PoP Research 4 – Dutch genre painting

Genre painting

• Dutch realist genre painters (1600-1700)
• Human figure and experience
• After 1517 religious movement abandoned Roman Christianity, Protestant reformation. Crucial moment for the development of genre painting
• Expensive decorations and public displays abandoned and frescoes rejected
• Patrons now belonged to the middle class, would embellish their homes with small-scale ‘feel-good’ paintings that they could relate to
• Historians believe that the climate in the northern countries played an important role in this switch to nasal paintings as the air was too humid for the preservation of fresco painting
• “Dutch Realism’ was middle on the hierarchy in between still life and history painting. Seen as less powerful than history paintings and portraits of rich and influential patrons
• Dutch realists combined people, nature, architecture and still objects as part of a simple narrative
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569) – portrayal of landscapes and peasant life is lively and unsentimental depictions of everyday life; observational skills, a grounded approach and the moral/social commentary
• • William Buytewech (1591-1624)
• • Frans Hals (1582-1666)
• • Adriaen Brouwer (1605-1638)
• Genre painting in the Golden Age is diverse in style and content as the achievement in techniques, optical effects and mood evocation
• 1630s – school of fine painters established  by Gerrit Dou.
• • Night scenes, hearth glow, candlelight
• • Gerard ter Borch the Younger (1617-1681)
• • Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684)
• • Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
• • Jan Steen (1626-1679)
• • Judith Jans Leyster (1609-1660)
• First phase of Dutch landscape painting – tonal phasesoft outlines, atmospheric effect, focus on the sky
• 1650s – classical phasekept atmospheric quality but featured contrasting light and colour and a compositional anchor like a tree, tower, ship
• • Ruisdael
• Interiors became popular
• Jan Vermeer – uniquely captured lighting in interior spaces
• Genre developed from the realism and detailed background activity of Early Netherlandish painting. The style reflected the increasing prosperity of Dutch society and settings became more comfortable, opulent and carefully depicted as the century progressed
• Adriaen Brouwer – Flemish master of tavern scenes
• Before Brouwer, peasants were depicted outside; he shows them in a plain and dim interior

Art in the 20th Century

• A few historical realisms developed – American and Socialist for example. Their painters portrayed American city life in an non-idealised manner

Painting during and after Modern Art Era

• Well-known shift from figuration to abstraction
• Modernism – instead of imitating scenes from everyday life, artists started to produce shapes and figures of their own imagination. They no longer felt a need to represent reality
• After the Modern era ended figuration will never really be abandoned but it never went back to its pre-modern state. Is its role in society the same? Does it illustrate the new working class and their lives in the same light?

Recent Genre Painting

• Slight reversion back to figuratove painting in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s
• • However, considered regressive and politically charged due to al ink with the Nazi movement
• Pop-Art – new kind of appreciation for the mundane
• • David Hockney’s work is similar to the initial principle behind genre painting
• • Their subject matter stressed a fascination with the ordinary and the common
• • Wayne Thiebaud’s still life paintings

Genre Painting in Contemporary Art

• Many contemporary painters apply themselves to figuration and many of these artists deal with scenes from everyday life. But we’re not sure if these scenes are real, invented or imagined

Relationship between Genre Painting and Photography

• Factual nature of photography
• Always been positioned between art and documentation and not considered art until recently
• Ordinary people and life as it is have turned out to be just as interesting as fantasy
• Julie Blackmon – “…images are both fictional and auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the fantastic elements if our everyday lives, both imagined and real.”

Sources

metmuseum.org

widewalls.ch