The Course of Empire: Desolation - Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole (1801 - 1848) was an American landscape artist and was the creative energy for the Hudson River School.  The Hudson River School was a 19th century American art movement that was focused on the aesthetic and emotional aspects of nature.  The School weaved the concepts of Europe's romanticism to create a wonderment for America's wild, and unexplored territory.  The Hudson River School started in upper New York State around the Catskill, and Adirondack mountains. The members included Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Hill, John Frederick Kensett, Asher Brown Durand, William Hart, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Thomas Cole.  Cole's imaginative visualizations of natural landscapes powered the romanticism in American landscape art in the 19th century. In his The Course of the Empire series, which include the title paintings, The Savage Lands (1833 -1836), The Arcadian or Pastoral State (1833-1836), The Consummation of Empire (1836), Destruction (1836), Desolation (1836), Cole expresses a divine and noble presence in his works.  The open landscape with the horizon unbroken, the bluish hue of the sunlight and moonlight, the sizing of human figures with reference to environment, the induced feeling of weather that is experience, are the precise elements that induce an emotional reaction to the work. With other Hudson River School artist expressing similar effects, "shimmering water and hazy skies, lit by diffused light" lead to a modern label for these type of works as Luminist.  "In Luminist works, man is sufficiently at peace with Nature that he can be reintegrated into the landscape without danger of starting a Course of Empire." (from "a river runs through it" by John Dorfman in Feb 2015 issue Art and Antiques)

 

The Battle of Trafalgar - Joseph Mallord William Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, water-colorist, and printmaker. He is regarded as the artist who elevated landscape/marine painting thru the uncanny, and noble ability of arranging colors to offer a feel and stimulating effect of luminosity and volume. In his works, The Battle of Trafalgar c 1824, Fisherman at Sea c 1796, and in Mount Vesuvius in Eruption, c 1817,  Turner fascinates his audience with a great command of color to capture moments either historical or current, in nature where things appear to be dire for the subject has he faces the wraths of god either thru war, storm or volcano.  This ability was developed with academic inquiry and travel to Italy and Sweden. In 1817 , Turner again crossed to the Continent, this time to explore the Lowlands and the Rhineland. In 1819, he traveled to Italy where he stayed for six months before returning laden with over two thousand sketches, studies and rough watercolors. Angoh, Stéphanie (2013-03-15). Turner (Kindle Locations 179-181). Parkstone International. Kindle Edition.

He is commonly known as "the painter of light" for a distinct and well deserved reason.

Turner's sense of the vivacity of color was enormously stimulated by his visit to Italy in 1819, understandable, given that the color sensibilities of most northern European artists are transformed by their contact with Italian light and color. Angoh, Stéphanie (2013-03-15). Turner (Kindle Locations 291-293). Parkstone International. Kindle Edition.

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun - William Blake

William Blake (November 1757 – August 1827) was an English painter, poet and printmaker with an original artistic expression during the Romantic period. He remained unknown during his productive career, but became a crucial figure during the later stages of his life.  "Blake stands alone in the history of British art; his paintings, prints and poetry evoke a private world of religious, mythic and philosophical themes of searing originality." (Tsaneva, Maria (2013-12-26). William Blake: 100 Masterpieces (Annotated Masterpieces Book 72) (Kindle Locations 142-144). Maria Tsaneva. Kindle Edition.

 "He believed that the visible world of the senses is an unreal envelope behind which the spiritual reality is concealed and set himself the impossible task of creating a visual symbolism for the expression of his spiritual visions". Tsaneva, Maria (2013-12-26). William Blake: 100 Masterpieces (Annotated Masterpieces Book 72) (Kindle Locations 36-38). Maria Tsaneva. Kindle Edition.  

The Great Red Dragon Paintings(circa 1805-1810) are a series of watercolor paintings that offer some insight into William Blake's visionary romantic style.  It was during they early 1800s that Blake was commissioned to create over a hundred paintings intended to illustrate books of the Bible. These paintings depict 'The Great Red Dragon' in various scenes from the Book of Revelation.

(3)"And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.(4) And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born." Rev 12:3-4 KJV


The verse refers to John the Apostle's descriptive vision in the Book of Revelations of the Great Red Dragon, Satan, trying to seize or devour the soon-to-be born Redeemer from his mother. The figure known as the Woman Clothed with the Sun is the Virgin Mary and she is a symbol for Israel and for the Church. Blake's threatening Dragon displays powerful musculature as well as its monstrous tail, wings, and horned heads.

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun

The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea

The Number of the Beast is 666

Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) - Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya (1746 - 1828) was court painter to the Spanish Crown and a major influence in the use of the Romantic approach.  The Romantic style or Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement in the 18th Century that used intense emotion such as apprehension, horror, and awe when confronting the sublime(in nature).  While employed by the Spanish Crown, Goya painted portraits of Joseph Bonaparte, Charles IV of Spain, and documented the Peninsular war in a series of prints known as the Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War)c 1810-1820. The Peninsular War was a military conflict with Great Britain and Spain against France for control of the Iberian Peninsula.  Through his works he became a commentator and chronicler of his era. The subversive imaginative element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of artists of later generations, notably Manet, Picasso and Francis Bacon.(from Wikipedia) 
 
In his painting, Witches' Sabbath c 1798 (oil on canvas), Goya confronts Spain's' onset of superstition and corruption prevalent in the rural parts of the country.  In the work, he displays a group women (young and old), witches, with one holding a child, and the other a corpse, surrounding a goat with large horns under a night sky with a crescent moon and bats. Some of the women are presenting a child to the Devil as a rite of initiation.  The skeletons of two children and a three infant corpses dangling from a spike are horror inducing, it implies the goat, the Devil, feeds physically and spiritually upon the infants and children.  Goya displays witchcraft as being  a mockery to the Roman Catholicism and this scene of superstition is said to have taken place in the rural parts of Spain and Goya, as a member of the court, wanted to make a persuasive statement regarding this type of falsehood.

Goya revisits this notion in The Black Paintings: Witches' Sabbath c 1821-23 (mural), where the goat, in black, is presented again as the Devil, and he sits in front of a group of woman as if he is speaking.  In both paintings, the Romantic style derives its intensity from the horrifying appearance of the "goat", the witches, and the infant corpses,  and leads the audience into the need to act and stop such a bizarre falsehood from occurring.

 

The Fall of the Damned by Peter Paul Reubens

Peter Paul Reubens (1577 - 1640) was a prolific Flemish painter with a majority of his subjects being mostly religious and mythological with some portraits and landscapes; his works exhibit a very strong adherence to the Baroque artistic style. The baroque style, in art, uses over exaggerated motion, and clear interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, and exuberance, and grandeur(Wikipedia). Also, the use of dramatic lighting and dark(chiaroscuro) is used to influence the expressed tension and drama.  This style as expressed by Reubens, is clearly seen in the Fall of the Damned(The Fall of the Rebel Angels) circa 1620.

In the Fall of the Damned, at the top of the painting, the Archangel Michael is flowing into a beam of light shining downward, and is forcing the rebel angels down out of heaven.  As the light streams downward, a pillar of bodies forms showing rebel angels pulling other souls down with them.  Women are being shown in various phases of pleasure and torture after giving into sin, and men's flesh are being pulled off.  At the bottom, the painting becomes darker and the souls are more deformed and grotesque.  It depicts parts of the Book of Revelation, 12:7-9,  "Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it."

The main appeal of  the work is the amount of life one can sense emanating from the painting.  The one lone solitary angel forces the mass of fallen souls downward in to the pit.  The change of color from light to a scarlet red then to dark, creates a flow and motion that the senses can follow.  "The real content of the artist's paintings, whether religious or secular, is the purposeful humans will that makes its own way through a solitary combat with the universe.  It enlivens all that is around it, and subordinates all parts of the work to the expression of this basic idea."  Varshavskaya, Maria; Yegorova, Xenia (2014-03-10). Peter Paul Rubens (Best of...) (Kindle Location 392). Parkstone International. Kindle Edition.


 

Fall of the Damned



Women, who have given in to sin, are being pulled away by rebel angels