Excelsior; Marchant! Artistic Movements in 19th century France [51]
Wed, June 3, 10, 17, 24, July 8,15 (no class on July 1) 2–3 pm (6 sessions) | Reynolds Lecture Hall
The effort to define a modern, more egalitarian state in France was not an easy one. Political turmoil, often quite violent, resulted in no fewer than eight constitutions in the 19th century, and the visual arts were integral to the social
upheaval of these rapidly changing times. And at the center of the art world, not only in France but in all of Europe, was the Salon—the enormously popular, influential, and increasingly controversial annual exhibition of art governed by the École des Beaux Arts, the School of Fine Arts, which had succeeded the Academy as the official arts administration. In this series, we will see how artists, both those admitted to the official exhibition and those excluded from it, shaped the political consciousness of the French public: how Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres bore the classical standard of Jacques-Louis David past the middle of the century, opposed by the arch-Romantic Eugène Delacroix and his
supporters: how the artists of modern life, who called themselves the Realists, sought after a sober view of social inequities together with their self-proclaimed leader, Gustave Courbet; and how a group of young students gathered around
their hero, Édouard Manet, to strive for an art that might capture an instant—an impression—of precious, fleeting life.
Instructor: Dr. Donald Schrader, Adjunct Professor of Art History, University of Mary Washington
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