Genre painting
Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities.[1] One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively, thus distinguishing it from history paintings (also called grand genre) and portraits. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person—a member of his family, say—as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class.
Genre subjects appear in many traditions of art. Painted decorations in
To 1800
The Low Countries dominated the field until the 18th century, and in the 17th century both Flemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden Age painting produced numerous specialists who mostly painted genre scenes.
In the previous century, the Flemish
Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade, Jan Steen, Adriaen Brouwer, David Teniers, Joos van Craesbeeck, Gillis van Tilborgh, Aelbert Cuyp, Willem van Herp, David Ryckaert III. Jacob Jordaens, Johannes Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch were among the many painters specializing in genre subjects in the Low Countries during the 17th century. The generally small scale of these artists' paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers.
The apparent 'realism' of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art gives the viewer the initial impression that the artist solely intends to depict scenes of common life in a realistic way. Underneath the realistic representation are, however, often hidden underlying meanings, either moral or symbolic. For instance,
One of the recurring themes in Flemish and Dutch genre painting is that of the merry company. These works typically show a group of figures at a party, whether making music at home or just drinking in a tavern. Other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities ("kermesse"), or soldiers in their camp or guardroom.
The Dutch painter
In England, William Hogarth (1697–1764) conveyed comedy, social criticism and moral lessons through canvases that told stories of ordinary people ful of narrative detail (aided by long sub-titles), often in serial form, as in his A Rake's Progress, first painted in 1732–33, then engraved and published in print form in 1735.
Developments in 16th Netherlandish art were received in Spain through the presence of Flemish artists working on projects in Spain as well as through Spain's sovereignty over the Spanish Netherlands. During the
19th century
With the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them.
William Powell Frith (1819–1909) was perhaps the most famous English genre painter of the Victorian era, painting large and extremely crowded scenes; the expansion in size and ambition in 19th-century genre painting was a common trend. Other 19th-century English genre painters include Augustus Leopold Egg, Frederick Daniel Hardy, George Elgar Hicks, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Scotland produced two influential genre painters, David Allan (1744–96) and Sir David Wilkie (1785–1841). Wilkie's The Cottar's Saturday Night (1837) inspired a major work by the French painter Gustave Courbet, After Dinner at Ornans (1849). Famous Russian realist painters like Vasily Perov and Ilya Repin also produced genre paintings.
In Germany, Carl Spitzweg (1808–85) specialized in gently humorous genre scenes, and in Italy Gerolamo Induno (1825–90) painted scenes of military life. Subsequently, the Impressionists, as well as such 20th-century artists as Pierre Bonnard, Itshak Holtz, Edward Hopper, and David Park painted scenes of daily life. But in the context of modern art the term "genre painting" has come to be associated mainly with painting of an especially anecdotal or sentimental nature, painted in a traditionally realistic technique.
In Belgium, the nationalism of the new state born in 1830 gave rise to history painting glorifying the past of the nation and genre painting returning to the models of 17th-century. Examples of artists working in this retro style include
The first true genre painter in the United States was the German immigrant John Lewis Krimmel. He was influenced, at least initially, by English artists such as William Hogarth and Scottish painters such as David Wilkie and produced lively and gently humorous scenes of life in Philadelphia from 1812 to 1821.[11] Other notable 19th-century genre painters from the United States include George Caleb Bingham, William Sidney Mount, and Eastman Johnson. Harry Roseland focused on scenes of poor African Americans in the post-American Civil War South, and John Rogers (1829–1904) was a sculptor whose small genre works, mass-produced in cast plaster, were immensely popular in America.[12] The works of American painter Ernie Barnes (1938–2009) and those of illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) exemplify a more modern type of genre painting.[13]
Genre in Asian traditions
Gallery of Flemish genre paintings
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Jan Sanders van Hemessen, Brothel scene, c. 1545–50
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David Teniers the Younger, Tavern scene, 1640
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Joos van Craesbeeck, Soldiers and Women, 1640s
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Gillis van Tilborgh, Elegant Company, between 1655 and 1675
Gallery of Dutch 17th-century genre paintings
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Hendrick Avercamp painted almost exclusively winter scenes.
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Gerard van Honthorst, Merry Company, 1623, using the chiaroscuro technique typical of Utrecht Caravaggism
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Judith Leyster, A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel, c. 1635
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Pieter de Hooch, The Visit, c. 1657
References
- ^ Art & Architecture Thesaurus, s.v. "genre" Archived 2018-07-31 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 30 April 2022.
- ^ Book XXXV.112 of Natural History.
- ^ "E. de Jongh, 'Erotica in vogelperspectief. De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks zeventiende-eeuwse genrevoorstellingen'· dbnl". DBNL. Retrieved 30 April 2022.
- ^ Ingrid A. Cartwright, Hoe schilder hoe wilder: Dissolute Self-Por traiture in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Art, Advisors: Wheelock, Arthur, PhD, 2007 Dissertation, University of Maryland University of Maryland (College Park, Md.), p. 8
- ^ H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek & Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. (1996) Jan Steen. Schilder en verteller, p. 172
- ^ Jan Steen, As the Old Sing, So the Young Pipe Archived 2021-11-08 at the Wayback Machine at the Mauritshuis
- ^ Brigstocke, Hugh. "Bourdon, Sébastien", Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 30 April 2022
- ^ Slive, Seymour (1995). "Italianate and Classical Painting". Pelican History of Art, Dutch Painting 1600–1800. Penguin Books Ltd. pp. 225–245
- ^ Francisco Goya Archived 2022-09-18 at the Wayback Machine at the National Gallery of Art
- ^ Jan Dirk Baetens, Review of: 'Henri De Braekeleer: 1840–1888' (2019) Archived 2020-11-23 at the Wayback Machine in Oud Holland, April 2020
- ^ Anneliese Harding, British and Scottish Models for the American Genre Paintings of John Lewis Krimmel, Winterthur Portfolio, Volume 38, Number 4 Winter 2003
- ^ Harry Roseland Archived 2022-05-21 at the Wayback Machine at Encore Editions
- ^ American Scenes of Everyday Life, 1840–1910 Archived 2022-09-27 at the Wayback Machine at the Metropoliton Museum
Further reading
- Buijsen, Edwin. "From 'Peasant Stories' to 'Urbane or Elegant Modern': A Birds-Eye View of Genre Painting in the Mauritshuis" In Van S Genre Paintings in the Mauritshuis, pp. 10–25.
- Van Suchtelen, Ariadne and Quentin Buvelot. Genre Paintings in the Mauritshuis. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers 2016.ISBN 978-94-6262-0940
See also
External links
- Media related to genre paintings at Wikimedia Commons