Nineteenth Century English Landscape
The Development of Landscape as a Revolutionary Genre
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Orientalism
Artists Abroad
Political changes in the Middle East during the 19th century – particularly 1831 accession of Mohammed Ali in Egypt when access/travel/opportunities/dialogue with the West was opened up. Although Ottomon Empire reabsorbed Egypt at the end of his rule, the openness remained and there was greater contact between Europe and the East in terms of colonization, investment (think-link the Suez Canal) and tourism (think-link Thomas Cook tours).
Carol divides these into three artistic themes:
- Colonization & appropriation
- Variation if picturesque, poeticized by exoticism
- face of materialism & scientific/historic curiosity
David Roberts, Cairo Looking West, (c.1840s?)
Who were the market for these images? Firstly through dealers – Ernest Gambart specialized in pictures from the Orient.
David Roberts, General View of the Island of Philae, Nubia, 1843 Lithograph
These paintings were very good to be turned into lithographs – strong details in elements such as architecture, clear and strong tonal contrasts. David Roberts published his Middle East pictures in six volumes: The Holy Land: Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia.
David Roberts, View of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, 1839
All these images are about colonization – Europe has a post-enlightenment, post-industrial economy which we bring to the East because it does not have them. The East is represented here by images of the past – old buildings, ruins, traditional costumes. Seen as “primitive” (ALWAYS write these in inverted commas!), pagan, lazy, passive (think-link Delacroix’s Women of Algiers – though not, of course, a landscape).
“Splendid cities once teeming with a busy population and embellished with temples and edifices, the wonder of the world, now deserted and lonely, or reduced by mismanagement and the barbarism of the Muslim creed to a state as savage as wild animals by which they are surrounded. Often have I gazed on them till my heart actually sickened within me.” David Roberts
It’s all there – mismanagement, barbarism, savage. As such, we therefore have a right to appropriate, justification for colonization, moral duty to save.
Edward Said’s Orientalism is the bible of this theory. About creating an opposite, an ‘other’, a reverse description of ourselves. It is not about imaging the real East.
However, Maryanne Stephens in her book The Orientalists prefers to think that images of the east is “closer to a dialogue….. than a discourse.” She challenges Said’s view and proposes that art and artists were affected by what they saw and what they produced reflected this.
The East as an aesthetic, picturesque, pleasure site. Stephens says that the landscape of the East does not conform to European conventions of landscape painting. What you see is basically a subject surrounded by barren waste. Thus new forms of landscape painting are needed. See how Roberts’ picture curves round, almost a fish-eye effect.
David Roberts, General View of the Island of Philae, Nubia, 1843
Edward Lear’s A View of Philae tries to use picturesque conventions – trees to each side, foreground-middleground-background, soft European light, hills in the distance – don’t quite ring true.
Edward Lear, A View of Philae
However, Lewis’ The Caravan-An Arab Encampment at Edfou, 1861 and Seddon’s Dromedary & Arabs at the City of the Dead with the Tomb of Sultan El Barkook in the Background 1853-6 have found a different light and attempted to deal with the reality – the brightness of the light, the flatness of the scenery, the strong purple in the shadows.
John Lewis[1] Thomas Seddon
Seddon was an associate of the PRB, a student of Holman Hunt. Note the very detailed, specificity of the title. This is a symptom of the recording of actuality. Itemising the past, almost visual archaeology. There is a letter from Hunt when he was there about artists going out two by two to bring back the passing/facing/soon to be lost images.
Thomas Seddon, Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat from the Hill of Evil Counsel , 1854-5
Not the minute detail but this is not mimesis, not straightforward transcription. We still have the idle figure of colonization but also the strong purple of the shadows (the eastern light), the intensity of shadow have affected the composition aesthetically and finally the tradition and ancient monument have been faithfully recorded. But not always…….. romanticism of Seddon’s pyramids versus Hunt’s acid green and purples:
Thomas Seddon, Pyramids at Giza-Sunset Afterglow, 1856
Holman Hunt, The Great Pyamid, 1854
The Great Sphinx at the Pyramids of Giza, by Thomas Seddon, (1821-1856), 1854, watercolor and body color, 9 3/4 x 13 7/8. Collection Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England.
See how the two handle the Sphinx (can’t find images). Hunt’s rendition has typically low viewpoint for the background with soaring sand dunes high behind the sphinx head. Seddon views the sphinx from above, like an archaeologist. Hunt hardly shows the sphinx’s face – just a slim line of shadow, concentrating instead on the geological strata of the rock. Seddon is pure recording of the features. In the rocks around the base of the sphinx Hunt has put a snake…. What is it doing there? No-one knows. Hunt says ‘cos it just happened to be there. Traditionally a snake is an emblem of triumph over evil – triumph of reason (science) over superstition? Christianity over paganism?
Hunt’s The Afterglow in Egypt, 1854 sums up how he felt……. The last moments of a once glorious civilization. Hunt actually referred to his travels as time travel….. a common perception of going back in time when traveling to the Orient.
Of course the recording/visual archaeology themes of artistic endeavour in the Middle East were also to do with searching for empirical evidence for Christian Belief. Uniting science and religion. The Holy Land was the source. In his religious symbolism, Holman Hunt found a way of creating a new visual language for the Anglican, protestant ethos. Think of The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (not strictly a landscape) but The Scapegoat, 1855[2]:
Read BOIME on Scapegoat.
He also paints the extraordinary ‘The Triumph of the Innocents’ 1875-84 which also, for all its allegory, is based in realism. In fact, tho many of Hunt’s stories are unreliable, the escape of his wife and young child in the middle of the night on a donkey is true.
Finally, let us take a look at James Jacques Joseph Tissot. Most unusual, Tissot's reputation has so firmly come to rest on the artist's depictions of the stylish leisured class of the late-nineteenth century that the religious works of his late career - illustrations of the life of Christ - are little known. However, at the turn of the century, these biblical images were considered his greatest achievement due, on one hand, to the popularity of images from the Near East and, on the other hand, to the sense of immediacy Tissot gave to an age-old tale through uncompromising attention to detail. The Journey of the Magi was created after the second of three trips that the artist made to Palestine between 1886 and 1896 to gather sketches and photographs of the people, costumes, topography, and light of the region.
Tissot, Journey of the Magi, 1894
[1] Lewis went to Cairo in 1841 and remained there for ten years. During that time he travelled throughout Egypt. After his return to Britain, his Egyptian drawings provided material for his paintings, including this view of the ruins at Edfu, between Luxor and Aswan. English visitors to Egypt reported that Lewis had "gone native", living in luxury in the Arab quarter of Cairo and wearing Islamic dress. His work shows his strong fascination with contemporary Egyptian culture, rather than the ancient remains. The focus on contemporary figures and animals in this work is typical.
[2] This was the first major painting Hunt made during his first stay in the Holy Land. He had the idea for the picture while studying the Talmud (the collection of ancient Rabbinic writings that forms the basis of religious authority in Orthodox Judaism) for information on Jewish ritual for his painting 'The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple’. Hunt's researches disclosed that on the Festival of the Day of Atonement, a goat was ejected from the temple with a scarlet piece of woolen cloth on its head. It was goaded and driven, either to death or into the wilderness, carrying with it the sins of the congregation. It was believed that if these sins were forgiven the scarlet cloth would turn white. Hunt regarded the Old Testament scapegoat as a prefigurement of the New Testament Christ whose suffering and death similarly expunged man's sins.
In the Book of Leviticus (which is quoted on the frame) the goat is said to bear the iniquities into a land that was not inhabited. Hunt chose to set his goat in a landscape of quite hideous desolation - it is the shore of the Dead Sea at Osdoom with the mountains of Edom in the distance. In his diary Hunt described this setting as 'a scene of beautifully arranged horrible wilderness' and he saw the Dead Sea as a 'horrible figure of sin', believing as did many at this time that it was the original site of the city of Sodom.
Seeing for the first time the extraordinary sight of the Dead Sea decided him to tackle the subject himself. Hunt returned to the edge of the sea with guides and spent about two weeks painting in the landscape and making sketches and notes. He took a white goat with him but he left blank that part of the picture that the animal occupies and did not paint the beast until he returned to his Jerusalem studio. Whilst at Osdoom, Hunt's life was at risk from hostile tribesmen. The insistence of his guides that they get away from this dangerous spot led to his leaving earlier than he wished. He took back samples of mud and salt to help him finish the foreground. In Jerusalem Hunt also bought or borrowed sheep and goat skulls and a full camel skeleton.
When this picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856 it met with a cool critical response. Even Ruskin, who devoted a lengthy entry in his 'Academy Notes' to the picture, thought the choice of a goat as subject was rather misplaced. He also thought it poorly painted. The critic of 'The Athenaeum' dismissed the work and on a curiously prophetic note added, 'We shudder, however, in anticipation of the dreamy fantasies and the deep allegories that will be deduced from this figure of a goat in difficulty.'
Hunt's lurid colouring is far from natural. Allen Staley writing on Hunt's landscape painting perceptively comments that 'Hunt may have painted what he saw, but by choice he saw strange things, and he saw them at their most vivid pitch.' The strident high-keyed purple which here bathes the mountains of Edom subsequently became the hallmark of much of his landscape painting.
Copyright 2005, Ms S. Sharpe