18th Century Zombies - Found on etsy! Plemon Studios has some great work, and I love these portraits of our Founding Fathers.

Zombie George Washington

Zombie Thomas Jefferson

Zombie Benjamin Franklin

Neoclassical

(a few more excerpts from that essay)

The eighteenth century was the time period for two distinctive styles – Rococo and Neoclassical. Neoclassical served as a rebirth of Greek and Roman styles.

 Eventually, tastes changed and with the French Revolution the political environment was different. The people didn’t appreciate the playful paintings that the upper class had, and they wanted something with “moral depth”. The Neoclassical movement began to take over; and artists like Jacques-Louis David and Angelica Kauffmann were a part of it. David’s works such as Oath of the Horatii and The Death of Marat deal with serious issues, gone is the light-hearted style of  Rococo.

(Oath of the Horatii)

Oath of Horatii tells a story about Roman brothers. The painting is dramatic with the lighting and the details of the clothes and figures of the brothers and father. There are Roman columns in the background and the women and children on the right of the painting look forlorn. This painting truly tells a story and serves to inspire.

(Death of Marat)

 The Death of Marat also tells a story, one that really happened. Jean-Paul Marat was a “demagogue” of the Revolution who was murdered in his bathtub.  This painting became “the symbol of the French Revolution”.

(Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures)

Kauffmann’s painting Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Her Treasures is an example of the Neoclassical style because instead of the “refined dress of the Rococo salon” (Benton 180), we are shown garments in the style of Rome. The moral paintings that the people were now wanting can be seen in Kauffmann’s work. The title of the painting explains it well, Cornelia’s treasures are her children. Politically, this painting was appreciated by the leaders of the Revolution because Cornelia’s sons grow up to be leaders, overthrowing the aristocracy and “redistributing [the lands] to the poor” (Benton 180). This attitude was shared by those involved in the Revolution; and makes it easy to see why Neoclassicism became the reigning style.

(Chiswick House)

With the French Revolution, as well as the “discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum”, came Neoclassical architecture. The discovery of these ancient Roman cities played an important role in architecture and interior design as the classics became reestablished in “art and state”. Neoclassical architecture is marked by an “academic, disciplined, […]and proportion[al]” style; quite unlike the “emotional and drama” filled Rococo movement. As the people began to embrace the political views of a republic, like that of Greece and Rome, it was only natural that other sectors mimic these opinions. While Rococo is full of details that covered almost all surfaces, Neoclassical is focused on order and lacking of excess decoration. Neoclassical architecture is considered the first “international style”, because of this there are surviving examples of it all over the world.

(Monticello)

In America, President Thomas Jefferson designed his own home, Monticello. Taking inspiration from the Chiswick House of London, a home with a dome in the middle, “triangular pediment, and columnar portico”; Monticello relies heavily on symmetry. Politically, the Neoclassical style symbolized “enlightened democratic leadership” to the Americans. Different from Rococo, Neoclassical is a style that has to be learned and done “within strict constraints”. Once it is learned, however, it is a style that is “pleasing to the eye” because of the “system of proportion[s]” that can work on any scale. 

 When the public began their revolutions a new style was needed to represent a new way of thinking, and Neoclassicism was embraced.

Letter Sunday

Letter to Marquis de Lafayette from Thomas Jefferson - 

April 11, 1787

Your head, my dear friend, is full of notable things; and being better employed, therefore, I do not expect letters from you. I am constantly roving about to see where I have never seen before and shall never see again. In the great cities, I go to see what travelers think alone worthy of being seen, but I make a job of it and generally gulp it all down in a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators, with a degree of curiosity which makes some to take me for a fool and others to be much wiser than I am.