Painting 19th-century Paris and its people

Aims

This course aims to: 

• introduce you to key Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works and a selection by less well-known contemporaries
• provide an introductory socio-historical context for looking at Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works
• improve visual literacy

Content

In this introductory course we will explore depictions of 19th-century Paris and its citizens created by a diverse selection of avant-garde artists working in Paris from the mid to late 1800s.

Incorporating prints, pastels and oil paintings, your exploration will include Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by artists including Renoir, Degas, and Morisot. Our discussions will involve less well-known but equally intriguing examples by contemporaries including Gavarni, Béraud and Raffaëlli. We will investigate how Parisians from across the social strata provided subject matter for avant-garde painters – from the wealthiest citizens to the most impoverished. We will discover some of the ways in which artists’ depictions, wittingly or unwittingly, provide insights into the varied experiences of 19th-century life in the capital.

There will be opportunities for close looking, visual analysis and comparison of works which aim to improve observations skills and to familiarise you with key works from the period. One session will take place in the Fitzwilliam Museum enabling you to experience the varied effects of paintings’ scale, technique and colour at first hand. 

Presentation of the course 

The course will involve illustrated lectures with PowerPoint, group interaction and close looking at some of the key paintings of the period. Our fifth session will be in the Fitzwilliam Museum, taking place in front of a small selection of predominantly 19th-century French paintings enabling you to experience original works. 

Course sessions

1. Setting the scene: and the painting of a ‘new’ Paris
   From the early 1850s onwards, large swathes of old Paris succumbed to demolition and urban renewal. We will consider the impact of Haussmann’s vast urban renewal programme on the development of modern painting. How did these changes in areas of the city influence modern painting?
    
2. The Bohemian
   We will discuss how representations of artists’ struggles for survival led to the creation of the bohemian ‘type’. We will consider works by artists including Tassaert and Couture as well as examining how Gustave Courbet’s images of the independent bohemian broke new ground.
    
3. The flâneur and the city
   The flâneur – the gentleman stroller - and his leisurely, proprietorial presence on the Parisian boulevards will be our focus. How does the flâneur manifest in paintings and how might his experience of exploring the city environment occasionally transfer to us, the viewer, when we look at images of Parisian street scenes? 
    
4. Ragpickers
   Working on the margins of society, ragpickers mainly worked at night, making a living from sifting through the city’s bins looking for saleable detritus suitable for recycling. We will consider how their unconventional lifestyles and experiences of the city - in parallel with the majority of citizens - inspired evocative depictions by artists including Manet and Raffaëlli.
    
5. The laundress
   We will address why depicting Parisian laundresses appealed to avant-garde artists including Daumier, Degas and Steinlen. A familiar figure of city life, her work was gruelling and low-paid. How did the laundress inspire experimental oil paintings, pastels and prints and what might these works reveal about the harsh working conditions of working-class women?
    
6. Fitzwilliam Museum visit
   The Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection includes outstanding Impressionist paintings. Our visit will enable us to explore original paintings ‘in the flesh.’ We will identify chief characteristics of French avant-garde paintings and will apply visual literacy skills. 
    
7. The Parisienne
   With her close attention to fashions and self-fashioning, the Parisienne often confused the social boundaries of class, making her identity difficult to pinpoint and her respectability, at times, uncertain. We will look at a small selection of images, from portraits of bourgeois respectability to depictions of the demi-mondaine, to consider how the Parisienne becomes a key figure in the representation of modern Paris.
    
8. The prostitute
   We will discuss how and why images of prostitutes proliferate in avant-garde paintings of 19th-century Paris. Looking at examples by artists including Manet, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, we will discuss ways in which depicting the subject might appeal to those keen to convey the ambiguity and complexity of modern life. 
    
9. Parisian entertainers and audiences
   By the end of the 19th century, the vibrant Parisian entertainment industry was internationally famous. We will investigate ways in which the vivacity of the entertainers, the intriguing ambience of the venues, and the responses of audiences provided artists including Degas, Tissot and Toulouse-Lautrec with ample ideas for experimental work.
    
10. Review
    Our final session will feature a small selection of images as we look back on some of the ideas discussed during the previous sessions. We will discuss how Paris and Parisians were inextricably linked to the development of modern painting in which artists sought to develop visual equivalents to the experience of modern, urban life. 

Learning outcomes

You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course. 

The learning outcomes for this course are:

• recognise the characteristics of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works
• employ visual analysis skills when looking at a 19th-century French paintings
• compare and contrast works at an introductory level