Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Australia
(Source)
To celebrate my being awol for a week, I'm presenting something from the gallery of the city I was in. During our undergrad AH phase, I told our English Art Lecturer that I found 19th century Engligh painting incredibly insipid due to the emphasis on pale, wan, consumptives being touted as the epitome of beauty (Pre-raphaelites), not to mention the hypocrisy of moralistic paintings (particularly with respect to female behaviour), but also Academic-style paintings that could be construed as borderline pornographic (step up, Alma-Tadema!). However, Flaneur had been telling me throughout the duration of her MA that I needed to see the Leighton at the AGNSW and that that would perhaps change my mind.
Cymon and Iphigenia illustrates a story from Boccaccio's Decameron, in which an uncouth young man, Cymon, decides to become educated and more moral after falling in love with Iphigenia, and thus, beauty tames the savage beast. I can see why this is a considered a great painting - the lovely arrangement of the draped figure of Iphigenia, the diffuse light highlighting the sensuous undulations of her body...it is quite lovely. Definitely much better in person than in photographs. But enough to erase all the issues I have with Victorian Painting? I don't know.
(Source)
To celebrate my being awol for a week, I'm presenting something from the gallery of the city I was in. During our undergrad AH phase, I told our English Art Lecturer that I found 19th century Engligh painting incredibly insipid due to the emphasis on pale, wan, consumptives being touted as the epitome of beauty (Pre-raphaelites), not to mention the hypocrisy of moralistic paintings (particularly with respect to female behaviour), but also Academic-style paintings that could be construed as borderline pornographic (step up, Alma-Tadema!). However, Flaneur had been telling me throughout the duration of her MA that I needed to see the Leighton at the AGNSW and that that would perhaps change my mind.
Cymon and Iphigenia illustrates a story from Boccaccio's Decameron, in which an uncouth young man, Cymon, decides to become educated and more moral after falling in love with Iphigenia, and thus, beauty tames the savage beast. I can see why this is a considered a great painting - the lovely arrangement of the draped figure of Iphigenia, the diffuse light highlighting the sensuous undulations of her body...it is quite lovely. Definitely much better in person than in photographs. But enough to erase all the issues I have with Victorian Painting? I don't know.
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