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Several
nineteenth century
European artists and art critics achieved a self-aware
homosexual identity that is expressed in both their lives and their
works, but lesbianism is only rarely depicted in terms of identity
during this period.
Hercules and the Hydra by
Symbolist painter Gustav Moreau
The Symbolist movement in
painting and literature flourished from 1886 to 1905. It was the first
self-consciously queer movement in Western art history.
Aestheticism was a
theory of art and an approach to living that stressed the independence
of art from all moral and social conditions and judgments. It
influenced many gay and lesbian writers and artists at the turn of the
twentieth century.
Jean-Frédéric Bazille
(1841-1870), an early French Impressionist, is remembered as a great
talent whose full potential was never realized because of his early
death. |
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Théodore Géricault
(1791-1824) may be the best known nineteenth-century visual artist
associated with Romanticism. His art glorifies the irrational, the
subjective, the morbid, the overly emotional, the unpredictable, and
the bizarre.
Anna Elizabeth Klumpke
(1856-1912) is best known today as the last lover of acclaimed French
painter Rosa Bonheur, but she was an accomplished artist in her own
right.
British artist
Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) chose
to live openly as a homosexual at a time when it was not socially
acceptable to do so. When he was convicted of "buggery" in 1873, his
career was destroyed.
Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929)
created works that celebrate the beauty of male youth, as well as the
artist's lifelong love of the sea, swimming, and sailing.
more on European Art
>>
Photo Credits:
The image of
Rosa Bonheur courtesy Archiv für Sexualwissenschaft, Berlin.
Gustav Moreau's Hercules and the Hydra courtesy Northwestern
University Library Special Collections. The image of Hippolyte
Flandrin courtesy Northwestern University Library Art Collection.
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