2: Social Statements with Millet
Jean-Francois Millet
The Gleaners, 1857Oil on canvas, w111 cm x h84 cm (43.7" x 33.1")
Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France
This, not the above, is the painting I was first thinking of for today, but all the reproductions are pretty poor quality since the original was destroyed by a bomb in World War II. So!
Today just wanted to point out that by now, genre painting may be most associated with the Realism + Social Realism movements in art (together running from about mid-1800s to mid-1900s), which were all about putting the focus on the real living/working conditions of lower class/'ordinary' people.
This would be as opposed to, say, Romanticism and/or pastoral landscapes, in which country ladies and gents working as poor farmers/shepherds/herders/etc. was portrayed as something almost enviable, peaceful and allowing plenty of time for naps and frolic. This would also be where I mention, totally unrelated, that Marie Antoinette actually had a whole model village built on the palace grounds where she could play at peasant for relaxation. Made her super sympathetic with the mob.
The work above (by Millet, he of the turkeys) shows three peasant women clearing the post-harvest field of stray stalks/produce (aka 'gleaning'). You can see the Musee d'Orsay for a bit of visual analysis and hit the painting's Wikipedia page for a quick summary of its context, but bottom line this painting made the upper classes in France deeply uncomfortable with its respectful depiction of poor laborers (done at a relatively large scale, the horror!), especially since the French Revolution was still fresh on the mind at the time it was done and displayed.
Genre works continue to have a history of association with ideas about class hierarchy and/or war between the classes. And this is kind of by necessity; focusing on scenes of 'normal' life is automatically a highlighting of all the economic and social class markers that fill our lives, and to even attempt a 'genre' work is to be making a statement about what you see as 'normal'.
Today just wanted to point out that by now, genre painting may be most associated with the Realism + Social Realism movements in art (together running from about mid-1800s to mid-1900s), which were all about putting the focus on the real living/working conditions of lower class/'ordinary' people.
This would be as opposed to, say, Romanticism and/or pastoral landscapes, in which country ladies and gents working as poor farmers/shepherds/herders/etc. was portrayed as something almost enviable, peaceful and allowing plenty of time for naps and frolic. This would also be where I mention, totally unrelated, that Marie Antoinette actually had a whole model village built on the palace grounds where she could play at peasant for relaxation. Made her super sympathetic with the mob.
The work above (by Millet, he of the turkeys) shows three peasant women clearing the post-harvest field of stray stalks/produce (aka 'gleaning'). You can see the Musee d'Orsay for a bit of visual analysis and hit the painting's Wikipedia page for a quick summary of its context, but bottom line this painting made the upper classes in France deeply uncomfortable with its respectful depiction of poor laborers (done at a relatively large scale, the horror!), especially since the French Revolution was still fresh on the mind at the time it was done and displayed.
Genre works continue to have a history of association with ideas about class hierarchy and/or war between the classes. And this is kind of by necessity; focusing on scenes of 'normal' life is automatically a highlighting of all the economic and social class markers that fill our lives, and to even attempt a 'genre' work is to be making a statement about what you see as 'normal'.