GIVING UP ON HISTORY? CHALLENGES TO THE HIERARCHY OF THE GENRES IN EARLY NINETEENTH‐CENTURY FRANCE

Abstract

This essay argues for the continuing importance of the hierarchy of the genres to French painting after the Revolution and for the hierarchy's destabilization through the introduction of new genres, notably the sub‐category of history painting known as ‘le genre historique’, in the early years of the nineteenth century. While history painting, traditionally the genre of choice of the ambitious artist and mainstay of academic ideology, remained pre‐eminent, historical genre painting's radical intervention unsettled traditional assumptions of artistic value and questioned the Academy's self‐proclaimed prerogative to legislate on artistic matters. It examines the development of historical genre painting in the light of these changes, particularly the shift in historical consciousness from the eighteenth‐century's Aristotelianism to the positivism of the nineteenth century. The essay concludes with a brief consideration of the relationship between historical genre painting, genre painting and the scenes of contemporary life called for in Baudelaire's celebrated essay, `The Painter of Modern Life'.