The Age of Sensibility1780-1840

Fuseli

Fuseli, De Sade and Diderot did not consider their worldof forbidden sex and eroticism to be irrational.

It was, from a social point of view, a problem of freedom.Diderot realised the power of imagination resulted in humancommunication and in a struggle against the rules, and that beyond those rules lay a path to unreality, dreamsand irrationality.

Hammacher

We often think of art in terms of periods, eg Classicism, Neo-classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Impressionism, Neo-impressionism and Symbolism. Here we consider an alternative path,

Neo-classic art and architectureLarge scale rebuilding of cities like Paris and London

Industrial revolution from 1760. Population increase, presure on colonies for raw commodities

Bott's Poor Law 1790Designed to protect the poor

French RevolutionBirth of a major European republic

American War of IndependenceAll but bankrupted France and England

Battle of Waterloo and TrafalgerLeft Britain as the only major sea power

Frankenstein published in 1818

“The Door of Death I found openAnd the Worm Weaving into the groundThou art my Mother from the wombWife Sister Daughter, to the TombWeaving to Dreams the Sexual strifeAnd weeping over the Web of Life”

Blake

The death of mortal man who from his thought derives to reach for the stars – pur ardu ad astra

Neo Classicism injected with an altered perception of reality

A recurring artistic theme – “The State of Man”

Artists, Writers and Poets who knew each other

ConstableBlakeFuseliJohn FlaxmanThomas Banks Emily Bronte 1818-48 Wuthering HeightsMary WollenstonecraftColeridgeThomas Paine The Rights of ManEmanuel SwedenborgJohn LavaterDe Quincy

They socialised together at their Patron's estates, like here at Petworth House – A favourite with Flaxman and Turner.

In 1760 there were some 10,000 landowners in England.

Their wealth was to significantly increase over the coming years

Paradise Lost

John Milton

Published in 1667 in ten books

An epic account of The Fall of man.Satan struggles through Chaos from Heaven to Hell.

All were familiar with this work

“When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,In slender Book his vast Design unfold,Messiah Crown'd, Gods Reconcil'd Decree,Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,Heav'n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All; the ArgumentHeld me a while misdoubting his Intent,That he would ruine (for I saw him strong)The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song”

Milton - Paradise Lost

Notel the references to hidden meanings known only to the initiated:-

Poet Blind, Slender Book, Design, Forbidden Tree, Sacred Truths

The original Latin prose has a rhythm also conveying meaning

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Commedia, later christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature.

The poem's imaginative vision of the Christian afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church.

It helped establish the Tuscan dialect in which it is written as the Italian standard.See also Michelangelo's elevation of his native Florentine language through his sonets.

Dante holding his Divine Comedie

One of Botticelli's to illustrations for the Divine Comedy

Christoph Martin Wieland September 5, 1733 – January 20, 1813, German poet and writer.

Wieland was widely read by this group. He was strongly influenced by the French fairy-tale vogue of the 18th century, he published a collection of tales entitled Dschinnistan (1786-1789), which included three original tales, 'Der Stein der Weisen' ('The Philosopher's Stone'), 'Timander und Melissa', and 'Der Druide oder die Salamanderin und die Bildsäule' ('The Druid or the Salamander and the Painted Pillar').

Typical of all these tales is the triumph of rationalism over mysticism.

More on the Philosopher's Stone elsewhere.

Jules Michelet (August 21, 1798 – February 9, 1874) was a French historian.

He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.

Michelet was widely read.He was an antimonarchist, critic, historian and philosopher.

His finest work was a history of France from the middle ages to the Revolution in 19 volumes

Jakob Böhme (1575-1624)Also widely read

“In Yes and No all things consist."

The central idea in Boehme's Lebensphilosophie (Life philosophy), is that reality, in both its physical and metaphysical aspects, is a living entity in constant tension between affirmation and suppression of the potentiality which exists in unity.

"Yes" and "No" define each other, bringing forth new form, new substance, new definition within the unity.

Horace Walpole 1717-1797"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel,"

“Foolish writers and readers are created for each other. The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well. The curse of modern times is, that almost everything does create controversy.” Horace Walpole, Letter to Sir David Dalrymple, 1770

In 1764, he published his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, setting a literary trend to go with the architecture. He rebuilt Strawberry Hill, Richmond in Neo Gothic fashion.

ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834)

He was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

“At six years old I remember to have read Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, and Philip Quarll - and then I found the Arabian Nights' Entertainments - one tale of which (the tale of a man who was compelled to seek for a pure virgin) made so deep an impression on me (I had read it in the evening while my mother was mending stockings) that I was haunted by spectres whenever I was in the dark - and I distinctly remember the anxious and fearful eagerness with which I used to watch the window in which the books lay - and whenever the sun lay upon them, I would seize it, carry it by the wall, and bask, and read.”

Biographia Literaria

Day after day, day after day,We stuck, ne breath ne motion,As idle as a painted ShipUpon a painted Ocean.

Water, water every whereAnd all the boards did shrink;Water, water every where,Ne any drop to drink.

The very deeps did rot: O Christ!That ever this should be!Yea, slimy things did crawl with legsUpon the slimy Sea.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“Not properly a dream,But a spirit of Reverie, akin to Somnambulism,during which the Understanding and moral senseare awake tho more or less confusedand over the Terrors of which Reason can exert no influence.”

Of the Nightmare

Thomas De Quincey

"That boy," his master at Bath School had said, "that boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one."

Thomas de Quincey (August 15, 1785 – December 8, 1859) was an English author and intellectual, best known for his book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822).

Tom Hood found the shrinking author "at home in a German ocean of literature, in a storm, flooding all the floor, the tables, and the chairs—billows of books." Richard Woodhouse speaks of the "depth and reality of his knowledge.

Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, Isis and Osiris appeared in his works which were read by Van Gogh, Gaugain, Dali, Manet, Gautier, Redon, Magritte and many others.

-- oh heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me, in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, for all human woes;

Thomas De Quincey

Thoma De Quincey's immediate influence extended to Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and Charles Baudelaire, but even major 20th century writers such as Jorge Luis Borges admired and claimed to be partly influenced by his work.

Berlioz also loosely based his Symphonie Fantastique on Confessions of an English Opium Eater, drawing on the theme of the internal struggle with one's self. De Quincey is also referred to in the Sherlock Holmes short story The Man with the Twisted Lip.

Rights of Man and the Age of ReasonThomas Paine

The original clarion call for the American revolution.

Many have regarded Paine's latter years as a period of decline but Hitchens points to hiscontinuing contributions to ideas and human progress as he saw it.“Paine saw what was happening to the Indians, and saw also that the theft of theirland and threat to their existence came largely from proselytising Christianity,which was used as a hypocritical cover for greed,” Hitchens writes. By encouraging President Thomas Jefferson to purchase Louisiana from the FrenchPaine helped set the course for the world. “From then on, the future of the United States as a continental, and thus world, power was assured,”Paine also staunchly defends his rights and kept his own reason to the end.“dying in ulcerated agony, he was imposed upon by two Presbyterian ministerswho pushed past his housekeeper and urged him to avoid damnation by acceptingJesus Christ.

“Let me have none of your Popish stuff,” Paine responded, and threw them out.In a world where rights and reason are forever under attack, we could do no worsethen return to Thomas Paine's firebrand radicalism for example and inspiration.

Christopher Hitchens, The Daily Telegraph

Mary Wollenstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792:

"How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own

industry, instead of hanging their heads surrounded with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it first

gave lustre…

Mary Godwin Wollenstonecraft

by John OpieNational Portrait Gallery

Mary Wollstonecraft is shown here pregnant with the future Mary Shelley. .

Emanuel Swedenborg Scientist, Philosopher and Spiritual Explorer

Noted Swedish scientist, philosopher and theologian, best known for his later writings, in which he presents ideas both Christian and ecumenical, for a new spiritual era or "new church" to be known as the New Jerusalem.

Blake found Swedenborg's lack of poetic creativity and his passivity impossible to accept. Both Blake and Flaxman joined the Swendenborg Society in 1789

It also didn't please Blake that Swedenborg didn't read Jacob Boheme who was avidly read by Blake and Coleridge

John Lavater1741-1801

“He who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius or a hero”

“Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.”

“Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.”

“To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you”

“Great minds comprehend more in a word, a look, a pressure of the hand than ordinary men in long conversations, or the most elaborate correspondence”

“He who has not forgiven an enemy has not yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life”

Henry Fuseli“The only man I ever knew

Who did not make me almost spewWas Fuseli: he was both Turk and Jew

And so dear Christians, how do you do?”Blake

“His spirits are hurricane,His servants flames of fireHe goes well on the wings of the windHis laugh is the mockery of Helland his love a murderous lightening flash” Lavater of Fuseli

Fuseli (1741-1825) was born in Zurich, spending eight years in Rome before finally settling in London to study. He enjoyed extensive knowledge of art history, literature, theology and many languages.

He was more worldly than Blake and a good match for Coleridge.Fuseli collaborated with Lavater on his English translations and wrote an introduction.

He was also familiar with Lavater's study of physiognomy

The Nightmare

“Sheppards Sleeping”, Auckland Museum

Achilles Grasps at the Shade of Pocrotas

Fuseli

Voices (Midsummer's Nights Dream) Fuseli

Hamlet

A preparational study by Fuseli

John Flaxman

Master of the purest Line1755- 1826

John Flaxman was an essential supporter and friend of Blake.

Flaxman represented Neo-classicism as a living discipline, using the academic mould to his advantage – unlike Blake

Captain CookBy Flaxman

National Library, Wellington

Coal port porcelain jardiniere with a Sèvres pink (so-called rose du

Barry) ground decorated with a Neoclassical painting based on a

design by John Flaxman, Shropshire, England, c. 1850; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Calypso and Hermes Flaxman

William Blake 1757-1827

When he was about nine, he told his parents he had seen “a tree filled with angels”

At age ten he was enrolled in Henry Pars's drawing school, where he learned to sketch the human figure by copying from plaster casts of ancient statues. His father encouraged his interest and even bought him some casts of his own.

Blake owned one of the first western copies of the Bhagarad-Gita in 1785. He was interested in the Cabala and the writings of Paracelus the alchemist and pioneer of modern toxicity.

In 1788 Blake was introduced to the avant guarde circle of William Godwin, his wife Mary Wollstoncraft, Joseph Priestly and Thomas Paine.

Death of the Poet

Blake

Romaticism.

Noble death of the poet.

Imortalised by Byron and Shelly

Sacrifice for art

The Golden Ladder from The Divine Comedy - Dante

Blake

House of Death Blake used neoclassicism to maintain his modern life style, but remained open to everything night and day offered (Hammacher)

Thomas Banks 1735-1805The Falling Titan

George Cumberland, 1754-1858Patron of Blake and Banks

A passionate advocate of radical neo-classicism, the art of ancient Greece, and especially of the sculptor Thomas Banks With Blake he experimented in new painting techniques

The Friendship Book itself is a time-capsule from the Age of Sensibility, beautifully bound in its original tooled green morocco.

It contains, additionally, more than 100 contemporary paintings, drawings, holograph texts, verses (mostly signed and dated) and autographs by notable artists, authors, poets, sculptors and naval characters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries: (eg George Romney, John Russell, John Flaxman, William Hodges, William Hayley, Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, Nicholas Pocock, Nelson's Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy).

Jane Austen, painted by James Stanier Clarke in 1815

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose realism, biting social commentary and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely-read and best-loved writers in British literature

The book also contains this rare watercolour of Jane Austin

And this Watercolour by John Russell, thecelebrated portraitist and astronomer, a friend of William Herschel.

Russell wrote a definitive book on using pastels

Literature, Art, Philosophy, Politics, Poetry, Scienceto each a door

The Legacy

Manet's Luncheon on the Grass 1893

From Denis Diderot (1713-84)“Les Bijoux indiscret”Diderot pleaded for nudity in paintings“nudity should not be shocking”

Charles Pierre Baudelaire(April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was an influential nineteenth century French poet, critic and acclaimed translator. He was

very influenced by our 'group'.

“You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim independent of morality”

Among his translations are “Confessions of an English opium Eater”, by De Quincey

No discussion of art and creativity could be complete without a study of Baudelaire and Satre

ManetWagnerNadarPoe

GautierDelecroixCourbet

Victor HugoFranz Liszt

Balzac

all met with Baudelaire

“Why does a good sketch please us more than a good painting?”

“He who has a sharp feeling for color, has eyes fixed to the canvas, his mouth half open, he is gasping; his palette is the image of chaos. It is in this chaos that he dips his brush and out of it, he drags the work of creation”

Diderot 1713-84

DiderotMichael Loos1764

Van Gogh studied Baudelaire, Micheletand Diderot avidly.

Michelet's encounters with the DarkLady were particularly readfeaturing in several of Van Gogh's works

“many, many times have I passed from larva into chrysalis state an to have a complete state . . . .shall I be bird or quadruped”

Author H. P. Lovecraft's praises Doré: "There's something those fellows catch - beyond life - that they're able to make us catch for a second. Doré had it."

Gustave Dore by Felix Nadar 1855-1859

Gustave Dore

Paul_Gustave_DoreAndromeda

The Divine Comedy

Dore

Little Red Riding HoodBrothers Grim

Dore

Paul_Gustave_DoreRaven

Edgar Allen Poe

London - Dore

Because I could not stop for death - He kindly stopped for me -

The Carriage held but just ourselves -and Immortality

Emily Dickenson 1863

To be Continued:-