Paul Delaroche
The Execution Of Lady Jane Grey 1833
The French Salon was an exhibition of art that was open to all people and was held every year in France. A visit to the Salon was similar to us visiting the cinema in this present day It was a form of entertainment. To be a top artist you needed to be included in the Salon. Art was selected by a jury of judges, and more popular genres included paintings of historical events. The favoured styles of art were Neoclassical and Romantic. These are now known as Academic art or Salon style art. Our image in this pack has elements of both Neo-classicism and Romanticism. Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) was onw of the most celebrated French artists of his time and one of the leading pupils of the artist Gros.
Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa (1804) AntoineJean Gros
“The Execution Of Lady Jane Grey” This painting was created in 1833 by the artist Delaroche. It was painted in France and is classed as a classical artwork. The scale of this painting is life size - measuring at 246 x 297cm. It was made with oil paint on canvas.
Delaroche employed academic drawing like Ingres used to plan and create this work. His use of smoothly applied oil paint adds an almost hyper real reaction from the viewer. His paintings also combine his love for the theatre, and the painting resembles where a dramatic execution is seemingly being acted out. Towards the very bottom of the composition is a pile of straw which the block rests was intended to soak up the criminal’s blood.
Delaroche painted the event of Lady Jane Grey’s execution nearly 300 years after it happened, but some aspects of his painting to do with the historical narrative is inaccurate and not quite as it happened in the early year of 1833.
Visually the painting is divided into three vertical elements. On the left hand side we can see two grief stricken ladies in waiting, with one sat slumped on the floor and one standing with her back to us. These figures emphasize the solemn mood of the painting.
Lady Jane Grey
The painting shows Lady Jane, blindfolded and wearing a pure, innocent white lace dress being assisted to place her head upon the box where she is to be beheaded. The man assisting her is Sir John Brydges, 1st Baron Chandos. He was a Lieutenant of the Tower at the time of Jane’s execution. However dramatic this piece is, the executions actually took place outside in the grounds named the Tower Green, where Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed. The use of Delaroche painting a different scene to the factual one may have been because he wanted to obtain artist licensing or because he was not familiar with the location.
Jane became Queen of England after the death of her cousin, Edward VI in 1553, but only for nine days.
The executioner's form is impassive and unfazed, as he has certainly done this before. He stands in an almost classical contrapposto stance. This stance is usually seen in sculptures of heroic figures from ancient classical art, and demonstrates the academic training of Delaroche The life size format of this painting is intimidating and immersive. Strong, warm toned reds and deep ochres are present in this painting, creating a mood that is sincere but also reminiscent of religious aspects of the 16th century. Furthermore, Lady Jane’s dress
Lady Jane Grey was the Granddaughter of Mary Tudor, who was Henry VIII’s sister and had support from the Protestant worshippers. As a Protestant, Jane was crowned queen in a bid to shore up Protestantism and keep Catholic influence at bay.
As a Protestant, Jane was crowned queen in a bid to shore up Protestantism and keep Catholic influence at bay. Jane became Queen of England after the death of her cousin, Edward VI in 1553,
The pearlescent shine of her lightweight looking dress additionally contributes to her innocence as it drapes elegantly across her young body. Even the delicacy of her hands enhances this.
The centre piece of this painting is Lady Jane Grey, positioned in the foreground. Her youthful age is highlighted in the painting as she is stood next to an ageing Lieutenant of the Tower of London, Sir John Brydges, who guides her towards the execution block. Lady Jane wears a blindfold and is about to kneel with her arms anxiously fumbling for the block on which she is about to rest her head. She is depicted with porcelain pale skin and is dressed in crisp white silk. She appears almost doll like. Delaroche has mastered the use of chiaroscuro so brilliantly that Lady Jane stands out strikingly from her surroundings. She may not have been dressed like this but as she was married this was unlikely. However, Delaroche chooses to paint her this way to show her innocence in the situation.
Jean-Louis André Théodore
Géricault
The Raft of The Medusa 1818-1819
“The Raft of The Medusa” This painting was created using OIl paint on canvas by Géricault between the years of 1818-1819 and has the dimensions of 491 x 716 cm. This scale is monumental and really entices the viewer into the events of the painting.
Romanticism
Théodore Géricault (b. 1791, d. 1824,)
Géricault was a french painter, one of the prime movers and most original figures of Romanticism. He studied the arts in Paris and was influenced by making copies of the Old Masters at the Louvre. This enabled him to develop a passion for the baroque art of Rubens. During the early 19th Century, Géricault was in italy and there became an enthusiastic admirer of Michelangelo and the dramatic paintings of Caravaggio.
This was a movement across all the arts, from late 18th to the middle 19th century. There is no definitive Romantic style.
The Raft of The Medusa is a painting of around 150 people on a raft for 13 days after having experienced a massive shipwreck disaster, where their captain released the lower class travelers and saved himself and those of higher status.
The central theme was the belief in the value of one's individual experience. A move away from the rationalism of science and the enlightenment and looking into the unknown, the occult, the dead, .the unexplainable. 1
French History -
1789-92: The Revolution and the end of King Louis XVI and the Bourbon family rule. 1804-1815: Napoleon 1st Empire- Goya paints the misery inflicted on Spain by Napoleon. 1815-48: Restored MonarchyBourbon Dynasty was restored to the French throne. 1815-1824: Reign of Louis XVIIIThe Raft of the Medusa 1824-1830: Charles X-tyrannical brother of the beheaded Louis XVI. -1830 revolution Liberty Leading the People. 1830-1848: Louis-Philippe I, the Citizen King- a republican.
The skin tone of this body is washed out and pale, signifying death and not to long ago.
Gericault interviewed the survivors and found out that they had to resort to sacrificing on other to stay fed, this is why there is a bloodied axe in the painting. Gericault also included a French officer’s uniform as he blamed the event on an old captain who caused the Medusa ship to sink.
In the far right corner, a sister ship (Argus) can be seen - but only just, portraying how far away and helpless these innocent people are. This allows the viewer a deeper insight into this awful situation, almost actually on the raft with them.
This is a print after a drawing by J. Correard, one of the survivors. Gericault wanted his painting to look authentic so he remade the raft in his studio and interviewed the survivors for details and to make notes of their horrific experiences. This is the plan of the Raft of The Medusa "at the point she was abandoned" contemporary engraving.
Here are a few preliminary sketches Gericault composed prior to completing his final masterpiece. They are studies of the survivors. He also visited morgues to paint dead flesh in order to correctly capture rotting flesh. This further shows his Romantic art style as he wants the experience to be authentic.
The billowing sail in the far left of the painting emphasizes the shape of the wave just behind it. This gives the sail as sense of power and force, adding to the terror and inhumane events happening on this Raft which is further gripping the viewer and immersing them into the painting,
This image of a father mourning his son is heartbreaking. It adds a deeper sadness to the overall tone of the painting and sets apart each person with separate story and dimension of the painting. By creating those studies of severed limbs from the morgue to his studio, Gericault was able to depict the death ridden flesh tones perfectly.
This godly figure placed on top of the human pyramid of people shows that the optimistic of the latter had hope for surival and that the ship in the distance might have come back for them. However, the dramatic light employed proves that this is an unlikely thing to happen and us as the viewers are drawn to this figure from the bottom of the painting (where we feel we could step onto the ship) to the top.
Eugène Delacroix
Liberty Leading the People 1830
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix Delacroix was a French Romantic artist who lived in the late 18th to the 19th century. Delacroix used expressive brushstrokes throughout his work and the use of his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of Impressionists, while his devotion towards exotic inspired artists of the Symbolist movement.
“Liberty Leading the People”
This painting was completed in 1830 and is a large scale OIl on canvas composition measuring 260 x 325 cm. This colossal size allows for the viewer to really gain a sense of the happenings in the painting and the foreshortening of bodies and limbs draws us in further - much like Gericault and his Raft. This painting is one of Delacroix's best-known works. It is an unforgettable image of Parisians, having taken up arms, marching forward under the banner of the tricolour representing liberty, equality, and fraternity. Delacroix was inspired by contemporary events to invoke this romantic image of the spirit of liberty, however he seems to be trying to convey the will and character of the people, rather than glorifying the actual event. This was the 1830 revolution against Charles X, which did little other than bring a different king, Louis-Philippe, to power. The warriors lying dead in the foreground offer poignant counterpoint to the symbolic female figure, who is illuminated triumphantly, as if in a spotlight.
The Tricolour of the brilliant blue and red compliments the red sash of the figure that looms up to LIbert. These colours all stand out and are in stark contrast to the traditional muted colour palette artists were working with. These wonderfully saturated pigments further enhance the looseness of the brushstrokes and form of the figures. This is not a perfectly finished painting as we can easily the brushwork involved but we have a sense of the openness of line and contours.
In
the centre figure we have a woman who is personification of Liberty, a semi-nude muscular female. She wears the red Phrygian cap of liberty, which was worn during the first French Revolution.’Liberty’ holds the tricolore flag in her left hand (which Charles X banned) and an infantry musket in her right hand. Her exposed breasts portray antiquity, the birth of democracy, to Ancient Greece and the Roman republican tradition. altogether she is a potent symbol of an idea of liberty and of struggle for freedom.
Marble Statue of Aphrodite
Paris was a medieval city with narrow and winding streets and LIberty is portrayed to be striding across the barricade which has been set up in the streets of Paris. The boulevards of the later 19th century had not yet been built, and so the revolutionaries dug up cobblestones that paved the streets in order to create a barricade. They were both defensive positions but also impeded the movement of the Royalist troops.
This painting is a contemporary subject and large paintings were usually reserved for history paintings - according to the rules of The Academy. Much like Géricault, Delacroix is taking on a subject that was relatable to the people of Paris as this was something that they experienced in the July of 1830. After this revolution, along came a more moderate king to the throne - King Louis-Philippe.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame is recognisable in the background to the far right. Notre Dame was a symbol of the monarchy. Delacroix represents the tricolour at the top of one of it towers. This was the flag of the revolutionaires. In the foreground, two men can be seen on the outer left of the canvas. Attention is drawn onto these figures by the use of simple technique of applying highlight which engages the viewer and draws the eye. The furthest man has a pistol in his waist, wears a disheveled loose-fitting shirt with no jacket and his skin colour altogether implies he is a man of a lower class than to his fellow fighter beside him.
This gentleman sports a sleek tophat paired with tailored clothing (jacket, waistcoat, trousers), and a hunting rifle. Delacroix depicts classes united against the monarchy and nobility.
The use of the dramatic smoke in the background makes the figures stand out against this brutal storm that is stirring up against the
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Royalists
Off centre and to the right side of the canvas Delacroix has painted a young boy who is gripping firmly onto two pistols - one in each hand. This gives him a wild and adrenaline pumped tone to this character as french children were taught not to behave so recklessly. The viewer can tell this boy is a school boy because he is wearing a velvet cap and a satchel with what appears to be an emblem - of a school. Underneath this feral schoolboy we can see two soldiers who have fallen. The artist is not giving the viewers a sense of heroic victory and Liberty leading everyone to safety, but instead depicting the reality and costs of this revolution. Next to these two fallen, on the left side is a man who looks as if he has been dragged from his bed to be inhumanly murdered by Royalists - as he is only wearing an unbuttoned nightshirt and is nude from the waist down. He’s only wearing one sock on his boney limbed foot. His shirt is bloodied and the figure is very close to the viewer. His right arm is foreshortened, much like the rest of the figures in this painting. This feature is much like Géricault’s Raft of The Medusa which literally puts forward violence, distress and despair in an idealised way.