Love and Dislike: Details of the paintings that were immediately understood by the audience of the 19th century

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The nineteenth century gave mankind many paintings in a variety of genres and styles. They are still pleasant or interesting to look at - it is not for nothing that collections of paintings of the nineteenth century continue to circulate on the net. Here are just many hints, understandable to the viewer of the past, the modern viewer does not read without preparation.

On the verge of falling

In the paintings of the American artist George Waters and Marcus Stone, there are hints that the girls who look so decent, or are on the verge of falling, or already held mistresses of the depicted young people. Perhaps we are also talking about violence.

The pictures seem very different: on one the girl is smiling and busy with her own business, on the other she turned away from the man (and the picture is called "Lovers' Quarrel"). On one, the young man is unsure of himself, on the other - he even looks impudent. Between the two figures in Waters's painting, a statue of Cupid is inscribed - from the fact that she is in the background, the illusion is created that he is fluttering. In Stone's painting, the girl lowered her half-open fan - in the language of balls, this meant "Impossible!"

At the same time, we see two common features: the gentlemen are sitting with their legs apart (which, I must say, contradicted the rules of etiquette and was allowed only in a very “friendly” company), and a red apple fell to the ground. If now a man with legs apart can be associated with love to seize other people's places in the subway, then earlier this position was attributed to sexual aggression. As for the red apple, it is a permanent symbol of temptation in the pictures of the past, and a fallen apple is a symbol of "falling", that is, that the girl succumbed to temptation or is about to succumb.

It is interesting that in Stone's painting the girl not only turned away - she sits so strongly bent over, as if her own spine does not hold her. She lost her strength. An untied ribbon is lying on the ground near her (it is not clear where it came from), and the gentleman practically presses his foot against the lady's leg. All of this can be a hint of rape that has already occurred or is planned. Waters's painting, for comparison, looks much more peaceful: the gentleman does not invade the girl's personal space, and his posture is not so open, he seems to be holding back his impulses.

Cane on the table

One more detail is visible in Waters's painting - a dirty and funny (in those days) hint. He can also be seen in Soulacroix's painting of a date in the garden. It's a cane on the table, pointing away from the man. Thus, an erection was hinted at. In Sulacroix, the man also clearly goes on the attack: she hugged the woman (and she does not shy away from this gesture), deployed so as to touch her knee with her knee (it was this touch that was given a special erotic meaning). The girl herself seems to be leaning towards the gentleman. Most likely, a kiss is about to happen - but hardly anything more, nothing in the girl's appearance and her accessories indicates that she agrees to go further.

Maiden misfortune

After acquaintance with the previous paintings, it will be easier to guess about the sending of the painting by Frederic Kemerrer. Again on the canvas - a date in a secluded place. The gentleman sits with his legs apart, but he does not reach for the lady, like the men in the previous stories. He sits in a haughty position with his hands on his hips and elbows apart. The girl next to him is crying; a red shawl rests on her hips in front, and a snake-shaped bracelet adorns her arm just above the elbow.

In general, a red shawl is a frequent detail in paintings about lovers, but usually it is located behind the heroine's back. In this case, it can symbolize the passion that a woman evokes, or be just a bright spot of color for balance in the picture. But on the canvas of Kemerrera, a shawl covers the bosom of a girl - it symbolizes virgin blood. The girl surrendered herself to the man who was looking at her, and, perhaps, not of her own free will - the shawl "spread" very bloody. In addition, the shawl tightens the fabric of the dress so that the belly of a pregnant woman can easily fit under it.

The snake, in the form of which the bracelet is made, is a symbol of sin, and the bracelet squeezes the woman's hand just in the place that is usually grabbed when a woman tries to turn around and leave. This, perhaps, is another hint that the girl was not so much seduced as she was once forced to intercourse. Now she is pregnant and does not know what to do - but the gentleman is indifferent to her trouble. It is unlikely that he is going to get married.

Scenes on the train

Berthold Woltz's painting "The Obsessive Mister" presents one of the typical subjects of the second half of the nineteenth century: a man speaks to a pretty girl. The name of the picture sometimes provokes a protest from commentators on the Internet: they say, now, not to get acquainted on the trains? What's so bad about it?

But if you look at the picture carefully, we will notice that the girl is in black clothes and is crying. She has just lost someone, so she is dressed in mourning and is experiencing acute grief. A man who wants to get acquainted simply ignores her condition. In addition, he holds a cigarette in her direction - which by the standards of the nineteenth century is very rude (and, by the way, in this context, in this context, it can mean the same thing in the picture as a cane on the previous ones). To emphasize the inappropriateness of the "casual conversation" that the travel companion has started, the artist separates him from the girl with the back of the seat - in contrast to the usual paintings about the conversation of a travel companion with a lady, where they are turned towards each other.

Gypsy school

This picture stands out from the general row only at first glance. It depicts boys who, under the guidance of a very young man in a costume typical for a gypsy violinist, are clearly learning a piece. The main humor of the film is that the boys clearly form a traditional Hungarian gypsy orchestra - a chapel, and the young man behaves like a primache - the leader of the orchestra.

However, in an ordinary chapel there was no more than one teenage apprentice, and the leader was a man in years. Probably, we see an overly ambitious young man who intends to assemble his own orchestra, and not obey someone else - but only boys who are still taught and taught are ready to go under the leadership of such a young primash. One can only imagine how this mustacheless chapel sounds!

One of the musicians has already clearly gotten a slap for poor performance. And, if we follow the boy's gaze, we can easily understand why he was so inattentive during the rehearsal: the teenager exchanges glances with a girl of his own age, who hid behind the stove so as not to interfere with his brother. The girl openly laughs at the effect she had on the boy with the oboe. Her hands are clasped in front of her belly - she is hardly disposed to the oboist, otherwise the artist would have expressed it in a pose. His fellow violinist also laughs at the unlucky lover.

Fortune tellers

The paintings with gypsy fortune tellers had several recurring themes, and this one was the most popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the paintings of François Navez and Otoli Kraszewska, a gypsy woman divines the girls, and the young man peers into the face of the fortuneteller. No, he did not fall in love with a gypsy woman, forgetting about the one next to him. He paid the fortune teller in advance so that she would see in the future beloved an ideal husband with his signs.

This is probably why the fortune-teller at Navez does not look into the girl's hand - she tries to remember what she was ordered to say. Krashevskaya emphasizes that the gentleman intends to get a lady for himself, by the way in which he put his hand on the back of the chair behind her in a businesslike manner. Moreover, the girl, perhaps, doubts his feelings: she has a bouquet of daisies in her hand (loves? Does not love?)

Painting in general can tell a lot, for example, about the fashion of noble Muslim women of the past. Qajar painting: a window into the life and fashion of Muslim harems of the past centuries.