Research Catalog

Title

Painting and narrative in France : from Poussin to Gauguin / edited by Peter Cooke and Nina Lübbren.

Publication

London ; New York : Routledge, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Cooke, Peter, 1962-
• Lübbren, Nina

Description

xiv, 233 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"Before Modernism, narrative painting was one of the most acclaimed and challenging modes of picture-making in Western art, yet by the early twentieth century storytelling had all but disappeared from ambitious art. France was a key player in both the dramatic rise and the controversial demise of narrative art. This is the first book to analyse French painting in relation to narrative, from Poussin in the early seventeenth to Gauguin in the late nineteenth century. Thirteen original essays shed light on key moments and aspects of narrative and French painting through the study of artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Charles Le Brun, Jacques-Louis David, Paul Delaroche, Gustave Moreau, and Paul Gauguin. Using a range of theoretical perspectives, the authors study key issues such as temporality, theatricality, word-and-image relations, the narrative function of inanimate objects, the role played by viewers, and the ways in which visual narrative has been bound up with history painting. The book offers a fresh look at familiar material, as well as studying some little-known works of art, and reveals the centrality and complexity of narrative in French painting over the course of three centuries."--Page [i].

Subject

• Narrative painting, French

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction : Narrativity and (French) painting / Peter Cooke and Nina Lübbren -- Section I: Ancien régime. Units of vision and narrative structures : upon reading Poussin's Manna / Claudine Mitchell -- Figures of narration in the context of a painted cycle : the north bays of the grande galerie at Versailles / Marianne Cojannot-Le Blanc -- The crisis of narration in eighteenth-century French history painting / Susanna Caviglia -- Obscure, capricious, and bizarre : neoclassical painting and the choice of subject / Mark Ledbury -- Section II: Restoration and July monarchy. Delacroix and 'the work of the reader' / Beth S. Wright -- Narrative and history in Léopold Robert's Arrival of the harvesters in the Pontine marshes / Richard Wrigley -- Narrative strategies in Paul Delaroche's Assassination of the Duc de Guise / Patricia Smyth -- Section III: Second empire and third republic. Eloquent objects : Gérôme, Laurens, and the art of inanimate narration / Nina Lübbren -- Tyrannical inopportunity : Gustave Moreau's anti-narrative strategies / Scott C. Allan -- Theatricality versus anti-theatricality : narrative techniques in French history painting (1850-1900) / Pierre Sérié -- The conflicted status of narrative in the art of Paul Gauguin / Belinda Thomson -- Section IV: Key issues of pictorial narrative. Narrativity, temporality, and allegorisation, from Poussin to Moreau / Peter Cooke -- Towards a study of narration in painting : the early modern period / Étienne Jollet.

ISBN

• 9781472440105
• 1472440102

LCCN

2015031471

OCLC

• ocn918940758
• 918940758
• SCSB-1866777

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library