The History of Modern Painting, Volume 1 (of 4) Revised edition continued by the author to the end of the XIX century — Reading Companion

From Hogarth to Gainsborough: The English Foundation

Muther begins his narrative in England, dividing modern art into two streams: the classic and the naturalistic. He positions William Hogarth as a founder of the latter, though he notes that Hogarth's methods were often inartistic. The real contrast emerges in the pairing of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Reynolds, Muther argues, was fundamentally an historical painter, while Gainsborough was a landscape painter. This distinction is not merely biographical but structural: Gainsborough's landscapes mark the beginning of paysage intime, an intimate mode that Muther sees as a break from the classical landscape tradition exemplified by Richard Wilson. The book's method is already visible here: it identifies turning points through comparison, using specific artists to embody broader shifts in pictorial logic.

Continental Crosscurrents: Goya, Watteau, and the Sturm und Drang

The second chapter widens the lens to the Continent, tracing English influence through the Sturm-und-Drang period in literature and art. Muther singles out Francisco Goya in Spain, Antoine Watteau in France, and Daniel Chodowiecki in Germany as key figures. Watteau, he claims, freed French art from baroque influences and redirected it toward the Low Countries. The discussion of pastelists like Maurice Latour and Rosalba Carriera shows Muther's attention to medium and technique. He also notes the rise of middle-class society painting through Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin and the moral turn in Jean Greuze. The section is organized as a series of national vignettes, each illustrating how artists responded to the decline of the sublime style and the emergence of a simpler, more sincere art. Muther's recurring image is that of posing disappearing from portraiture, a symptom of a deeper structural change.

Gros and the Napoleonic Epos: Realism Against Convention

The most extended excerpt focuses on Antoine-Jean Gros, whom Muther presents as the great colourist of the Classical school and the singer of the Napoleonic epos. The analysis is built around two paintings: Napoleon on the Bridge of Arcola (1801) and The Plague of Jaffa. Muther emphasizes Gros's departure from David's monotonous manner, noting the greater warmth of colour and broader sweep of the brush. He praises Gros for having the courage to paint a hospital with its sick and dying, a subject antique art avoided. The description of The Plague of Jaffa is meticulously visual: the sick twist and writhe in the shadows, while Napoleon appears as a splendid apparition. Muther's judgment is unequivocal: Gros remains ever fresh because he painted under the impulse of real events, not empty theories. This section exemplifies the book's method of using a single artist to dramatize a larger historical argument about the logic of evolution.

Movement and Structure: The Book's Architecture

Muther's history is organized in books and chapters, each with a clear thematic focus. The table of contents reveals a pattern: after establishing the English foundation and continental crosscurrents, the volume moves through national schools and movements. The excerpts show that Muther frequently uses comparison as a structural device—Reynolds versus Gainsborough, David versus Gros, classical landscape versus paysage intime. He also employs recurring images: the bridge at Arcola, the hospital ward, the garden replacing formal French style. These images function as anchors for larger arguments about the shift from nature choisie to a more direct engagement with reality. The book's movement between scenes—from Hogarth's London to Goya's Spain to Gros's Egypt—mirrors its argument that modern art is defined by a restless but logical search for new forms of expression.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to Muther's comparative method and his use of specific works as evidence for broader claims. The excerpts offer only a partial view, but they suggest a historian who values technical observation and structural analysis over mere chronology. The book's strength lies in its ability to make the reader see paintings anew, not as isolated masterpieces but as nodes in a network of artistic decisions. For those interested in how nineteenth-century art historians constructed their narratives, this volume provides a rich example of the genre at its most ambitious.

I keep thinking about Muther's quiet insistence that painting is less about progress than about shifting temperaments—how Gros's brutality feels like a held breath. It reminded me of another book, Modern Painters, Volume 4 (of 5) — Text and Context, which lingers on similar tensions. Sometimes a book stays with you simply because it makes you see restlessness as tenderness.