Course delivery and schedule This Weekend Course includes 7 x 90-minute sessions delivered between Friday evening and Sunday lunchtime with plenty of opportunity for further conversations and networking during breaks and mealtimes.
Course sessions The first course session takes place after dinner on Friday evening. There are four sessions on Saturday: two before lunch, one before dinner and one after dinner. There is a break on Saturday afternoon just after lunch, offering time to rest, read, or explore Madingley Hall’s beautiful grounds. The final two sessions take place on Sunday morning, and the course finishes with lunch.
Summary of content During this introductory weekend course we will explore depictions of Paris and its citizens created by a selection of avant-garde artists working in Paris from the mid- to late-19th century. Encompassing a range of media, our exploration will examine works from around the 1840s to the end of the 1800s. Looking at familiar realist, impressionist and post-impressionist works - as well as less well-known examples - we will discuss how depictions of Parisians from across the social strata, provide insights into modern art and life in the 19th-century capital.
Our first session will consider the impact of Haussmannisation on the development of modern art. The vast urban renewal programme undertaken in the capital by Baron Haussmann under the instructions of Napoleon III. From the early 1850s onwards, large swathes of old Paris succumbed to demolition and urban renewal. How did the changes affect modern painters’ works and how was it possible for artists to show and sell their work?
Our next session we will discuss the phenomenon of the artistic bohemian – a figure, whose emergence during the 1830s and 1840s, was associated with Parisian life. Looking at work by Octave Tassert and Thomas Couture, amongst others, we will consider how representations of artists’ struggles for survival - in literature as well as the visual arts - led to the bohemian ‘type’. We will consider how Gustave Courbet’s images of the independent bohemian, broke new ground.
The third session considers Baudelaire’s flâneur. This gentleman/dandy - synonymous with the phenomenon of the Haussmann city - is associated with leisurely, proprietorial strolling along the city’s boulevards. How does the flâneur manifest in paintings, and how might his experience of exploring the city environment potentially transfer to us, the viewer, when we look at images of Parisian street scenes?
In our fourth session we will look at the representations of ragpickers. Working on the margins of society, these figures 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 the ragpickers’ unconventional lifestyles - living in and experiencing the city in parallel with the majority of citizens - inspired evocative depictions by artists including Manet and Raffaëlli.
Our fifth presentation we will discuss the appeal for avant-garde artists including Daumier, Degas and Steinlen of depicting Parisian laundresses. Highly visible on the streets as they washed and ironed in open shops, and delivered heavy bundles of washing to their customers, laundresses were a familiar feature of city life. Their work was gruelling and low-paid. We will investigate how they inspired experimental oil paintings, pastels and prints and drew attention to the labour of working-class women.
The complex figure of the Parisienne is the subject of our sixth session. Epitomising modernity, the Parisienne - with her close attention to fashions and self-fashioning – 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.
Our final session considers the Parisian entertainment industry which, by the end of the 19th century, was internationally famous. The energy of the entertainers, the vibrancy of the venues, and the responses of the audience provided artists with ample inspiration. Our final session will consider representations of entertainers and audiences as seen through the different lenses of artists including Degas, Tissot and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Aims This course aims to:
introduce you to key impressionist and post-impressionist works
provide introductory socio-historical context to the understanding of Paris during the time of the impressionists to the end of the 19th century
improve visual literacy
Friday Please plan to arrive at Madingley Hall between 16:30 and 18:30. You can meet other course participants in the Terrace Bar which opens at 18:15. Tea and coffee making facilities are available in the study bedrooms.
19:00
Dinner
20:30 – 22:00 Paris and the avant-garde
22:00
Terrace Bar open for informal discussion
Saturday
07:30
Breakfast (for residents only)
09:00 – 10:30 Bohemians
10:30
Coffee
11:00 – 12:30 The flâneur and the city
12:30
Free time
13:00
Lunch
14:00
Free time
16:00
Tea
16:30 – 18:00 Ragpickers
18:00 – 18:30
Free time
18:30
Dinner
20:00 – 21:30 Laundresses
21:30
Terrace Bar open for informal discussion
Sunday
07:30
Breakfast (for residents only)
09:00 – 10:30 The Parisienne
10:30
Coffee
11:00 – 12:30 Parisian entertainers and audiences
12:45
Lunch
Departure after lunch
Presentation of the course The course will involve illustrated lectures, group interaction and close looking at some of the key paintings of the period.
Learning outcomes As a result of the course, you will gain a greater understanding of the subject and you should be able to:
recognise the characteristics of impressionist and post-impressionist works
understand the significance of the Parisian ‘types’ in the development of modern art
employ visual analysis skills when looking at a 19th-century French painting
compare and contrast works at an introductory level
Course materials Course materials include the course syllabus, detailed timetable, reading list and tutor biography. Once these materials are available, you can download them from the Documents section below.
We will also email these to you before your course starts. Please check your spam folder if you have not received them.
Please note that our weekend courses are non-credit bearing and there is no formal assessment.
