Edouard Manet - Execution of the Emperor Maximilian, 1867
Francsico de Goya - The Third of May 1808, 1814In 1861, President Benito Juárez of Mexico passed a law that ended the repayment of Mexican debts to European nations. Napoleon III responded by invading Mexico and installing the Austrian noble Maximilian von Habsburg as Emperor. The intervention was a disaster. By 1865, the French military was on the retreat, and the end of the American Civil War meant that the United States might intervene on Mexico’s behalf. In February of 1867, Napoleon III withdrew all the remaining French troops. Maximilian was stranded. He was tried for treason by the Mexican government, found guilty, and executed on June 19, 1867. Manet was clearly moved by these historical events and painted five versions of the Execution of the Emperor Maximilian. The best of them was completed in 1869. It is clearly a direct artistic response to Francisco de Goya's painting Third of May, 1808.
Both artists were painting during times of great historical upheaval. Goya responded to the first Emperor Napoleon's invasion of Spain and the subsequent brutality of the French troops. The cultural context for his painting was Romanticism - a reaction to the Enlightenment - a term which describes a set of attitudes to the power of the imagination, a commitment to the truth of feeling and a sensitivity to contemporary political events. The context for Manet's art is the urban expansion of Paris, rapid industrialisation and the emergence of new ways of seeing in response to modern life. 50 years after Goya's celebrated painting, another French Emperor was responsible for distant acts of violence and Manet seems to have drawn on both the newspaper reports of the execution and Goya's composition for his own version of events.
Some art historians claim Manet as the Father of Modern Art because he was so responsive to the texture of modern life. His brushwork is alive. He rejects the super-smooth finish of academic painting, preferring a superb range of effects which suggest the continual flux of life in the modern city. And yet Manet's way of seeing is grounded in art history. We have seen how he responded, controversially, to Titian's example. What I'd like to know is how you feel about these two paintings of an executution. How has each artist composed the scene? How have they dealt with pictorial space? How would you describe the use of light, the roles of the various characters in the paintings (the victims, the soldiers, the onlookers) and each artist's attitide to the events depicted? What, would you say, is the main difference between the two works?
Check out the excellent Museum of Modern Art online exhibition of Manet's Maximilian paintings for further insights into this great series of paintings.
4 comments:
I once asked the art historian Simon Lee (expert on David and Goya)whether in fact Manet had borrowed the visual ideas of Goya. He did not beleive that there was much to support this notion. It was interesting to see John Eldefield's approach counter that in his curation of the MoMA show.
However, I don't find Manet's composition as compelling as Goya's. Manet developed a method of depicting light which did not use half-tones as frequently as other painters. Although there seems to be a sudden flood of light which amplifies the explosion from the gun, the figure shot seems blanched. There is also an air of casualness amongst some of the characters, especially the soldier on the right. The figures suspended from the wall spy on the scene as if watching a staged cockfight below, their heads and arms assembled like a pile of rocks...the background countryside seems idyllic. Moreover the frieze like composition, the reliance on horizontals and the use of repoussoir is crude; unlike so many of Manet's other compositions, there is little to draw us into the drama.
On the other hand there is much that compels us to empathise with Goya's work, which was perhaps a more heart felt exercise in propaganda, although one that reflected his ambiguous position as a sympathiser of the rebelling majos, but also as somebody in the pay of the occupying French forces near Madrid. I particularly like Goya's use of background, middle ground and foreground, to indicate where Murat found the 'insurgents' who had attacked his troops the day before. The dust of the hill of Principe Pio is fertilised with the blood of the faithful, clerics and artisan peasants, reliant on agricultural knives to combat the products of modern industry. Goya's use of diagonals and arcs makes this picture far more expressive...and whilst Goya's depiction of stigmata on the main majo indicates where his sympathy falls, he also felt deeply uneasy about how social revolution could destabilise the progress of the illustrados and forces of the enlightenment.
V
What a great post! I agree with you entirely about the almost listless atmosphere in Manet's painting but I wonder if this reflects a more modern (for want of a better word) attitude to politics and the strangely disassociated nature of the execution of Maximilian. Goya's painting speaks of first hand experience of bloodshed and violence, whereas Manet read about the incident in a newspaper. I love the characters peering over the wall, spectators in the late 19th century sense, watching from a safe distance. There is something almost comic in the pose of the detached soldier on the right and the death is curiously bloodless. Judging from Manet's view of this historical event, Goya's fears about the de-stablisation of the forces of the Enlightenment were well grounded!
We were initially surprised that Waldemar Januszczak didn't draw comparisons between these two paintings in his programme on Manet (particularly because he referred to the connections between the two in other paintings).
Last year we saw a fantastic exhibition at the Prado dealing with Goya in the time of war. The exhibition covered everything from beautiful portraits of his royal patrons (and Wellington if I remember correctly) through the 'disaster of war' etchings etc. and of course including the 3rd of May, paired with it's companion piece the 2nd of May, which explains more about the events that gave rise to the executions. It was such a brilliant exhibition - Goya's intensity was physically draining.
It is this intensity that seems to separate the two paintings (the Goya from the Manet), and perhaps this is why some critics / historians don't see the work as similar. Manet's painting feels 'cereberal' when seem alongside the Goya. This, despite the fact that Manet's work was probably seen as 'anti intellectual' by the powers of the Salon.
Intensity seems to be something that Spanish Art does particularly well (Zurbaran is able to imply a sense of doom even when painting a bowl of Oranges). Andrew Graham Dixon dealt with this excellently in both his series on Spanish Art and in the series on the Baroque. The early 'national style' of Spanish Baroque seems to be explicitly targeted on creating an intense, emotional reaction. This also seems to be at the core of Goya's work.
Manet ('the Man Who Invented Modern Art') also seems intent on creating a reaction, but the reaction seems more 'conflicted', less pure, less intense, more 'modern'. In the end, I guess that with the Manet the viewer feels like an observer, a spectator, whereas with the Goya the viewer feels like a participant, a player, an executioner.
A request to the author of this great article.
Can you please post some bibliography / references of where you got that information from?
I am a university student and i find this information quite useful for an essay i have.
If you could please provide me with the books where you drew all that information from (even the specific pages where it was originally, if possible) i would be grateful to you!
Thank you in advance!
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