Painting History

Art H 220 | October 4, 2021

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Today: history painting, one of the first international art movements
that American artists participate in.
France, 1660 United States, 1786

Key question: How did American art develop in relation to European art
institutions?
Defining history painting:
Artistic genre deemed the highest
form of art by the French
Academy in the 17th century.

Typically large paintings that

portrayed historical events with
identified figures; often depict a
dramatic narrative movement;
convey a moral or political
message.
Charles Le Brun, The Queens of Persia at the Feet of
Alexander, 1660-1, oil on canvas [French
Academy]
Painted for Louis XIV – hangs in Versailles
Relationship between historic scenes/contemporary
events?

Charles Le Brun, The Queens of Persia at the Feet of

Alexander, 1660-1, oil on canvas [French
Academy]
 1. History Painting

The Academy: This hierarchy is based on

man as the measure of all
things.
2. Portraits
French Academy of Art,
founded 1648 as the Royal
Academy of Painting and 3. Genre painting
Sculpture

4. Landscape art
Establishes a hierarchy of
genres:

5. Still life
 Henri Testelin, The Expressions, after Charles
Le Brun, 1696, etching, Met

Identify
emotions?
 Henri Testelin, The Expressions, after
Charles Le Brun, 1696, etching, MET

surprise contemplation sadness laughter

terror fear anger disdain

despair worry exhaustion pain/di

stress
Royal Academy of
London (founded by
Sir Joshua Reynolds,
1768)

New call for history

painting: depicting
heroic action to
morally uplift and
instruct the
gentleman viewer

Benjamin West
b. Pennsylvania
Self-Portrait, 1806. PAFA.
Benjamin West, Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta,
1768, oil on canvas, Tate [Royal Academy]
 Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada

Major contribution to
history painting:
depiction of
contemporary subjects,
settings, and events.

Expanded traditional
boundaries of the top
academic genre
 Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada
[Major-General James Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec, French and Indian War, Sept 13, 1759], 7 x 5 feet!

What’s new about Battle secured

subject? British
holdings in the
Exhibited at Royal New World
Academy in 1771

Response?
How do we make
arguments about images?

Visual analysis: description

with a point
Writing Project #1: visual analysis

Tomorrow in section: visual analysis

workshop

Some questions to ask yourself in a

visual analysis…

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada
 Visual (or formal) analysis:
description with a point

What are the major visual elements (what

kind of things/people/settings/events
are depicted)?

How are those elements depicted?

(consider: color, lighting,
shading/modeling, level of detail, pose,
gesture, expression,
stillness/movement…

Not everything has a place in a visual

analysis. Be selective!

Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Canada
HOW is Wolfe depicted?
Things we could note:

Pose
Gesture
Expression
Clothing
Relationship to setting
Attributes/connection to objects
Pose, gesture: Christ-like, swooning, gazing upwards
Van Dyck, Lamentation over Dead
Christ, 1634, oil on canvas
Expression
contemplation
Other major elements or important figures?
Consider the same aspects as
Wolfe:

Pose
Gesture
Expression
Clothing
Relationship to setting
Attributes/connection to objects
Pose, gesture

Attributed to Appollonius, Torso

Belvedere, 2nd century BC, marble
Albrecht Dürer, Melencolia I, 1514. Engraving.
Metropolitan Museum of Art 43.106.1. Pose, gesture, expression Attributed to Appollonius, Torso
Belvedere, 2nd century BC, marble

Psychological and moral complexity.

[melancholy, sorrow, contemplation,
perplexity]
Why these references? What’s the message?
The “noble savage:” a popular (flawed) idea in the 18th and 19th century that man “uncontacted” by
civilization is inherently good; it is civilization that draws out evil.

George Catlin, Wi-jún-jon, Pigeon’s

[Sir William Johnson] Egg Head (The Light) Going To and
Returning From Washington, 1837-9
A figure
contemplating
death.

[Sir William Johnson]

 Formal analysis:
description with a
point

What are the major visual

elements?

how are those elements depicted?

How would you characterize the

composition - the way those
visual elements are organized and
arranged in space? (consider:
strong vertical, horizontal, or
diagonal elements; symmetries;
repeated or mirrored poses…)
What visual strategies does West use to connect Wolfe and the Native American figure?
Formal analysis: description
with a point (a claim, a
thesis)

What are the major visual

elements?

How would you characterize the

composition - the way those
visual elements are organized and
arranged in space?

What are the effects of these

visual choices? How has the artist
created meaning by visualizing the
subject matter in this particular
way? (Analysis)
Claim: West draws visual parallels between Wolfe and the Native
American (pose, expression, compositional placement, mirrored
objects) that ask the viewer to consider the men in comparison
with one another. Doing so highlights their differences, ultimately
creating a binary of old world vs. new world, individual vs.
archetype, “civilized” vs. “primitive.”
Was West’s
history painting
actually that
radical?

Remember
what history
painting was
supposed to
do: morally
inspire and
uplift a national
audience.
John Singleton Copley
Self-Portrait
1780-1784
NPG

John Singleton Copley, Nicholas Boylston, 1767. Oil on

canvas. Harvard Art Museums.
 DIA copy, 1782

NGA

MFA
Havana, Cuba, 1749

Patron: Brook Watson –

by 1778, a wealthy
merchant and Tory
(royalist) leader in
British Parliament

John Singleton Copley, Watson

and the Shark, 1778, oil on
canvas, NGA
Claim: this history painting is
about much more than a
newsworthy shark attack – it’s
actually a statement about the
American revolution and the
institution of slavery in
America, both hotly debated
issues in contemporary British
politics.

How do we back up that claim

with specific details from the
artwork itself ? (Visual analysis
– working backwards)
Start with formal
observations!

Pyramidal
composition

John Singleton Copley, Watson

and the Shark, 1778, oil on
canvas, NGA
[Havana, Cuba, 1749; Brook
Watson]
 Where is Watson?

What could that

compositional
placement mean?

John Singleton Copley,

Watson and the Shark,
1778, oil on canvas,
NGA
“shark-infested waters”
Both hunters, both victims
Paul Revere, Bloody Massacre, 1770, colored engraving
[Crispus Attucks]
 Agency?

How radical is this,

really?

John Singleton Copley, Watson and

the Shark, 1778, oil on canvas,
NGA
What does Watson and the
Shark teach us?

1. Artists and patrons

collaboratively
constructed complex
narratives in American
history paintings.

2. Reading history
paintings is an equally
complex task, and
requires paying
attention to formal
elements as well as
social, political, and
cultural context.
Columbus, Conquest, and the Capitol
Natalia Ángeles Vieyra

John Vanderlyn, Landing of Columbus at Guanahani, West Indies, October 2, 1492, 1846, oil on canvas. US Capitol
Vanderlyn’s painting: 1 of 4 paintings commissioned by Congress in 1836 and added to the rotunda between 1840-1855
Artists were asked to depict a scene that was “civil or military, of sufficient importance to be the subject of a national picture,
in the history of the discovery, or the settlement of the colonies.”
 How would you begin a visual analysis of this painting?

John Gadsby Chapman, The Baptism of Pocahontas at Jamestown, Virginia, 1613, 1837-1840
Divine spotlight

Turned back
Supplicant pose

Compositional parallels
Immaculate white dress
These history paintings are enshrined in the very center of governmental power.
What message does that send about who belongs at the center of our nation?
What does it say about ownership over history?
Up next:
Inventing the American Artist