Picturing the People: Images of the Lower Orders in Nineteenth-Century French Art

Abstract

Picturing the People: Images of the Lower Orders in NineteenthCentury French Art If the images that artists create directly connect to the culture of their time, then the pictures painted, etched, and drawn in France between 1815 and the i86os should be rich in representations of the people-of the people as peasants and workers, of the people seen as the lower orders in crowded slums or rural hovels, and as the classes dangereuses who filled social commentary. The expectation that the lower classes should be frequently depicted in nineteenth-century French art would rest on more than the naive assumption that art must illustrate its era, for the sights of that age-thousands of immigrants and endless construction while the population of Paris trebled, new machines and industries, political demonstrations, barricades, and revolutionmight well have stimulated the artistic eye. The culture as a whole was greatly concerned about these matters. They were the subject of novels (many of which are still read) and of systematic field studies (now remembered primarily for contributing to the birth of modern social science). They were the object of important political and religious movements and of innumerable programs for reform. They were discussed at the meetings of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, in sermons, in parliament, and in pamphlets and daily newspapers. Not only were pauperism, prisons, crime, illegitimacy, and illiteracy recognized as critical problems for modern France, but contemporary French history was also believed to have played a peculiarly exemplary role in the course of modern civilization.1