Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities.[1] One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively, thus distinguishing it from history paintings (also called grand genre) and portraits. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person—a member of his family, say—as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class.
In the previous century, the Flemish Renaissance painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen painted innovative large-scale genre scenes, sometimes including a moral theme or a religious scene in the background in the first half of the 16th century. These were part of a pattern of "Mannerist inversion" in Antwerp painting, giving "low" elements previously in the decorative background of images prominent emphasis. In the second half of the 16th century, Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer painted in Antwerp works showing in the foreground cooks or market-sellers amidst a bountiful spread of vegetables, fruit and/or meat, with small religious scenes in spaces in the background. Around the same time, Pieter Brueghel the Elder made peasants and their activities, very naturalistically treated, the subject of many of his paintings.
The apparent 'realism' of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art gives the viewer the initial impression that the artist solely intends to depict scenes of common life in a realistic way. Underneath the realistic representation are, however, often hidden underlying meanings, either moral or symbolic. For instance, Gabriel Metsu's The Poultry seller, 1662 shows an old poultry seller handing a young woman a live rooster with its head craning upwards. The suggestive pose of the rooster's head and the fact that the Dutch word for 'birds' (vogelen) was also a vulgar term for sexual intercourse indicated that the artist also included a scabrous meaning in his painting.[3] Genre painters often included symbolic meanings in their paintings. For instance, Adriaen Brouwer painted a number of genre portraits that represent the five senses or the seven deadly sins. An example is his genre group portrait The Smokers which depicts the sense of taste.[4] Other artists included moral meanings into their genre scenes. Jan Steen's The Happy Family painted in 1668 depicts a merry family evening with the head of the family, clearly inebriated, singing out his lungs, backed up by the mother and grandmother. The children join in on musical instruments. The moral of the picture is clarified in the note hanging from the mantelpiece reading "So de ouden songen, so pijpen de jongen" ("As the Old Sing, So the Young Pipe"), i.e. children will learn their behaviour from their parents.[5]Jacob Jordaens had painted a series of paintings on the same subject matter about 30 years earlier.[6]
One of the recurring themes in Flemish and Dutch genre painting is that of the merry company. These works typically show a group of figures at a party, whether making music at home or just drinking in a tavern. Other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities ("kermesse"), or soldiers in their camp or guardroom.
Louis le Nain was an important exponent of genre painting in 17th-century France, painting groups of peasants at home, where the 18th century would bring a heightened interest in the depiction of everyday life, whether through the romanticized paintings of Watteau and Fragonard, or the careful realism of Chardin. Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting.
In England, William Hogarth (1697–1764) conveyed comedy, social criticism and moral lessons through canvases that told stories of ordinary people ful of narrative detail (aided by long sub-titles), often in serial form, as in his A Rake's Progress, first painted in 1732–33, then engraved and published in print form in 1735.
Developments in 16th Netherlandish art were received in Spain through the presence of Flemish artists working on projects in Spain as well as through Spain's sovereignty over the Spanish Netherlands. During the Spanish Golden Age of painting in the 17th century, many picaresque genre scenes of street life as well as the kitchen scenes known as bodegones were painted by Spanish artists such as Velázquez (1599–1660) and Murillo (1617–82). More than a century later, the artist Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) used genre scenes in painting and printmaking as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition. Beginning in about 1808 Goya painted a significant number of genre scenes and he dealt with genre subjects again in various drawings during the period from 1810 to 1823.[9]
With the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them. Realists such as Gustave Courbet (1819–77) upset expectations by depicting everyday scenes in large canvases of a scale traditionally reserved for "important" subjects. They thus blurred the boundary which had set genre painting apart as a "minor" category. Realist paintings on such a scale, and the new type showing people at work, emphasizing the effort involved, would not normally be called "genre paintings". Both monumental scale and the depiction of exhausting work are exemplified by Barge Haulers on the Volga (Ilya Repin, 1873). History painting itself shifted from the exclusive depiction of events of great public importance to the depiction of genre scenes in historical times, both the private moments of great figures, and the everyday life of ordinary people. In French art this was known as the Troubador style. This trend, already apparent by 1817 when Ingres painted Henri IV Playing with His Children, culminated in the pompier art of French academicians such as Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) and Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815–91). In the second half of the century interest in genre scenes, often in historical settings or with pointed social or moral comment, greatly increased across Europe.
In Germany, Carl Spitzweg (1808–85) specialized in gently humorous genre scenes, and in Italy Gerolamo Induno (1825–90) painted scenes of military life. Subsequently, the Impressionists, as well as such 20th-century artists as Pierre Bonnard, Itshak Holtz, Edward Hopper, and David Park painted scenes of daily life. But in the context of modern art the term "genre painting" has come to be associated mainly with painting of an especially anecdotal or sentimental nature, painted in a traditionally realistic technique.
In Belgium, the nationalism of the new state born in 1830 gave rise to history painting glorifying the past of the nation and genre painting returning to the models of 17th-century. Examples of artists working in this retro style include Ferdinand de Braekeleer, Willem Linnig the Elder and Jan August Hendrik Leys. Under the influence of foreign artistic movements such a realism, Belgian artists in the second half of the 19th century were able to break away from the old traditions and create a new format for their genre paintings. An example is Henri de Braekeleer who used light and colour to infuse his intimist genre scenes with a modernist spirit.[10]
The first true genre painter in the United States was the German immigrant John Lewis Krimmel. He was influenced, at least initially, by English artists such as William Hogarth and Scottish painters such as David Wilkie and produced lively and gently humorous scenes of life in Philadelphia from 1812 to 1821.[11] Other notable 19th-century genre painters from the United States include George Caleb Bingham, William Sidney Mount, and Eastman Johnson. Harry Roseland focused on scenes of poor African Americans in the post-American Civil War South, and John Rogers (1829–1904) was a sculptor whose small genre works, mass-produced in cast plaster, were immensely popular in America.[12] The works of American painter Ernie Barnes (1938–2009) and those of illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) exemplify a more modern type of genre painting.[13]
Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, work, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on.
David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output. He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.
Philips Wouwerman was a Dutch painter of hunting, landscape and battle scenes.
Andries Both, was a Dutch genre painter. He was part of the group of Dutch and Flemish genre painters active in Rome in the 17th century known as the bamboccianti, who painted scenes from the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside.
Pieter Bodding van Laer was a Dutch painter and printmaker. He was active in Rome for over a decade and was known for genre scenes, animal paintings and landscapes placed in the environs of Rome.
The Bamboccianti were genre painters active in Rome from about 1625 until the end of the seventeenth century. Most were Dutch and Flemish artists who brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherlandish art with them to Italy, and generally created small cabinet paintings or etchings of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside.
Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.
Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting represents the 16th-century response to Italian Renaissance art in the Low Countries, as well as many continuities with the preceding Early Netherlandish painting. The period spans from the Antwerp Mannerists and Hieronymus Bosch at the start of the 16th century to the late Northern Mannerists such as Hendrik Goltzius and Joachim Wtewael at the end. Artists drew on both the recent innovations of Italian painting and the local traditions of the Early Netherlandish artists.
Michelangelo Cerquozzi, known as Michelangelo delle Battaglie was an Italian Baroque painter known for his genre scenes, battle pictures, small religious and mythological works and still lifes. His genre scenes were influenced by the work of the Flemish and Dutch genre artists referred to as the Bamboccianti active in Rome who created small cabinet paintings and prints of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside. One of the leading battle painters active in Italy in the first half of the 17th century, Michelangelo Cerquozzi earned the nickname 'Michelangelo delle Battaglie'.
Jan Miel was a Flemish painter and engraver who was active in Italy. He initially formed part of the circle of Dutch and Flemish genre painters in Rome who are referred to as the 'Bamboccianti' and were known for their scenes depicting the lower classes in Rome. He later developed away from the Bamboccianti style and painted history subjects in a classicising style.
Michiel Sweerts or Michael Sweerts was a Flemish painter and printmaker of the Baroque period, who is known for his allegorical and genre paintings, portraits and tronies. The artist led an itinerant life and worked in Rome, Brussels, Amsterdam, Persia and India (Goa).
JohannesLingelbach was a Dutch Golden Age painter, associated with the second generation of Bambocciate, a group of genre painters working in Rome from 1625–1700.
Pieter van Lint or Peter van Lint (1609–1690) was a Flemish painter, draughtsman and designer of tapestries. He excelled in history paintings, genre scenes and portraits in the Flemish Baroque style with some Classisizing influence. He worked in Antwerp and Italy.
Flemish Baroque painting was a style of painting in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. The period roughly begins when the Dutch Republic was split from the Habsburg Spain regions to the south with the Spanish recapturing of Antwerp in 1585 and goes until about 1700, when Spanish Habsburg authority ended with the death of King Charles II. Antwerp, home to the prominent artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob Jordaens, was the artistic nexus, while other notable cities include Brussels and Ghent.
Jan van den Hecke or Jan van den Hecke the Elder (1620–1684) was a Flemish Baroque painter, draughtsman, printmaker and engraver, mainly known for his still lifes, landscapes and battle scenes. After training in Antwerp, he spent time in Rome, where he had important patrons. After his return to Flanders, he worked for a while in Brussels, probably painting flower still lifes for Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, the Austrian governor of the Spanish Netherlands, before returning to work in Antwerp.
Anton Goubau or Anton Goebouw was a Flemish Baroque painter. He spent time in Rome where he moved in the circle of the Bamboccianti, Dutch and Flemish genre painters who created small cabinet paintings of the everyday life of the lower classes in Rome and its countryside. He is known for his Italianate landscapes and genre paintings in the style of the Bamboccianti and his history paintings with mythological and religious themes.
Ferdinand de Braekeleer, sometimes spelled as Ferdinand de Braeckeleer, was a Flemish painter and printmaker. He is known for his paintings of genre scenes, church interiors, historic events, religious scenes, cityscapes, market scenes and market still lifes. He is called 'the Elder' to distinguish him from his son with the same name, who was also a painter.
Peiraikos, or Piraeicus or Peiraeicus, was an Ancient Greek painter of uncertain date and location. He was the chief representative of what is called rhopography (ῥοπογραφία), or the painting of petty subjects, such as still-life. None of his work is known to have survived and he is known only from a brief discussion by the Latin author Pliny the Elder. Pliny's passage comes in the middle of his discussion of painting in Book XXXV of his Natural History, completed about 78 AD:
It is well to add an account of the artists who won fame with the brush in painting smaller pictures. Amongst them was Peiraikos. In mastery of his art but few take rank above him, yet by his choice of a path he has perhaps marred his own success, for he followed a humble line, winning however the highest glory that it had to bring. He painted barbers' shops, cobblers' stalls, asses, eatables and similar subjects, earning for himself the name of rhyparographos [painter of dirt/low things]. In these subjects he could give consummate pleasure, selling them for more than other artists received for their large pictures.
Willem Reuter was a Flemish painter of cityscapes, genre paintings and history paintings who was primarily active in Rome, where he was known as Guglielmo Reuter. He was part of the circle of Dutch and Flemish genre painters in Rome who are referred to as the 'Bamboccianti' and were known for their scenes depicting the lower classes in Rome.
The Oyster Eater or Girl Offering Oysters is a small oil-on-panel painting by Jan Steen dating to c.1658–1660. Since 1936, it has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in the Hague. It is a genre painting that demonstrates Steen's intricate style and use of domestic settings. It also shows Steen's use of symbolism with oysters to create a theme of earthly lust.
↑ Ingrid A. Cartwright, Hoe schilder hoe wilder: Dissolute Self-Por traiture in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Art, Advisors: Wheelock, Arthur, PhD, 2007 Dissertation, University of Maryland University of Maryland (College Park, Md.), p. 8
↑ H. Perry Chapman, Wouter Th. Kloek & Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. (1996) Jan Steen. Schilder en verteller, p. 172
↑ Anneliese Harding, British and Scottish Models for the American Genre Paintings of John Lewis Krimmel, Winterthur Portfolio, Volume 38, Number 4 Winter 2003
Buijsen, Edwin. "From 'Peasant Stories' to 'Urbane or Elegant Modern': A Birds-Eye View of Genre Painting in the Mauritshuis" In Van S Genre Paintings in the Mauritshuis, pp.10–25.
Van Suchtelen, Ariadne and Quentin Buvelot. Genre Paintings in the Mauritshuis. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers 2016. ISBN978-94-6262-0940
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