Paul Delaroche - Hardcover

Bann, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069101745X ISBN 13: 9780691017457

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Paul Delaroche was one of the most celebrated artists of the first half of the nineteenth century. His major paintings, which include Lady Jane Grey, The Princes in the Tower, Young Christian Martyr, and other works based on historical events, achieved widespread recognition throughout Europe. Although Delaroche's major works continue to be popular when they are exhibited, his name is little known among many museum goers today. This is the first fully illustrated book to be devoted to Delaroche since the publication of a small catalogue raisonné after the artist's death in 1856. Stephen Bann's volume also offers the first detailed analysis of Delaroche's major works that seeks to place them within the context of the visual culture of the early nineteenth century. Its appearance coincides with the bicentenary of Delaroche's birth in 1797, and may be expected to initiate a broad reappraisal of his significance as an artist.

Delaroche is possibly the most widely copied artist of the period, with examples ranging from the acknowledged masterpieces of reproductive engraving by Mercuri and Henriquel Dupont, to the first retrospective catalog of his works illustrated entirely by photographs. Bann seeks to detail how Delaroche's widely known and memorable images have been built up through drawings and references to other works. The result is a unique study that surveys the whole spectrum of visual representation--including paintings, drawings, refined reproductive engravings, lithographs, photographs, and popular prints.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Bann is Professor of Modern Cultural Studies at the University of Kent. He has written extensively on the representations of history in the nineteenth century, and is the author of Romanticism and the Rise of History and Frankenstein, Creation, and Monstrosity.

Review

Delaroche (1797-1856) was an early success as a painter and remained successful throughout his life. He has been ignored since his death. Mr. Bann undertakes to account for this odd situation and hopes to revive interest in Delaroche. Speculation about family tensions and rivalries is not much help in either of these causes, but examination of the paintings is interesting. Delaroche was a history painter, but not in the moralizing, inspirational manner of David. The post-Napoleonic public had seen more than enough of that sort of thing. Delaroche selected historical episodes likely to attract interest--the murder of the Duc de Guise, the death of Mazarin--and painted them with great attention to details of costume, well-composed and plausible arrangements of the participants, and no indication of his own opinion of the event. He is reported to have said, on his first view of a daguerreotype, "From today painting is dead." He in fact became much interested in photography. It did for the present what he tried to do for the past--it got the shot. Delaroche remained, in effect, a paparazzo with a brush, while painters in general turned to agitation, editorializing, psychological inquiry, and the cultivation of individualistic brushwork. Delaroche was a fine technician, though, with a nice eye for the dramatic moment. He deserves the reappraisal that Mr. Bann hopes to provoke in honor of his 200th birthday. -- The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 069101745X
• ISBN 13: 9780691017457
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336