Text / Sun Jijing
The 19th century was a transitional period for European art to transition from classical to modern, and French Impressionist painting was regarded as a visual representative of the discourse of aesthetic modernity, and its visual language surpassed the Western classical tradition to achieve breakthroughs in multiple dimensions of aesthetic modernity, value and significance. The 19th-century German painter Wilhelm Leibull took the theme of rural life as the core of his work. He attaches more importance to the inheritance and development of the "northern tradition" represented by the Renaissance realistic painting master Holbein. Li Xiaoyu's article examines the understanding of Holbein in the context of 19th-century art criticism and the influence of popular ideas on Leibul's creation, deepening readers' understanding of the poetic realist art style pioneered by Leibull. The female nude paintings of Frederick Leiden, an active neoclassical artist in the late 19th century, reflect the gradual decline of classical ideas and their corresponding academic art traditions after the European Enlightenment. (Wang Hongyuan)
Abstract: Frederic Leighton (Frederic Leighton) was a master of British neoclassical art in the late 19th century, but his paintings of female nudes were fiercely criticized by Victorian critics, who believed that his works pursued too much classical style and style, resulting in a lack of vitality in the human figures. This paper illustrates the neoclassical aesthetic connotation of Leiden's female nude paintings from four aspects: the depiction of curves between virtual and real, the use of chiaroscuro tones, the integration of classical sculpture and realistic natural elements, and the design of gender identity and life and death. The article argues that the neoclassical school is not completely classical in form and content, and that they more or less absorb the aesthetic characteristics of various artistic styles, showing the diverse and complex characteristics of the transitional period.
Keywords: Leiden, female nude painting, neoclassicism, aesthetics
The development of culture and art in any country or nation is caused by its special historical environment and social conditions, and there are profound historical reasons and sufficient reasons for existence. In the big European family, Britain is a special individual. It is both part of European culture and has a distinctive, independent aspect. The closed geographical environment and stable life have also created a unique national character of the British: they are rigorous, even rigid and conservative, and it is difficult to accept new things, but they also love nature, and their feelings are deep, delicate, subtle, and imaginative. [1] Victorian England, with its profound social changes and conservative national character, made its neoclassicism significantly different from that of France. British academic painters did not reject new art forms as much as France, and the work of Frederick Leiden, the representative of the British neoclassical school in the late 19th century, demonstrated this characteristic. A reading of Leiden's paintings of female nudes shows that the neoclassical school did not depart from realism, naturalism, or even Gothicism, as is widely believed.
The depiction of the curve between the virtual and the real
In the first half of the 19th century, the antique style triggered by the archaeological fever prevailed, which led to the prosperity of classical art in British schools, which made the art training schools in Britain generally keen to study the value of ideal beauty in antiques. Unlike England, due to the outbreak of the French Revolution, French neoclassical artists spent most of their time exploring life, giving classicism more practical significance. As a result, there are almost no nude paintings on the walls of the Royal Academy of Arts of this period, while the Paris Salon maintains a strong tradition of displaying nude paintings. Influenced by the French academic art of painting, Leiden created his first female nude painting in Paris, Venus and Cupid.
The French neoclassical master Ingres had a great influence on Leiden's female nude paintings, and Leiden wrote to his sister while in Paris: "I also got to know Ingres, and although he was very rough at times, fortunately he was very kind to me on the day I was introduced to him." He had just finished a beautiful painting of a young girl, and I was able to admire it boldly and sincerely. [2] The work mentioned in the letter is Ingres's 1856 Fountain, in which the contrasting curves of the right arm and waist of the "beautiful girl" raised above her head sparked Leiden's desire to create nude paintings of women. In the same year, Leiden completed Venus and Cupid.
In Leiden's design, Venus's hips and thighs are curved in an S-shape, and the soft texture of transparent fabric hangs from the wrists to the ankles, further emphasizing the contours of Venus's body, which is faintly reflected in its snow-white and smooth skin. The fabric on the right side runs through her thighs and slides down the inner thighs, directing the viewer's gaze to Cupid, the little goddess of love. Cupid sat at Venus' feet with a golden serpentine bracelet tied around her ankle. Leiden uses the technique of intertwining the curves between the virtual and the real, interweaving the soft clothing with the graceful body of Venus, falling into almost transparent and perfect classical folds, which in turn complement the sinuous pillars behind Venus and Cupid's serpentine bracelet. The background of the painting absorbs the characteristics of the Renaissance, the dense jungle, the natural form of flowers, and the birds passing under the dim sky, which merge with the figures into a harmonious and stable organic whole, adding vitality and dynamism to the picture, and making people feel the rich layers of space. The use of curvilinear shapes, the layout of contours and the meticulous expression of fabrics not only maintain the elegance and solemnity of classicism, but also highlight the vividness and beauty, so that Leiden's Venus is not as deliberate as the "beautiful girl" in Ingres's works, and the limbs appear excessively distorted, showing Leiden's artistic pursuit of combining the freehand of ideal beauty with the realism of the real human posture.
Although Leiden's first female nude painting theme is derived from classical materials, the painting style imitates classical art, emphasizes the elegance and dignity of the figures, and has obvious classical characteristics and norms, but unlike the calmness and rigor of classicism, Leiden abandons the unnatural painting technique of carving, pays attention to the role of reason and man, looks at man himself with human eyes, naturally presents the female image with human posture, focuses on portraying the smooth curve of man with realistic skills and keen insight, and recalls the classical tradition in an anthropomorphic way, so that the image of Venus is plump and strong, the curve is natural and beautiful, and the demeanor is stretched and very vividIt shows the connotation of neoclassical aesthetics poured into the author's early paintings.
The use of chiaroscuro light and shadow
In 1856, on the initiative of George Frederick Watts, Leiden's work Venus and Cupid was exhibited at the Manchester International Exhibition. However, it is a pity that this work was not recognized by the British and American audiences at the time. Henry Greville, a close friend of Leiden, advised him in a letter to Leiden: "I hope that you will turn your mind entirely to the tightly covered limbs, and that you will not draw Venus again for some time to come." [3] Thus, for the next ten years, Leiden never painted Venus again. It was not until 1867 that his second work of female nudity was exhibited, Venus Stripping and Bathing.
In contrast to the fate of Venus and Cupid, which was not accepted by the general public, Venus Strips and Bathing inaugurated the "Nude Renaissance" of British painting [4]. Venus Strips and Bathing depicts a full-length female nude with a figure standing beside a marble pillar in a gentle antithetical pose, looking down diagonally diagonally, striking a pose similar to that of Aphrodite in Praxiteles' masterpiece Aphrodite of Knidos, subtly maintaining a sense of stability and balance throughout the painting. As the art critic J. Atkinson said. B. Atkinson, the painting was created "in the spirit of Greek art"[5], and Leiden sought to enhance the overall image of the nude by establishing a very strong visual resemblance to classical statues, highlighting the nobility and purity of women, and the dove and rose at the bottom of the picture are symbols of the gods in Roman mythology, expressing the author's unremitting pursuit of aestheticism. At the same time, Leiden also has ulterior motives in dealing with the relationship between light and dark structures, which forms a certain contrast with the aesthetics of the whole painting. Unlike many nude bathing pictures of the same type, there is no bathing water in the background of this painting, only a calm sea in the distance. A large black mass emanated like smoke from the container to the left of Venus. In the late 19th century, the writer George Moore commented that Leiden's figures were "made of soap—and not ordinary yellow soap, but beige-pink soap with a strong fragrance"[6], which Moore saw as a metaphor and reflection on the pollution caused by soap production in industrial society. In addition, the edges of the main body in Venus are clear and clear, without overlapping with the background, and the light and dark details of the face and body also give people a realistic thinking. Although the symbolism of the roses and doves at the bottom of the painting is obviously a representation of the purity and beauty of the Venus tradition, expressing the romantic atmosphere of the creator, the black mask-like shadows of the figure's eyes, reflecting the appearance of the wings of birds, are the creator's desire to reveal the true associations of people that have not been completely erased. At the same time, Venus's distorted body position creates a distinctly deep wound on the torso, with the skin below the wound clean and smooth, while the upper part has dark shadows, most notably under the left chest. Unlike the soft contours of the skin in the shadow around the abdomen, the left breast and the shadow under the left arm are folded skin. This is a reminder that the nude women in the painting are both perfect images from ancient mythology and real representations of working-class models, showing the creator torn between idealism and realism.
Like the classicist painters, Leiden often used bathing scenes to depict beautiful female bodies to convey his artistic pursuits and aesthetic concepts. However, unlike his earlier "Venus and Cupid", "Venus Strips and Baths" shows more distinct neoclassical aesthetic characteristics. The artist's use of light and shadow contrasts to enhance the realistic effect in the painting, while the semi-sculpted shapes and clear edges of the human subjects set off the graceful curves of the female nude, and also have a clear realist tendency, all of which show that Leiden is a true neoclassical painter.
However, Leiden's expression of the aesthetic connotations of neoclassicism does not stop there. According to Leiden, beauty is achieved through a process of academies and idealizations, which involves translating the imperfections of the nude model in reality into the smooth perfection of classical sculpture. However, this transformation is not complete in Venus Stripping and Bathing, where the characters are a fusion of different types of bodies, such as the modern and the ancient, the flesh and the sculpture, the real and the ideal. As a result, critics have been violently critical of Leiden's figures, accusing them of being made of an intermediate substance between flesh and marble. For example, a reviewer in the Journal of Art described the Venus in Venus as "neither as pale as marble nor as vibrant as the human body" [7]. According to the Times commentators, "her flesh was as soft as wax, but there was no fresh blood flowing in her veins"[8]. A contributor to Art Magazine commented that Leiden's characters contain the ancient and haunting legend of Pygmalion (Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus in Greek mythology, who was good at carving. He didn't like the mortal women of Cyprus and decided never to marry. He carved a beautiful ivory maiden with miraculous skill, to which Pygmalion gave all his energy, all his passion, all his love, to which he worked day and night. He caressed her as he had treated his wife, dressed her up, named her Galatea, and begged God to make her his wife. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was moved by him, gave life to the statues, and made them husband and wife. The "Pygmalion effect" has become synonymous with artistic sensibility as long as a person has a persistent pursuit of artistic objects. On the one hand, it is the author's persistent pursuit of artistic objects, but on the other hand, because the portraits of the characters are like wax figures, the craftsmanship is not so perfect, and the miracle is not completed. 〔9〕
A fusion of classical sculpture with real-life elements
The story of Pygmalion and Galaty provided the artist with the opportunity to explore a half-marble, half-flesh form of bodily expression. In the late 80s of the 19th century, Dorothy Dene, a working-class model from a poor background, became a model for Leiden, which made the contradiction and entanglement between ideal and reality more prominent in his later works. Leiden wanted to use nude female paintings to show that people preferred lifeless marble statues to real women with flesh and blood in real life. In 1890, Leiden wrote Psyche in the Bath. The painting depicts Psyche taking off his clothes and bathing after being rescued by Cupid and placed in a sacred golden palace. According to mythology, Psyche was the youngest daughter of an ancient Greek king, and her incomparable beauty has long been known far and wide, so much so that people call her the goddess of love and beauty. Venus, the goddess of beauty, was so jealous that he sent his son Cupid to destroy the beauty of Psyche. However, when Cupid met Psyche, he was moved by her beauty and fell in love with her deeply. Cupid visits Psyche every night as an invisible lover, until Psyche disobeys Cupid and ignores his instructions, only to discover that her love is love itself. Unlike Leiden's earlier work Venus and Cupid, this painting only shows a female nude and does not show Cupid, but because of the close relationship between Cupid and Psyche in the mythological plot, artists and audiences often regard Cupid as Psyche's invisible admirer.
If in "Venus Stripping and Bathing", the nude Venus is still in a transitional state between marble and flesh, then in "Bathing Psyche", the sculptural traces of female nudity are more and more obvious. A Lloyd's Weekly contributor writes that Psyche was "designed to have the sculptural beauty characteristic of the work of the Academy" [10]. In order to show the full beauty of Psyche, the embodiment of beauty, Leiden uses his preferred rectangular composition, with simple human movements standing in the middle of the picture in full openness, showing the unique and perfect nudity of the goddess. Psyche's face is slightly shy and sad, and the posture of turning his body and raising his hands is very similar to that of the statue of Venus with a broken arm. In this painting, Leiden pays great attention to the use of lines, the vertical posture of the figures and the creases on Psyche's clothes, which contrast with the vertical grooves on the stone columns, these straight lines and horizontal lines at the steps constitute a consistent beauty, and the dark background curtain contrasts with the white female nude, which makes the figure more prominent. At the same time, as in Venus Undressing and Bathing, the nude Psyche standing next to a marble pillar in Psyche in the Bathing evokes associations and analogies between the female form and the architectural form.
In addition to the two elements of the statue-like nude and the marble-like fabric, there is also a connection between the flesh, the fabric, the marble and the precious metal in the reflection at the bottom of the picture. In the reflection, the curtains, stone pillars, golden vases and the lower part of the figure's legs are overlapped, and a closer look reveals that the reflection in the painting is not a true reflection of reality. While the vase on the right side of the painting can be seen, the pile of yellow fabric on the left and the steps leading to the pillars are not. The reason for this can be explained by the words of Alison Smith, who argues that "in the late 19th century, the restoration or restoration of lost or damaged statues was seen as a legitimate goal for artists, and this goal provided an opportunity for scholarly intervention and artistic interpretation" [11]. One example of this approach is Lawrence Alma-Tadema's A Sculptor's Model (1878), in which Tadema restored and depicted the making of the statue of Venus Esquilina, unearthed in Rome in 1874, with imaginative paintings. Accordingly, critics interpreted the reflections in Leiden's paintings as a way of venturing the submerged or buried fragments of antique sculpture through which the unexcavated fragments could be reassembled to form complete columns, vases, and bodies of psyche statues.
To illustrate the reality of the excavation and restoration of the statue, Leiden skillfully used technique to preserve the fracture or damage of the statue in the female nude figures of his work. In Venus Stripping and Bathing, a circular shadow cast by the head forms a line under Venus's neck, connecting the head and neck of the antique statue Venus with the body of the real-life model Dani. At the same time, the visible cracks in the torso bear a strong resemblance to classical statues such as the Vatican's Aphrodite of Knidos, the Louvre's Venus de Milo, and the Uffizi's Venus de'Medici. In the case of Psyche, Leiden uses the contrast between the light tones of the figure's body and the dark tones of the head and neck to make the head look like something that was added later, reminiscent of the famous Neapolitan sculpture Venus Kallipygos, which modern sculptors have restored and combined several times in the style of the Hellenistic era. In addition, in Leiden's two works, the fabric wraps around the top of the figure's right arm, which coincides with the fracture of the arm of the classical sculpture Venus, and the design of the fabric is to naturally connect the arm to the body, while subtly cutting off the figures to make them look mutilated, which is also a reference to the archetype of classical feminine beauty, the Venus of Milo.
Some Victorian critics lashed out at Leiden's depiction, arguing that the sculptural, cold image lacked Psyche its authenticity, naturalness and vitality. The most scathing criticism was a cartoon titled "Ice is Cheap Today" published in the famous British humor magazine Punch, which showed characters resembling the shape of Psyche in "Bathing Psyche", except that the magazine Psyche was frozen. This cartoon represents a widespread critique of Leiden's academicism, claiming that in the process of transforming the real body into an idealized body, Leiden overemphasized the "image" effect of sculpture, and simply exhausted the blood and life of real characters in pursuit of visual impact and classical formal beauty, thus ignoring the appeal of the human figure. In response to Leiden's lines, Punch magazine also made a mockery of a conversation between two men browsing the Royal Academy exhibition, saying that the folds of Psyche's fabric were "very unnatural" and looked like marble.
In order to cater to the preferences and tastes of the upper class, he created based on ancient mythological figures, focusing on the integration of people and sculptures, which inevitably left a stereotypical and unreal impression; The mood of burnout creates a subtle and restrained classical statue-like beauty of female nudity. "Psyche in the Bath" is a portrayal of Leiden's style of painting, the work depicts the bathing of nude women in detail, the standing posture, posture and facial contours of the figures all reveal a kind of Greek elegant standard beauty, the soft curves of the female nude and the straight lines of the stone pillars and steps in the background set off the strict and beautiful atmosphere of ancient Greece. At the same time, Psyche's movements of raising his hands high, as well as his beautiful naked figure reflected in the pool water, showed a shy and happy demeanor, a charming posture and a lazy form, all showing the subtle and gentle but rich natural emotions of a girl in real life. This is a characteristic of feminine beauty that cannot be matched by any sculptural painting, full of romantic lyricism.
Fig.1 Frederick Leiden, Perseus and Andro Moda, Oil on canvas, 235×129.2 cm, 1891, Collection of Walker Art Gallery, UK
A design where gender identity is entangled with the fate of life and death
This use of classical statues combined with real-life elements becomes richer and more vivid in Leiden's later works, and further imparts a deep sense of reality. In 1891, he painted Perseus and Andromoda (fig. 1), followed five years later by Perseus riding Pegasus on Pegasus to rescue Andromoda (fig. 2). Drawing on a common motif from classical Western sources, this series of paintings depicts the young hero Perseus rescuing Andromoda, who is tied to a reef to be sacrificed to a sea monster. According to the Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphoses, Perseus found Andromoda's arm tied backwards to the jagged rock face, merging with the marble statue, "which would have been mistaken for a marble statue had it not been for the warm tears that ran through her hair and cheeks" [12]. In Layton's treatment, Andro Moda's curved body contrasts with the darkness of the dragon's irregular jagged body. The artist uses elements tied to the rock face by Andromoda to divide the figure's nude, one at the top of her arms and the other along the upper thighs that surround the fabric. Andromoda's left arm is tightly tied behind his back, looking as if it has been cut off, and a black shadow at the base of his neck is similar to the classical statues of Venus and Aphrodite. At the same time, Leiden took a different approach, and the original storyline of Perseus putting Medusa's head in a bag was deliberately tampered with by the painter to reveal the head outside, once again reflecting the atmosphere of turning living people into lifeless marble, creating a more direct picture effect of integrating classical statues with real-life elements.
Fig. 2 Frederick Layton Perseus rode Pegasus on Pegasus to rescue Andromoda Oil on canvas 184.2 cm diameter 1895-1986
In addition, Andromoda and Medusa in The Metamorphosis are both victims of rape and unjust punishment, but in Leiden's work, the beauty of the former and the ugliness of the latter, as well as the fate of both of them, are in stark contrast. Andromoda's white body symbolizes the purity and innocence of the maiden, the layers of hair grow over her body, the orange hue reappears in the flames of the dragon's breath, the farthest tendrils can be recognized in the shape of a snake, which is the hair of Medusa transformed into a snake, and Andromoda's long neck is reminiscent of the scene when Medusa was beheaded, and the rocks exposed at the bottom of the picture refer to people such as Atlas who turn to stone when they see Medusa's terrible face. These details seem to remind people that it is not the fire-breathing dragon that poses danger to Andromoda, but the head of Medusa wielded in Perseus's hand. It can be seen that both the sanctioned Medusa and the saved Andromoda are in the hands of Perseus. Thus, like many paintings on the walls of the Royal Academy in the second half of the 19th century, Perseus und Andromoda shows the stark contrast between the male and female figures of patriarchal culture, in which women are objects of bondage and protection, while men are arbiters and saviors.
At the same time, the strength and fighting spirit of men, as well as the weakness and helplessness corresponding to women, are not only reflected in the posture of the characters in the painting, but also in the structure and treatment of the picture. Perseus is high above the sky, surrounded by a halo of light, the extension of light visually associates it with Andromoda, the fluttering state of the fabric is consistent with the movement trend of Perseus's arm raised, and the exaggerated twisting pose of the Pegasus makes the character dynamic. The stretched body contrasts strongly with Andromoda's distorted and deformed posture, and the dynamic image highlights the post-Gothic character, giving the male figure an intrinsic chivalry and heroism. This structure conveys Leiden's message that in reality he also hopes to help Dani rise from a humble career as a model to a stage actress. However, the mythical story of Perseus wielding a sword and killing the dragon was changed by Leyton to a less powerful bow and arrow. This is a deliberate design by the painter due to his feelings of loss, implying that Perseus's attempt to save Andromoda failed as much as he helped Dany himself. Perseus's arrow, stuck in the skin of the dragon's back, is also aimed at Andromoda, where the arrow is not only a weapon to kill monsters, but also reminiscent of Cupid's arrow with erotic powers, adding a layer of mystery to Layton's relationship with Dani.
epilogue
Since the middle of the 18th century, the rise of Enlightenment and rationalism, as well as the emergence of archaeological excavations in ancient Roman cities such as Pompeii, have once again stimulated people's interest in imitating classical art, and neoclassicists have consciously pursued this aesthetic goal. Drawing on the artistic techniques of ancient Greece, Leiden hopes to get inspiration from ancient Greek sculptures, and through the restoration of unearthed fragments, he strives to shape the nude women in the works into a new and perfect whole, creating an aesthetic taste of beauty, harmony, solemnity and elegance. In the process of painting, Leiden, like another contemporary, Edmund Blair Leighton, "firmly believed that it was the painter's pursuit to express the truth of history through details and to reproduce history accurately and meticulously" [13], and pursued elegance and delicacy in content, structure, line and color, all of which fully reflected the profound influence of academic orthodoxy. However, it is precisely this persistent pursuit and unremitting exploration of the ideal beauty of classicism that has led to repeated criticism of Leiden's work by Victorian critics, who criticized the women in his works for looking like wax figures, as if composed of an intermediate substance between marble and flesh, enhancing the beauty of the characters while lacking the realism of the real world.
However, these criticisms are only part of the process of completing the work, which is a reflection of the decline of the classical ideas of art in the late nineteen-sixties, and as Professor Chang Ningsheng puts it, "the academic art of the late nineteenth century was later completely demonized by the emerging modernist adherents" [14]. In fact, from Leiden's works such as Venus and Cupid, Venus Stripping and Bathing, Psyche's Bathing, Perseus and Andromoda, etc., it can be seen that female nude figures are frozen in a variety of states between flesh and marble, reality and ideals, living and dying. It is this sense of transition in the material, and the cracks that accompany the design of the fabric, that constitute the visual remnant of the artist's real-life working-class nude model Dani and the mutilation of classical sculpture figures. At the same time, the female nude created by Leiden is a metaphor for the patriarchal system's understanding of female gender and its recognition of male gender temperament. All these confirm that the classical paintings of the academy not only carry strong classical characteristics in form and content, but also "more or less carry the imprint of the times and the nation and produce new aesthetic characteristics" [15], showing the transcendence of neoclassicism over classicism, and also highlighting the complexity and diversity of neoclassical painting. (This article is the result of the project "Research on the Maritime Silk Road and Sino-British Art Exchange in the 18th Century" of the Hunan Provincial Social Science Review Committee, project number: XSP17YBZZ038)
Exegesis:
[1] Li Jianqun, Words on British Art History, People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 2000, p. 3.
〔2〕Barrington, Bmilie. The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton. Vol.1, Nabu Press, 2011, p.245,
〔3〕Ibid, p.264.
〔4〕Smith, Alison. The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art. Manchester University Press, 1997, p.101.
〔5〕Atkinson, J. B. The Royal Academy, Art Journal. Jun 1867, p.141.
〔6〕Prettejohn, Elizabeth. “Aestheticising History Painting”, Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity. ed. Tim Barringer and Prettejohn. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1999, p.105.
〔7〕Atkinson, J. B. The Royal Academy, Art Journal. Jun 1867, p.141.
〔8〕“Exhibition of the Royal Academy”, The Times. 4 May 1867, p.12. Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus in Greek mythology, good at carving. He didn't like the mortal women of Cyprus and decided never to marry. He carved a beautiful ivory maiden with miraculous skill, to which Pygmalion gave all his energy, all his passion, all his love, to which he worked day and night. He caressed her as he had treated his wife, dressed her up, named her Galatea, and begged God to make her his wife. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was moved by him, gave life to the statues, and made them husband and wife. The "Pygmalion effect" has become synonymous with artistic sensibility as long as a person has a persistent pursuit of artistic objects.
〔9〕W. E. H. “Current Art.-1.” Magazine of Art, 1885(8), p.347.
〔10〕“Exhibition of the Royal Academy” Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper. 11 May 189.
〔11〕Smith, Alison. The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art. Manchester University Press, 1997, p.98.
〔12〕Ovid. The Metamorphoses. Penguin, 2009, p.151.
[13] Guo Sheng, "From Chivalric Style to Chivalry: The Craftsman Spirit in Leiden Painting", Fine Arts, No. 11, 2021.
[14] Chang Ningsheng, "Reflection and Revision of History: Academic Painting and Avant-garde Thought in the Late 19th Century", Art Observation, No. 12, 2006.
[15] Li Chunshan, "Research on the Aesthetic Characteristics and Value of British Academic Painting in the Late Nineteenth Century", master's thesis, Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, 2012.
Sun Jijing is an associate professor at the School of Social Development and Management, Hunan Women's University
(This article was originally published in Art Observation, Issue 3, 2024)