Monday, November 28, 2016

Salon-style Paintings and Drawings, 19th century

Henriette Browne
Girl Writing, or, The Pet Goldfinch
c. 1870
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Julian Alden Weir
Idle Hours
1888
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The 19th-century descriptive impulse was a strong one. Artists, like novelists, made meticulous reproductions of the inanimate world, every button, every pleat. They seemed to share a notion that reality itself could be mastered if its textures were sufficiently accounted for. National art academies claimed to uphold universal and permanent standards of excellence and beauty. Posterity has judged that these claims were both bogus and irrelevant. Yet the work that asserted the claims is frequently exonerated for their falseness. It is even admired now for the foolish bravery of its illusions.

William Merritt Chase
Pink Azalea
1880s
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Manuel Arroyo
The Meeting of Francis I & Charles V
1887
Prado, Madrid

Charles Bargue
A Footman Sleeping
1871
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

attributed to Jean Ausustin Franquelin
Mariner's Wife
1830s
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giacomo Favretto
Academic Nude
19th century
Morgan Library, New York

Hippolyte Flandrin
Academic Nude
1830s
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Merry-Joseph Blondel
Venus Healing Aeneas
19th century
Prado, Madrid

Germán Hernández Amores
Socrates Reproaching Alcibiades
1857
Prado, Madrid

Vicente López Portaña
Portrait of María Francisca de la Gándara
1846
Prado, Madrid

Francisco Pradilla
Baptismal Procession of Prince Juan
1910
Prado, Madrid