The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)

Trends in Mid Nineteenth-Century

Architecture

CHAPTER 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music 57

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Nineteenth-century nationalism stimulated an interest
in the cultural heritage of ethnic groups beyond the
European West. Just as Catlin found in the American West
a wealth of fascinating visual resources, so Europeans turned
to Africa and the East for exotic subjects. Napoleon’s inva-
sion of Egypt (1798–1801) had started a virtual craze for
things North African, and such interests were further stim-
ulated by the French presence in Algeria beginning in the
1830s. In 1848, the French government abolished slavery
in France and all of its colonies.
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier (1827–1905), a member
of Rude’s studio and a favorite exhibitor in the academic
Salon of Paris, requested a governmental assignment in
Africa in order to make a record of its peoples. The result
of Cordier’s ethnological studies was a series of twelve busts
of Africans and Asians, executed by means of innovative
polychrome techniques that combined bronze or colored
marble with porphyry, jasper, and onyx from Algerian quar-
ries (Figure 29.11). Cordier’s portrait heads reveal a sensi-
tivity to individual personality and a commitment to
capturing the dignity of his models. Rather than perceiving
his subject as an exotic “other,” he regarded each as a racial
type “at the point,” as he explained, “of merging into one

Islam and the West

Neomedievalism in the West

Architects of the early to mid nineteenth century regarded

the past as a source of inspiration and moral instruction.

Classical Greek and republican Roman buildings embodied

the political and aesthetic ideals of nation-builders like

Napoleon and Jefferson (see chapter 26); but the austere

dignity of Neoclassicism did not appeal to all tastes. More

typical of the Romantic imagination was a nostalgic affec-

tion for the medieval world, with its brooding castles and

towering cathedrals. No less than Neoclassicism,

Neomedievalism—the revival of medieval culture—served

the cause of nationalism. It exalted the state by recaptur-

ing its unique historical and cultural past. On the eve of

the unification of Germany (1848), and for decades there-

after, German craftsmen restored many of its most notable

Gothic monuments, including its great cathedrals.

In England, where the Christian heritage of the Middle

Ages was closely associated with national identity, writers

embraced the medieval past: Alfred Lord Tennyson

Figure 29.10 EDMONIA LEWIS, Forever Free, 1867. Marble, height 40^1 ⁄ 2 in.

Figure 29.11 CHARLES-HENRI-JOSEPH CORDIER, African in Algerian

Costume, ca. 1856–1857. Bronze and onyx, 37^3 ⁄ 4  26 14 in. Rich details and

sensuous materials characterize Cordier’s portraits, which became famous as

examples of a new visual anthropology focused on the physical appearance of

what he called “the different indigenous types of the human race.”