FA 192a Studies in Modern and Contemporary Art:
Romanticism in Britain and America from Turner to Whistler Seminar Spring 2017
Prof. Nancy ScottTel: X 62664
scott at brandeis.eduOffice: 210 Mandel Center for the Humanities
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 10-11:00 AM, or by appointment.
This seminar fulfills the FA and Creative Arts requirement; the IGS elective requirement; and the research seminar requirement for completion of the Art History major.
Books for purchase/ Available in Brandeis Bookstore: 2017
James Hamilton. Turner : A Life(1997).
J.M.W. Turner:Painting Set Free (2014-15). Ed. By David Blayney Brown, Any Concannon and Sam Smiles. Tate Britain.
Suggested: Daniel E. Sutherland,Whistler: A Biography (2014).
Ian Warrell, Turner and Venice, Tate Britain (London, 2003).
K. Lochnan, et al. Turner Whistler Monet: Impressionist Visions, Tate Gallery (2004).
Course preparation: background in art history or a strong interest in English literature, other fields of interest, such as IGS students; weekly meetings will include presentations by professor and students (See Special Focus Topics). Field trips will be planned to area museums.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
Final product for the seminar is an oral report and a term research paper of 15-pages, double-spaced. Weekly attendance and informed discussion is critical.
Nine hours of weekly preparation for class time is the Brandeis standard. You should come to class prepared to discuss each week’s readings, and short response prompts will be posted on Latte each week. Every course thrives on student preparedness for class discussion, and we will engage in lively conversation in the direct experience of great art all this semester.
1)Research paper of 15 pages of compelling interest to the student, chosen in consultation with the instructor (30 %)—
Due Dates: April 6, 2017: outline and bibliography due
May 2, 2017: Oral seminar reports to be given in final class. (10%)
May 4, 2017 (Study Day). Final Paper Due.
3)Short special focus topics, to be presented orally in class; and visual analysis reports on museum exhibitions/ field trips, as requested in the syllabus. (Average of all—25%).
4) Mid-semester exam, in-class, with essay topics distributed in advance. (20%).
5) Class attendance and general participation. (10 %)
Learning Goals &Classroom protocol: This course will be an excellent focus for visual analysis and critical thinking skills, with new challenges and achievements. The work of art is a primary document, and we will learn to unlock its history and meanings by means of close looking.
Active classroom discussion*, individual development of strong writing in producing a detailed, well-researched term paper, and learning new library tools for research will be our top learning goals. (*No texting, laptops down during class time.)
Guidelines for competence in both areas --visual analysis papers, andoral presentations will be provided in course hand-outs. Museum visits will engage us in visual analysis from works of art, studied directly in museum or museum’s study rooms.
Romanticism in Britain and America from Turner to Whistler
Weekly readings and assignments Spring 2017
Topics to be covered:
J. M. W. Turner: His early, middle and late periods, including the development of themes in Italy, and especially in Venice and Rome. His interest in science, industry and the contemporary controversy over the slave trade.
John Constable: the ‘settled’ English landscapist, and intense observer. British Romanticism.
French painting of the period – seen through British eyes.
David – Géricault- Delacroix and the heroic tradition of French history painting (including comparative material on J. -A.-D. Ingres and the ‘classicizing’ academic side of romanticism); Géricault in London.
J. M. A. Whistler - Réalisme, learned in France from 1855-62, imported to England.
Whistler’s libel trial against John Ruskin, and the importance of landscape painting at mid-century; the second wave of Asian art’s influence in London;
The Pre-Raphaelites; with a collaborative class meeting with Prof. Plotz’s Victorian Literature
The Hudson River school.
Whistler and the Aesthetic Movement.
Monet in London, from 1870-71; in the late 19th century c 1903.
January 17-19) Introductory class – What is Romanticism? Origins and sites of Romantic art. Characteristics of Romantic painting and sculpture – What is the style of this period?Aesthetic theory in the late 18th century. The picturesque and “ the sublime” (aesthetic state of wonder- see Sir Edmund Burke).
Reading: A. Wilton and T. Barringer, American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-80. “The Sublime in the Old World and the New,” pp 11- 21. Latte.
Roots of the Romantics: Lecture on the state of British painting (before John Mallard William Turner: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Americans John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West; visionaries and eccentrics Henry Fuseli, William Blake.
Importance of the Royal Academy as ‘home’ institution for Turner.
Part 2: Overview of Turner’s career – periods and works noted since the 19th century
Reading: John Ruskin, “Turner” in Fine Art Society exhibition catalogue, pp. 6-10. For next week: Choose at least one work of art (find jpg) from one of the periods that Ruskin designates, and prepare to show this to class to illustrate.
Week 2 - January 24-26) Biographical Reading:
Hamilton, James. Turner: A Life. Chapters 1-4, pp. 3 - 120.
For January 24th class: Each student will be responsible for a particular period of Turner’s biography and career: we will divide chapters in the biography among all students.
Suggested: Focus on one of the chapters from “Maiden Lane” to “Turner, young Artist” and “Royal Academician.” These will deal with Turner’s birth in Maiden Lane near Covent Garden, his education, his tumultuous family life during childhood; his precocious skill from age 15 years as a draftsman, his interest in documenting the Gothic style of English architecture, and monuments of the British Isles; Turner’s early career at the Royal Academy.
Jan 26: This will take us to his emergence as a Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy
Dramatis personae to be highlighted in the class: Turner and his world
His contemporaries from youth:–Thomas Girtin, Copley Fielding;
His emerging colleagues and competitors: Richard Parkes Bonington, Phillipe de Loutherberg.
His highest goals: the art of Rembrandt, and Claude Lorrain –17th century French master of the Italian landscape.
Also Suggested: Solkin “Education and Emulation,” ch in Turner and the Masters, 99-101; plus catl. Entries 1-21 (*pp 102-120).
Week 3 - January 31-February 2 John Constable, Turner’s competitor and great interpreter of the British landscape. Defining the variety in the major artists of British Romanticism.
Reading:Constable: The Great Landscapes, edited by Anne Lyles.
John Gage, “The Big Picture: Constable and the Six- Footers,” pp. 20-29.
Thursday Focus: A. Lyles, “Soliciting Attention” pp. 32-39. Plus pp. 187 on OPENING OF WATERLOO BRIDGE. The competition between Turner and Constable. The practices of the Royal Academy.
Suggested: Leo Costello, “Varnishing Day” (Latte).
Week 4 – February 6-8) British artists in France; French artists in Britain.
Revolution, peace and the period of French neoclassicism, its dominance and the French academy, British attitudes to the heroic style of J.L. David in 1802.
Reading: William Hauptman, “The Blood-Stained Brush,” British Art Journal, 2010: 78-93 plus endnotes. (Latte)
Géricault in England; the success of Raft of the Medusa; its relation to Turner’s Slave Ship. Delacroix to England—Themes in his Romantic repertoire.
Reading: Noon, Patrick J. ed. Crossing the Channel: British and French painting in the age of Romanticism. London:Tate Publishing 2003.
Introduction, 2 pp. (Latte).
‘The Raft of the Medusa in England,’ 7 pages (Latte).
Week 5 – February 14 – 16
Turner and mythological and literary sources – Drawn from art and from Italy.
The lessons of 17th century artist, Claude Lorrain, and the dream of Italy.
Readings: Nicholson, Kathleen, “Claude and Turner,” in Turner and the Masters, 55-74;
Also “Academy and the Grand Style” catl. Entries pp 123-41.
Suggested: Hamilton, Chapters 5-7, pp. 121 -220.
Winter Break – February 18-26th
Opening at The Frick Collection, New York on February 23rd:
Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time
February 23, 2017toMay 14, 2017
(* Class trip to be arranged to this important exhibition.)
Week 6 – February 28 – March 2
Turner in Italy – From Rome to Venice: 1819 to 1840
Readings: Warrell, Ian. “Turner and Venice- Introduction” pp. 14-29; and
“Discovering Venice 1819-40—Sketching the City” pp 83-99.
in Turner and Venice. Tate Publishing (London, 2003).
Suggested: Hamilton, James. Chapters 10-11: “Terra Pittura,” pp 149-98.
Or: Hamilton, Turner and Italy (2008), “Turner’s Route to Rome” pp. 39-53.
Special topics for March 2 and March 9: Turner’s painting from Shakespeare: Juliet and her Nurse, R. A. 1836; Other influences from literature on Turner’s Venetian painting
Week 7 – March 7-9
Special Collaboration on the Pre-Raphaelites and John Everett Millais.
Readings: Tim Barringer, “Victorian Avant-Garde” and “Origins” in The Pre-Raphaelites, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art (Washington D. C., 2012): 7- 19; 24-5
Who was John Ruskin? How is his career intertwined with that of Turner?Discussion of Ruskin’s role in promoting the Pre-Raphaelites.
Suggested: Marjorie Munsterberg, “Ruskin’s Turner” British Art Journal, 2009.
University Archives/ Special Collections – Class meeting at Library on Thursday, March 9. Printed books with Turner engravings, an original edition of Ruskin’s Modern Painters; books from the 1840 travels in the Middle East of David Roberts, 5 – volume set of lithographs: The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia.
March 14 Comparison essays assignment due.
Week 8 - March 14-16
Turner and The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying: Typhon Coming on). Exhibited Royal Academy, 1840.
Readings: John Ruskin on Turner, Modern Painters (1843).
J. McCoubrey, “Turner’s Slave Ship: Abolition, Ruskin and reception,” Word & Image, 14/ 4, 1998, 319-53.
Scott, “America’s First Public Turner: How Ruskin sold The Slave Ship to America,” British Art Journal, Vol X/ 3, (2010): 69-77.
MFA Class trip – to be scheduled on Thursday or Friday afternoon (3/17). We will leave from Mandel Center at 1: 30 pm promptly for 2 PM appointment at the MFA.
Week 9 – March 21-23
American artists discover the national landscape: The Hudson River School
Look online at the work of Hudson River painters - Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Sanford Gifford, John Kensett, Robert Duncanson. Bring one example to class to present what you found to be representative of this style.
Reading: Wilton Andrew and Barringer, Tim. American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-80. Remainder of Wilton article, from p 21-37.
Strongly Suggested: C. Colbert, “Razors and Brains: Asher B. Durand and the Paradigm of Nature,”Studies in the American Renaissance (1992), 260-91.
Suggested: Barringer, Tim. “The Course of Empires,” pp 39-65.
Thursdayfocus reports TBA on Alexander von Humboldt and Asher B. Durand.
Week 10 March 28-30James Whistler – from France to England
Readings: Lochnan, Ed. Turner Whistler Monet: Impressionist Visions (2003),
“Turner, Whistler, Monet: An artistic dialogue:” 15-36.
March 28: Visual analysis paper from MFA trip due in class.
“Turner and Impressionism: Tinted steam:” the landscapes of Impressionism and the Aesthetic movement. Focus on London and Venice.
Readings: John House, “Turner and Impressionism: Tinted steam,” 37-49, Lochnan, ed. Turner Whistler Monet (2003).
Grace Seiberling, ed. Monet in London, and exhibition catalogue. High Museum of Art/ Seattle: distributed by University of Washington Press, Atlanta, 1988.
Thursdayfocus reports: 3/30: Suggested: review of Whistler: A Life for Art’s Sake, 2014 biography by Daniel Sutherland.
Week 11 April 4-6
Materials and methods. Turner’s and Whistler’s watercolors.
Brain Livesley “The Later Life of Turner: Body and Mind,” J. M. W. Turner: Painting Set Free (2015): 24-37.
April 4: Focus presentation on The Falls of the Rhine (MFA) and watercolor at Princeton Museum.
April 6: Class trip to Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. Leave from Mandel Center at 1: 30 pm promptly for 2 PM appointment at the MFA.
Passover / Spring Break April 10- 18, 2017
Frick Collection private tour of Turner exhibition – April 17 at 11 AM – meet at
1 East 70th Street in New York (off Fifth Avenue) by 10:45-50 AM
Week 12 April 18-20
Visual Analysis assignment on a work of paper from either museum visit,
due Thursday (4/20).
Tuesday, April 18: Class meets at Rose Art Museum.
British works on paper. Rose Art Museum class: Study of the Rose “Turner.”
Discussion on Mark Bradford, the Venice Biennale project, and the 2014 exhibition at the Rose Art Museum, “Sea Monsters.”
Sam Smiles, “Decline and Fall: Turner’s Old Age,”J. M. W. Turner: Painting Set Free (2015): 58-61.
Week 13 April 25-27
The Art market and trade in paintings and prints.
Readings: James Hamilton, A Strange Business, Chapter 4, “Painter: Painting is a Strange Business,” 76-104.
______. Making Painting: Helen Frankenthaler and JMW Turner(Turner Contemporary, 2014).
Empire and Globalism: British art in the Colonies, images of the black.
Selection: Maurie McInnis, Slaves waiting for sale : abolitionist art and the American slave trade(2011). TBA
Marcus Wood, Blind Memory.Selections TBA.
Week 14 May 2 Final Class - Student reports
May 4 – Study Day – Final Papers Due.
Scope of the Course:
Our topics are rooted in national traditions, but have international scope – whether in exploration, or the commerce of the slave trade during this period (c 1800-1840).In the midst of these shifting worlds of industry and art, photography is invented, and the world of science develops complexities that move away from the transcriptions of art. Artistic expression in turn develops an innovative abstract language, also much influenced by the aesthetic of Japanese art and culture. (Whistler – Monet).
We will make three museum trips, and schedule classes in the library and at the Rose Art Museum. The Morse Prints and Drawings Study Room and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Art Study Room at the Harvard Art Museums give us the opportunity to see watercolors and drawings up close. We will study Turner’s famous work, The Slave Ship, on site in the MFA gallery.
Bibliography: the recent legacy of The Slave Ship:
Rediker, Marcus Buford. The Slave Ship : A Human History. New York: Viking, 2007.
Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory : Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865. Routledge ed. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Levecq, Christine. Slavery and Sentiment : The Politics of Feeling in Black Atlantic Antislavery Writing, 1770-1850. Becoming Modern. Durham, N.H. : Hanover: University of New Hampshire Press;Published by University Press of New England, 2008.
Special Exhibition in New York: Possible class trip for March / or April 2017.
Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time
February 23, 2017toMay 14, 2017
Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), nineteenth-century Britain’s greatest land- and seascape artist, depicted ports throughout his career, both in monumental oil paintings and in watercolors. An insatiable traveler and an artist with a deep fascination with light, topography, and local traditions, as well as with classical antiquity, Turner brought an innovative approach to the depiction of both modern and ancient ports. In the spring of 2017, The Frick Collection will presentTurner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time, a major exhibition that brings together some thirty-five works from the 1810s through the late 1830s in oil, watercolor, and graphite that capture contemporary cities in England, France, and Germany, as well as imagined scenes set in the ancient world. It will unite for the first time the museum’s two paintings of Dieppe and Cologne with a closely related, yet unfinished, work from Tate Britain that depicts the modern harbor of Brest. The exhibition is organized by Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator at The Frick Collection; leading Turner scholar Ian Warrell; and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, the Frick’s Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published in association with Yale University Press.
The springboard for this show is a pair of monumental paintings by Turner in The Frick Collection acquired by the museum’s founder over a century ago — theHarbor of Dieppeof 1825 andCologne, The Arrival of a Packet-Boat: Eveningof 1826. Due to travel restrictions, however, they have never before been part of an exhibition outside of the Frick. While they are widely recognized as significant turning points in the artist’s career, a focused examination of these works is long overdue and will provide an ideal occasion to consider afresh one of the central motifs of Turner’s art. This exhibition will also unite for the first timeDieppeandColognewith a closely related, yet unfinished, work from Tate Britain that depicts the modern harbor of Brest. As supported by recent technical analysis,The Harbor of Brestwas likely intended to form a series of monumental European ports with the two Frick paintings. This trio of canvases — all made at a time when Turner was experimenting with the representation of light — offers a fascinating glimpse into his technique as well as the everyday life of major European ports of distinctly different regions. Displayed alongside these paintings will be two sketchbooks filled with drawings made on site by Turner during his travels to the Continent, the material from which he later developed his canvases.
The exhibition also features three oil paintings from the later 1820s and 1830s in which Turner continues to explore the motif of the port, now as a setting for narrative scenes drawn from classical history:Regulus(London, Tate Britain);Ancient Italy: Ovid Banished from Rome(private collection); andAncient Rome: Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus(London, Tate Britain). These evocations of ancient Rome and Carthage share with the artist’s modern ports their compositional format — a central expanse of water, with land on either side, beneath a luminous sky — and their array of quotidian detail — the same variety of mundane objects and figures at work and at leisure that appear in theHarbor of DieppeandCologne— now evoking the daily life of a long bygone era. Into these light-filled and richly detailed scenes, Turner integrates his narrative content — momentous scenes of arrival and departure that look forward and back. The close relationship of Turner’s modern and ancient ports reveals the extent to which observation and imagination overlap in his process.