3.4 The role of the Edinburgh Town Council This route incidentally leads us to another important feature of the movement, namely the role of the Edinburgh Town Council and its provosts. (The English equivalent would be a lord mayor.) Throughout the eighteenth century, the Town Council, with a policy of enlightened self-interest, promoted the city by sponsoring or patronising its academic, medical and scientific life. The Council regarded the city's university, infirmary and medical school as institutions which, if given enough prestig
4.6 From Enlightenment to Romantic thinking The Enlightenment had typically expressed, on the one hand, the soul and imagination and, on the other, reason and intelligence in terms of incompatible opposites. Not so Delacroix: What are the soul and the intelligence when separated? The pleasure of naming and classifying is the fatal thing about men of learning. They are always overreaching themselves and spoiling their game in the eyes of those easy-going, fai 3.7 Massacres of Chios – a critical stir Chauvin viewed both Delacroix’s subject and his technique as barbaric: the painting dealt with no eternal truths and delivered no inspiring lesson. Other complaints were voiced about the rough brushwork that called attention to itself in such a non-academic manner. The ‘cadaverous tint’ of the bodies also drew criticism. Gros, whose own compositional experiments had inspired Delacroix, allegedly called the picture the ‘massacre of painting’ (quoted in Johnson, 1981, p.87), while Ste Acknowledgements This course was written by Dr Linda Walsh. This free course is an adapted extract from the course A207 From Enlightenment to Romanticism c.1780-1830, which is currently out of presentation Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Author(s): References Acknowledgements This course was written by Dr Emma Barker. This free course is an adapted extract from the course A207 From Enlightenment to Romanticism, which is currently out of presentation Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Author(s): 3.2 The propaganda function of Jaffa When Jaffa was exhibited in 1804, it was greeted with great acclaim and would thus seem to have fulfilled the propaganda purpose for which it was intended. Like The Battle of Nazareth, it deals with the later stages of the Egyptian campaign after the French had invaded Syria, which, like Egypt, formed part of the Ottoman (Turkish) empire. The French assault on Jaffa in March 1799 culminated in the massacre on Bonaparte's orders of some 2,500–3,000 Turks, who had surrendered th 3.1.1 Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken of Jaffa First and foremost, Jaffa (like Eylau) contributed to the personality cult of Napoleon, which formed the core of the regime's propaganda. In this respect, however, it is important to note that this painting, exhibited in the Salon of 1804, was actually one of the first military scenes commissioned by the regime to exalt Napoleon in this way. This was largely because it took some time before the propaganda machine needed to organize a large-scale system of official patronage was 3.1 The limits of propaganda Although portraits of Napoleon were manufactured on a large scale and distributed widely, they could only act as propaganda for the regime up to a certain point. Given the institutional circumstances sketched out in the introduction to this course, the most effective way to use art as propaganda was with large-scale history paintings that would attract the attention and excite the interest of a large audience when they were exhibited in the Salon. State patronage for such painting was revived 2.7 Legitimating the regime The failure of Ingres's painting is revealing of the problems of political legitimation faced by the regime. If it was difficult to justify the authority of a ruler who had seized power, it was even harder to justify a monarchy based on usurpation (the authority Napoleon had usurped being either that of the Bourbon dynasty from a royalist point of view or that of the people from a republican one). Ingres's image of timeless, otherworldly majesty can thus be seen as compensating, or rather try 2.5 The emperor With Napoleon's coronation as emperor in 1804, a new type of official image was once again required. Portraits of the emperor in his ceremonial robes were commissioned from several established artists; these all revived a traditional type of royal portraiture from the eighteenth century. The example shown in Plate 10 is by a former David student, Francois Gérard (1770–1837), by now a fashionable portrait painter (see Author(s): 2.4 The First Consul Clickto see plate 11 Antoine-Jean Gros, Bonaparte as First Consul, 1802, oil on canvas, 205 x 127 cm, Musée Nationale de la Légion d’Honneur, Paris. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library Look at Gros's Bon 2.3 The military leader Let us now consider another relatively early portrait, David's Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, in which the then First Consul is shown at the Great Saint Bernard at the start of the campaign which led to the defeat of the Austrians at Marengo in June 1800 (see Plate 10). In fact, Bonaparte had actually crossed the Alps on a humble mule rather than 2.2 Hero or great man? Read the following passage from the Encydopédie article ‘Hero’, considering what qualities identify the hero as opposed to the great man. Which type of man seems to owe more to innate talent and ge Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: analyse paintings centred on the human figure in terms of how a work's form and content together produce its meaning explain how and why French painting came to be used and controlled by the Napoleonic regime discuss the problems of interpretation raised by Gros's Napoleonic paintings locate Napoleonic painting within the broad shift from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in French art. References Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to 6.3 Seaside photography 6.2.2 Informational content Obviously for the purpose of historical record, portraits taken in the context of the family home can be more informative than those taken inside the studio with its make-believe settings. Compare the 5.7.2 Post-mortems How do Images 73 and 74 differ from the usual studio portraits of children? Make a note of the more obvious differences.
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