THE GENRE PAINTING

What is a "genre painting"? Is is a painting that depicts scenes from everyday life. The French word "genre" means "kind", as in "mankind". Street scenes, peasants working in the fields, women at their washing, any subject would do as long as it was taken from life. The term "genre" did not come into use until the end of the 18th century, though this style of painting dates from the 17th. The painting of genre subjects was a reaction against the painting of the 16th century which was considered too mannered, sophisticated and "high­brow". The man who has come to symbolize this upheveal is an Italian painter, Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio, after the town in Northern Italy where he was born.

Caravaggio took the subjects of his paintings from everywhere ranging from everyday life to religion. What mattered was to paint them from life. He treated all of his subjects in the same style painting a small number of figures, caught in full movement and presented in close-up. He would give these scenes a strong, dramatic light that accentuated the contrast between light and shadow. His style of painting became extremely popular and was imitated all over Europe. Is is called Tenebrism, from the Italian "tenebroso", which means "murky" and refers to the dark shadows that characterize Caravaggio's work.

Beginning with Caravaggio, painters were ready to study people's natural, spontaneous behaviour. They began to depict people in a familiar ordinary world, something that had never previously been done in painting. Painters' studios began to be filled with a steady stream of models of all types. The artist would dress them up in the theatrical costumes according to the subject he wished to paint. Sometimes, if he wanied to paint the best of life, he would portray his models drinking or playing musical instruments. Or else he chose the opposite, the misery of life, as the Spanish painter Murilli did with "The Young Beggar".

This new style of painting was immediately popular, especially since small paintings that were easy to handle, had made their appearance. They are called "easel paintings". The rising Dutch bourgeoisie, for example, covered their walls with them. But critics and art specialists looked on them with disdain. To them, these were "minor" or "low" works. Despite the opinion of the specialists, all the major painters were fascinated by genres subjects and widened their scope to include paintings of the life of the bourgeoisie. The Dutch painter Vermeer or the French painters Watteau, Fragonard Boucher and Chardin were the masters of genre painting in the 17th and 18th centuries.

On the eve of the French Revolution, painters began to abandon genre painting, because they thought and felt the subjects were too light and frivolous. Virtue and noble sentiments came back into fashion. This frequently resulted in the theatrical compositions that were too sentimental to be "true". Throughout the first half of the 19th century genre painting was abandoned in favour of grander subjects, inspired by history or mythology. It wasn't until the arrival of the Impressionists in the late 19th century that genre painting came back into its own.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 668