Dan C.:


The Bath of Psyche (detail): Frederick Leighton (1830-1896).
            This painting by Leighton was painted with oil on canvas in 1890.  It is a portrait of Psyche who was written in a tale of the Roman poet Lucius Apuleius in the 2nd century A.D.  In the tale, the beautiful Psyche is united with the son of Venus, Cupid.  Her name signifies the soul.


William Holman Hunt (English, 1827-1910). Oil on panel
The woman portrayed in the painting is the Lady of Shalott who was cursed to weave at a loom.  At one point, she sees and looks directly at Lancelot, and 'the curse' comes upon her. Then, she leaves the tower and takes a boat onto the lake.  As a symbol of empowerment, she writes her name on the side of the boat.  However, the Lady of Shalott, later, dies.

By reading Barzun’s, “The Work of Mind-And-Heart,” I learned that the Romantic period began in the late 18th century and ended in the mid 19th century.  One of the early Romantics was Rousseau who believed that humans were moved by passion more than anything else.  He also believed that thought, or reason, was the main “instrument” for our desires and that the heart and the mind were the “engine” for our moral, social, and scientific progress.  Rousseau’s beliefs in what being a Romantic explains why the poetry of this time focuses on “egotism” and “subjectivity.”

Two other important aspects of the time were the love of nature and the importance of the human spirit.  Romantics believed that people should respect and be in awe of nature.  Also, Romantics were fascinated by human imagination and the good and bad sides of human nature.  However, I found it difficult to understand the importance of some of the major poets and artists of the time period other than Rousseau.

Zach:

Remorse of Nero after the Murder of his Mother.
1878
John William Waterhouse
I found this painting rather odd while scrolling through the paintings because, all of the painting during the time period seemed to be about or include women. This was one of the first paintings that focused on only a male. However at the same time, the way in which Nero is portrayed he had female like stature, in the way that he is laying on the bed with his head in his hands.

 

 

Pan and Psych
1872-74
Burne Jones
What caught my eye about this painting what that it contained a Centaur. I found this rather odd because o most of the paintings were classical views of women, This painting contains a greek myth symbol. None of the other painting included anything like this? Were there more like this or what this a strange painting for this time period?

 

 

 

 

After reading the article about Pre-Raphaelites I found myself even more confused about the genre. Most painting genres that I am aware of the artists all had very similar styles and focuses and for the most part while scrolling through the painting they seemed all very similar. But as I read through this article is seemed like all the artists all had very different styles, so I went back through the paintings but still could not find or notice the differences. Also It seems like from this article that a lot of publicity has started to come out more recently about this genre of painting. Is that because it a lot of these paintings have just been dated or found or is there another reason?

Kristina:
http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/Big/Proserpine.jpg
   
  "Proserpine:" Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Oil on canvas, 1874
        
         Proserpine is a daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She was abducted by Hades to be queen of Underground, but allowed to return to the surface of the earth for part of the year. She is considered a personification of spring. Her appearance is similair to paintings of other women we looked at last class: long neck, a lot of hair etc.

http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/wat/jpg/water01.jpg <http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/wat/jpg/water01.jpg>

     "Thisbe" John William Waterhouse. 1909

         Thisbe is a figure in Greek Mythology. She and her lover Pyramus were forbidden from being together, so they used a crack in a wall between them to converse with each other. 

Barzun helped to explain what kinds of ideas existed during the time of the Romanism. He mentions that during this time Romantism included political and economic ideas that were either new or developed forms of earlier views. Romanticism also consisted of the rediscovery of certain past periods. Similarly, Pre-Ralphaelites"who saw themselves as an avant-garde group, and they looked to the early masters as an inspiration. They chose the name Pre-Raphaelite as a homage to the painters that flourished before the perceived 'dour influence' of Raphael.

http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/tra18481

Stephanie:

Destiny, Bridgeman Art Library, the date is unknown. By: John William Waterhouse. This painting is very relevant to the Pre-Raphaelite’s style because of its portrayal of a girl that tells something about nature. Within this image there are layers of symbolism that are brought out by the colors Waterhouse used.

My Sweet Rose, Bridgeman Art Library, date is unknown. By: John William Waterhouse
This painting is especially “Pre-Raphaelite” style because of the color and style. The combination of mind and heart are clearly shown in this. The beauty of the women and the flowers is being expressed in this newly changed world.

Barzun has a quote on page 466 that reassures my idea of Pre-Raphaelites understanding. It says “Romanticism work was ‘one meant to give please to us living today, whereas classicist one was designed to give pleasure to your grandfathers’”. This makes my understanding clearer, if I am correct in saying that the Pre-Raphaelite era was like a Romantic era which involved more artistic movement rather than political advancements in society. He also quotes on page 467, “These tales were often about love and adventure, as contrasted with epic narratives or satires.” This deepens my idea of the Pre-Raphaelites because all of their artwork consists of women with lots of rich color in the paintings. For example, the second painting I chose has a romantic side to it with the pretty pink roses and the young beautiful women smelling them, how is that not clearly romance?

Also on page 470 Barzun has an interesting statement. “Man, then, is conceived by Romanticism as a creature that feels and can think. His every thought is charged with some emotion. When this opinion is new in the culture the need is felt to study the ways of mind-and-heart as one force, while giving form to its less conscious stirrings.” This also deepens my understanding of the Pre-Raphaelites era because the look and style of the paintings themselves, give that sense of a new way of thinking as Barzun calls “mind-and-heart” together. It is no longer just what one’s mind is expressing, artists are beginning to combine mind with what they feel in their hearts too.

Dan D.:
Dan Duggan


Ulysses and the Sirens by JW Waterhouse is an Oil on Canvas piece, painted in 1851 it currently resides in the National Gallery of Victoria, located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. This painting is a visual representation of the passage in Homer’s Odyssey, where Odysseus (Ulysses) and his men pass the Sirens whose song would lure ships and its men to disaster. Waterhouse’s painting details how in Homer’s work, Odysseus ordered his men to cover their ears with wax so that they could not hear the Siren’s song, he also had his men tie him to the ship’s mast without any covering for his ears so that he could hear the music without steering the ship to destruction. Here Waterhouse depicts the sirens as a winged creature with the head of a woman.

St. Eulalia by JW Waterhouse is an Oil on Canvas piece, painted in 1885 it currently resides in the Tate Gallery in London. This painting represents the death of Saint Eulalia, a young woman from Spain who was killed by the Roman Empire due to her Christian beliefs and confrontation of the Judge Dacian and his laws and ceremonies forcing Spanish worship of Roman gods and goddesses. It is said that Saint Eulalia was first unsuccessfully tortured by Roman soldiers and then sentenced to death at the stake, here she is said to not have been affected by the fire while the soldiers themselves were burned and the flame went out; when the fire was reignited Eulalia opened her mouth and her soul in the form of a white dove flew out and with it she died. Fueled by anger, Dacian ordered that she be hung on a cross, despite the traditionally warm weather in the area, a snowstorm struck, covering the body of St. Eulalia. Her remains today rest in the Crypt bearing her name in the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia.

Sources:
http://www.steulalia.org/en/who-is-saint-eulalia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Eulalia_of_Barcelona
http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/pictures/ulysses-sirens-1891/
http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/wat/jpg/water07.jpg
http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/wat/jpg/water12.jpg

Jacques Barzun’s writing “The Work of Mind-And-Heart” definitely deepened my understanding of Pre-Raphaelites. I had a very limited understanding of romanticism in general up until reading this passage and Barzun’s descriptions on what the style was, where it evolved from, and all of which it covered was very informative. I would not say that the content of his writing confused anything which I may have already known, just that the writing itself was at parts difficult and a decent amount of the subject matter was unknown to me. The beginning of the piece where Barzun discusses the Treaty of Vienna and how the emotions following the war, artistically, spiritually, and intellectually all influenced the birth of romanticism was relatively straight-forward; Barzun deconstructs the word Romanticism itself and how it evolved to that point, representing architecture and “…new forms in art and thought” (468). Romanticism also finds a place in the romance languages and works by such men as Dante and Milton regarding Hell and Heaven, much of the romantic art deals with these themes as well as what could be called “classic” examples from Greek and Roman literature. What I gathered from Barzun was that romanticism was sort of a combination of many different styles but was meant to be very emotional and stirring, dealing with graphic themes and very religious tones.

However Barzun’s writing is very dense and a lot of his examples are not deeply explained, rather used to explain other of his examples; this made parts of the passage very difficult and time-consuming in that I really had no idea what he was talking about. What I ultimately came away with from Barzun was that Pre-Raphaelitism was a sort of re-awakening where older themes were combined with current subjects and produced very powerful and in-depth works of art, that in literature pieces were epic and involved “…strong, brooding, vindictive Byronic-adventurer who is ruthless toward his foes and, although passionate toward women, not subdued to their will either” (486). Readers at the time were subject to harsh rulers in a harsh time and these works provided both an escape and dream. The most surprising part of the piece to me was where Barzun discussed Froebel and how he produced the first kindergarten, that romanticism was an awakening on many different levels and is in fact a huge proponent of public education.

 

Doug:
http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/wat/jpg/water12.jpg
This painting was done by John William Waterhouse, in 1891, and is titled "Ulysses and the Sirens". Waterhouse was most well known for his artistic works of females, especially from Greek mythology.

The Barzun reading helped me understand the reason for much of the subject matter upon that Waterhouse painted. Barzun wrote that "given the task of reconstruction, the Romanticists could not do without the ideal of the hero". This general attitude of looking for heroes could have encouraged Waterhouse to choose Ulysses, perhaps the most famous hero in all of Greek mythology, to paint. Yet he chooses not to portray Ulysses in battle, or in any triumphant pose, instead he is drawn tied to the mast of his ship, as the sirens fly nearby, trying to lure the ship and its crew to their death. However, this encounter is not without bravery, and it demonstrates the human side of the heroes that were so greatly looked upon, the fact that they faced temptation just like everyone else. Indeed, Barzum remarks that "'roman' was applied to tales written in that dialect as spoked in southern France. These tales were often about love and adventure" and certainly Ulysses' journey was centered around love and adventure as well.

http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/Big/Hylas.jpg
This painting, done in 1851 by Sir John Everett Millais, is titled "Hylas and the Nymphs" and it depicts in very natural colors a young man reaching into a pond filled with nude nymphs.

Barzun writes that "Hugo declared that 'whatever is in nature is in art'". Millais certainly had this ideal in mind as he composed this very natural painting, focused on the interactions between people and nature. The two main colors in the painting at green, representing all the lush vegetation and natural components of the scene, and skin color, showing the naked human body in its most raw form. One romantic thinker of the time, "Stendhal affirms that the two experiences of the most concentrated awareness--love and art--are due to the same excitement of nerves and brain". This connection between love and art is deeply apparent in Millais' work, as it is a work of art concerned with the aesthetic beauty of nature and the emotional beauty of human love.

Laura

The title of this painting is La Ghirlandata. It was done by Dante Gabriel Rossetti between 1871 and 1874. This painting is interesting because of the bright red and pink colors jumping out of it. These colors create a happy, loving sense of emotion for the painting. The roses around the harp indicate a sense love and attraction. The harp in this painting represents music which is usually thought of as a symbol for love in life. The two angel like heads at the top bring a sense of purity and truth to the painting.


The title of this painting is Ophelia. It was done by Sir John Everett Millais in 1851 and it depicts Ophelia, a character from Shakespeare's play Hamlet. The bright colors and detailed scenery is what caught my eye in this painting. The painting seems to depict a sense of life and death. The life is shown with the colorful flowers as they float down the river. Death is represented by Ophelia floating in the river with her arms out and her head laying back. The painting reveals an undeniable sense of nature and beauty.

The Work of Mind-and-Heart by Barzun:
After reading the work of mind-and-heart by Barzun I had mixed feelings about whether or not this reading helped me to understand these paintings or not. He deepened my understanding of romanticism but I thought only related it slightly to the paintings. He helped me by making me realize romanticism was an “outburst against abstract reason and the search for order.”  It was not a movement, Barzun said, but more of state of consciousness and this is why it’s so hard to define the word. He related to me the fact that this period of time was an overwhelming time for artists.

By reading this Barzun helped me to see why these paintings were so unique in the way they looked. The paintings are interesting because artists of the romanticism period worked to fulfill the “urgent demands and obstacles of social peace or progress” and they were always up for a challenge.  Barzun says the use of the word romantic was used to characterize scenery and imagination in paintings. This is seen in many of the paintings through the bright colors and nature scenes in almost every painting. The painter’s term local color came into use, meaning the accurate portrayal of manners as means of conveying reality. As I could find and see in the paintings, the painter used color to show the reality of the scene. Romanticism was thought to validate risk and passion, Barzun says. By him telling us this we can relate it to the painting because of how risky some of the women look in them and the passion of love or desire they reveal in each painting. Finally, the statement “the arts convey truth” helped me when looking at these paintings. The paintings reveal a sense of truth when they have a religious touch to them or the way the women in them are positioned and color of their skin or make up. Over all Barzun did help me with some understanding of why the paintings look the way they do.

http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/Big/FlamingJune.jpgChelsea

    The oil painting “Proserpine” was created in 1874 by the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  It was created during the Romantic era.  Some of the Romantic characteristics of this painting are its bright colors and its realistic portrayal.  What I liked about this painting was that it used bright colors and I loved how it was a little bit different from all of the other paintings that I saw.  She still had the same long hair and pale skin but this painting seemed to be a lot more relaxed.
       Barzun’s works helped deepen my understanding of the Pre-Raphaelites because I was able to understand the use of bright colors.  This was a time period where people were more drawn to using brighter colors because it was a time of excitement.  I was also able to understand that this was a time period where people were concerned about depicting everyday life.  This painting depicts something that would appear in the everyday, normal life or a common person rather than focusing on what might be considered more important like Kings and Queens.  I was also able to learn that this was a time period where people were more concerned about pleasing the people of the current time and not those of the past.  So rather than sticking with traditional painting topics and styles, Rossetti chose a more contemporary, relatable scene to depict.

         The painting “Destiny” was created by the artist John William Waterhouse.  What I liked most about this painting was her bright red dress and how it seems to stick out from everything else in the painting.  I also really liked how there is water and boats in the background.  Another aspect of this piece that I enjoy is her facial expression.  This painting’s expression just seems more realistic than that of the others I had seen.
        After reading Barzun’s work I was able to understand that this painting depicts an everyday scene from that time period because during the Romantic era artists were more inclined to paint pieces that depicted scenes from everyday life and make them more relatable.  Reading Barzun’s work somewhat complicated my understanding of the Pre-Raphaelites because he made it seem like the paintings of the Romantic era were completely different and original from any other time period.  From the looks of this painting it doesn’t seem to use a new and different type of painting style from any other paintings that I have seen.

John:
http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/Big/Ophelia.jpg
This painting is called Ophelia.  It is a work by Sir John Everett Millais.  It was originally painted in 1851 and can be found in the Tate Gallery.  This piece of art work combined color and volume to depict a peaceful scene which sees to be full of emotion.  

        Barzun seems to make the point that the definition of Romanticism isn’t an easy task.  In fact, he goes on to say that there have been numerous definitions, each which possess a different meaning.  If I took one thing from “Work of mind and Heart”, it is that Romanticism represents realism and emotion over three generations. It was created not to satisfy the people back then but to relate to us now.  All of the artists possessed different views of al kinds of different things, including religion, politics, art, and lifestyles.  The passionate work of this time portrays real things either on the surface or way below the surface.  

        There is obviously passion in this painting.  Which emotion the artist is trying to trigger, however is a little unclear to me.  Without a concrete definition of the artistic time and culture of this painting, it is difficult to see what artists were trying to illustrate.  It appears as if the woman in the painting is at ease and calm.  She might seem as if she is dying in the distinct form of nature.  It is interesting to note that the green background is cut off in the corners to create some sort of circular top to the image.  The most colorful flowers are in her hand, so that might signify life and hope in the woman.  

http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/Small/Hylas_Small.gif
This painting is called Hylas and the Nymphs. It was painted in 1896 by John William Waterhouse.  This painting can be viewed today at the Manchester City Art Gallery.  The images in this painting seem to be dark and dull.  The women are all naked and appear to all look very similar to each other.  Similarly, they all have the same color hair in the same style.

        This painting might resemble a notion of male weakness towards female sexuality.  With so many artists painting so many different images with so many different meanings, this painting could potentially possess a variety of different meanings.  When Barzun states “human beings are moved by passion”, he speaks about artists acting on passion as well as viewers analyzing the paintings by their emotions.  There is no doubt that this image shares a significant amount of passion, but the context is unknown.  Is this image one of joy or of a failure of epic proportions.  Does it represent the beauty of sexuality or the imprisonment that sexuality encloses us in.  In many ways, there’s no escaping it, as the picture shows the woman in the center physically pulling the man in to the water.  I feel as if this image can mean a multitude of things, and Barzun lays out a basic understanding of the era, while at the same time letting the reader know that there are many aspects to Romanticism and trying to sum it up in a short definition is just simply unrealistic.

Ryan:

 

Works Cited

Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.

Moss, Richard. "A Brotherhood Of Realism And Romance - The Pre-Raphaelites | Culture24." Home | Culture24. Web. 01 Feb. 2010. <http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/tra18481>.

"Pre-Raphaelites." Persehone Home Page. Web. 01 Feb. 2010. <http://persephone.cps.unizar.es/General/Gente/SPD/Pre-Raphaelites/Pre-Raphaelites.html>.

Emma:

 
Lady Lilith was painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1868. A particularly striking element to this piece is that like many other paintings from the time, Rossetti chose to have his woman be extremely pale and have a long exposed neck. Lady Lilith is also depicted as a woman who is probably of the upper class because she has the time to spend combing her hair. The contrast between the dark floral background and the pale tones of her skin and dress help illuminate how powerful and well painted this painting is.


Il Ramoscello was painted in 1865 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Similar to many other of Rossetti’s paintings, the young woman depicted has red hair, pale skin, and a long neck. Another feature that seems to be important is that the woman has bright red lips. Historically, this has been a sign of true, natural beauty and perhaps that is the message that Rossetti was trying to convey.

            After reading the website “A Brotherhood of Realism and Romance- The Pre-Raphaelites” and the section titled “The Work of Mind-and-Heart” from Jacques Barzun’s book I do not feel like my understanding of art and of the time period changed. While the paintings certainly are striking and must have taken hours and hours to paint, I still do not care for the art of the time period. The reading from the textbook confused me and I didn’t really understand what was being written. There was so much information about the time period and other things that were changing during the time when these paintings were painted that I felt like I got caught up in other subjects rather than being able to focus on my understanding of the art of the time.

Tom:

This work is titled “An Al-Fresco Toilet” created in 1889 by Samuel Luke Fildes.  It’s a classic work in that it shows a wealthy women getting her hair done up for her, and really shows the luxuries of being upper class.  It’s interesting to see the treatment a young woman gets even in the simplest of tasks.  Even the women doing her hair seems to be content, showing the positive relationship between the two.

This work of art is entitled, “The Remorse of Nero after the Murder of his Mother”. Painted in 1878 by John William Waterhouse, this is a powerful piece depicting the afterthoughts of “Nero” after the unexpected death of his mother.  As he is lying down clearly remorseful, we wonder why just sulking, and no crying or anything else.  For someone who just had their mother die, he doesn’t seem that upset, which opens the question of what really happened with his mother? Was Nero potentially a part of the act?

This work is titled, “Dolce far niente” and was done by John William Godward in1904.  In this piece, we see what seems to be a foreign women lying among animal fur.  We see a very blank look about her which asks the question is she dead? Or possibly very upset about something.  This is interesting because it asks many questions and doesn’t leave a lot of room for answers.  This woman is clearly of some wealth, what could she possibly not have to live for?

Reading Barzun:
            After reading Jacques Barzun’s “The Work of Mind and Heart” my views about Pre-Raphaelites has definitely changed some.  The immediate thought of the “Romantic” period is that it is just that, Romantic.  That meaning a time of change, style, love, wealth, and class.  After reading this, I’m not so convinced it was all that glorious.  Sure there was plenty to come from the Pre-Raphaelites including all of the glorious art and music, but that doesn’t overpower what else was going on in that period.  People just tend to wrap up the whole period into its glory and not really take into consideration what else the period entailed.  As far as the arts go, I understand where the artists were coming from a lot more now.  The works I reviewed above, I now have a feeling of what the creator was thinking when creating them.  Overall, my views of just about everything Pre-Raphaelite has changed dramatically.

Jennifer:
This oil on canvas titled “An Al-Fresco Toilet” was painted by Samuel Luke Fildes (1844-1927) in 1889.  It captures the reality that women during this time and of this class had help everyday to make them look beautiful.  As the painting shows, women were supposed to be pale and naturally beautiful; this was not too hard for them to do with the help from their maids to make their lives more relaxed.  It is also evident that the maid does not dress as brightly colored or do her hair as daintily as the girl sitting in the chair.  
 
“The Lady of Shalott”, painted by John William Waterhouse captures the love for nature at this time.  There was a love for birds and trees and flowers, which the woman is surrounded by in this painting, although at times one needed to escape to the city, which we could infer that this woman is doing in her boat with her belongings.  
 
Reading Barzun helps clarify how Romanticism came to be for the pre-Raphaelites.  It talks about how the different classes came to be treated- the middle class had less power, it was more upper class.  Poetry was very popular at this time.  Then rose Realism and symbolism and naturalism. As we can see in many of the paintings, the arts captured people's manners and costumes.  Something very popular for woman was being pure and beautiful, almost like an angel, which is also portrayed in the arts. It seems that this time period was extremely focused around the changes in the arts.