WEEK 12 Belief in Nineteenth Century Art

Andrew Marvick
Associate Professor of Art History
Department of Art and Design
Southern Utah University

Belief in Nineteenth Century Art

New modes of expression of belief and a renewed exploration of religious themes in nineteenth-century art began about 1810 with the rise of Romanticism Links to an external site. as a broad current in Europe and America. Doubts about the efficacy of a philosophy based exclusively on mankind's capacity for reasoned argument as a foundation for civilization inspired many early nineteenth-century artists to seek alternative inspiration in nature and the wilderness. Consequently landscape painting soon emerged as a genre of increasing importance as a vehicle for poetic, philosophical and religious themes.

Such painters as Caspar David Friedrich Links to an external site. in Germany, and John Constable Links to an external site. in England offered new landscape compositions in oil, executed on a larger scale than was previously common, in an effort to reflect a variety of undefined or indefinable spiritual feelings; the themes conveyed in these images are sometimes collectively grouped together under the heading of Pantheism Links to an external site.—a broad attribution of nature to a nameless divine entity, which many artists preferred to more conventional, explicitly Christian imagery. Friedrich's Moonrise Over the Sea Links to an external site., of 1822, in which three figures are seen quietly admiring a beautiful nocturnal prospect, exemplifies this depersonalization of the divine; but his equivocation on this theme is reflected, as well, in such paintings as the plainly Christian-themed Cross Beside the Baltic Links to an external site., of 1815.

As the century progressed, however, the influence of science was increasingly felt by artists, and found expression in a variety of forms and styles. On the one hand the scientific discoveries of the mid-nineteenth century inspired such extraordinary landscape images as John Brett Links to an external site.'s Val d'Aosta Links to an external site. (1858), which the geology-minded art critic John Ruskin Links to an external site. admired for its conscientious attention to rock strata. On the other, the modern world's increasing mechanization and industrialization led some artists to envision various kinds of divine retribution, as in, for example, the apocalyptic Great Day of His Wrath Links to an external site. (1853), a large, late landscape by the English painter and inventor John Martin Links to an external site., for whom an ambivalent relationship to technology was a repeated artistic theme.

In the closing decades of the century a broad variety of more personal responses to the theme of spirituality found artistic expression. Among these are the mystical puzzle pictures of the Belgian Symbolist Fernand Khnopff Links to an external site., whose enigmatically designed and posed figures, set in strangely ritualistic architectural contexts and accompanied by indecipherable runes (The Sphinx, or The Caresses Links to an external site., from 1896, is a memorable example) made glancing and unresolvable reference to such exotic institutions as the Theosophical Society Links to an external site. and the Rosicrucian Fellowship Links to an external site..

The hunger for expression of spiritual impulses is felt in the art of two major exponents of Post-Impressionism Links to an external site., as well. The Dutch-born painter Vincent Van Gogh Links to an external site., who as a young man had attempted, without success, to undertake a career in the church, later addressed his frustration with organized religion and what he saw as its inherent incompatibility with the path of true Christian feeling in several paintings of quasi-religious type, of which The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise Links to an external site., of 1890, is an example. And Paul Gauguin Links to an external site. likewise infused some of his more overtly spiritual scenes with intense, vibrating colors which he associated with specific, highly personal symbolic meaning. The color symbolism and private character of expression in such paintings as Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Links to an external site. (1897) would later provide a restless spiritual model for much of the formally radical abstract and non-representational art of the early twentieth century.