Battle Painting Research Articles

Waterloo in Richard Caton Woodville’s “Battles of the British Army”: Series for the Illustrated London News , 1893–99

This article examines three Waterloo pictures in Woodville’s “Battles of the British Army” series for the Illustrated London News . It considers the sort of national and imperial history that they, and the series as a whole, project and examines how Woodville’s needs and the magazine’s imperatives intersected during the production process. It also frames them as spaces where relations between words and images, as well as between the construction of history paintings and the reproduction of dominant narratives and tropes, are negotiated. It relates them to available models of and discourses about battle painting. In addition, it places them in relation to late nineteenth-century politics and to the imminent annexation of history painting by didactic book illustration.

THE BLACK SEA COASTLINE IN THE RUSSIAN-MOUNTAINEERS RELATIONSHIP IN THE PERIOD OF «THE CAUCASIAN WAR»: PICTORIAL STORY

The article analyzes the battle scenes reflecting the process of integration of the Black Sea coastal area of Kuban and Russia in the period of the Caucasian War. Participation of the young artist Ivan Aivazovsky in troop landings on the coast in 1838 gave a great impact to the development of marine battle painting. In the paintings "The Capture of Turkish boat by Russian sailors and the release of Caucasian women prisoners and "Night. Smugglers” Aivazovsky vividly depicted certain aspects of the mountaineers’ criminal fishery: the detention of a Turkish vessel with slaves by Russian corvettes of the Abkhaz expedition created after 1829 and the night scene of smuggling on the seashore. The author of the paintings is accurate in presenting historical details (landscapes, images of Turkish and Russian ships, appearance of traders). The painting by Kozlov "The Feat of Soldier Arkhip Osipov in March 23, 1840" is based on the events described in different interpretations by the participants of the defense of the Mihaylovsky fortress: Miroslavsky, later by interpreters Philipson and Fedorov. Analyzing these versions, the author comes to the conclusion that the plot of the painting is based on Philipson’s version, which in its turn is based on the testimonies of soldiers – participants of the battle. Such works of art had a great significance and ideological importance in the formation of the heroic image of Russian soldiers and their faithful serving the Tsar and Fatherland.

THE BLACK SEA COASTLINE IN THE RUSSIAN-MOUNTAINEERS RELATIONSHIP IN THE PERIOD OF «THE CAUCASIAN WAR»: PICTORIAL STORY

The article analyzes the battle scenes reflecting the process of integration of the Black Sea coastal area of Kuban and Russia in the period of the Caucasian War. Participation of the young artist Ivan Aivazovsky in troop landings on the coast in 1838 gave a great impact to the development of marine battle painting. In the paintings "The Capture of Turkish boat by Russian sailors and the release of Caucasian women prisoners and "Night. Smugglers” Aivazovsky vividly depicted certain aspects of the mountaineers’ criminal fishery: the detention of a Turkish vessel with slaves by Russian corvettes of the Abkhaz expedition created after 1829 and the night scene of smuggling on the seashore. The author of the paintings is accurate in presenting historical details (landscapes, images of Turkish and Russian ships, appearance of traders). The painting by Kozlov "The Feat of Soldier Arkhip Osipov in March 23, 1840" is based on the events described in different interpretations by the participants of the defense of the Mihaylovsky fortress: Miroslavsky, later by interpreters Philipson and Fedorov. Analyzing these versions, the author comes to the conclusion that the plot of the painting is based on Philipson’s version, which in its turn is based on the testimonies of soldiers – participants of the battle. Such works of art had a great significance and ideological importance in the formation of the heroic image of Russian soldiers and their faithful serving the Tsar and Fatherland.

THE BLACK SEA COASTLINE IN THE RUSSIAN-MOUNTAINEERS RELATIONSHIP IN THE PERIOD OF «THE CAUCASIAN WAR»: PICTORIAL STORY

The article analyzes the battle scenes reflecting the process of integration of the Black Sea coastal area of Kuban and Russia in the period of the Caucasian War. Participation of the young artist Ivan Aivazovsky in troop landings on the coast in 1838 gave a great impact to the development of marine battle painting. In the paintings "The Capture of Turkish boat by Russian sailors and the release of Caucasian women prisoners and "Night. Smugglers” Aivazovsky vividly depicted certain aspects of the mountaineers’ criminal fishery: the detention of a Turkish vessel with slaves by Russian corvettes of the Abkhaz expedition created after 1829 and the night scene of smuggling on the seashore. The author of the paintings is accurate in presenting historical details (landscapes, images of Turkish and Russian ships, appearance of traders). The painting by Kozlov "The Feat of Soldier Arkhip Osipov in March 23, 1840" is based on the events described in different interpretations by the participants of the defense of the Mihaylovsky fortress: Miroslavsky, later by interpreters Philipson and Fedorov. Analyzing these versions, the author comes to the conclusion that the plot of the painting is based on Philipson’s version, which in its turn is based on the testimonies of soldiers – participants of the battle. Such works of art had a great significance and ideological importance in the formation of the heroic image of Russian soldiers and their faithful serving the Tsar and Fatherland.

Portland's Gettysburg Cyclorama: A Story of Art, Entertainment, and Memory

Portland, Oregon's, Gettysburg Cyclorama opened the last week of December 1887. Measuring 30 feet high and 300 feet in circumference and housed in a large sixteen-sided building, the great cylindrical painting viewed from within helped mark Portland as a major American population and cultural hub. The first cyclorama permanently exhibited in the Pacific Northwest, the huge image of the bloody 1863 battle attracted thousands of visitors and highlighted the city's Civil War observances. Closing to the general public in March of 1892 — a victim of shifting demographics and changing tastes — the enormous canvas continued to grace the large rotunda's walls adorning numerous businesses until the building's 1910 demolition. The story of the creation and short-lived popularity of Portland's long-lost battle painting is a tale about the relationship between images and historical understanding — one that reveals how late-nineteenth-century Oregonians recalled the origins and legacy of the Civil War.

THE LOST ART OF BRITISH BATTLE PAINTING

Without a king commander on the field, or the opportunity for public approbation, British battle painting paled in comparison to its French counterparts. The founding of the Royal Academy in the eighteenth century contributed to a flourishing of the art, spearheaded by a few sensational pieces that captured the imagination of the British public. Though the convention may have been usurped by modern photography, the continuing reproduction of famous battle paintings confirms their enduring popularity.

Exactitude is truth: representing the British military through commissioned artworks

The work of regimental artists is often derided for being jingoistic, irrelevant and predicated on anachronistic representational strategies rooted in high-Victorian battle painting. Despite their marginal status, a core of professional painters today work regularly for the British armed services to record, and occasionally commemorate, contemporary and past feats of arms, as well as more mundane public service duties such as ceremonial display and Keeping the Army in the Public Eye (KAPE) tours. Their work is largely unseen by the non-military public, mainly because it is intended for a closed community of serving soldiers, their families and veterans who are associated with the unit. Yet, as a sizeable contemporary body of artwork, it contributes to the commemorative rhetoric of the British military and employs a number of artists of national standing.Drawing on the author's own experiences as a several-times commissioned military artist, this paper is a work in progress that examines the work of several painters including John Ross, Ken Howard and Keith Holmes who have worked occasionally for the British armed services in the past three decades. But the paper will take as its principal case study the work of painter David Rowlands, commissioned in the 1990s by the Permanent Joint Headquarters (United Kingdom) as their official artist to record the British build-up in the Arabian Gulf, and since then fully employed by units in the British army (and some overseas military units) to paint commemorative works related to active service overseas, largely in Iraq and more recently Afghanistan.Through an examination of Rowlands' work, the paper touches upon the formal language of military painting, particularly the tensions between illustration and interpretation, between factual and technical accuracy, and examines the issues of authenticity and historical verity. The paper also touches upon issues of agency and reception, and the stresses between the commissioning process, the independence of the artist as interpreter and broader concerns of testimony and visual authority.

17th-century views of polish towns in the swedish royal collections at drottningholm palace

The Royal Swedish Collection at Drottningholm palace includes, among various other such scenes, a series of battle paintings by Johan Philip Lemke (1631–1711). This painter, educated in the Netherlands and Italy, carried out two series of paintings to commemorate the wars of the two Swedish monarchs, Carl X Gustav and Carl XI. These enormous compositions painted on canvas were mounted into the walls of two rooms in the palace. One of these views, the series devoted to the victories of Carl X Gustav, comprises twelve pieces, eight of which depict panoramas of towns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Carried out in 1690–1705, these views were copied from the engravings of Eric Johnson Dahlbergh (1625–1703), as is explained in the inscriptions. Unfortunately, the poor condition of these pictures (the effect of 18th-century ‘conservation’ using sand...) rules out comprehensive analysis of what is depicted in them. It can be no more than suspected that Lemke’s Drottningholm paintings were of a high artistic quality. As is proven by his drawings currently housed in the National Museum in Stockholm, this artist was undoubtedly a magnificent painter. These days, more than anything else the paintings under examination represent an interesting attitude of the painter towards history and glorifying the ruler in question.

De pinceau et d’épée. La peinture de bataille en Italie (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle) : vers une dissolution des formes

On brush and sword. The battle painting in Italy (16th-18th century) : towards dissolution of forms. The representation of battles in the Roman and Tuscan Renaissance painting is dominated by the mannerist style : few naturalistic coloration, predominance of the line and contour on the effects of the atmosphere, predilection for the complexity of compositions, all of which adds the work the character of “tour de force”. With the production of Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Jacques Courtois in the 17th century, the treatment of the subject was well developed. From then on, the tumult of mixing of the horsemen has direct consequences on representation. Absorbed by the light-dark contrast, the forms of soldiers and horses become less distinct. Starting from the end of the 17th century, this tendency towards confusion accentuates with the development of a much established pictorial style. The figures lose solidity, but the act of painting gains vigor and energy to the extent that it appears to be the imitation of the act of combat.

Studies in Late Qing Dynasty Battle Paintings

Le present article est consacre a l'etude d'un certain genre de l'art pictural sous les Qing. Dans une premiere partie, l'A propose de se focaliser sur quatres peintures de batailles realisees a la fin du regne de la dynastie Qing appartenant a des collections provenant d'Alberta (Canada), de Prague et de Norfolk (Angleterre). Pour chacune, il traite des problemes de datation et d'attribution. Il compare ensuite deux versions des douze peintures de batailles de Wu Youru qui utilisent chacune des documents des Premieres Archives Historiques Chinoises de Beinjing.

Napoleon and History Painting: Antoine-Jean Gros's "La Bataille d'Eylau, and: Painting and History during the French Restoration: Abandoned by the Past (review)

Reviewed by: Napoleon and History Painting: Antoine-Jean Gros’s “La Bataille d’Eylau”, and: Painting and History during the French Restoration: Abandoned by the Past Dorothy Johnson Christopher Prendergast. Napoleon and History Painting: Antoine-Jean Gros’s “La Bataille d’Eylau” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Pp. 223. $85 cloth. Beth S. Wright. Painting and History during the French Restoration: Abandoned by the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Pp. 269. $70 cloth. The two books under review here could not be more different in perspective. While Christopher Prendergast’s book offers an extended meditation on one painting, Beth Wright’s work is a study of the interrelationship between historical writings and historical paintings during the Restoration. Prendergast is a literary critic bringing the insights of literary theory (in a Brysonian manner) to bear upon an analysis of Gros’s painting, and, by extension, history painting during the Napoleonic period. Wright’s book is deeply historical and reflects her profound familiarity with French painting of the period. Gros’s vast, complex, and often written-about Battle of Eylau of 1808 certainly warrants a book-length study, for the painting is central to the development of French Romanticism and is one of the most important works commissioned by Napoleon during his campaign to utilize the visual arts for cultural and political propaganda. As in his Napoleon in the Pest-House of Jaffa of 1804, Gros’s subtle and profoundly psychological painting contains mixed [End Page 155] messages about the heroism of Napoleon and the validity and success of his military campaigns. In this work, in fact, Gros transforms the academic genre of battle painting as it had been codified during the late seventeenth century. But this is not the subject of Prendergast’s book. In a series of seven chapters Prendergast explores certain aspects and issues related to history painting, especially battle painting, during the Napoleonic period. Two chapters (chaps. 1 and 6) engage the Battle of Eylau in some detail. In chapter one, Prendergast chooses to focus on a detail of the right foreground, more specifically the gaze of the fallen Prussian soldier that expresses terror and horror, and informs us that he will use this detail to stand for the central arguments of his book: “For to start with a detail, especially with this detail, is both to make a move (routinely unremarkable) and yet to raise a question, a fundamental question, about the character of Gros’s painting. The move is a standard one, the adoption of a kind of synecdochic shorthand, using the detail as an anticipatory marker for a more general claim or argument about the picture: indeed there is an important sense in which the whole argument of this book can be made to converge on the implications of this one detail” (4). Indeed, Prendergast follows the method he has described and does not disappoint. In several chapters, he singles out details for discussion or meditation whether from paintings, historical narratives, or aesthetic treatises of the period. In some instances, this method leads to the presentation of new perspectives which give food for thought, and many pertinent questions are raised throughout the book. A few critical historical circumstances are described in detail, such as that of the commission of the Battle of Eylau and certain aspects of the Napoleonic propaganda campaign in painting. Several key issues in history painting are discussed at length in theoretical terms such as the choice of a significant moment and the debates concerning the “beau idéal” (chap. 3). For the latter discussion, Prendergast aptly focuses on the leading protagonists in the debate, the early-nineteenth-century aesthetic theorists Quatremère de Quincy and Emeric-David. His narrow focus on a few isolated passages in the published texts of these authors, however, leads him not to take into consideration the broader context, so that he states “Even in the writings of Quatremère and Emeric-David it [the “beau idéal”] is already well on its way to the intellectual graveyard” (58). This is mistaken, for the debate on the “beau idéal” in art would be central to the heated polemics of the Romantics versus the Classicists in the...

The allure of empire: art in the service of French imperialism, 1798-1836

From monumental battle paintings to the public display of archaeological spoils to the decoration of urban vistas, visual culture promoted modern French imperialism. So argues Todd Porterfield in this look at the forces of art and politics in France's military conquest of the Near East. In challenging the conventional wisdom that France happened into imperial venture, Porterfield explores interactions among artists, generals, journalists, curators, and politicians from the time of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign to the invasion of Algeria during the Restoration and July Monarchy.

Naked History: The Rhetoric of Military Painting in Postrevolutionary France

In the wake of the French Revolution, artists faced the challenge of representing contemporary military history without allegorizing it. Gros's Battle of Nazareth and Lejeune's Battle of Marengo represent two new pictorial rhetorics that responded to a new ideology of war. These transformations in French battle painting raised the issue of what people could accept as art, a contemporary reception that the essay also considers.

Popular Imperialism and the Military, 1850-1950.

Delusive seduction - pride, pomp, circumstance and military music, Robert Giddings We carved our way to glory - the British soldier in music hall song and sketch, circa 1880-1914, David Russell popular imperialism and the image of the army in juvenile literature, Jeffrey Richards heroic myths of empire, John M.MacKenzie war correspondents and colonial war, circa 1870-1900, Roger T.Stearn officer material - representations of leadership in late-19th-century British battle paintings, Paul Usherwood the world on fire - pyrodramas at Belle Vue Gardens, Manchester, circa 1850-1950, David Mayer the Hendon air pageant, 1920-1937, David Enrico Omissi.

Alphonse de Neuville's "The Spy" and the Legacy of the Franco-Prussian War

IN THE RELATIVELY peaceful period between end of first Napoleonic empire and 1870, military painting did not enjoy great popularity in France. Military painters had limited heroic material to draw on in this period, and although extensively patronized by both Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III, artists like Horace Vernet and Adolphe Yvon evoked little sympathy among more progressive critics. In his Salon review of 1859, Paul Mantz referred to ponderous documentary approach of Vernet as the religion of gaiter button, and in same year, Baudelaire wrote that since visual impact of a real battle was unobtainable in painting, only true military paintings possible were simple episodes of camp life.' Indeed, in middle years of nineteenth century, small paintings and prints of Nicolas Charlet and Auguste Raffet, both of whom specialized in anecdotal scenes of military camp life, generally attracted wider appreciation than battle paintings in tradition of Napoleonic era. However, experience of Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 not only revived popularity of military painting in France, but also profoundly changed manner in which artists treated their subject matter. Many of younger military painters after 1870 had been in active service during war, and their work had truth and immediacy of personal experience. Their major problem lay in depicting events of a war which amounted to a string of humiliating defeats for French. On other hand, human losses in war and cession of Alsace-

Källorna till “Las lanzas”

Summary In contrast with earlier writers, who have primarily treated “Las lanzas” in connection with formal analyses of Velazquez collected œuvre, the author considers the painting — the artist's one officially commissioned battle painting — in its natural context, contemporary European battle painting. A comparison with e.g. the German Christoph Jobst's tapestry cartoon “Hersfeldt's Surrender” (Fig. 1), executed in 1615, shows how closely “Las lanzas” (Fig. 2) adheres to the iconographically accepted surrender motif. There are, however, certain divergences in Velazquez’ painting, e.g. the semi‐bird's‐eye view of the landscape and the fact that the victor, Marquis Spinola, is shown dismounted. This indicates that with the aid of military topographical maps and historical accounts Velazquez has attempted to create a realistic and historically correct scene within the framework of the iconographic scheme. The question is the extent of this realism. Scholars generally seem inclined to interpret the painting ...