The End of a Rebellion

The Spanish painter Antonio Gisbert Pérez (1835-1902) was a convinced liberal. On this painting he shows the end of the rebellion of the Castilian towns in 1521. The members of the Catholic Church are shown as the great enemies of any liberal movement. The rebels didn’t listen to their promises and threats. They are the true martyrs of their time and their people.

Los Comuneros de Castilia (1860)

Cossack Painting

Józef Brandt (1841-1915) was one of the most famous Polish battle painters and in my opinion the best. He specialized on scenes from the 17th century, the great and dramatic period of Polish history.

His preferred heroes were the Cossacks from the eastern provinces, who fought in this time normally against the Poles. Brandt’s paintings are so convincing, so realistic because he concentrated more on everyday life scenes than on the great battles, which he also painted.

There’s a Cossack on guard, a wild colorful figure in a wide landscape. This is no pretentious painting, it is reduced to the absolutely necessary.

Returning from Vienna. Here are the victors who saved Vienna in 1683. They are returning with there trophies, their exotic booty and their prisoners.

On the Way to Fantasy

This is a very interesting Art Nouveau painting by the Austrian Maximilian Liebenwein (1869-1926).

Saint George, as though the world were full of devils... (1908)

Sure it’s not a real history painting, neither it’s a religious painting. It pretends to show Saint George but he’s painted as a medieval knight. As model for the costume and the title served the engraving from Albrecht Dürer (1470-1528) Knight Death and the Devil (1513).

The fantastic battle scene with the realistic costume reminds me also of the painting "Beserk" by the American fantasy artist Frank Frazetta (born 1928).

I don’t think that Frazetta knew Liebenwein or his painting. But it is a good example for the strong influence of history painting on modern fantasy art. When painters like Liebenwein abandoned the pretension to be "realistic" they turned into the forefathers of fantasy.

Welsh Alps

Beyond any doubt this is a very romantic painting. A Gaelic bard is fleeing from an English castle in Wales and curses his pursuers from above a cliff. This nice story is based on the legend that king Edward I ordered to kill all bards to suppress Gaelic culture.

But anyway the artist John Martin (1789-1854) was famous as a landscape painter. And it’s nice to see that he puts some mountains from the Swiss Alps into Wales. The whole scenery is a theatrically arranged invention.

The Bard (c. 1817)

Napoleons Soldiers

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891) was a well known military painter, who focused on subjects from the Napoleonic wars. There he preferred everyday life scenes instead of glorious battle scenes. The result was a kind of military genre painting, which implied a certain authenticity.

Information: General Desaix and the Peasant (1867)


The Rest (1870)

Copernicus

The Polish history painter Jan Matejko (1838-1893) shows here his famous compatriot Nicolaus Copernicus in a conversation with God. Copernicus and his tools are illuminated by the divine light from above.

Astronomer Copernicus: Conversation with God (1872)

Restoration

The Return of the Crusader (1835) by the German painter Carl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880).

The Romantic painter Lessing shows an old disillusioned warrior coming home. Sure that he left a lot of his ideals back there in the war. May be that some crusaders returned like this, but painting must be seen in the context of the conservative restoration in Europe that ended the liberal and national dreams.

Late Academic Painting

The Excommunication of Robert the Pious (1875) by the French painter Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921).

Laurens was the last of the great French history painters. Excellent skilled by his academic studies he preferred anticlerical subjects.

The Black Brunswicker

The Black Brunswicker (1859-60) by John Everett Millais (1829–1896).

Millais shows here a member of that famous German mercenary corps that fought in British service against Napoleon. The young soldier parts from his lover before the battle of Waterloo. He is characterized by his black uniform and the prominent skull and crossbones on his hat. But I think these signs are serving also to indicate his almost certain fate, because the Brunswickers suffered terrible losses at Waterloo.

Neither the Brunswickers nor Millais could suspect that the well designed black uniform with the skull and the bones should become very popular in the German right-wing Freikorps movement after the First Worls War and become on this way the pattern for the uniform of the SS.

Turkish History Paintings

Mehmed II enters Constantinople with his army by the Italian painter Fausto Zonaro (1854–1929).

Zonaro is an interesting character. After he studied art in Italy he moved to Turkey and lived for many years in Istanbul, where he became a kind of Turk by choice. Moreover he had great success with his history paintings glorifying the highlights of Turkish history. That’s the cause why today there can be seen history paintings in the best European academic tradition in some public buildings in Istanbul.

Problematic Allegories

An allegory is a figurative of representation of something abstract. Allegories became very popular in Renaissance and Baroque painting. Normally virtues, feelings or moods like Justice, Fidelity or Melancholy were represented by young women. Later with the discovery of the world these women were also used to symbolize the new continents. Europa was just known, now she was accompanied by the new invented Asia, America and Africa.

Europe Supported By Africa and America (1796). A typical 19th century illustration by William Blake (1757–1827).

Allegories as national symbols became popular not before the rising nationalism as a reaction on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Germania and Italia (1811-28). This peaceful allegory is by the German Romantic painter Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) one of the founders of the Nazarene movement. Both people, the Germans and the Italians, were suppressed and far away from forming nations. Without nations, nationalists from many kingdoms were supporting each other.

But this harmony passed by in some decades. Here Germania (1849) by the German painter Christian Köhler (1809-1861) is called to arms by Justice. And she’s not only reaching for the sword, but also for the imperial crown.

Hardly surprising that with the beginning of the First World War the once so peaceful Germania has changed to an aggressive Valkyrie with armor, shield and sword and the crown on her head.

Germania (1914) by Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1850-1920).

There are a lot more examples from all European nations. Interesting and a little sad is how these once so peaceful figures were transformed into something so aggressive and hateful, they were mobilized.

Another different War Painting

Boer War (1901) by the English painter John Byam Shaw (1872-1919).

This painting reminds me a lot of "The Proscribed Royalist" by Millais. It’s that untypical absence of heroism, that concentration on the civil aspects of war, which made them comparable.

The "Boer War" is far, far away, as indicated by the green typical English countryside, which is so different from the dusty South African bush. The war is only represented by the lone woman, who is mourning because she lost somebody over there.