Wednesday April 14, 1999

Announcements:

• all recitation sections meet in the Palmer Sculpture Garden this week

    Daumier, continued

• depicted a range of topic/emotions
• concern with lower/working class
• lived among working class

• sympathetic depiction of working poor
• almost sculptural interpretation of figures
• second class in the section behind
• faces show dignity, not artificial beauty

• Daumier enjoyed all types of theater (high and low)
• melodramatic scene on stage
• audience is caught up in the magic of (bad) theater
• expresses Daumier's love of theater
• image is of audience reaction--not action on the stage

• lithography technique allow freedom
• need not be etched, gouged
• more like a crayon/charcoal drawing

• faithful representation of nature and society
• during this period
• beginnings of cafe society
• move from agrarian to industrial society
• Realists accept everything as acceptable subject matter
• criticized by the conservatives (Salon) for this idea

• considered the greatest of the Realists
• best fits what we describe as realism
• leading Realist artist in France
• saw everything as potential subject matter
• often rejected by Salon

• everyday, working-class people as acceptable subjects
• a common scene at the time
• this has been the older man's life--will be the boy's life
• already laid out for him
• cinematic quality--bending and lifting
• arid, unforgiving landscape
• used a thick brush; seems coarse
• opposition worried that this would draw attention to injustices against the working class
• COMPARE: John Brett's "The Stone Breakers"
• playful scene (puppy)
• beautiful landscape
• lacks the message that Courbet's has
• would have been accepted by Salon--traditional

• Courbet came from landed peasantry
• from Ornans (small town)
• hot-headed, fiery

• looks as though paint was applied by palette knife--impasto
• arranged country-folk like figures in "Death of Socrates"
• death bed scene
• controversial to used common-folk as subjects
• rejected by Salon
• COMPARE: Couture's "Decadence of the Romans," 1847
• contemporary work
• type of death bed scene that the Salon found acceptable

• portrays himself confidently
• allegorical: depicts what painting and art means to him; significance to his life
• familar/famous painters and artists present
• working-class figures from his Realist works
• muse
• entranced boy

• group of painters named for town near Forest of Fontainebleau where they painted
• representative of life before industrialization
• moved to countryside to work among the rural poor
• recording rural areas before they are consumed by industrialization

• rural
• remote
• when they appear, humans are shown living in harmony with the land