Genre Painting in Northern Europe
From a raucous party of smokers at a tavern (32.100.21) to a housewife quietly absorbed in work (32.100.5), from a guardroom of gaming soldiers (64.65.5) to a scene of gallant courtship (32.100.19), the varied subject matter known collectively as genre painting depicted scenes from everyday life, both high and low. Genre painting enjoyed enormous popularity in northern Europe in this period, particularly in the seventeenth century and especially in the Netherlands, where many of its practitioners elevated what was critically regarded as a humble form to heights of desirability rivaling more classically esteemed subjects, such as history paintings (paintings of biblical scenes, classical history, or mythology). By the time the French Academy—the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture—was founded in 1648, the hierarchy of arts was firmly established and upheld by critics throughout Europe, who ranked paintings according to their subject matter. The artist-writer Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–1678), for example, in his Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst (Introduction to the Elevated School of Painting) of 1678, divided paintings into three “grades”: still-life painting ranked lowest, as it relied primarily on direct observation and skill, and history painting ranked highest, as it was believed to require imaginative genius for its execution. Occupying the huge middle rung was the form known today as genre painting, but which then lacked a general term (the word genre was probably used in this sense for the first time toward the end of the eighteenth century by French writer Quatremère de Quincy). Despite their middling status in contemporary theory, these kleyne beuzelingen (little trifles) were produced in great quantity, often fetched large sums—as did the works of the sought-after fijnschilder (fine painter) Gerrit Dou (1613–1675) (40.64) and his pupil Frans van Mieris (1635–1681)—and were collected by bakers, burghers, and princely patrons alike. The foundations of genre painting in Europe were laid most remarkably by the great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525–1569) (19.164) in the sixteenth century. Bruegel’s inhabited landscapes and scenes of peasant life are lively and unsentimental depictions of common occurrence, such as weddings and village fairs. Often pointedly critical of human folly, as in works illustrating ever-popular proverbs and moral sayings, Bruegel’s oeuvre had great appeal to collectors and great influence on later artists, who prized his observational powers, humanistic approach, and the “lesson” or witty commentary often contained in his works. In the Netherlands, artists such as Willem Buytewech (1591–1624) and Frans Hals (1582/83–1666) were pioneers of the first generation of genre painting. Buytewech, called “Geestige Willem” (“lively” or “witty” Willem), had a short but influential career depicting carousals of the well-heeled (and often badly behaved) as well as peasant life. His drawing Poultry Market in a Dutch Town (2002.122) is a vivid yet dignified portrayal of an everyday activity. Hals, a successful portraitist and painter of military companies, also excelled at genre subjects such as Merrymakers at Shrovetide (14.40.605) and Young Man and Woman in an Inn (14.40.602). The former, populated by stock characters from comic theater, contains in the characters’ gestures and the array of “props” and foodstuffs many thinly veiled sexual references that would have been understood by the viewer (who would have had, besides a certain assumed worldliness, access to the many books of emblems and symbolic devices popular during this time). The latter is an entirely secular treatment of the theme of youthful folly, depicted with especial variety by artists in Hals’ native city of Haarlem, and eschews direct reference to its biblical prototype, the tale of the Prodigal Son. Hals’ Flemish pupil, Adriaen Brouwer (1605/06–1638), specialized in low-life tavern scenes of card players and drunken brawls. In The Smokers (32.100.21), he depicted himself (as the foreground figure blowing smoke rings) and his friends, painters Jan Cossiers and Jan Davidsz. de Heem, with good-natured humor. Through its Golden Age in the seventeenth century, genre painting in the Low Countries remained richly diverse in both style and subject as artists achieved new heights of technical refinement, optical and perspectival sophistication, and an often superb evocation of mood. In Leiden, Gerrit Dou established in the early 1630s a reputation as the first and greatest of a school of “fine painters,” producing small-format works of high finish and minute detail. These often depicted night scenes illuminated by glowing hearth or candlelight. Gerard ter Borch, the Younger (1617–1681), a native of Zwolle who later settled in Deventer, produced jewel-like paintings of upper-class domestic interiors, where sumptuously attired figures engage in pensive activities such as letter writing, reading, and gazing into a mirror (49.7.38; 17.190.10). Indeed, a large facet of a genre scene’s appeal was the opportunity it afforded to gaze into a private interior much like the one in which it might have hung and, in many cases, to identify with the values expressed by the subject. Paintings by Delft masters Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684) and the less prolific but profoundly accomplished Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) exhibit compositional clarity, balance, and order, with painstakingly naturalistic lighting effects. They evoke a private world of quiet stillness, from a dozing maid (possibly intoxicated, as indicated by the wineglass nearby) (14.40.611) or a young woman gazing out of a window, pitcher (a traditional symbol of purity) in hand, to an intimate scene of family life (14.40.613). At another extreme, Jan Steen (1626–1679), a native of Leiden who traveled widely throughout the Netherlands and gathered influences from many sources, specialized in such themes as the chaotic upper-class household overrun by vice, and the lovesick maiden receiving a house call from a medical quack (46.13.2). Such themes had obviously moralizing overtones, but the result was just as often hilarious in effect. In The Dissolute Household (1982.60.31), a lascivious interaction plays out between man (bearing the features of Steen himself) and serving maid, while the mistress of the house, absorbed in the refilling of her wineglass, remains oblivious. Still-life elements such as the joint of meat cast on the floor and the broken jug warn against profligate behavior, while the clapper and crutch—symbols of poverty and disease—hint at what lies ahead for this wanton family. The contemporary viewer would appreciate the implied moral lesson as well as the wit and imagination of the artist and the degree of descriptive skill entailed. Outside the Netherlands, a group of Dutch and Flemish artists were active by about 1625 in Rome, where they were called the Bamboccianti, after their leader Pieter van Laer (ca. 1592/95–?1642), known as “Il Bamboccio,” meaning “puppet” or “ugly doll,” because of a physical deformity. The Bamboccianti, including Jan Miel (1599–1664) (93.29), Johannes Lingelbach (1622–1674) (71.123), and Michiel Sweerts (1618–1664), painted scenes of contemporary life in the Roman countryside strongly influenced in their subject matter, realistic description of detail, and dramatic lighting effects by the Italian painter Caravaggio (1571–1610). Around the same time, Louis Le Nain (ca. 1600–1648), active in Paris, achieved a classicizing gravitas in genre scenes such as the Peasant Family (Musée du Louvre, Paris). His work inspired the street scenes of Jean Michelin (ca. 1616–1670) (27.59), a French painter of the next generation. These artists, working outside of the Dutch tradition, were interested in an unidealized depiction of everyday reality without moralizing social commentary. By the eighteenth century, the popularity of genre painting in the Netherlands was eclipsed somewhat by a taste for larger-scale decorative works. Genre themes, often inspired by earlier Dutch works (20.155.8), remained popular in the oeuvres of French artists Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), and Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806). Chardin favored subjects of children at play, reflective studies of quiet absorption, as in Soap Bubbles (49.24) (where the bubble may allude to the transience of life). In works such as The Stolen Kiss (56.100.1), Fragonard allows the viewer a titillatingly voyeuristic glimpse of a moment of passionate abandon.
Citation
Meagher, Jennifer. “Genre Painting in Northern Europe.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gnrn/hd_gnrn.htm (April 2008)
Further Reading
Bailey, Colin B., ed. The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press, Ottawa, 2003. Liedtke, Walter. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of, 2007. See on MetPublications Liedtke, Walter A., et al. Vermeer and the Delft School. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven: Yale University Press; New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001. See on MetPublications
Additional Essays by Jennifer Meagher
- Meagher, Jennifer. “The Pre-Raphaelites.” (October 2004)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Italian Painting of the Later Middle Ages.” (September 2010)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523).” (June 2009)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Petrus Christus (active by 1444, died 1475/76).” (December 2008)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Still-Life Painting in Southern Europe, 1600–1800.” (June 2008)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century Art.” (October 2004)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Botanical Imagery in European Painting.” (August 2007)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Commedia dell’arte.” (July 2007)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “Food and Drink in European Painting, 1400–1800.” (May 2009)
- Meagher, Jennifer. “The Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs, 1400–1600.” (October 2002)
Related Essays
- Food and Drink in European Painting, 1400–1800
- Frans Hals (1582/83–1666)
- Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675)
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525–1569)
- Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe, 1600–1800
- American Scenes of Everyday Life, 1840–1910
- Art and Love in the Italian Renaissance
- Burgundian Netherlands: Private Life
- Commedia dell’arte
- Domestic Art in Renaissance Italy
- Dutch and Flemish Artists in Rome, 1500–1600
- Early Netherlandish Painting
- Gardens in the French Renaissance
- Gerard David (born about 1455, died 1523)
- Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)
- Intentional Alterations of Early Netherlandish Painting
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- Jan van Eyck (ca. 1390–1441)
- Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806)
- Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805)
- Northern Italian Renaissance Painting
- Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe
- Pastoral Charms in the French Renaissance
- Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe
- Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France
- Work and Leisure: Eighteenth-Century Genre Painting in Korea
- Low Countries, 1400–1600 A.D.
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Keywords
- Avercamp, Hendrick
- Brouwer, Adriaen
- Bruegel, Pieter, the Elder
- Chardin, Jean Siméon
- David, Gerard
- De Heem, Jan Davidsz
- De Hooch, Pieter
- Dou, Gerritt
- Fragonard, Jean Honoré
- Greuze, Jean-Baptiste
- Hals, Frans
- Lingelbach, Johannes
- Maes, Nicolaes
- Michelin, Jean
- Ochtervelt, Jacob
- Steen, Jan
- Teniers, David, the Younger
- Ter Borch, Gerard, the Younger
- Van Brekelenkam, Quirijn
- Van Ostade, Adriaen
- Vermeer, Johannes
- Wtewael, Peter
- Connections: “Details” by Cristina Carr
- Connections: “Fatherhood” by Tim Healing
- Connections: “Living with Vermeer” by Walter Liedtke
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David Hockney
This is one of a series of large double portraits which Hockney began in 1968. He had painted imaginary couples in such earlier paintings as The First Marriage (A Marriage of Styles) 1963 (Tate T00596 ). In the later paintings, the subjects are real couples who were Hockney’s friends. They are portrayed in their home environment in a style which is both realistic and highly simplified. Hockney worked from photographs and life observation, making drawings to resolve composition. Usually one character looks at the other, who looks out of the painting at the viewer, thus creating a cyclical movement of looking. Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is unusual in that both subjects, Mr and Mrs Clark, look out at the artist and viewer from either side of a large open window which is in the centre of the painting. The viewer, who looks at the painting from a central perspective, will be at the apex of the couple’s gaze out of the painting, a third in the relationship. Percy is the name of one of the Clarks’ cats and refers to the cat sitting statue-like on Mr Clark’s knee, looking out of the window. ‘Mr and Mrs Clark’ are the dress designer Ossie Clark and the fabric designer Celia Birtwell. Like Hockney, the two came from the north of England and met the artist in 1961 in Manchester, where Ossie was studying at Manchester College of Art. Both men went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London. When Ossie and Celia married in 1969, Hockney was their best man. He painted them in their flat in Notting Hill Gate, west London, an area where the artist and a number of his friends then lived. Hockney chose to paint them in their bedroom because he liked the light there. An etching from his earlier series A Rake’s Progress 1961–3 (Tate P07029 -44) is portrayed on the left side of the painting. He began to make drawings and take photographs for the painting in 1969 and began working on the canvas in the spring of 1970, completing the painting in early 1971. In 1976 he described the painting as one of two works of his to come close to naturalism (Kinley 1992), although many areas of the image have been flattened and emptied of detail.
Hockney has commented that his aim in this painting was to ‘achieve … the presence of two people in this room. All the technical problems were caused because my main aim was to paint the relationship of these two people.’ (Quoted in Kinley 1992, [p.6].) One technical problem was to paint the figures contre jour, or against the light, something he had been experimenting with in earlier pictures of single figures in interiors. As in a photograph, it was difficult to achieve a balance between the bright daylight outside the window and the relative shade indoors. Because the canvas was so big, Hockney worked on it in his studio, where he set up light conditions that approximated those in the Clarks’ bedroom. He painted the lilies, sitting in a vase on a small table in the foreground of the painting, from life at the studio. He found the nearly life-size scale of the figures difficult to realise and both Clarks posed for him many times. In the event, Hockney painted Ossie Clark’s head as many as twelve times before he was satisfied. He is depicted lounging on a chair, his bare feet buried in the long pile of a fur rug. His pose is relaxed but his expression is watchful. Celia stands with one hand on her waist wearing a long, flowing dress and a rather wistful expression. Close to her and therefore, perhaps, associated with her are the lilies, traditionally a symbol of the Annunciation and feminine purity. Likewise, the cat on Ossie’s lap carries symbolic resonances of the libertine and somebody who disregards rules and does as they please. Viewed in this way, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy recalls the famous portrait of a married couple, The Arnolfini Marriage 1434 (National Gallery, London) by Flemish renaissance painter Jan van Eyck (approximately 1395–1441), in which a small dog at the couple’s feet represents fidelity. Hockney has pointed out that his painting reversed one of the conventions of wedding portraiture, by seating the man while the woman stands. The gulf between the couple represented by the open window and the gaze of the third party (artist or viewer) turned out to be prophetic: the marriage did not last.
Further reading
Stephanie Barron, Maurice Tuchman, David Hockney: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Tate Gallery, London 1988, p.37.
Catherine Kinley, David Hockney: Seven Paintings, exhibition brochure, Tate Gallery, London 1992, [p.6], reproduced [p.6] in colour.
Catherine Kinley, Hockney: Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, exhibition brochure, Tate Gallery, London 1995, reproduced on front cover in colour.
Catherine Kinley/Elizabeth Manchester
1992 and 1995/March 2003
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Display caption
Hockney painted this portrait of his friends, fashion designers Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell, shortly after their wedding. Hockey had been best man. The couple are shown in their flat, with their cat Percy, but they modeled for the work in Hockey’s studio multiple times. Hockey spent a lot of time working on the scene, and painted Ossie’s head at least twelve times until he was satisfied with it. Speaking about the painting in 2017, Birtwell said ‘David couldn’t get Ossie’s feet, so I think the rug was useful in the end’. Birtwell modelled for Hockney for many years.
Gallery label, July 2020
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