuminated manuscripts containing his poems and paintings to illustrate them (done by hand).
# linear design.
# importance of polarities.
# a love for religious art of the Middle Ages.
# against portraiture and landscape. Horror for realistic oil painting.
# with him a Romantic vista of free expression opens, a liberation of the poetic imagination suppressed in
English painting.
WILLIAM TURNER (1775-1851)
# began as topographical painter.
# atmosphere painting. (seascapes, storms)
# attraction for wild nature, infinite of space and movements of tremendous evidence.
# always experimental. Using a variety of devices.
# original treatment of light and weather conditions.