Understanding History and Society through Images, 1776-1914

Understanding History and Society through Visual Art Content

In order to teach students how to critically look at artwork, teachers need to know this skill. I am including background knowledge for teachers to apply to their own thinking and learning about history and society from 1837-1900.

Views of Gender in the Victorian Era

Woman should not be expected to write, or fight, or build, or compose scores. She does all by inspiring man to do all.—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841

During 1837-1900, the Victorian era was full of both the hope of peaceful family life and the dread of social problems. Victorian era women were expected to love, honor, and obey their husbands and to keep their children clean, warm, dry, and fed. Victorian era men were expected to provide for and defend their family and were viewed as powerful and active.

During the Crimean War (1853-1856), women kept their homes intact while their husbands went off fighting. In Ford Madox Brown's Waiting: An English Fireside, 1854-55, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, a mother and child are seen in a cluttered and cozy abode. The mother is doing needlework with her infant on her lap. There are letters to the left of her, perhaps suggesting that the husband has written while she is left to care for the family. We see a similar scene in Frederic George Stephens' Mother and Child, 1854, Tate Gallery, London, where a contemplative mother holds a letter while a child of about three seems to comfort her. Both these images show mothers making a home for their children and offering stability.

In 1852, over three hundred thousand emigrants left Britain to seek their fortune in other countries. In Ford Madox Brown's, The Last of England, 1852-55, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, we see a couple on a ship leaving England to start a new life in a new land. Gender roles are clear: the man looks determined to make a new living, while the woman looks unconvinced about why they are leaving. Both man and woman offer security to each other as they hold each other's hand but we can also see the woman holding the hand of a child wrapped in her cloak. The man braves the wind and sea with his hat and coat while the woman holds an umbrella to shelter herself and her child. As the man stares ahead resolutely, the woman seems to already regret leaving. She is wearing a pink scarf, as if it is one thing from her past that she cannot release or maybe it is one luxury item she could take. There are cabbages tied to the front of the ship as if the woman is continuing to make a home for and nourish her family during the long voyage.

In the Victorian era, there were few occupations available for women. With few other occupational choices available, factories offered assembly lines jobs, but women were not paid the same wage as a man for doing the same work. Unfortunately, this meant that many women resorted to prostitution to make ends meet. "Poverty is the chief determining cause which drives women into prostitution in England as in France." ⁸ One especially poignant image is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Found, 1854-55, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In this scene, a stockboy, coming to the city to sell his lamb for slaughter, has noticed a passing girl. He recognizes her as his first love, now corrupted by the city. ⁹ She is ashamed and shrinks from him, unable to look him in the eye. The setting of innocence here is pointedly rural, as opposed to the equally pointed urbanism of the setting of sin in the same series. ¹⁰

In 1852-63, Ford Madox Brown painted Work, Manchester City Art Galleries. The scene shows construction workers digging a trench in the middle of a busy London street. The working class commands our attention as they are spotlighted while other social classes are pushed to the side. In front of the laborers are lower class children dressed in tattered clothes and led by a girl who takes care of her baby sibling and younger brother. To the left are middle class women passing the site and at the top of the road are members of the upper class on horseback. You can see how Victorian era men were expected to be strong, look handsome, and do work, while the Victorian era women were expected be on the sidelines, look pretty, and avoid work.

Masculinity is also demonstrated in William Bell Scott's Iron and Coal: the Nineteenth Century, 1861, Wallington Hall, Northumberland, England. We see workers with their massively strong forearms swinging hammers down onto molten ore with the furnace breathing intense heat onto them. The workers in both Work and Iron and Coal: the Nineteenth Century are portrayed as heroes, building roads and molding metals to bring modernity to their cities. Howard Pyle brought another image to the world of men: dashing pirates, valiant adventurers, and historical heroes. He wrote and illustrated Robin Hood, published be Scribner's in 1883 and Pyle created illustrations and wrote pirate fiction in 1887. ¹¹ It is interesting how Pyle's pirates could be elegant and dashing like The Buccaneer Was a Picturesque Fellow, The Fate of a Treasure Town, Harper's Monthly December 1905 and lean and haggard like in the pirates in The Buccaneers, Harper's Monthly Magazine, January 1911.

Comparing Two Artists

Howard Pyle and Mary Cassatt were two American contemporaries from the Delaware valley area. Both artists came from educated and wealthy families, who at first disapproved of their notions of making careers in art, but later supported them. Both Pyle and Cassatt studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and came to work with a group of artists: Pyle opened up the Howard Pyle School of Art in 1900, while Cassatt joined the Impressionists in 1877.

In teaching his students how to illustrate, Pyle said, "After you have chosen a general subject, submit it to the crucible of your own imaginations and let it evolve into the picture. Project your mind into it. Identify yourself with the people and sense, that is feel and smell the things that naturally belong there." ¹² As an illustrator, Pyle had three rules: get familiarized with historical details such as dress, social habits, architecture, and technology, keep a sketchbook, avoid overdramatization so that you leave something to the imagination. ¹³ Finally, Pyle endorsed four basic techniques: concentrate on black and white composition, use diagonal lines and cropping to give your viewer a sense of participation in the scene, make your figures and objects smaller or larger according to their relative significance, and use the surroundings and background of the image to enhance the mood of a scene. ¹⁴ In addition to pirates, Pyle painted patriots, princesses, knights, and outlaws.

Cassatt's work looks so different from Pyle's because she was trained in France with the Impressionists, who shared a passion for things modern and refused to go along with the demands of the Salon. As an Impressionist painter, Cassatt lightened her palette and indulged in painting the ever-fleeting moment, as seen in her Self-Portrait, 1878, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ¹⁵ Impressionists used loose brushwork which gave the effect of spontaneity and effortlessness and bright colors to make their paintings more vivid. Cassatt was revolutionary during the Victorian era because her women are doing something, not just looking at the viewer. Cassatt painted the leisure class of women who entertained and frequently attended the theater and opera, while wearing fashionable clothes and accessories like in Two Young Ladies in a Loge, 1882, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Cassatt painted women going to the theater drinking tea, doing needlework, and taking boat rides, but she may be best known for painting mothers and children. Even though Cassatt never married or had children, the mother-child theme of many of her paintings may have resulted because Edgar Degas encouraged it, her nephew's birth enabled her to see the maternal bond in a new light, or she was influenced by her studies of the Old Master' treatments of the Madonna and Christ Child. ¹⁶ In 1924, Mary Cassatt told a young painter from Philadelphia, "My mistake was in devoting myself to art, instead of having children." ¹⁷

This unit will feature four of Pyles works and four of Cassatt's works:

Captain Keitt, The Ruby of Kishmoor by Howard Pyle, Harper's Monthly Magazine, August 1907. I am choosing this illustration because can really see how Pyle used diagonal lines to make you feel like you are onboard with the captain. Just looking at the swirling waves in the background makes me seasick.

Marooned, Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main by Howard Pyle, Harper's Monthly Magazine, September 1887. When I walked into the Delaware Art Museum and saw this huge painting framed in gold, I was awestruck. It is amazing how Pyle captures the golden light that covers the canvas. By having one figure with nothing but this empty beach, amplifies the solitude of a pirate who gets left behind.

We Started to Run Back to the Raft for Our Lives, 1902, from Sinbad on Burrator, Scribner's Magazine, August 1902, Delaware Art Museum. A line of runners speed down the beach, running away from something. This looks exactly like a scene from The Pirates of the Caribbean when Jack Sparrow and his men are fleeing the cannibal tribe.

The Buccaneer Was a Picturesque Fellow, The Fate of a Treasure Town, Harper's Monthly, December 1905. Buccaneers gained their name from the word buccanning, which was a process of curing thin strips of meat by salting, smoking, and drying in the sun. ¹⁸ You can see how Pyle's buccaneer influenced Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow. Both characters are dressed in flowing shirts, with weapons tucked into sashes and belts and are quite masculine in their stances.

Young Mother Sewing, 1900, Metropolitan Museum of Art. I find it very interesting how Cassatt hired unrelated models to pose for this painting to get an objective effect. The mother is intent on her needlework while the little girl is gazing frankly at the viewer. ¹⁹ I love how natural this scene is and can just imagine the girl shifting her weight impatiently while her mother finishes her sewing.

The Child's Bath, 1893, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. The downward perspective of this painting is fascinating to me. I also love how the mother appears to be talking to the girls as she bathes her. I think it is very interesting how Cassatt cropped this picture so we see every detail of the two figures. It is just like a close-up photograph.

Two Children at the Seashore, 1884, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. I think most every child can relate to a day at the beach. I also think the class will have fun re-enacting this scene and then writing about it. I can imagine how my students will notice how both children are wearing socks and shoes while digging in sand.

Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. This is my favorite image of Cassatt because it is so colorful and natural. Discussing the girl and her pose will make learning relevant, because I think all my students and I can remember a time when we were either sleepy or bored to the point of taking a nap in public.