Hudson River and French Romanticism

The Raft of the Medusa

Théodore Géricault

 

The Romantic era is a throwback to the Baroque era stylistically. It tends to look at mystical, legendary, or fantastic situations and bring them to life. One such case is the shipwreck of the Medusa, which was a French vessel that ran aground. The crew was isolated for a long time and apparently turned to cannibalism and attempted to escape the island using a raft created from the detritus of the ship. It’s a far-out fantastical story that might be out of a book or a play. It’s the perfect subject for a politically motivated reimagining by Théodore Géricault. There is some thought that the reason the ship ran aground was due to some incompetence of the captain of the ship.

However from the painting what isn’t communicated is that the captain was incompetent or that the crew had to turn to cannibalism. Instead, there is something like a Homeric epic struggle that is portrayed by the figures struggling and grasping for life. Trying to conquer the odds heroically. Everyone is clamoring to get out into the ocean and just at the horizon, there is the smallest hint of what might be the main sail of a frigate cresting the waves. Everything about this painting is this over-the-top epic struggle. Almost as if this story had gotten a Zach Synder 300 treatment. The strengths of the piece are with its use of shadow and an incredibly busy center triangle, between the bodies with the mast. The hue is predominantly sepia-toned there isn’t a lot of variation besides a great shadow in the center, that progressively illuminates at the edges. This epic reimagining is deliberate because this crash made the French Navy look bad. Anytime you have a Captain who doesn’t project power and instead projects weakness that’s a problem. Just as things are from earlier in the century this is a piece that is trying to sell you on the dire struggle of running aground and with the great waves combined with the state of the crew, maybe it was unavoidable. It really was this men against gods clash in the ocean. Théodore Géricault is known for creating paintings this kind of epic patriotic artwork. 

Despite the color tone being drab it has a vibrancy and urgency about the painting that I enjoy. That’s mostly communicated by the body language of the subjects. There is so much dynamism going on in the work that it just pops. With art like this you can turn that failure into a dramatic success. 

Liberty leading People

Eugène Delacroix

Looking more into French Romanticism, and that mythical reimagining of events the next painting Liberty Leading the People dives deeper into the fantastic. This is a painting that is putting a message first and ignoring historicity. In the prior painting, there might have been some kind of balance between being somewhat accurate and making the scene as epic as possible. In this painting, this is a direct personification of human ideals or jumping into proto-Jungian psychology. This is a symbolic piece first. 

In the center is the French flag in red white and blue being held by a seminude woman who is being followed by a bunch of soldiers. A man is at her feet looking up at her, just like the flag he is wearing red white, and blue. To his right is a soldier who is dead at her feet who is likewise red white and blue, although he is greyed out symbolically. Obscured by smoke are the soldiers who either have red white and blue on their clothing or on bayonets. To her left, the viewer's right is a boy with guns, and she is wielding a rifle. Her face is interesting because it is a Greek profile, something that is reminiscent of Athena. 

The symbolism is on the nose, that France is looking towards Lady Liberty, this personification of truth and justice, a cultural motif and she is leading the French people onward. Her semi-nude form is aimed directly at men to believe that if they follow her there is this chance at sex, having children, and a future for France. It’s a propaganda package that is parallel to the post-World War II nuclear family of a house, land, wife, 2.5 kids, and a dog. It is just more symbolic and relevant to the culture at the time. It’s glamorizing the war, and entrenching it in that mythical framework. It showcases the promise of success and also to a lesser extent the risk of defeat. 

The aspect at play is the strategic use of color putting the French flag in the people. The use of color to communicate French nationalism. There isn't a good sense of space, but there is the hint of a large throng of people behind the main figure.   

I appreciate this piece for the same reason I enjoyed others that are similar. Strategic messaging is important in warfare, and it’s interesting to see the development of information warfare over the ages. 

A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie

 Albert Bierstadt

 

This is the type of painting I would really want to see in person, because even with the digital image it is awe-inspiring to the extent it makes my jaw drop and time seems to stand still. I love everything about this picture. It does something interesting with color theory and shadow that is unusual. It’s also hard to pull off effectively. The foreground is dark and obscured. The center is bright and the background is also dark with a tiny sliver of light in the back. Normally you use shadow to push things back making the foreground the brightest. By ignoring that and making this kind of three-layered alternating sets of light and dark, the painting gives this immense sense of space. It is majestic. This is the parfait of oil paintings. 

It's not just the mountains, the clouds are sculpted too. You can see the bowl of clouds following the valley that accentuates and compliments the shape of the mountains. 

The European landscape of art is colored by throwbacks to Greek and Roman motifs. Thousands of years of history and context is always saturating the oil paintings. The Hudson River School in their conception of art was trying to do something that had never been done before. They were looking for a truly American version of art. So this form of naturalism in capturing the majestic beauty of America was their way of approaching and solving that problem. It’s a fresh start into something new. There is nothing that communicates that better than a landscape that looks like Eden in a sense. I believe the artist is trying to establish the epic, majestic America. The new Eden kind of a tale. He accomplishes that immensely. 

Asher Brown Durand

The Solitary Oak

In the Solitary Oak we have a similar theme of exploring the beauty of America. This isn’t quite as Edenic as there looks to be a house and a person in the distance. That’s not necessarily problematic but it is telling a similar story. This one is of the prairie and the peacefully idyllic life that there is in America. This work creates space not so much by extreme contrasts as you would expect in mountainous terrain but by gentle sloping into the purple horizon. There is a feeling of immense calm and tranquility that permeates the work. 

Durand was attempting to appeal to a city dweller's ideal of what the countryside was actually like. How it was not just this place of beauty but also spiritual as well. A place of healing and quietness. 

There is nothing that stands out to me as eye-grabbing other than the whole expanse of the piece. I think that’s deliberate. Because it’s not busy and energetic with dynamic poses it causes your eye to seamlessly and lazily drift across it. Like your eye would in the countryside. This is a completely different take on America and the countryside. Not as this epic landscape of towering mountains and "God rays" of sun, with dire thunderstorms. It's about spirituality, being at peace with nature, and an intrinsic calmness that soaks into the soul. 

References

Artist Info Théodore Gericault. National Gallery of Art, https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-   info.1334.html. Accessed 14 July 2024.

Bierstadt, Albert. Albert Bierstadt Biography with All Details. https://www.albertbierstadt.org/biography.html. Accessed 14 July 2024.

En - Musée Delacroix. https://www.musee-delacroix.fr/en/. Accessed 14 July 2024.

"Heeding the Call of Nature: Asher Brown Durand's Communion with the American Landscape"; Essay by Lee A. Vedder. https://tfaoi.org/aa/6aa/6aa4d.htm. Accessed 14 July 2024.