Paintings serve as the visual records that provide the 21st century with important information regarding the structure of the society, culture, styles, and the ideologies that prevailed in that period. Aside from providing aesthetic beauty, paintings made by artists such as Degas, Greuze, and David did not only educate the scholars of the styles they used but it also exposed a brutal realism of the destruction of the family bonding amongst its members. The purpose of this paper is to connect the paintings of these artists and examine their context as relevant to the growth of familial isolation and gender division in the Modern period. Artists addressed the status of the family, women, and children differently through their paintings and exposed that beneath the so-called blissful happy domestic life lies a sad and fake façade of isolation and lack of filial bond amongst the family members.
Family is the basic unit of the society and this truth remained for thousands of years. Even in the 21st century, the society cannot exist without the collection of families living in one place. During the Modern period, families are deemed important in rearing future generations of the society. It is the prime reason why families exist, to educate their young so that they will be able to conform to the standards expected to them by the society. For instance, some painters in the Romantic period had attempted to portray families as an icon of peace; illustrating blissful domestic happiness characterized by warm colors, smiling faces of the children scattered around and playing with each other whilst their parents happily gaze to them from their seats. The Modern period artworks were filled with lavish themes of familial domesticity which somehow gives an idea that marrying and having a family must have been a happy life for men and women. However, Degas countered this theme with realism that not all pictures portrayed in this manner were indeed happy in their situation. Take a closer look on his painting titled The Belleli Family (see fig. 1) a classic oil painting he made in 1858 to the 1860s. The Belleli family portrait (c.1858-1860) painted by Degas represents the importance of gender division/hierarchy prevalent in the modernist period; a style which was considered an idealistic portrayal of the modern family (Nochlin 154-155).
“The family was a theme considerably debated during the second half of the 19th century in France among men of Degas’ class, and specifically within the group of sophisticated men of letters; who were his friends and associates” (Nochlin 162).
Despite the fact that close family ties were the primary focus of the society, the paintings that somehow depict a blissful home sweet home image, it does not really reflect the reality within it. Paintings such as the one made by Degas for the Bellili family only served as a propaganda to hide the awful strained and loveless marriage of his aunt and her husband (Nochlin 156). This can be seen on the division implicitly indicated by the artist in the painting. The tension of the painting arises from the stiff figure of Laura Degas; her face devoid of any emotion and her eyes seemed to look distant. Her left arm clung protectively on her Giovanna who seemed to mimic her mother’s stoic disposition. In contrast, Giulia maintained the some connection with the patriarch of the family, Gennaro, who seemed rather unfazed and uninterested to pose for the painting due to his sideways glance. Degas exposed the sociopolitical factors that divided the Bellili family. They belong to the bourgeoisie group and their obvious lack of affectionate warmth to each other characterized the ideal family whose authority centered on parents alone. The society assigned roles to each sexes; the father was the symbol of authority and the provider while the mother’s duty was to educate and rear the children to become good citizens. As Nochlin noted, for the family belonging to this group the notion of happy living was not exercised instead the goal was to promote the family’s image with “restrained respectability” and this isolation created by Degas in his painting was illustrated by the distance of the couple from each other clearly an evidence that marriage by that time was an unhappy one (163).
In the case of Jacques-Louis David’s painting titled The Oath of Horatii (c.1785; see fig. 2) the family of the Roman Emperor Horatius seen in the act of encouraging his sons to battle the enemies of Rome. The intense gazes as well as the colors emphasized the drama of their emotions. While the men towered and ready to lay their lives for the sake of Rome’s glory, the three women on the right side were seen cowered and slumping in grief whilst the woman wearing the blue veil cradled the children protectively as if refusing to let them see what the men were doing at the center.
“One of the Horatii was married to a sister of the Curatii while their only sister, Camilla, was betrothed to one of their opponents. The two sets of brothers nevertheless fought to death, and only one of the Roman warriors survived; thus, Rome triumphedthe returning victor, finding his sister mourning her betrothed, killed her in patriotic rage. Their fatherdefended him before the assembled people of Rome and succeeded in winning his exoneration” (Crow 212-213).
In this case, the authority centered on the patriarch of the family, Horatius, and while the women embodied the weaknesses, the men on the other hand exhibited determinism to topple Rome’s enemies by allying themselves together. In addition to the historical theme of the painting, what David emphasized in this work was the different social status of the women in the family. If Degas used the spatial distance to illustrate the characters’ emotional detachment from each other, David highlighted this through the use of the colors and the lighting. The women on the right panel received minimal lighting due to the men blocking the light source with their bodies. Although the gender divide was evident in this painting, it was the contrast of Degas’ painting. David’s work showed the deep filial connection between father and sons; their emotions representing valor and courage were reflected on their faces. There was no emotional detachment but the Horatius and his sons were prepared to help their father battle the war against the enemies. The representation of the family in this painting was based on politics and gender as well. After learning that Horatius’ son killed his own sister, he neither felt remorse or anger and instead of persecuting for his crimes, Horatius defense for his son explained that women during the Roman period held no right and were deemed as useless citizens; therefore, the death of Horatius’ daughter was the right way to punish her for allying herself emotionally with the enemy.
Lastly, another painting that features the family theme was the work of Greuze titled, The Dying Grandfather (see fig. 3) painted in the mid-18th century was contrasts the previous works of Degas and David. Both Degas and David’s works illustrated the gender division and lack of emotional feelings of their subjects towards each other; but in Greuze’s work, it was effeminate in a sense that only few paintings managed to depict a family portrait as emotional as this one. At the center of the painting, the dying grandfather, old and with white hair solemnly waits for his final hour to come. Surrounding his weak figure were the servants, children, and grandchildren all exhibited sad emotion on their faces as they watch their beloved grandfather speak to the eldest son of his final wishes before he depart in peace. The background was pitch-black. Greuze intended the painting to portray the pursuit of happiness by portraying the life of his own family with all the members together in one place.
“Greuze never painted landscapes, and his petit-bourgeois families are entirely cut-off from the world outside their happy and unhappy home; no views of streets, no exteriors-not even doors or windows; the family is hermetically sealed. In this isolation from society, genetic relationships take over” (Bryson 128).
The concept of isolation in Greuze’s painting meant the family’s separation from the society itself to achieve their happiness and yet, because of this reason, their emotions were sometimes deemed as cold due to the fact that they lacked social interaction from the outside. In this painting, the family unit was depicted as single and isolated unit of the society where only the family members dominated the picture because of their genetic connections. As a conclusion, the portrayals of the family in arts have been treated differently by artists throughout the centuries and mostly, these relationships were based on the gender roles assigned to them by the society. It was because of the roles assigned that family members are ranked based on the degree of their importance or in accordance to their hierarchy and mostly, issues regarding strained family relationships occur in the middle class sector of the society.
WORKS CITED
Bryson, Norman. Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. PDF File.
Crow, Thomas E. Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1985. PDF File.
David, Jacques-Louis. The Oath of the Horatii. 1785. Oil on canvas. Digital Image. Museum of Louvre, Paris, France. Web. Erich Lessing, Louvre Museum. 16 Mar. 2016.
Degas, Edgar. The Bellelli Family. c.1858-1867. Oil on canvas. Digital Image. Web. Gerard Blot, Paris, Musée d'Orsay. 16 Mar. 2016.
Greuze, Jean-Baptiste. The Dying Grandfather. N.d. History of Art, University of Michigan Library. 16 Mar. 2016.
Greuze, Jean-Baptiste. The Dying Grandfather. 1763. Oil on canvas. Digital Image. Web. Wow.com. 16 Mar. 2016.
Nochlin, Linda. Representing Women. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999. PDF File.
