At the beginning of the 17th century, in the Flemish painter Rubens's Fables of the Four Continents, the tiger appeared in European fine art as a representative of Asia, and the image of the "other" in a culture appeared. About 200 years later, inspired by Orientalism, the French Romantic painters Delacroix and Jerome, and the Romantic sculptor Barry have created many exotic Romantic works with tigers and other wild beasts. However, whether it is the allegorical expression of the "four continents" or the Orientalism of the 19th century, its essence is a visual expression of rights rooted in Eurocentrism.
It was not until the second half of the 19th century, with the rise and development of artistic movements such as Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Primitivism, when people began to examine cultures outside Europe with a more rigorous academic attitude, that the attitude of the Western public towards the East underwent a significant change...
In 1608, due to the serious illness of his mother, the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens returned to his hometown of Antwerp after his studies in Italy and became a court painter in Brussels. In 1609, the Netherlands and Spain signed the Twelve-Year Armistice, ushering in another golden age of economy in Antwerp. Between 1612 and 1614, Rubens painted The Fables of the Four Continents.
Rubens, Fables of the Four Continents, 1612-1614
It's a sexy scene full of lust. Beautiful women representing the continents, snuggled up with male avatars of the main rivers that flow through those continents. On the far left are the Danube and Europa with oars in their hands, and sitting opposite them is the embodiment of the Nile and the symbol of Africa, the black Venus, on their right side is the embodiment of the Prata River and the Americas, next to the white-haired old man is the embodiment of the Ganges, representing a young woman representing Asia with her hands on his shoulders. Although the painter did not strictly distinguish between the facial features and skin tones of women representing each continent, in order to help the audience understand the identity of each figure, some elements such as animals, plants and antiquities were deliberately added. For example, next to the old man representing the Nile is a crocodile with a crown of wheat straw symbolizing the fertility of the Nile's banks; gold coins allude to the myth of Eldorado and the rich natural resources of the Amazon River. At the feet of the old man of ganga, a tigress protecting the cub in her arms was holding a crocodile, and the sword was raging and touching. The painting can be seen as an examination of the painter's early learning: the robust human body comes from Michelangelo, the brilliant colors come from Titian, and the sense of movement comes from Baroque art.
In Rubens's pen, the tiger, as a representative of Asia, appeared in European art as a cultural "other" image. The reason why tigers have evolved into cultural symbols of Asia is because tigers are only distributed in Asia, and their survival range reaches as far west as Asia Minor, limited by natural barriers such as mountains and oceans, and tigers have not been able to enter Europe; the farthest to the south has reached the islands of Southeast Asia. At the same time, tigers have important symbolic significance in asian cultures. For example, in Hinduism, the mount of the goddess Durga is the tiger to match the martial spirit of the goddess. The tiger is also a national symbol of the Korean nation, and the mascot of the 1986 Seoul Asian Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics was the tiger Hodori, the Western patron saint of the Korean people. In Ang Lee's 2012 film "The Fantasy Drifting of Pi Pi", Indian Pi Pi embarked on his adventure at sea accompanied by a Bengal tiger.
In China, the White Tiger has been one of the four spirits of the myth since ancient times, and it is widely found in the tombs of the Han Dynasty. As the king of the forest, the tiger is regarded as a symbol of power and strength because of its majestic image and domineering and majestic personality, such as the tiger cannibal and the tiger symbol of the dispatch of troops unearthed in Hunan. Tigers are not only a favorite subject of Chinese artists, but also as a cultural symbol, they have long been integrated into the daily expression of Chinese, becoming part of our cultural genes, and also part of the Imagination of Westerners for Asia.
Hidden behind Rubens' work is a much older tradition of Western iconography. Beginning during the Renaissance, European artists visualized the known world through allegorical figures derived from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. These allegorical figures are usually young women and are arranged in different series of rivers, oceans, and continents. In the 16th century, the world was divided into four parts: Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Each continent represents a quarter of the world – Europe in the north, Asia in the east, Africa in the south, and the Americas in the west. This division is in line with the overall understanding of the world during the Renaissance at the time, just as they also divided the world into four seasons, four elements, four directions, and four virtues. In the European perception, after entering the "great geographical discovery", the starting point of Asia was Asia Minor, that is, the seat of the ancient Roman provinces of Asia Minor, and its geographical scope extended to the originally unimaginable exotic and distant place - the East.
Whether in tapestries, decorative arts, prints, maps, or even coins, traditions that anthropomorphize continents into female allegorical figures can be seen. The figurative standards of these allegorical figures were standardized in the best-selling Handbook of Images published by the Italian humanist Cesare Ripa and supplemented by the traveler accounts of the time. In the Illustrated Manual of Images, published in Rome in 1603, Europe is described as a woman dressed in colorful and luxurious clothing. She sat between the horns of abundance, holding up a temple with her right hand and her index finger pointing to the crown and scepter representing power. Weapons, books, musical instruments, owls, etc. are scattered around, indicating the main parts of the world, namely religion, art and weapons. Asian heads wear garlands woven from a variety of flowers and fruits and gorgeous embroidered costumes. She holds a stick of cinnamon, pepper and cloves in her right hand, a smoking incense burner in her left hand, and a camel next to her. Garlands refer to the beautiful things that asia produces are necessary for human life, her clothing indicates that material wealth is quite abundant, spices indicate that she spread them all over the world, incense burners indicate the gum that emits aroma and the spices produced by it, and camels are animals endemic to Asia. Ripa's representation of the continents became the basis for most subsequent images of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The identity of each continent is also visually enhanced by the animals and plants of that continent.
The theme of "Fables of the Four Continents" is imbued with Christian Eurocentrism and is therefore a recurring theme in Baroque art, through which the Catholic Church, as a patron of Baroque art, hopes to proclaim its bounty to these places. For example, Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, commissioned by Pope Innocent X for Piazza Novona in Rome, symbolizes the influence of the Church on these places and affirms the church's triumphant performance.
In 1810, almost 200 years after Rubens completed The Fable of the Four Continents, Madame Starr published On Germany in Paris. The book not only details German culture and ideas, but also formally launches the Romantic movement. One of the three ways to express Romanticism is Orientalism, that is, the fascination with cultural fields outside of Western culture. The East in a broad sense refers to the whole world outside the West. It is not only adjacent to Europe, the most powerful, richest and oldest colony in Europe, the source of European civilization and language, a competitor of European culture, and one of the most esoteric and commonly appeared "other" images in Europe, playing an important role in shaping the West and its related cultures.
Inspired by Orientalism, the neoclassical master Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres reveals to us the mysteries of the Turkish palace women. Although the Grand Lady of the Palace uses the classic icon of "Reclining Venus", the feminine and seductive gestures of the characters, the cannabis pipes, incense burners, fans and turbans remind us of the authenticity of the exotic scene. From 1832 to 1833, the French painter Eugène Delacroix was invited to accompany duke Morne on a diplomatic mission to Morocco. This tour can be seen as a turning point in the artistic career of this Romantic master. What he saw and heard in North Africa stimulated his imagination with vivid impressions and continued to feed back into his later art. This trip to Morocco reinforced Delacroix's romantic belief that beauty existed in nature—those in which the fierce competition of nature, the evolutionary processes of nature, and the existence of nature, especially animals, had a natural beauty. In fact, before going to North Africa, Delacroix had accompanied his friend to the Botanical Garden in Paris to sketch for their new member, a Bengal tiger from India. After returning from Morocco, de la Croix's focus shifted, depicting many scenes of beasts and beasts, as well as fighting between beasts and humans. Using Rubensian compositional techniques, he reproduced exotic romantic works such as lions, tigers and horses wrestling together, as well as Muslim hand-to-hand combat with tigers and lions, such as this "Tiger Hunting". The painter captures an Arab cavalry officer straddling a horse with its front legs jumping up, and sees the spear in the officer's left hand about to insert a tiger that has already bitten the horse's leg. Here, the tiger is the embodiment of romantic passion, and the fierce struggle between man and tiger at key moments inevitably makes the audience hold their breath, and the capture of the moment of life and death conveys the painter's strong identification and fascination with the "sublime power" in romanticism.
Eugène de la Croix, The Tiger Hunt, circa 1854
The Romantic sculptor Antoine Louis Barye was known for his vivid portrayal of animal figures. Not only can he handle the anatomy of animal figures with ease, accurately expressing the contest between life and death in the animal kingdom, but his animal shapes dovetail without any barriers with the romantic spirit of pursuing strong momentum and shaping tension. Let's take a look at his famous bronze sculpture "The Tiger Devouring the Crocodile of the Ganges". It's a deadly battle in the wilderness. In order to stimulate the romantic imagination of the viewer, Barry not only chose bizarre animals, but also set the place where the story takes place in a foreign background, such as the Ganges River in India. The fight between the tiger and the crocodile inevitably reminds us of rubens' collision between the same combinations. Here, 19th-century sensibility allowed the repressive bestiality of man to be cathartic, so this romantic depiction of the beast was warmly welcomed.
Anthony Louis Barry Bronze Sculpture "The Tiger Devouring the Crocodile of the Ganges"
The boom in Orientalism continued unabated during the Second French Empire. If Delacroix and Barry are passionate about the violent impact of tigers on the senses, Jean-Léon Gér me prefers exotic lyrical poetry. Jerome's early work was passionate about depicting everyday life in antiquity and his success at the Paris Salon, and he subsequently transferred this enthusiasm to the depiction of everyday life in North Africa and the Near East.
In 1853 Jerome traveled to Turkey. In 1856, Jerome visited Egypt for the first time. His itinerary followed the classic Near East travel route, along the Nile to Cairo, through Fayoum, to Abu Simbel. Then head back to Cairo and cross the Sinai Peninsula, passing through Aqaba and Jerusalem before arriving in Damascus. The Arab religious practices, customary scenes and North African landscapes Jerome saw along the way heralded the beginning of orientalist painting by the painter. The tiger, as a symbol of exotic culture, also appears in front of the public with a more multi-dimensional image, and the Western world has the opportunity to use the tiger as a medium to conduct more in-depth and meticulous observation and understanding of the worldly conditions, living habits and aesthetic preferences of the non-Christian world. As Edward Said put it in his brilliant Book Orientalism: "The East is almost a place created out of thin air by Europeans, and since ancient times it has represented romance, exoticism, beautiful landscapes, unforgettable memories, extraordinary experiences".
Jerome, The Fur Merchant of Cairo, 1869
For example, Jerome's 1869 "The Fur Merchant of Cairo" is a capture of egyptian life in the city, showing a merchant selling tiger skins on the streets of Cairo. Although the huge tiger skin covers his body, his skin color and the wrapped turban tell the viewer of his Arab identity, showing the painter's superb ability to shape the figure. He is showing the best quality of this tiger skin to passers-by, hoping to find the right buyer.
In 1885, Jerome painted Pasha's Anguish, which modern scholars have hailed as "one of the best paintings made during this period" by modern scholars. This work was inspired by the last line of victor Hugo's poem of the same name in The Collected Works of the Orient –
"No, no, it is not because of those countless sad faces,
Blood stains, tear marks, flashing in the darkness,
Leave shame and regret in the depths of his soul.
Then, this Pasha, driven by the war, was lost and heartbroken,
Cry like a woman... What the hell is going on?
It turned out he had died a Nubian tiger."
Jerome, The Pain of Pasha, 1882
In the center of the picture, the tiger, the king of the hundred beasts, is no longer in sight, and its huge body is lying on the peacock green carpet, as if it is sleeping deeply, and pink flowers are scattered around it. In a sad, dignified atmosphere, a grieving Turkish governor sits next to the tiger, holding his cheek with one hand and pondering, perhaps grieving for the tiger's departure, or perhaps he is also sad that his power and position will eventually pass away like this tiger. Based on his previous sketches at the Alhambra, the painter created an exquisite and gorgeous Arabian interior environment for the audience, which immediately immersed the audience in an exotic atmosphere.
Jerome especially likes to depict tigers in the desert, watching warily at advancing armies or running at full speed towards some unseen prey. The Tiger in Sight, completed in 1888, pulls the viewer's vision from the city into the wilderness. In the lower right corner of the frame, a tiger crouches on the edge of a cliff, looking at the procession in the distance, as if observing its own prey, ready to move. Here, the tiger becomes the well-deserved protagonist. Although the audience cannot see the appearance of the tiger clearly, from just one back, the audience can understand the unique alertness and acumen of the tiger. The dazzling light, the dry desert, and the sparse vegetation all tell us that this is a scene that happened in North Africa. Starting from the image strategy of landscape painting, the painter uses the tiger as the medium to introduce the real geographical environment of North Africa to the Western audience, and conveys the truth and strangeness of the Eastern world from the dual levels of nature and humanity.
Jerome, The Tiger under Observation, circa 1888
In the 1870s and 1880s, Jerome created many series of paintings about lions, tigers, and leopards, varying in size and quality, suitable for almost all tastes and economic classes. Wealthy European collectors find many places to admire in these vaguely Orientalist works that reveal to the viewer the tension between wild and tamed, between the forces of nature and the forces of man, and the similarities between wandering tigers and military marauders in a foreign land.
As the demand for Orientalist genres began to spread across Europe, more and more painters were encouraged to embark on this adventure. Artists such as Holman Hunt, Rudolf Ernst, Gustav Bauerfeld and Giulio Rosati developed their associated styles and images within the artistic framework of Orientalism.
Rudolf Ernst, "Pasha's Favorite Tiger"
By the end of the 19th century, Orientalism had declined. The art works associated with them appear dull and outdated compared to the styles of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Primitivism, and Aestheticism that had developed in the second half of the 19th century. These later artistic movements were inspired and influenced by Orientalism in many ways. Paul Gauguin's Tahiti, a place "far away from the European scramble for money" and Henri Rousseau's naïve, unpretentious tropical jungle scenes are borrowings from visual forms of non-Western or prehistoric peoples. In particular, Rousseau observed and felt the world with innocent and immaculate eyes. Tiger and Buffalo Fight in a Tropical Forest, Scout Attacked by Tiger, Tiger in Tropical Storm (Surprise!) The oversized plants and wild animals lurking in the shadows both tell the story of the painter's fascination with the pristine world.
Henri Rousseau, Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprise!) ）》1891
Henri Rousseau, Tigers and Buffalo Fighting in the Tropical Forest, 1908–1909
Whether it is the allegorical expression of the "four continents" or the Orientalism of the 19th century, its essence is a visual expression of rights rooted in Eurocentrism. In the former, Europe enjoyed supreme domination over other allegorical figures. She is equipped with all the equipment of the power of european monarchs: the crown, the throne, the scepter and the orb of the cross. Other cultures and peoples outside of Europe are often derogatoryly described, with inherent stereotypes expressing the inferiority of those who are considered less civilized, showing and reinforcing the ideas of the "self" and "other" inherent in this fable series.
With the spread of Orientalism in the 19th century, a series of stereotypes associated with Eastern culture were reinforced—"The East is irrational, degenerate, naïve, and 'abnormal'", the most obvious of which is the lack of "civilized" behavior, and the spread of such an idea essentially reflects European imperialism and the sense of superiority that accompanies it. Many people feel that Western culture is the most superior, contains the most reasonable patterns of behavior and thinking, and should be popularized throughout the world to illustrate the rationality of colonialism itself.
However, when people began to examine cultures outside Europe with a more rigorous academic attitude, the attitude of the Western public towards the East underwent a significant change, and they began to gradually examine non-Western peoples and their cultures such as Asian civilization represented by tigers with an appreciative attitude, and reasonably treated the cultural differences between the East and the West. As a result, heterogeneous and heterogeneous Eastern and Western cultures have also begun to recognize, corroborate and complement each other.
(The author of this article is affiliated with Shaanxi Normal University)