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The realism period (Late 1840s - 1900s) is generally classified as the Victorian Period in Europe and the Civil War through the Guilded Age in the US. 

 

In Europe, Queen Victoria helped England to become the most powerful country in Europe. The strength of the their naval fleets helped them dominate overseas trade and became the global peacemakers. Under England's thumb, continental Europe saw a decline in past political powerhouses and many of the dominate empires fell to English rule. 

 

In the United States, slavery was at an all time high and disagreements over the direction the country was going, as well as the South attempting to succeed from the Union caused Civil War to break out in 1863. As the war came to a close, and slavery being abolished, America thrived in the Guilded Age. Marked by population exploding and the upper class's wealth grew exponentially. Wealthy families, like the Rockefellers, dominated culture and art movements in the United States. The distance between the wealth of the upper class and the rest of the masses left immigrants and the poor at an all time low. 

REALISM

The Potato Eaters. Vincent van Gogh. c. 1885. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Oil on Canvas. This painting depicts the severe poverty of the poorer classes that were prevalent in this period while the wealthy upper classes flourished. 

Medicine

 

During the Victorian period several advancements were made in medicine that are still around today. Ether was first used by William Morton, a dentist, in 1846 as an anaesthetic. In 1847, chloroform was introduced as an anaesthetic which was favored by doctors because it was less flammable than ether. Chloroform was given to Queen Victoria during the birth of Prince Leopold. By the 1920s, chloroform was used in 80 - 95% of anaesthetics across the UK and Germany. 

 

Dentistry became increasingly important since the use of sugar was becoming widespread. "Waterloo teeth" was a procedure where real human teeth were set into hand-carved chunks of ivory jaws. The teeth came from executed criminals, grave robbing, and purchased from the lower classes. 

 

Joseph Lister, in 1867, caused a major shift in hospital procedure that aided in the overall health of society. These procedures included wearing gloves, washing their hands and instruments with a phenol cleaning solution he invented. 

Technological Advancements

 

The shipping of goods, raw materials, and people became quicker and more affordable with stagecoaches, steam ships, and railways. In Britain, clocks were set based on the time that trains came through. In addition to the transportation industry advancements, the Penny Black was also put into use. The Penny Black was a standardized postage stamp that allowed people to ship letters and packages for the same price regardless of the distance traveled. 

 

Gas lighting was being used in factories, government buildings, and quickly spread to homes. In the 1890s, the improvement of the incandescent gas mantle improved the output of light. Street lights all over London began to be installed in the late 1880s.

 

Although photography was released by Daguerre in 1839, handheld cameras were common by 1889 making it more common to find authentic Victorian fashions and architecture from the period.

IMPORTANT DATES

 

1837 - Queen Victoria Reigns

1840 - New Zealand becomes a British colony

1842 - Mines Act of 1842 banned women & children from working in mining

1845 - Irish Famine begins

1850 - Restoration of Roman Catholic hierarchy in England

1851 - First World's Fair

1851 - Singer invents practical sewing machine

1854 - UK declares war on Russia: Crimean War

1858 - Charles Worth (1st Fashion Designer) opens couture shop

1859 - Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species

1862 - Congress passes Morill Act establishing Land Grant Colleges

1863 - Ebenezer Butterick patents first size paper patterns for clothing

1867 - Harper Bazaar begins publications of 1st fashion magazine

1872 - Steam-powered machine for cutting multiple layers of cloth was introduced

1888 - Jack the Ripper murders five prostitutes in London

1888 - Princess Victoria II becomes German Empress

1870 - 1891 - Elementary Education Act requires free education for children under 10

1901 - Death of Queen Victoria, Edward takes over as King

Photograph of Queen Victoria. c. 1887. Royal Collection. Photographer: Alexander Bassano.

Entertainment

 

Outside of theatre and opera, there were many entertainment options in Europe during the Victorian era. Brass bands could be heard in bandstands. Circuses became popular and sprung up all over Britain. Mesmerisms or people communicating with the dead was more popular spectacles in this period than any other period in history (a trend that is becoming increasingly popular in television today).

 

Sporting events, like cricket, bicycling, roller skating, and horseback riding were originated in the Victorian Period. The first Olympic Games were held in 1896 in Athens bringing 14 nations and 241 athletes competing in 43 events. The first football league (soccer) was established in 1888 by Aston Villa. 

Artists

Two styles of art dominated the Victorian era: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. This was the first period that the fine art did not follow the aesthetics or ideas of architectural movements.

 

Impressionist paintings have small but visible brush strokes, emphasis on the depiction of light, unusual visual angles, and movement as an element of human perception and experience. This movement broke the traditional rules of academic painting by letting the brush strokes remain visible and not relying on making hyper realistic images. Impressionist painters tended to leave the studio and paint in the open air looking directly at the subject matter of their paintings. Impressionism began with a group of Paris based artists.

Claude Monet

 

Oscar-Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) is considered the founder of Impressionist painting. His painting, Impression, Sunrise is the reason why the movement is called Impressionism. This painting was first exhibited in 1873 as the first exhibit of the newly formed Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers. This association was formed by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley as a rejection to the conservative academic paintings displayed at the Salon de Paris. The term, impressionism was originally used as a descriptive term for a lesser form of art, however, the impressionists cointed the term for themselves.

 

Monet's interest in how light affects a landscape caused him to paint a series of paintings with the same subject matter at different times of the day. Beginning in 1899, Monet spent twenty years painting water lilies. 

 

After the death of two wives, Monet began loosing his eyesight. Paintings that were done while he had cataracts have a generally redish tint to them. After having surgery to remove the cateracts, Monet went back in and repainted several of these redish paintings. In 1926, Monet died of lung cancer.

Photography of Claude Monet. c. 1899. Photographer: Nadar. 

Auguste Renoir

 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919) was a French painter who was key in the development of the Impressionist style. He is best known for his sensuality of the female form and he is said to be "the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau." Renoir was the child of filmakers and ceramic artists. From a young age, he worked as a painter of fine china in a porcelain factory, as well as paintings on fans that were sent overseas. 

 

His paintings use vibrant light and heavily saturated color, usually focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. Many critics say his style of painting figures causes it to appear that the figures are slightly fused to the backgrounds. Some of his paintings of the nude form are the most like preceding styles of art.

 

One of the major acheivements that is attributed to Renoir is the discovery that shadows are in fact not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them.

Edgar Degas

 

 

Edouard Manet

Post Impressionists

Henri Rousseau

Toulouse-Lautrec

Vincent Van Gogh

Photograph of Auguste Renoir. c. 1875. Musee d'Orsay. Photography.

Theatre

Between 1875 and 1914, theatre innovations completely altered the look of theatrical performances. Gas lighting and then electric lights replaced candlelight. Elevator stages were installed in larger theatres, allowing entire sections of sets to be raised, lowered or tilted for scenes. In 1896, the Revolving Stage was introduced in Munich.

 

The Melodrama, although losing popularity, was still being performed. However, melodramas were mostly perofrmed in salons and involved rhythmic spoken poetry with some dramatic structure or plot. It was usually set to music. 

 

In Germany, the Meiningen Ensemble is credited with creating some of the most historically accurate productions of the 19th century. This gradually became more common place as well as their trend for a unified production led by a director. Prior to this period, the playwright was the main decision maker on productions. This shift in thought has a lot to do with the want for a hyper realistic picture on stage which needed a supervisor. 

 

Richard Wagner rejected contemporary ideals of theatre and pushed for a more unified production or "master art work". He created a new style of auditorium where the seats were organized in a fan shape and the procenium was set up so that no seat was better than any other. This broke the prior ideaology of keeping social classes separate.

 

Two large new styles of theatre emerged from the Victorian Period: Naturalism and Realism.

 

Naturalism stemmed from the ideas of Darwin's new scientific theories. It attempts to create a perfect illustration of reality. Very detailed three dimensional sets were created which used Darwin's theory that the determining role of the environment is crucial to how a person behaves in the space. Everything down to the tiniest detail is photo-accurate to a location. The style of acting in Naturalism was an attempt to create given circumstances, headed by the Stanislavski method. There is a strong focus on how external forces affect a character instead of internal decisions. Several plays that were written and intended to be performed in the Naturalistic style are: Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), Strindberg's The Father (1887) and Miss Julie (1888).

 

Realism attempts to represent subject matter truthfully without exotic, supernatural, or artificial artistic conventions. The sets were accurate representations of what the location might actually look like, but allowing some leanancy to tailor the choices to fit the story. Perspective, depictions of light forms, and the details of light and color were accurate enough to be believeable. Several playwrights writing in this style are: Checkov, Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, and George Bernard Shaw.

Costumes

The rise of new technology in the garment industry made way for at home clothing manufacturing. This gave individuals to create customized garments that fit their needs and their own aesthetics. 

 

WOMEN: From the 1850s - 1880s, women's silhouettes had very low necklines, multi sleeves, and jackets and shirts were styled after men's fashion. The skirt began shifting the fullness towards the back which was accentuated by a bustle, or padded structure that attached to the waist. The style of decoration resembles curtains and swags. There were many layers of fabrics that was similiar to men's fashion. In the 1870s, many bustles shifted down in the fishtail bustle.

 

In the 1880s - 1890, the shape of the torso continued to become exaggerated in an s-curve. Corsets pushed out the bust and pulled the hips back. The bustle was very structured and high. During this period, the silhouette was so stylized that the bustle sometimes appeared to be a shelf attached to a woman's butt. Hairstyles for women were pulled close to the head in buns and twists. Occasionally you can see curls. Bonnets and hats were very popular, especially those resembling men's hats. Most women wore high boots that were worn on a daily basis.

 

MEN: In the Victorian Period, men's fashion did not change a whole lot from previous periods. Major stylistic differences include that men's pants shifted from straight cut with no crease or cuff to a hard crease down the middle with a cuff near the ankle. Cravats were no longer worn and replaced with bow ties and ties that were tied with a variety of different knots. For semi-formal events, the tuxedo jacket was popular with a shawl collar. For formal events, the tail coat was the standard. There was a push for recreational clothing for sporting events and casual activities. The knickerbockers and the norfolk jacket came out of this need. Hairstyles were side burns and mustaches in the earlier period. As time went on, beards became more popular.

Architecture

As a retaliation to the Industrial Revolution, architecture took a turn to the handmade aesthetic known as the Arts and Crafts Movement. Pulling gothic styly, architects took gothic building materials to create an asymmetrical decorative exteriors (like clapboard and shake). Architects mixed materials as a decorative element. The outside architecture of buildings were affected by the functional use of the interiors. Bedrooms may have larger windows even if breaks the symmetry on the outside. Windows were strung together to create larger expanses of glass. The functionality of the space and the architect that built it was more important than adhereing to old standards of architecture.

Bibliography

 

Bailey, Colin B., Joseph J. Rishel, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Masterpieces of Impressionism & Post-Impressionism: The Annenberg Collection. New York: Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1989.

 

Beaujot, Ariel. Victorian Fashion Accessories. London: Berg Publishers, 2013.

 

Cumming, Elizabeth, and Wendy Kaplan. The Arts and Crafts Movement. New York, N.Y: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

 

Elliott-Binns, Leonard Elliott. Religion in the Victorian Era. London: The Lutterworth Press, 1953.

 

Freeman, Susan Kathleen. "In Style: Femininity and Fashion since the Victorian Era." Journal of Women's History 16.4 (2004): 191-206.

 

Hitchmough, Wendy, and Martin Charles. The Arts & Crafts Lifestyle and Design. New York: Watson-Guptill, 2000.

 

Kirk, Sheila, Philip Webb, and Martin Charles. Philip Webb: Pioneer of Arts & Crafts Architecture. Chichester, West Sussex, England ; Hoboken, N.J: Wiley-Academy, 2005.

 

Kornwolf, James D. Arts and Crafts Architecture. 41 Vol. Society of Architectural Historians, 1982.

 

Kunzru, Hari. The Impressionist. New York: Dutton, 2002.

 

Mathey, François. The Impressionists. New York: Praeger, 1961.

 

Nemy, By E. "Reliving the Victorian Era: Re-Creating the Era of Victorian Society." The New York Times: C1. 1981.

 

Newcomb, Simon. Science during the Victorian Era. 49 Vol. New York: American Periodicals Series II, 1897.

 

Post-Impressionism. Oxford University Press, 2009.

 

Reed, John R. Victorian Conventions. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975.

 

Romano, Eileen. The Impressionists. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Studio, 1997.

 

Steele, Valerie. Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

 

Victorian Era. Sage Publications, 2003.

 

Wilson, A. N. The Victorians. London: Hutchinson, 2002.

Post-Impressionism was a term used to describe the style taken on by artists following Manet. Although Post-Impressionist artists used the same vivid colors, real subject matter, and thick application of paint similar to the Impressionists, they used more geometric forms. They distorted natural form in order to create an expressive effect and sometimes use unnatural or seemingly arbitrary color. Many scholars refer to this period as modernism, however, that term can encompass a vast variety of other styles as well. 

STYLES MORGUE

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