ANTECEDENTES HISTÓRICOS

As artists sought independence from rigid academic guidelines, they looked to a wider variety of sources—nature, popular culture, and other artists—for inspiration.

Visiting art collections became an essential part of an artist’s education. Some collections were organized as museums, and opened to a wider public. Basel was WKH ÀUVW WR RSHQ D PXQLFLSDO DUW PXVHXP  IROORZLQJ LWV SXUFKDVH RI  WKH

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since the sixteenth century) opened to the public (1765), and in 1771, Pope Clement XIV established a Vatican museum for his collection of ancient and Renaissance art. Enlightenment belief in the importance of education combined with pressure for social equality and the political imperative to demonstrate (national, municipal) superiority through the display of cultural artifacts to bring about a wave of museum building during the nineteenth century.

Publicity surrounding the French revolutionary government’s opening royal art collections to the public in the Louvre palace during the 1790s inspired other national and city governments to follow suit: Budapest (1807), Madrid (1819), London (1824), Munich (1836), Edinburgh (1859), Stockholm (1866), Boston and New York (1870), Berlin (1876), and Ottawa (1882). The French national PXVHXP EHJDQ ZLWK WKH FRQÀVFDWLRQ RI  UR\DO FROOHFWLRQV DQG 5RPDQ &DWKROLF

Church property during the French Revolution, which suddenly placed under state ownership a vast amount of art that needed a home. The same pattern occurred in Spain where, during the reign of Napoleon’s brother Joseph (1808–13), Church property was nationalized. The national gallery in Madrid, situated in a building on the Paseo del Prado, opened to the public in 1819, following the restoration of Fernando VII, son of the deposed Carlos IV. Its artworks, the property of the royal family, were grouped according to national schools.

Napoleon, as part of his plan to establish Paris as the capital of a great empire, UHTXLUHG FRQTXHUHG WHUULWRULHV WR VHQG WKHLU PRVW VLJQLÀFDQW DUWZRUNV WR 3DULV IRU

installation in the Musée Napoléon. This brought together many famous masterpieces in a kind of “greatest hits” collection that raised public consciousness about art in

France and abroad (Figure 3.16). Visitors to Paris during Napoleon’s reign could contemplate Western art history as represented by its masterpieces. Outside France, people recognized the necessity of protecting and preserving their own art as part of their national identity.

The National Gallery in London represented a different conceptual model for a national museum. Unlike the Louvre and Prado museums, it did (and does) not include royal collections. All works of art were either donated by private persons or purchased, making the museum the result of individual philanthropy and democratic decision making. While some members of parliament wanted to appropriate some of the works stolen by Napoleon following Wellington’s victory at Waterloo, Wellington insisted they be returned to their original owners. Serious discussion about establishing a national museum began when George Beaumont bequeathed his art collection to the nation, and the extensive and important collection of John Angerstein came up for sale in London.

Angerstein, a Russian immigrant, agreed to sell his collection as the foundation for a British national museum in 1823. A year later the museum opened to the public in Angerstein’s former residence. It included Italian Renaissance masterpieces and works by British artists, including Reynolds and West, and Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode paintings (Figure 1.3). Parliament then began purchasing major works—by Poussin and Titian, for instance—when they came up for sale from private collections. In 1838, the National Gallery moved to its present location on Trafalgar Square. Paintings were arranged to highlight individual masterpieces. Britons began to recognize the importance of their own art in 1844, when Robert Vernon began admitting the public to his collection of British art. He donated 160 of these works—including paintings by Turner and Constable—to the National Gallery in 1848 with the provision that they be grouped together in a “Vernon Gallery,” permanent acknowledgement of a citizen’s contribution to the national patrimony. In 1853, two years after the

Figure 3.16

Anonymous, Eh bien, Messieurs!

Deux Millions [Napoleon displaying the Apollo Belvedere and other treasures taken from Italy], 1797.

Crystal Palace Exhibition (which ignited the competition among nations in art and technology), the National Gallery reorganized its collection according to national VFKRRO³,WDOLDQ 'XWFK DQG )OHPLVK )UHQFK 6SDQLVK DQG (QJOLVK³UHÁHFWLQJ WKH

escalating awareness of art as an embodiment of national identity.

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and the government; not until the twentieth century was a national art museum established in Washington (1937). This situation contrasted with Europe, although following the American Civil War (1861–65), museums were founded in major cities with the enthusiastic support of private collectors. In 1844, the New York Gallery of Fine Art opened, with the former collection of grocery magnate Luman Reed as its core. For its founders, a group of successful businessmen, establishing a museum was a point of honor since all European cities the size of New York had by then public art museums. Lack of funding caused the Gallery of Fine Art to close in 1853 and to transfer its holdings to the recently established New York Historical Society.

CONCLUSION

In order to comfort and pacify the public during an era of incessant and often unsettling change and to foster support for those in power, links to the past were forged. References to wise, respected ancient rulers and altruistic, devout saints served DV HIIHFWLYH PHDQV RI  HQQREOLQJ WKH GHHGV RI  FRQWHPSRUDU\ ÀJXUHV $W WKH VDPH

time, trust in secular and religious leaders wavered, and artists utilized these same DVVRFLDWLRQVWRXQGHUPLQHSXEOLFFRQÀGHQFHLQDXWKRULW\WKH\IHOWZDVXQGHVHUYLQJ

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considered society guided not by rational Enlightenment principles but by egotism and indifference, began to look elsewhere for answers: to the human imagination and to nature. This more complex world view that took intuition, instinct, and unseen forces seriously is known as Romanticism.

For maps of locations mentioned in this chapter and pictures of the Panthéon and Géricault’s impressive grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris go to www.routledge.

com/textbooks/facos.

Romanticism

C H A P T E R 4

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adical, egalitarian Enlightenment ideas, like the policy of d’Angiviller, encouraged artists to develop a visual language appropriate to the ideas they wanted to communicate. In d’Angiviller’s case, the ideas he sanctioned were OLPLWHGWRWKRVHEHQHÀWLQJSROLWLFDOVWDELOLW\DQG1HRFODVVLFLVPZDVWKHVW\OHFRQVLGHUHG

most appropriate. Under different circumstances however, brutal, ghastly elements FRXOGUHLQIRUFHRIÀFLDOGRJPDDVHYLGHQFHGE\*URV·VPesthouse at Jaffa (Figure 3.8).

Intense subjectivity, associated with Romanticism, emerged in David’s Brutus (Figure 2.9), but again, it was regulated—by Neoclassical principles. Thus, there was a certain GHJUHHRI ÁH[LELOLW\UHJDUGLQJWKHNLQGRI SDLQWLQJDFFHSWDEOHWRDFDGHPLHVDQGUXOHUV

or patrons. This depended on the purpose of an artwork and the conditions under which it was conceived. English artists enjoyed the greatest freedom because of England’s political stability and comparatively liberal values.

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governments waned, due primarily to two factors: an expanding art market due to increasing bourgeois wealth, and the escalating popularity of radical Enlightenment ideas. Its two most important ideas—human equality and the superiority of knowledge gained through observation and experience—implied rejecting hierarchies and privileges based on birth, religion, and tradition. These included the foundational institutions of western political systems (monarchy, aristocracy), organized religion, and art academies. It also meant than an individual’s feeling, experience, and ideas had inherent value.

The drastic political, social, and economic transformations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries help explain the appeal of Romanticism.

Much of Europe was ravaged by war, aristocracies feared the spread of democratic revolution, France and the United States struggled to establish stable governments, the population of Europe increased at an alarming rate, with agricultural production striving to keep up. Industrialization created a new social class, the working class, whose displacement from ancestral villages ruptured traditional social structures. Whereas previously people were secure in the knowledge that their daily meal came from a YLOODJHJDUGHQRQFHXSURRWHGWRWKHFLW\ZKHUHDÁHGJOLQJVXSSO\QHWZRUNFRXOGQRW

always meet demand, people often no longer knew when their next meal would come, or if they could afford it, particularly in times of crop failure, unemployment, and ÁRRG)RUWKHPDMRULW\KXQJHUZDVDQDFXWHDQGFRQVWDQWFRQFHUQDQGGULQNLQJZDWHU

was often contaminated by sewage. As a counterbalance to the helplessness felt by many in the face of circumstances they could not control, the example of Napoleon,

although ultimately a failure, showed the heights to which an individual born without money and social status, but with talent and determination, could rise.

Great Britain France *HUPDQ\ Austria Belgium 5XVVLD

1790 69 141 — — — —

1825 669 212 90 85 — 164

1855 3,583 900 422 306 312 254

1875 6,484 1,462 1,770 418 484 424

1900 8,778 2,665 7,925 1,425 1,070 2,773

Data Box 4: Pig Iron Production (annual average in thousand metric tons)

In document INSTITUTO TECNOLÓGICO Y DE ESTUDIOS SUPERIORES DE MONTERREY (página 12-0)