Oil
Painting -> History of Painting
History of Painting
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The oldest known paintings
are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, dated at about 32,000
years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and
black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo,
and mammoth. There are examples of cave
painting all over the world.
History painting is the painting
of scenes with storyline content from classical history, Christian
history, and mythology, as well as depicting the historical
events of the near past. These include paintings
with religious, mythological, historical, literary, or allegorical
subjects--they embodied some interpretation of life or conveyed
a moral or intellectual message. The historical events chosen
would be iconographic, not only depicting important events,
but ones of particular significance to the painter's society,
as for instance, the signing of the declaration of independence
in American history painting. |
The event, if suitable, does not need to have actually occurred,
and artists have frequently taken great liberties with historical
facts in order to portray the message desired. The gods and goddesses
from the ancient mythologies represented different aspects of the
human psyche, figures from religions represented different ideas,
and history, like the other sources, represented a dialectic or
play of ideas. For a long time, especially during the French Revolution,
history painting often focused on depiction of the heroic male nude;
though this waned into the 19th century. Other artists depicted
scenes, regardless of when they occurred, in classical dress. When,
in 1770, Benjamin West proposed to depict "The Death of General
Wolfe" in contemporary dress, he was firmly instructed to use classical
attire by many people.
He did depict the scene in clothing that had occurred on the scene.
Although George III refused to purchase the work, he succeeded both
in overcoming his critics' objections and inaugurating a more historically
accurate style in such paintings. In the mid-nineteenth-century
there arose a style known as historicism, which marked a formal
imitation of historical styles and/or artists. Another development
in the nineteenth century was the blending of this genre with that
known as genre
painting: the depiction of scenes of everyday life.
Grand depictions of events of great public importance were supplemented
with scenes depicting more personal incidents in the lives of the
great, or the everyday life in historical settings. The artists
who depicted them sometimes connected the change with the moral
messages conveyed by the public events; they asserted that moral
messages were also instructive in the ordinary life, and indeed,
were even superior because more people would be able to apply the
lesson implicit in a depiction of family life than in one of a heroic
death on the battle field.
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