4  Thirty Minute Programs
Grade(s)  9 - 12
Curriculum:  Art

Drawing on the London National Gallery's collection, these four programs explain how engaging with paintings as objects, brings us closer to the artist. A unique approach which affects our role as viewers. Each program explores the times related to each painting giving us insight into the development of that era in Europe.

Program Titles & Outlines:

1. Manet   (27:45)
Edgar Manet (1832-83), the oldest of the artists presented, never exhibited with the Impressionists, although he was friendly with many of them and was considered by them as an inspiration. Trained in the studio of a successful academic painter, Thomas Couture (1815-79), he sought to depict what his friend, the poet Charles Baudelaire, termed 'the heroism of modern life' - to show 'how great and poetic we are in our cravats and patent boots'.  His notorious picture of a Parisian courtesan, Olympia (1863), was inspired by the Renaissance Italian master Titian and the 18th-century Spanish painter Goya, though f ew contemporary viewers would have been aware of it. Manet never abandoned the academic ideal of History Painting: a large-scale, monumental work showing a heroic or noble deed, traditionally considered to be the artist's most demanding task.

2. Seurat  (28:00)
Rather than attempting to convey the brevity of each moment, the academically trained 'Neo-Impressionist' Georges Seurat (1859-91) sought to 'elevate' the ephemeral to the enduring. To this end he studied the art of the Renaissance and of the ancient Mediterranean civilizations - Egyptian as well as Greek and Roman - at the Louvre, and steeped himself in the optical theories of his day. His large canvases, elaborated from brilliant tonal drawings and from coloured compositional oil sketches, interpreted modern life as a series of solemn tableaux frozen in time. Seurat gradually replaced the free brushwork of Impressionism by small streaks and dots of pure color, thought to fuse in the viewer's eye to produce more vibrant effects than if the colors were mixed together on the palette.  Now called Pointillism, this technique was termed Divisionism by Seurat and his followers. Seurat's landscapes, like Monet's later works, exclude the human figure, but unlike Monet's they emphasize the permanent geometric forms of the scenes depicted.

3.  Degas    (28:15)
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), only two years younger than his friend and rival Manet, outlived him by 34 years. Like Manet he came from a well-to-do Parisian family, and like him he sought to reconcile the depiction of modern' life with the 'art of the museums' and of Japanese prints. His main influences, however, were the Neo-classical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) and Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), the foremost French exponent of Romanticism. In all his works, Degas tried to reconcile the purity of line of the former with the fluid handling and dramatic color of the latter. Pastels, a medium to which he increasingly resorted with age, enabled him ' he said, 'to draw in color. Although he participated in all but one of the Impressionist exhibitions, Degas differed from his colleagues in never working out-of-doors (his poor eyesight made bright light painful to him) . The real subject of the brilliant racecourse pictures he painted in the 1870's was not the race track itself but the movement of horses and human figures - the human body in motion came to be his main interest, and he later focused on the traditional theme of the female nude.

4. Monet  (29:18)
Claude Monet (1840-1926) is usually regarded as the greatest of the Impressionists. His painting impression, sunrise (1872) gave the movement its name. Although influenced by Manet, Monet was even more indebted to the open-air landscape studies of Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) and the seaside subjects of his friend and mentor Eugene Boudin (1824-1898), the painter who first recorded the Parisian bourgeoisie's outings to the beaches of Normandy. Unlike Manet, he avoided political commitment.