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Europe 1800 - 1900
Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 2
Lesson 2: France- Romanticism in France
- Gros, Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa
- Gros, Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa
- Ingres, Portrait of Madame Rivière
- Ingres, Napoleon on His Imperial Throne
- Ingres, Apotheosis of Homer
- Ingres, La Grande Odalisque
- Painting colonial culture: Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque
- Ingres, La Grande Odalisque
- Ingres, Princesse de Broglie
- Ingres, Raphael and the Fornarina
- Géricault, Raft of the Medusa
- Géricault, Raft of the Medusa
- Géricault, Raft of the Medusa
- Géricault, Portraits of the Insane
- Eugène Delacroix, an introduction
- Delacroix, Scene of the Massacre at Chios
- Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus
- The cost of war: Delacroix, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi
- Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
- Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
- Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
- Delacroix, Murals in the Chapel of The Holy Angels, Saint-Sulpice
- Rude, La Marseillaise
- Romanticism in France
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Delacroix, Scene of the Massacre at Chios
Eugène Delacroix, Scene of the Massacre at Chios; Greek Families Awaiting Death or Slavery, 1824 Salon, oil on canvas, 164" × 139" (419 cm × 354 cm) (Musée du Louvre, Paris) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- I'm a little confused - how does this scene relate to the Industrial Revolution? The Turkish sultan of Greece at the time was particularly cruel (Byron went from England to Greece to fight with the revolutionaries, and English tourists are still particularly welcome around Mesolonghi), but there's no sense that this foretold of an age of machines and steam and water power!(8 votes)
- The art movement is actually called Romanticism, however Romanticism really started up during the Industrial Revolution as a reaction to the violence of the Enlightenment. In many areas, Romanticism idealized the Christian ages with representations of knights, the Brazilians represented their noble savages in their works, and Americans painted the rugged wilderness and the frontier (looking back to the nature that was so predominant before colonization).(13 votes)
- Why aren't there any questions???
I know, i know, it doesn't belong here, but don't flag it! (someone will anyway)
When did this happen, and when did the ottomans have time? Napoleon would have kept them busy.(0 votes)- See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chios_Massacre. The massacre happened in 1822. The Turkish troops were ordered to to "kill all infants under three years old, all males 12 years and older, and all females 40 and older, except those willing to convert to Islam."(7 votes)
- Why was Dr. Zucker so non-committal about the faiths of the factions in this battle? The Turks did not "tend" to be Muslim, they identified themselves as an Islamic empire until Ataturk after WW I. The Greeks did not "tend" to be Christian, the Greek Orthodox faith has been linked to the Greek cultural identity going back to the Byzantine empire. Granted, there were members of different faiths on both sides, but they were not in positions to make decisions. And the issue of faith was the rationalization for the atrocity the Turks purported.(1 vote)
- The words "tends to" would be synonymous with "a large percentage of." I don't want to speak for Dr Zucker, but he's not being "noncommittal", he's being accurate. I don't agree with my esteemed colleague Mr Alexander that there's a comparison to the ambivalent "of the Negro persuasion."
When Dr Zucker is using "tends to" in this context, he's referring to mathematical states or populations, not socio-political ambivalence.(1 vote)
- If you look at the bottom left, you'll see a girl kissing the cheek of some (dead?) person which they forgot to include.(1 vote)
Video transcript
(melodious, rhythmic music) - [Dr. Steven Zucker] We're in one of the large painting galleries
in the Louvre in Paris, looking at a massive canvas by
the French painter Delacroix. This is called "The Massacre at Chios." - [Dr. Beth Harris] And this
is a contemporary subject, which is important because
large paintings were generally reserved for subjects from
history, from mythology. - [Dr. Steven Zucker]
Or religious painting. - [Dr. Beth Harris] And yet here we have a contemporary
event and not a heroic event. In fact, the opposite, an
unrelenting scene of violence and indifference to suffering. - [Dr. Steven Zucker] The
story behind the painting was an attack by the Ottomans
on the Greek island of Chios, where according to reports as many as 30,000 people were killed, others were starved
and many were enslaved, and that's precisely the story that Delacroix is telling here. - [Dr. Beth Harris] And,
in fact, at this time, many Europeans went to
fight for the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire. - [Dr. Steven Zucker] From
the French perspective at this moment, Greece
was a representation of the great European tradition, whereas on the other
side of the Bosphorus, we entered into the East. From the French perspective, that was a foreign
land, a foreign culture, distant and exotic and dangerous. - [Dr. Beth Harris] And Muslim. We have this frieze of suffering figures across the foreground, some fighting in the middle ground, and then this distant, very
sketchily-painted landscape in the background. - [Dr. Steven Zucker] Where
we see towns being burned. But let's spend a moment with
the figures in the foreground. We see an Ottoman soldier on horseback. He looks back with disdain. He's bound a nude woman to the horse and there's another woman who
seems to be holding her head with her right hand, but perhaps
reaching up to the soldier, who in turn is reaching to
grab the hilt of his sword. - [Dr. Beth Harris] And look at the horse, how loosely painted he
is, how wild he looks. And while the male figure looks at these terribly suffering female figures with complete indifference
and even disdain, I almost see a sense of
conscience in the eye of the horse about the horror that's being perpetrated. - [Dr. Steven Zucker] And perhaps the white at the mouth shows
the horse in such a fury that its mouth is foaming. - [Dr. Beth Harris] If we
moved down below the figure on the horseback, we see perhaps the saddest scene of all, of a small child reaching for
the breast of its dead mother. - [Dr. Steven Zucker]
And look at the delicacy with which Delacroix
has painted this pair. The child's flesh is
still pink, he's alive, but her color is more blue. And we can see those
blue-green veins in her breast, in her neck, and in her temple. And her eyes are now completely vacant. - [Dr. Beth Harris] Her
dress has been pulled down. Her chest is bare. Her
breasts are exposed. There's a sense of indecency and horror at the people who would've
done this to a woman. - [Dr. Steven Zucker]
Just beside her head, an older woman sits who
looks completely vulnerable. And then we have another
grouping on the left side. - [Dr. Beth Harris]
Here we see a male nude whose eyes are similarly vacant and who's wounded and bleeding and yet there's still something noble and beautiful about his body. - [Dr. Steven Zucker]
And set out before him, we see not only a satchel,
but a broken, bloodied sword. - [Dr. Beth Harris]
Beside him a woman leans on his shoulder, she grasps her ankle. She has no energy left
to fight, to resist. She's clearly already
grieving the imminent death of the man beside her. - [Dr. Steven Zucker]
And at the extreme left we see a variety of other
figures, in despair, who seemed to have given
up, their cause is lost. - [Dr. Beth Harris] And then
behind, two figures in shadow, who appear to be Ottoman
soldiers guarding this group of prisoners. - [Dr. Steven Zucker] So what
explains an artist taking on the scale of history painting, the guise of history painting, but giving us instead a
painting of unrelenting misery? - [Dr. Beth Harris] By this
point in the early 19th century, history painting, paintings
of biblical subjects, of mythological subjects, of ancient Greek and Roman history, weren't speaking to the
19th century public. And artists like Delacroix
and other Romantic artists are looking for new ways to
make paintings that are large that still have a moral message, that still galvanize the public. - [Dr. Steven Zucker] It is in some ways a perfect reflection of the painting that it faces in the gallery, which is Gericault's,
"Raft of the Medusa," another contemporary scene that spoke to death that had no purpose. but Delacroix doesn't
just choose a subject that is uncommon. He handles paint in
ways that are uncommon. He uses color in ways
that were quite distinct from what the academy
anticipated or expected. Look at the boot of the older
woman in the foreground, the almost pure whites. Or notice, for instance, the line of red that creates a shadow under the arm of the dying male nude. - [Dr. Beth Harris] Or look at the forearm of the seated older woman
where Delacroix has used blues to create shadows. This idea of colored shadows, of very loose and open brushwork, which is evident, especially,
in the striped fabric worn by the seated figure on the left. These are all things that
help to express the sense of the momentary, of the personal, the handling of the paint by the artist. - [Dr. Steven Zucker]
And this creates a sense that this is a more personal,
more subjective experience conveyed on this canvas,
directly by the artist's hand. (melodious, rhythmic music)