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UNIT NINE: Late Baroque and Rococo STUDY GUIDE W Joseph Wright of Derby. An Experiment with an Air Pump, 1768, oil on canvas Joseph Wright of Derby/ the bird in the glass bowl/ moonlight and the Enlightenment/ a questioning gesture from the scientist/ a reflective pose of the philosopher/ two sisters torn between curiosity and distress/ appearance of well-dressed lovers 1. “One of the earliest practitioners of a Romantic mode in Britain was Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), who had trained as a portrait painter with Thomas Hudson, Reynolds‟s teacher. After Wright‟s Grand Tour of 1773-1775, he returned to the Midlands to paint its local society. Many of those he painted were the selfmade entrepreneurs of the first wave of the Industrial Revolution, which was a member of the Lunar Society, a group of industrialists (including Wedgewood), mercantilists, and progressive nobles who met in Derby. As part of the society‟s attempts to popularize science, Wright painted a series of „entertaining‟ scenes of scientific experiments, including An Experiment on a Bird in the Air-Pump” (Stokstad, Art History 949-50). “The air pump was one of the most innovative scientific developments of the eighteenth century. Although it was employed primarily to study the property of gases, it was also widely used to promote the public‟s interest in science because of its dramatic possibilities. In the experiment shown here, air was pumped out of the large glass bowl until the small creature inside, a bird, collapsed from lack of oxygen; before the animal died, air was reintroduced by a simple mechanism at the top of the bowl. In front of an audience of adults and children, a lecturer is shown on the verge of reintroducing air into the glass receiver. Near the window at right, a boy stands ready to lower a cage when the bird revives. (The moon visible out the window is a reference to the Lunar Society.) By delaying the reintroduction of air, the scientist has created considerable suspense, as the reactions of the two girls indicate. Their father, a voice of reason, attempts to dispel their fears. The dramatic lighting not only underscores the life-and-death issue of the bird‟s fate but also suggests the fact that science brings light into a world of darkness and ignorance. The lighting adds a religious dimension as well” (950). 2. “The moon is probably a reference to the Lunar Society. Based in the English Midlands, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, it met each month to discuss recent scientific developments and conduct experiments. Many of Wright‟s friends and patrons were members of the Society. It epitomizes, like Wright‟s painting, the spirit and exchange of ideas that are the essence of the Enlightenment (the Age of Reason). The Society met during the full moon so that its members would have the convenience of riding home by the light of the moon- hence the Society‟s name” (Cumming, Annotated Art 69). “The visiting scientist has flowing locks and a long robe, which make him look rather like a wizard. It was common practice at the time for a scientist to travel to a private residence to provide an evening‟s entertainment and instruction to a wealthy family” (68). 3. “Born in Derby, near the site of England‟s first large manufactory, Joseph Wright became the first painter of the Industrial Revolution, a portraitist and friend of manufacturers, engineers and those early scientists who were still called „natural philosophers‟. Trained in London by Thomas Hudson, teacher of Wright‟s older contemporary Reynolds, he, like Reynolds, desired to be more than an „ordinary‟ craftsman. In the enquiring spirit of Derby acquaintances, and emulating the Dutch followers of Caravaggio- „candlelight‟ masters such as Honthorst and Godfired Schalcken who had worked at the English court- Wright turned to ceaseless pictorial experiments in the effects of light, notably in nocturnal views of industrial scenes- blacksmiths‟ shops, iron forges, glass-blowing houses, blast furnaces, cotton mills- and of volcanic eruptions, which he depicted repeatedly after witnessing Vesuvius in action during a visit to Italy in 1773-5. All were painted with a new, Romantic fervour, in which, like the scientist and poet Dr. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles, Wright was able to „Inlist Imagination under the banner of Science‟” (Langmuir 329). “Darwin‟s tag fittingly describes this large painting, at once modern genre, „history painting‟, vanitas and portrait. It depicts not so much an experiment as a science-based home entertainment of the kind which Josiah Wedgewood was to arrange in 1779, when he summoned an assistant of the chemist Joseph Priestley to instruct his children and his friends. In Wright‟s picture a charismatic natural philosopher demonstrates the effects of a vacuum and the necessity of air for living creatures. The air has been pumped out of the flask at the top of the large apparatus on the table with the air pump, invented by the German physicist Otto von Guericke in about 1650. Another of his inventions, a pair of Magdeburg spheres, is lying nearby; when they are placed together, the air pumped out from between them, the resultant vacuum makes the spheres inseparable. In the flask a valuable white cockatoo is struggling for air and appears near to death. Only the scientist- white-haired and direct of gaze and gesture like God the Father in religious imagery- can save it by releasing the valve at the top of the flask” (329-330). 4. “The boy at the window lowers the bird‟s cage in hope of its imminent release; his two sisters react with grief and horror to their pet‟s agony, as their father adduces the chilly comforts of reason. The elderly man on the right meditates on death- a theme whose universal application is made even plainer by the human skull preserved in the large glass, from behind which shines a single candle. Another traditional motif of transience is introduced in the watch in which the man on the left times the demonstration. Behind his a boy watches with fascination. The youthful couple are alone in ignoring the central action, their eyes locked in love, their thoughts only of life. They are Mary Barlow and Thomas Coltman, who were to marry in 1769; their double portrait as a married couple, painted by Wright in 1771, is also in the [National] Gallery” in London (330). “A fainter secondary source of light is the moon outside the window- a Gothick touch reminding us that in the late eighteenth century science and the occult were sometimes confused, and equally enthralling. In a few years, Dr. Mesmer would demonstrate „animal magnetism‟ in Paris, while in England Erasmus Darwin‟s Lunar Society would meet every Monday nearest the full moon to discuss advances in science and technology” (330). 32
UNIT NINE: Late Baroque and Rococo STUDY GUIDE X Canaletto. The Grand Canal Looking Down to the Rialto Bridge, c. 1758-63, oil on canvas Canaletto/ vedute painting/ effects of light and water/ probable use of a camera obscura/ acutely observed human activities/ gondolas 1. “During the eighteenth century, landscape in Italy evolved a new form in keeping with the character of the Rococo: veduta (view) painting. Its beginnings can be traced back to the seventeenth century with the many foreigners, such as Claude Lorraine, who specialized in depicting Rome‟s environs. After 1720, however, it took on a specifically urban identity. The most famous of the vedutists was Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768) of Venice. His pictures were great favorites with the British, who bought them as souvenirs of the grand tours of Italy, then so popular. Indeed, he enjoyed such success with clients from England that he later became one of several Venetian artists to spend long sojourns in London” (Janson 610-11). 2. “Canaletto‟s landscapes are, for the most part, topographically accurate. However, he was not above tampering with the truth. While he usually made only slight adjustments for the sake of the composition, he would sometimes treat scenes with considerable freedom or create composite views. He may have used a mechanical or optical device (perhaps a camera obscura, a forerunner of the photographic camera) to render some of his views, although he was a skilled draftsman who hardly needed such aids. In any event, they fail to account for the sparkle of his pictures and this sure sense of composition… He often included vignettes of daily life in Venice that lend a human interest to his scenes and make them fascinating cultural documents as well” (610). 3. “From the first Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) was a professional, one of a family of professionals. His approach to view painting must certainly have been influenced by his early training in stage design, upon which he was collaborating with his father Bernardo and his uncle (or elder brother) Cristoforo by the time he was nineteen. Although no actual designs have survived, we know the names of certain plays for which Bernardo and his sons are recorded as having executed the scenery; and the type of scenery can be gauged well enough. The chief exponents of theatrical décor at the time were the Bibiena family, whose complicated architectural perspectives provided the setting for every type of play. One of their favorite devices was the scena all’angolo, whereby the stage setting was constructed at an angle, which gave the spectator a more lively and interesting vista down the pillars and porticoes and balustrades that represented the inevitable location of most plays: a palace interior” (Levy 104). 4. “No better painter of townscapes has ever existed, and even when his style grew tamer, neater and – it must be admitted- more mechanical, he did not lose his passion for the facts of Venice: from a flowerpot on a barred window-sill to a well-head, including the stance of a gondolier, and the set of a mask and cape, as well as the sequin-like flicker of light dotting a steep, tiled roof or a statue gesticulating whitely against a crisp blue sky. And his instincts made him also- as tends to be understressed- a keen observer of Venetian people of all classes. He is indeed the work of someone who was „origine civis venetus’, and could never forget that origin. Yet although detail proliferates in his pictures, he knew how to subordinate it to overall grasp of the scene. At their best, his pictures are built out of glowing light and strong shade, which in turn model the buildings depicted, creating an uncanny illusion of looking into not just the view shown but somehow beyond: into the city, which is felt extending far outside the composition, around the corner of the canal or the angle of a church, behind the last façade and the jumble of chimneypots and campanili on the horizon. Not only bricks and mortar but life itself is grasped- and felt to be going on with a serene assurance” (107, 112). 5. “Canaletto certainly drew on the spot, but the sureness of his eye was matched by a sureness of mind. He believed implicitly in the truth of his visual sensations, untroubled obviously by doubts or waverings. The actual visible world was reality for him… Hence the conviction of Canaletto‟s art, which lifts it above any mere reproduction of picturesque sites. What sometimes seems his prosaicism, is, in fact, his strength. That his views are seldom accurate topographically has been absorbingly and exhaustively demonstrated, and yet the demonstration seems oddly beside the point. It emphasizes only what can be sensed in most of Canaletto‟s pictures, that he was complete master of his material subject matter- constantly rearranging it and ingeniously modifying it for his own pictorial ends. But the resulting paintings were intended to look overwhelmingly factual and „true‟. They do, and that they do so is the ultimate indication of their creator‟s confidence in his own artistry” (112). 6. “The years of his first fame are probably the time when he began to assemble some pupils and co-workers in his studio; for vast as was his own output, he can hardly be responsible for all the Canalettesque views we have, even after imitations and frank pastiches have been discarded. No doubt the studio helpers were useful in preparing pictures even when they did not really paint them, and examination of Canalettos of the late thirties and early forties seems to indicate attempts at mass production. Many of the scenes would already be recorded by an original sketch made on the spot by Canaletto and often worked up more elaborately in further drawing done by him in the studio. From this second drawing the paintings could be prepared. The practice seems to have been to paint in the sky, and even sometimes the clouds, across the whole upper area of the picture; presumably the buildings were then drawn in over this and certainly their outlines were incised into the sky paint so as to provide guidance for the actual painting of them. Traces of inclusion are visible along roofs and cornices, semi-circular lines marking arches and domes, and though these are also present in paintings entirely by Canaletto, equally they are preparations that assistants could easily and usefully make for the final brush of the master. In fact, many Canaletto‟s show fluctuations in quality within the one picture: now the figures are more clumsy than his, now authentic Canaletto figures enliven a dully-painted architectural scene” (112-113). “Canaletto produced a few capricci, views of Venice where famous landmarks are piquantly jumbled together… These were paintings to be appreciated more by the resident or native than by the tourist” (113). “It was not until 1763, however, that prejudice against his type of art softened enough for him to be admitted to the Venetian Academy. And at Rome during the eighteenth century, the Director of the French Academy refused rooms to landscape painters, reserving them for students of … history painting” (117). 33
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