Nostalgia for the Past
Nostalgia can take many forms, but can perhaps be summarized by the phrase 'appropriating selected aspects of the past for the use of the present'. It tends to involve an emotional or spiritual response to the past rather than a rationalizing one, and as a result is associated with the art of sentiment rather than of intellect. As we shall see, however, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists who made use of nostalgia were prepared to shape its appeal in intellectual as well as purely sentimental or aesthetic forms.
Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) was a passionately political artist, a proponent of history painting in its most elevated form and of the neoclassicist aesthetic. His 'The Oath of the Horatii' of 1784 (Louvre, Paris) depicts a scene from the Roman historian Livy: the three Horatii brothers pledge to fight the three Curiatii brothers in order to settle a dispute between their respective cities of Rome and Alba -- they do this despite the pleadings of their mother and their sisters, one of whom is betrothed to one of the Curiatii (while one of the Curiatii sisters is betrothed to one of the Horatii). The painting is an austere one, with the figures -- the Horatii on the left, the elder Horatius, their father, in the center, and the lamenting women on the right -- grouped against an almost abstract architectural setting of three bare, massive arches. This is not the kind of image that might come to mind when the term 'nostalgia' is used, but this is a deeply nostalgic image, looking back to the supposed virtues of Ancient Rome as a model through which the contemporary world can be renewed. The subject is one of unyielding honor and bravery, charged with fate and grief as well as nobility and self-sacrifice. The figures are heroic, with the three Horatii united in their oath, their taut strength, and the intensity with which they focus on the swords upheld in their father's hands; while the women are arranged in decorous hopeless grief on the right-hand side. All the figures are garbed with classical simplicity and are visually united by the color scheme of subdued greys and blues lit by glowing red and flesh tones. The implication here is of a cleaner, more honorable, more moral social order, in which the noble ideals of self-sacrifice, physical courage and spiritual virtue are upheld. The modern world, David implies, has fallen below this standard, but can redeem itself by seeking to emulate it. At a time of social and political revolution in France, this was a powerful visual message.
A very different message of social and political conservatism is embodied in the second picture to be considered, 'Merry Christmas in the Baron's Hall' (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) painted in 1838 by the Irish artist Daniel Maclise (1806-70). This large panoramic picture shows a scene of Christmas merriment as the artist imagined it might have looked in the hall of a seventeenth-century baron. He is seen seated at the center of a raised dais, a canopy over his seat and a soldier standing guard at his side. Around his table are finely-dressed lords and ladies. In the foreground, the ceremonial bringing in of the boar's head is taking place, with servants, ceremonial pikemen and musicians accompanying the dish down the stairs into the hall. All around are scenes of merriment and jollity with men, women and children in fine clothes drinking, eating, joking and laughing. Father Christmas distributes gifts on the right; a young man plays flirtatious games with a group of young women on the left; a jester and a juggler entertain the party, and everywhere there is decoration, food and drink, enjoyment and plenty. This is a vision of 'Merrie England', an England without industrialization or great cities, or a hungry and discontented working class. Society here is clearly hierarchical -- the squire presiding over all from the high table as his people benefit from his generosity and paternalism -- but it is contented. At a time when the poor were hungry and were feared to be in revolutionary mood, with the period known as the 'hungry forties' just beginning, such imagery represented a desirable and reassuring use of the past for the purposes of the present.
Maclise's canvas is filled with people and activity; there is scarcely a square inch in which something exciting, lively and enjoyable is not going on. It is an intensely human scene of color, bustle and festivity....
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