Essay - Family portraits - A journey through art history, Exercises of Art

Download Essay - Family portraits - A journey through art history and more Exercises Art in PDF only on Docsity! 56 The Focus Vol. XV/1 Essay Family portraits A journey through art history In the bourgeois era the family, as society’s primary unit, became socially acceptable as the subject of a picture; until then it had been the nobility who left their mark on this art form. The family’s changing political and social status is therefore reflected in the images passed down to us in painted form – images which at the same time bear the distinctive hallmark of the creative minds that shaped them. At times when status-boosting hyper- bole was the order of the day, artists sought out and explored the cracks in the image; elsewhere, domestic intimacy is appropriated to serve patriotic ends. These are just some of the conclusions to be drawn from the six family portraits – all major works in terms of art history – selected and presented here by Wibke von Bonin. by Wibke von Bonin 1. They kept hunting dogs and court dwarfs; the ladies curtseyed in their big hooped skirts, the men wore ruffs. They ruled over countries far and near and enjoyed the fruits of their conquests. Wealth and splendor com- bined with stringent etiquette: life at the court of Philip IV, depicted in fabulous detail in the painting “las Meninas” (1656, The Maids of honor) by court painter Diego Velázquez (1465–1524), offers no hint of the fact that elsewhere in europe the consequences of the Thirty Years’ War were still unraveling and that the power of the spanish royal family was steadily dwin- dling, hanging like a sword of Damocles over Madrid. The succession was at risk. of the king’s eight children born in wedlock only one daughter was still alive in 1649 when he married his second wife: Maria Anna of Austria, previously the fiancée of his own son and heir, who had died not long before. he was 42, she was just 15 – and his own niece, into the bargain. The first child born of this marriage was Margarita, shown as a five-year-old at the center of this painting – known as “la Familia” from the 18th to the mid-19th century and one of the most admired and debated paint- ings in the history of art. We know the names of the young noblewomen who lean towards the princess, and of the dwarfs to the right of the picture and the people behind them. Yet the viewer’s interest is focused on the two bright rectangles at the far end of the room. here we can make out – the identification is almost undisputed – a reflection in a mirror of the king and queen, while the backlit figure of court chamberlain José Nieto appears on a staircase to the right. Nieto’s job as the king’s attendant was to open doors for his royal master; his presence in the family picture is re- garded as evidence that the two reflected figures – shown as half-length portraits – are indeed Philip IV and his wife, even though it was not really the proper thing to show their majesties in anything other than their full-size glory. Diego Velázquez could clearly afford a breach of etiquette – which he compounds by including himself P H o to s : P ic tu r e a l l ia n c e /u n it e d a r c H iv e s ( v e l a z q u e z ); P ic tu r e a l l ia n c e /a r tc o l o r /a . K o c H ( G o y a ); P ic tu r e a l l ia n c e /a K G -i m a G e s /e r ic H l e s s in G ( s te e n ); P ic tu r e a l l ia n c e /a K G -i m a G e s ( B a z il l e ); P H il a d e l P H ia m u s e u m o f a r t/ c o r B is ( P e a l e ); c o r B is ( r o c K w e l l ) Parallel Worlds Essay 57 The Focus Vol. XV/1 masterful breach of etiquette: “las meninas” by diego velázquez 60 The Focus Vol. XV/1 close relatives in groups on a countryside terrace, in the shadow of a large tree. his parents sit in the left fore- ground, behind them stand his brother Marc and – at the far edge of the picture – Bazille himself. We know the names of the individual figures and their relationship to the artist – the sister-in-law, the cousins, the Doctor and his wife. Yet they are of interest chiefly to this genteel family’s descendants. contemporary viewers of this large painting enjoy the young ladies’ gossamer-light summer dresses, the patches of sunlight on the ground and the magical little still life of hat, stick and bouquet in the foreground. And marvel at the solemn serious- ness of the faces – almost all looking towards a point outside the picture, beyond the foreground. had the pic- ture been painted a few decades later we might see a reference to a quasi-photographic perspective here. The painter was a friend of the Impressionists, espe- cially claude Monet. Three years after depicting this peaceful summer idyll, in November 1870, Frédéric Bazille was killed in the Franco-Prussian war, never to turn 30 years old. 5. It was not possible to survive as a portrait painter in early 18th-century America. Talented artists also worked in a craft profession – as house painters or gild- ers, for example. As trade prospered, great fortunes were made in cities like Boston and Philadelphia, yet it did not occur to the newly affluent middle class to pa- tronize the arts. only later generations, and generally the descendants of english colonists, managed to over- come the limitations of colonial painting through their contacts with master painters in the homeland of their forebears. charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), a self-taught artist who studied for several years in london, was the first painter confident enough to return home and seek his fortune there. At that time Philadelphia was the big- gest city in the united states, with 70,000 residents, and the wealthiest, too. And by this stage a prosperous citizen like John cadwalader was more than happy to put this wealth on display. he commissioned no less than five works for his family residence from Peale, including the “Portrait of John and elizabeth lloyd cadwalader and Their Daughter Anne”. This family portrait with his wife and daughter was painted in 1772. The head of the household adopts a forthright, assured pose, while his wife – wearing a sumptuous silk dress, her hair arranged in the rococo style – looks virtue, decorum, an idyllic world: Peale‘s small and rockwell‘s extended families depict the idealized nucleus of american society. Parallel Worlds Essay 61 The Focus Vol. XV/1 freedom from want and from fear, freedom of speech and freedom of worship. These freedoms – it is implied – were worth fighting for; the American public, the majority of whom were at this stage opposed to the usA’s intervention in World War II, should stand up for them. The saturday evening Post printed the Four Freedoms in February/March 1943. Norman Rockwell, who was unable to take part in the battle for the Amer- ican dream of freedom and prosperity for everyone, saw his freedom illustrations as persuasive endorse- ments of President Roosevelt, whose economic pro- gram called for significant sacrifices on the part of the American people. Powerful images of the family have come down to us, spanning long periods of history, and mediated in particular by works of art. Whether they were produced against a backdrop of dynastic or bourgeois aspira- tions, these works stand out, above all, when they also reveal the artist’s personal viewpoint. Today photogra- phers have joined, but not replaced, these artists. Be- cause, contrary to the early adage which equated pho- tography with objective reproduction, this medium too is used in a highly artistic way. Thomas struth’s family portraits are just one example – albeit an extraordinar- ily original one. up to him confidently. he is handing a ripe peach to his little daughter and gazes thoughtfully down at both of them. The painting radiates a calm satisfaction. The couple do not look beyond the picture but are occupied with their child – who will profit from their wealth and will probably be raised in accordance with the moral principles of the age. The rigorous realism of Peale’s style reflected his self-appointed mission as an artist. The country needed pictures of its eminent citizens and heroes. The artist was a fervent patriot: he joined the civil militia in the War of Independence, fighting with them from 1776 onwards and quickly forging a military career. he be- came the fledgling republic’s first painter of historic scenes, producing pictures of battlefields and victors, and numerous portraits of George Washington – the first of which dates from 1772. 6. Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) was also a presidential portraitist. Yet long before his portraits of Dwight D. eisenhower, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were published for a mass audience on the title pages of the saturday evening Post, the artist was already a house- hold name in America, his characters as popular as those of Walt Disney. Rockwell was 22 years old when his first illustration appeared in a popular magazine in 1916; there would be nearly 300 of them in all over a span of nearly 50 years. People love his pictures be- cause they idealize the average American family – with a touch of gentle humor. one of his most famous pictures is “Freedom from Want”, painted in 1942. An extended family gathers around the table on Thanksgiving Day, chatting and in high spirits, while the housewife serves up the tradi- tional turkey, which will imminently be carved by the head of the family. There is no want here – but no high- living, either: the glasses are filled with water. This is a puritanical, healthy world, viewed from a standpoint at the end of the table which also includes the viewer. The viewer might be a guest at the table, might feel includ- ed, invited by the man in the right foreground. At any rate there seems to be enough space and food for every- one. The idyll of sufficiency is depicted with such pre- cision that this might be a photograph. This is one of the “Four Freedoms” illustrations in- spired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s epony- mous state of the union address to congress in 1941. The artist came up with memorable images to express Wibke von Bonin has a PhD in art history. As arts editor for German broadcaster WDR she documented the international art scene with films and series on art historical sub- jects spanning all ages and cultures. Her TV series on “100 masterpieces from the world’s major museums” – for which she also edit- ed an accompanying series of books – was especially popular. Her articles on art are published in books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues. ReSUMÉ Wibke von Bonin