3:1 Music and the Senses: Gainsborough’s Portrait of Karl Friedrich Abel

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Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender

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The University of Melbourne

Sexing the Canvas: Art and Gender

244 classificações

What do paintings tell us about sex? How is art gendered? In this course we will study some of the world’s most beloved pictures guided by expert curators and art historians who step outside of the square, bringing a gendered reading to the masterpieces contained in the magnificent collections that we have been lucky enough to bring to the Coursera platform. In this course you will learn how: * Gender and sexuality is an integral part of the production and reception of works of art * To increase your understanding of paintings through theories of gender and sexuality * To understand key terms from gender-related theories of art history and museology * To recognise the operation of what is termed ‘the gaze’ and how it works in relation to paintings * Ideas about gender and sexuality can productively be employed in theorising art curatorial practices * To take the initiative in relating theoretical ideas about gender and sexuality to the reading and display of art and visual cultures.

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Gainsborough at the Huntington

We consider five pictures by Thomas Gainsborough in week three of this course that are held in the collection of the Huntington Gallery in California, through an explication of how the artist represented his subjects in the context of the culture of sensibility. Beginning with Gainsborough’s painting of Karl Friedrich Abel, we consider how the artist produced his portrait of masculinity through references to music, science and the senses. We then move to Gainsborough’s pendant portraits of Lord and Lady Ligonier, and The Blue Boy, focussing upon boundaries of gender and sexuality, including debates around effeminacy and passion between the sexes. We conclude with the Huntington’s Cottage Door, considering how this staged scene calls the viewer to look with charity upon impoverished rural women and their children.

3:1 Music and the Senses: Gainsborough’s Portrait of Karl Friedrich Abel6:17

3:2 The Ligoniers: The Tensions of Gender in Paint12:41

3:3 The Blue Boy: Effeminacy and the Culture of Sensibility8:30

3:4 Gainsborough’s Cottage Door: Charity and Sensibility11:06

Conheça os instrutores

Jeanette Hoorn
Professor
Culture and Communication

[MUSIC]

Gainsborough's portrait of Karl Friedrich Abel here in the Huntington Library and

Art Gallery in San Marino, California is an outstanding example in

the history of art of a portrait of a musician as a man of sensibility.

A German composer and musician who trained under Johann Sebastian Bach,

Karl Frederich Able, one of the last great virtuosi of the viola

de gamba is seen here at his desk poised over a musical score.

Abel is represented as the consummate musician, active in his profession,

who although seated appears as a dynamic 18th century gentleman.

Beautifully dressed in a fine fabric of subtle brown and gold,

he is correcting or writing a musical score.

One which he might perform on his viola di gamba which rests on his knee.

Dressed in costume that he might have worn while in concert,

he's the epitome of respectability and success, a man at the peak of his powers.

And as Christine Riding has pointed out, in this remarkable picture Gainsborough

presents a grand figure from the world of music through an image that is harmonious

and compositionally rhythmic, evocative of musical composition itself.

Gainsborough, in line with Shaftesbury's views on sensibility, and

on the allowance of excessive emotion when it came to music.

Loved music, and himself had an affinity for the viola.

As well as organizing chamber concerts and designing the sets at which Abel and

his friend Christian Bach performed in Bath,

he himself performed the viola with Abel, who was his intimate friend.

Whom Gainsborough said was,

quote, the man I loved from the moment I heard him touch the string.

Gainsborough's friend, Henry Dudley Bate noted, and I quote, "His

performance at the viola de gamba was in some movements equal to the touch of Able.

Stressing that the painter always plays to the feelings.

Gainsborough who sometimes wished that he were free of the labors that his portraits

required of him, was famously known to remark, I'm sick of portraits and

wish very much to take viol da gamba and walk off to some sweet village where I can

paint landscapes and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease.

Vibration was one of the paradigms of the cultural sensibility, and

hearing was represented by the 18th century French painter, Philippe Messier,

in his picture The Sense of Hearing, by women playing musical instruments.

Hume emphasized the harmonic possibilities of the nervous system

in his treaties of human nature, comparing the affections generated

among human creatures to the sounds transmitted by musical instruments.

Listening to music was part of the culture of sensibility.

And the definers of sensibility while not encouraging in moderate or

excessive emotion, made an exception for enthusiasm for the visual and

performing arts allowing quote "A plausible enthusiasm, a reasonable

ecstasy in transport in relation to architecture, paintings and music".

Here Gainsborough represents his admired and

loved friend through the codes of the gendered sensibility.

Abel is powerful, professional and active.

Sitting astride his chair with his legs apart, he leans forward in his chair.

His bow resting at a steep angle on his thigh,

his right hand poised over the sheet of music.

The momentary pause allows Gainsborough to emphasize a moment of concentration, which

he conveys through the representation of his subtle facial expressions.

This image is one of a man of sensibility, the whole styling of which

would have been unthinkable for a woman of his class to perform, or for

Gainsborough to represent in the way that he has here.

Abel asserts masculine sensibility and authority in a subtle way,

as he looks out of the picture plane, addressing the viewer with his gaze.

It almost meets our own.

He's pomeranian, the subject of other works by Gainsborough, rests by his feet.

She has almost as much pride of place in the composition

as his famed musical instrument.

Presenting an image of companionship, harmony, and mutual support.

Here we see a great musician at ease with his dog.

Contemporary critics commented upon the many outstanding features of the painting

with one noting quote, "It is difficult to determine whether the spirit of

the figure, the clearly marked meaning of the face, or the correctness of the dog,

and the richness of the chair cover deserve the highest commendations".

Like the portrait of an officer of the Fourth Regiment of Foot in Melbourne,

Gainsborough is using the image of the musician at work with his dog as his

companion as a means of illustrating the sensibility that included in its gamut,

cohabitation with domestic animals and their treatment.

Let us now consider the pendant portraits of Edward, second Viscount Legionnaire,

and Penelope Viscountess Legionnaire, both painted in 1771.

Hanging here adjacent to Fredric Abel.

These magnificent paintings are both outstanding examples of 18th century

portraiture and also fine examples of the gender culture of sensibility.

[MUSIC]

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