This ground-breaking book presents a critical study of pictorial narrative in nineteenth-century European painting. Covering works from France, Germany, Britain, Italy and elsewhere, it traces the ways in which immensely popular artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme, Karl von Piloty and William Quiller Orchardson used unique visual strategies to tell thrilling and engaging stories. Regardless of genre, content or national context, these paintings share a fundamental modern narrative mode. Unlike traditional art, they do not rely on textual sources; nor do they tell stories through the human body alone. Instead, they experiment with objects, spaces, cause-and-effect relations and open-ended ambiguity, prompting viewers and reviewers to read for clues in order to weave their own elaborate tales.
Table of contents:
1 The terms of narrative; 2 Eloquent objects; 3 Patterns of reception; 4 Stories in paint; 5 Epilogue: Into the twentieth century
Reviews:
'Narrative Painting in Nineteenth-Century Europe provides a new lens through which to appreciatively view works that might not have previously seemed worthy of close analysis. It reveals the impressive ingenuity with which artists and critics of the second half of the nineteenth century sought to bring pleasure to viewers and readers hungering for engaging stories. Given that pleasure is not prominent in the earnest academic discourse of the early twenty-first century, it is refreshing to see its pursuit treated as a legitimate topic of research. This is one more reason to be grateful for Nina Lübbren's well-crafted book.' Jonathan P. Ribner in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 22:1 (Autumn 2023)
'The real achievement of Lübbren's study, allows us to see narrative painting with fresh eyes, while avoiding the tendentious special pleading that so often accompanies re-readings of neglected art from the period. Thanks to her research, we can now begin to tell a new story about an important, and unjustly overlooked, aspect of nineteenth-century European painting.' Neil McWilliam in The Burlington Magazine, 165 (Dec. 2023)
'Lübbren performs this task with unquestioned authority. She has
an enviable mastery of the national cultures and languages that are
involved. She rightly claims that she is consistent in applying a method
derived from narrative theory, while remaining attentive to the individual
testimonies of critics and writers over the period, an approach that ‘builds
on Kemp’s narratological and reception-orientated method while paying
more detailed attention to the actual language used by contemporary
recipients’ (p.27). As well as being a work of great intellectual authority,
the study is indeed a pleasure to read, as demonstrated in deft descriptions
such as that of Karl von Piloty’s Seni before Wallenstein’s corpse (1855; Neue
Pinakotek, Munich).' Stephen Bann in The Burlington Magazine, 166 (Feb. 2024)
Why did thousands of 19th-century artists leave the established urban centres of culture to live and work in the countryside? By 1900 there were over 80 rural artists’ communities across northern and central Europe. This is a critical analysis of the phenomenon on a Europe-wide basis. It combines close visual readings of intriguing and little known paintings with a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on sociology, geography and theories of tourism. Rural artists’ colonies have been unjustly neglected by an art history preoccupied with the urban avant-garde. Yet these communities hatched some of the most exciting innovations of late 19th-century painting. Moreover, the practices and images of rural artists articulated central concerns of urban middle-class audiences, in particular the yearning for a life that was authentic, pre-modern and immersed in nature. Paradoxically, it was precisely this nostalgia that placed artists’ colonies firmly within modernity, mainly through their contribution to an emergent mass tourism.
Table of contents:
Introduction; Part One: Among artists; 1. Creative sociability; Part Two: Artists and villagers; 2. Painted peasants; 3. Patrons and publicans; Part Three: Artists in nature; 4. Forest interiors; 5. Landscapes of immersion; Part Four: Artists and places; 6. Painting place-myths; 7. Significant landscapes: tourists in the countryside Epilogue: Artists' villages today; Gazetteer
Reviews:
Selected as a Spectator Book of the Year, 2001
"...demonstrates how the best art history will continue to expand its scope and refine its critical rigour." Christopher Riopelle (curator of post-1800 painting, National Gallery, London), Times Literary Supplement, Aug. 2001
"It is a ground-breaking work. Fluent and highly readable, making a range of complex intellectual issues readily accessible in an admirably jargon-free way." Professor John House, Courtauld Institute of Art
"Lübbren identifies the immersive potential amongst these ruralists of nature/ space/ landscape as going beyond ... the detachment and power of the gaze." Cultural Geographies, 10:4, 2003
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.
Table of contents
Introduction: Narrativity and (French) Painting, Peter Cooke and Nina Lübbren / SECTION 1: Ancien Régime / 1 Units of Vision and Narrative Structures: Upon Reading Poussin’s Manna, Claudine Mitchell / 2 Figures of Narration in the Context of a Painted Cycle: The North Bays of the Grande Galerie at Versailles, Marianne Cojannot-Le Blanc / 3 The Crisis of Narration in Eighteenth-century French History Painting, Susanna Caviglia / 4 Obscure, Capricious and Bizarre: Neoclassical Painting and the Choice of Subject, Mark Ledbury / SECTION 2: Restoration and July Monarchy / 5 Delacroix and ‘The Work of the Reader’, Beth S. Wright / 6 Narrative and History in Léopold Robert’s Arrival of the Harvesters in the Pontine Marshes, Richard Wrigley / 7 Narrative Strategies in Paul Delaroche’s Assassination of the Duc de Guise, Patricia Smyth / SECTION 3: Second Empire and Third Republic / 8 Eloquent Objects: Gérôme, Laurens and the Art of Inanimate Narration, Nina Lübbren / 9 Tyrannical Inopportunity: Gustave Moreau’s Anti-narrative Strategies, Scott C. Allan / 10 Theatricality Versus Anti-Theatricality: Narrative Techniques in French History Painting (1850−1900), Pierre Sérié / 11 The Conflicted Status of Narrative in the Art of Paul Gauguin, Belinda Thomson / SECTION 4: Key Issues of Pictorial Narrative / 12 Narrativity, Temporality and Allegorisation, from Poussin to Moreau, Peter Cooke / 13 Towards a Study of Narration in Painting: The Early Modern Period, Étienne Jollet
Reviews
"The introduction [... by Lübbren and Cooke] is a model of its kind; no better overview could have been written of the characteristics of narrative painting and of how critics have construed it from the time of Lessing onwards. It sparkles with ideas about the fundamental nature and complexity of narrative and will become required reading for anyone with a serious interest in French history painting. This high standard is continued in the following thirteen essays […]." Simon Lee, in The Burlington Magazine, September 2018
"This is a study of visual narrative in French art—predominantly history painting—from its rise in the seventeenth century to its controversial demise at the end of the nineteenth century. In this connection, art history needed to catch up to take account of the work of literary narratologists such as Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Gérard Genette, and Mieke Bal. [...] Inanimate things are shown by Nina Lübbren to be treated by painters such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean-Paul Laurens in the same pictorial register as animate humans, thus foreshadowing the ultimate abolition of generic distinctions." Barbara Wright, in French Studies: A Quarterly Review, 71:4 (Oct. 2017), p.569
From postcards and paintings to photography and film, tourism and visual culture have a long-standing history of mutual entanglement. For centuries art has inspired many an intrepid traveller, and tourism provides an insatiable market for indigenous art, authentic or otherwise. This book explores the complex association between tourism and visual culture throughout history and across cultures. How has tourism been linked to images of colonial expansion? Why are we so intrigued by lost places, such as Tutankhamun's tomb or Machu Picchu, South Americas lost city of the Incas? What is the relationship between art, tourism and landscape preference? What role did commercial tourist photographers play in the imagination of Victorian Britain? Drawing upon examples from across the globe, this exciting new contribution to a popular subject illustrates how tourism and visual culture intersect with one another and in the process become contested ground.
Table of contents:
Introduction Part 1: Sites and Images 1. From 'Women's Lib' to 'Palestinian Women': The Politics of Picture Postcards in Palestnie / Israel, Annelies Moors 2. Algeria In and Out of the Frame: Visuality and Cultural Tourism in the Nineteenth Century, Deborah Cherry 3. Henri Chapu's Provincial Monuments to Jena-Francois Millet: Legitimizing the Peasant-Painter through Tourism, Bradley Fratello 4. Open-Air Museums and the Tourist Gaze, Stephen F. Mills 5. British Photographers and Tourism in the Nineteenth Century: Three Case Studies, Robin Lenman 6. Artists as Drivers of the Tour Bus: Landscape Painting as a Spur to Tourism, Peter Howard 7. North to South: Paradigm Shifts in European Art and Tourism, 1880-1920, Nina Lübbren 8. Picture Essay: Souvenir Bangkok, Davide Deriu Part 2: Practices and Encounters 9. Unlosing Lost Places: Image Making, Tourism and the Return to Terra Cognita, Roger Balm and Briavel Holcomb 10. Holocaust Tourism: Being There, Looking Back and the Ethics of Spatial Memory, Griselda Pollock 11. Joe's Bar, Douglas, Isle of Man: Photographic Representations of Holidaymakers in the 1950s, Duog Sandle 12. Straight Ways and Loss: The Tourist Encounter with Woodlands and Forests, Simon Evans and Martin Spaul 13. tourist:pioneer:hybrid: London Bridge, the Mirage in the Arizona Desert, Daniel Jewesbury 14. Frightening and Familiar: David Lynch's Twin Peaks and the North American Suburb, Renee Tobe 15. Mountains and Landscapes: Towards Embodied Visualities, Eeva Jokinen and Soile Veijola
Reviews:
"The aim of Visual Culture and Tourism is to explore the ''mutual entanglement'' of tourism and visual culture." Times Literary Supplement
"In a welcome move forward, Lübbren notes the evolution of vision into ‘less obviously visual arenas’ (p. 3) dealing with ‘the audio, the spatial and the psychic dynamics of spectatorships’ (p. 3) that lend themselves ‘particularly well to the illumination of certain touristic practices’ (p. 3). ... Crouch and Lübbren move to offer a fresh and compelling approach to the complex relationships between visual culture and tourism that have been lacking within existing research on visuals in tourism." Caroline Scarles in Journal of Historical Geography, 30:4 (2004), 809-810
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