The Babylonian Marriage Market | |
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Artist | Edwin Long |
Year | 1875 |
Medium | Oil on Canvas |
Location | Royal Holloway College |
The Babylonian Marriage Market is an 1875 painting by the British painter Edwin Long. It depicts a scene from Herodotus' Histories of young women being auctioned into marriage in the area then known as Babylon or Assyria. It received attention for its provocative depiction of women. Long's use of historical detail to make the painting engaging yet relatable has been highly regarded. [1] The work was purchased by Thomas Holloway in 1882 and is owned by Royal Holloway, University of London.
Edwin Long was a portrait painter [2] who was highly reclusive, shying away from public appearances and publicity. [3] [4] [5] He is noted to have painted more large-scale paintings than any of his peers from the English Royal Artistic Academy. [3] Long was inspired by cultural artefacts, people and historical writings for his subject matter; the Histories of Herodotus inspired The Babylonian Marriage Market. [3] His sketches of Spanish life during travels in Spain [3] were received well by the art audience and academics of the time. [3] This increased his public profile. [3] The increased notability helped to establish Long within the English Royal Art Academy. [3]
As his career and productivity increased, The Babylonian Marriage Market was shown at the Royal Academy, selling for 6,605 pounds, [3] [6] the largest price a painting had ever been sold at the time. [3] [6] This success as well as his persisting interest in Egyptian History led to further travels including Egypt in his later years. [3] Long was selected as a Royal Academician in 1876 and 1881. [2]
Edwin Long is thought to have conceived the painting in direct response to creation of the new laws centred around women's ownership and the ongoing women's suffrage movement. [7] The Married Women's Property Act 1870 gave women the right to retain property even once they were married. [8] This was regarded as significant as prior to the law property of a married woman would be immediately given to the husband. [9] Holloway College notes that while this law was a significant improvement from the previous one, many women remained uncontented and demanded greater reform. [10]
Bohrer, a leading Art Historian and Archaeologist notes that The Babylonian Marriage Market was ground-breaking in Long's use of Western painting tradition and Eastern myth. [11] The English artistic audience of the time had been exposed to Babylonian / Assyrian subject matter on a range of earlier occasions. [12]
The Babylonian Marriage Market painting is 172.6 cm high and 304.6 cm wide. [13] Oil on canvas is the medium used. [13]
It is painted in a representative style, known as Realism. [14] Realism was a popular form of painting in the Victorian era, that was received well by art audiences. [15] [16] : 153 The Victorian Art World, and English art academy considered realism to be a high art. [16] : 167
The foreground of the painting contains a line of Babylonian women who are seated and are facing the painting's audience. [11] These women are brides waiting to be auctioned off on the white stone stepped pedestal featured in the middle ground of the painting. [11] Upon this pedestal the first bride is currently being auctioned; she is displayed for purchase by another darker-skinned woman. [17] To their left stands an auctioneer, presenting the woman to be sold. [18] In the background of the image a crowd of men has gathered and is engaged in bidding on the women. [10] [19] The crowd features men that appear to come from different wealth levels and classes, and they are consumed by an array of different activities. [19] Bohrer notes that the underlying event and subject of depiction is the alteration of women into commodity through the process of the market place sales system. [11]
Bohrer posits that Long imagined and painted the place of sale to resemble a 19th century auction house. [18] Bohrer argues that by doing this Long made the experience of viewing the painting more confronting for the present day Victorian viewer. [18] Shireen Huda argues strongly for the idea that Long was intentionally depicting a contemporary auction house, [19] most likely an auction space used by Christie's in London. [19] Huda puts forth that Long had painted the famous auctioneer Thomas Woods as the auctioneer character within the work. [19] The 1875 English art audience is argued by Bohrer to be familiar with the Babylonian / Assyrian setting. [20] It is argued that Long conflates Babylon and Assyria, creating a hybrid eastern setting. [20]
Long's inspiration for his choice of composition is unclear, as within the literature are housed competing and contrary opinions. [11] [21] [3] [19] The core topic of this disagreement is the divergence of Long's composition when compared with Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, [22] [23] the academic standard of translation at the time of painting. [24]
Imogen Hart points out that Herodotus describes the event taking place in the heart of a village, not an auction house, with the men of the village standing in a circle around the women, not a line. [25] She further observes that Long's painting however, is set in a building reminiscent of a modern auction house, the men gathering in a line, not a circle. Bohrer attributes this divergence of Herodotus' translation to Long's own artistic freedom or reimagining of the fable, [11] purposely abstracting the content of Herodotus to be more resonant with his 1875 audience. Hart attributes this divergence with Herodotus to Long's reading and favour for George Swayne's translation and commentary on Herodotus, [25] [26] which contains this linear arrangement and equal arrangement of the brides as depicted by Long. [26] The Graphic notes Long's fondness for Swayne's commentary on Herodotus. [3] It is argued that Long chose this method of composition because it better aligns the women (brides) with the decimal currency, with Hart arguing that the linear arrangement is more like a numerical scale that converts the brides to numerals. [27] She posits that a core feature of the painting is Long's purposeful obscuring of the faces of the ugliest and most beautiful brides. [27] By doing this Long is argued to address the philosophical problem of the difficulty or impossibility of assigning an objective worth to beauty. [28] [18] [27] Long was understood to put forward that the most beautiful and ugly things are deeply subjective and personal. [27] The additional choice to have the women seated at an equal level has been observed to establish an impactful linear equality, not hierarchy; Hart argues that this feature of the women's seating is key to understanding Long's critique of the Babylonian ritual. [27] The first bride is facing away from the viewer in the detail, and in doing so the viewer is not able to see her face, but can see the linear equality of the bride's seating positions.
The painting is currently held in the Picture Gallery of Royal Holloway, University of London,
The Babylonian Marriage Market was first displayed at the Royal Academy's annual exhibition in 1875. [3] It was subsequently bought for Thomas Holloway, of the Royal Holloway University of London in 1882. [10]
The painting made its public debut at the Royal Academy in 1875, where it drew large crowds and won widespread acclaim. [29] The art critic John Ruskin praised the painting and highlighted the similarity between its subject matter and modern European marriage practices, which Ruskin thought were also mercenary and immoral. [30] It is noted that audiences at the time had a taste for exotic eastern artefacts and narratives. [31] The work was displayed in a gold painted frame. [32] The frame was embossed with numeric Roman numeral script, each numeral encased in a circle which was positioned directly below each bridal figure in the painting. [32] These numerals were thought to designate the rank of each of the brides. [32]
The current owners of the painting, The Royal Holloway College, note how the painting became a symbol and discussion point for women's rights during the 1870s. [10] The Babylonian Marriage Market was noted to resonate with the women of the 1870s, in light of the women's suffrage movement. [14] The painting is still currently thought of a symbol which embodies this goal of gender equality. [10] The silent film Intolerance (1916) includes a seven‐and‐a‐half‐minute scene closely based on this painting, [34] [35] and it is recreated in the historical sequence in The Marriage Market (1923).
The Babylonian Marriage Market was thought to be well received from the financial perspective, selling for a then record breaking £6,605. [3] [17]
Art critics of the period did not question Long's attention to archaeological detail and instead were primarily interested in the figures and narrative occurring within the setting. [36] Art journalists at the time were noted to be absorbed in the ancient narrative. [37] Media at the time of display applauded Long's placement of historical detail within the work. [11] It has been noted that when the painting was originally displayed its meaning was ambiguous, [17] without clearly signalling endorsement or disapproval at the Babylonian ritual. [36] Bohrer points out that the painting struck a chord with the public, as its core topic is the transformation of women into an objective currency, amid the wider political changes with regards to women being able to possess land and currency of their own. [20] Social theorist Sander Gilman puts forth that the painting is evident of how 19th-century European culture had internalised a conception of femininity and beauty that is distinctly racial. [17] He argues that the fact that the women's arranged of beauty correlates distinctly with their racial features, from the most attractive who have fair skin and European features, while the least beautiful having darker skin and more pronounced features, is evidence of these internalised race judgements. [17]
Media outlets at the time were aware that the work was not just a fable, but aimed to make an important comment on the status of women in the Victorian era. [37] The painting was noted to acquire wider social notability, its commentary on the marriage process resonating with wider audiences. [38] Satirical versions of the painting were created and distributed, for example an 1876 cartoon published in the Punch Pocket Book, which showed Mr Punch, a popular comic cartoon character of the time, auctioning for sale young women and other comic characters. [38] [39] Academics note that the work, through its political social critique, prompted greater political reform and discussion about women's rights to own property, goods and currency. [10]
Long notes that he was enduringly inspired by the works of John Phillip, who was Long's personal teacher and mentor. [2] A popular and well respected English painter who, like Long depicted many images of Spanish life. [40] The painting was inspired by a passage in the Histories by Herodotus, [41] and the artist copied some of the images from Assyrian artefacts in the British Museum. [42] The composition is also influenced by Victorian painting auctions. [43] The Graphic notes Long's enduring inspiration borne from myth and events from ancient History, especially those described by Herodotus. [44] Bohrer notes how Long, either consciously or unconsciously, incorporates the theme of vision and the gaze in The Babylonian Marriage Market, themes which are distinctly explored in early western depictions of Babylonian Life, this theme is highlighted in an annotation of the work making clear this theme of the gaze. [11]
Bohrer reports that artists practising at the time, such as Ford and Long, used Babylonian/Assyrian artefacts that were newly available to them not in order to recreate the strict Babylonian setting, but rather as imaginative inspiration. [11] As the artists are noted to utilise the artefacts to embellish and create greater fictive detail in their imaginations of what Babylon could have been like. [11] Bohrer's puts forward that the presence of the tiled nineteenth century styled floor, in The Dream of Sardanapalus (see above) is an example of this. [11] Bohrer argues this as Ancient Assyrian/Babylonian architectural conventions and technology would have not allowed such a tiled floor to be designed or manufactured. [45]
The painting incorporated several designs known from ancient artifacts. The motif of a carved stone with handle, probably of Elamite origin, and found in a foundation deposit of the Sumerian king A'annepada (circa 2500 BCE), was reused in the decoration of the white platform at the center of the painting. [33]
Assyria was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC, which eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC to the 7th century BC.
Sennacherib was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sargon II in 705 BC to his own death in 681 BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is one of the most famous Assyrian kings for the role he plays in the Hebrew Bible, which describes his campaign in the Levant. Other events of his reign include his destruction of the city of Babylon in 689 BC and his renovation and expansion of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh.
Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia. It emerged as an Akkadian populated but Amorite-ruled state c. 1894 BC. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was retrospectively called "the country of Akkad", a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. It was often involved in rivalry with the older ethno-linguistically related state of Assyria in the north of Mesopotamia and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom centered around the city of Babylon.
Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 1st Baronet, KLS was a British East India Company army officer, politician, and Orientalist, sometimes described as the Father of Assyriology. His son, also Henry, was to become a senior commander in the British Army during the First World War.
Nabopolassar was the founder and first king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from his coronation as king of Babylon in 626 BC to his death in 605 BC. Though initially only aimed at restoring and securing the independence of Babylonia, Nabopolassar's uprising against the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which had ruled Babylonia for more than a century, eventually led to the complete destruction of the Assyrian Empire and the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in its place.
Ashurbanipal was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 669 BC to his death in 631. He is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria. Ashurbanipal inherited the throne as the favored heir of his father Esarhaddon; his 38-year reign was among the longest of any Assyrian king. Though sometimes regarded as the apogee of ancient Assyria, his reign also marked the last time Assyrian armies waged war throughout the ancient Near East and the beginning of the end of Assyrian dominion over the region.
Sîn-šar-iškun was the penultimate king of Assyria, reigning from the death of his brother and predecessor Aššur-etil-ilāni in 627 BC to his own death at the Fall of Nineveh in 612 BC.
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Edwin Longsden Long was a British genre, history, biblical and portrait painter.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia until Faisal II in the 20th century. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and being firmly established through the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BC, marking the collapse of the Chaldean dynasty less than a century after its founding.
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