La représentation romancée de la classe ouvrière à l'époque mi-victorienne en Grande-Bretagne
The subject of this thesis is Victorian social realism, a spell of British Art during which Realism tends to grow everywhere in Europa during the 19th century. During this period of time, Great Britain reaches its summit with the industrial modernity. At the same time, this fast-changing world is causing a serious class struggle that artists try to represent through a new estheticism and a new ideology. Whereas in France, the figure of the peasant is mostly associated with Realism, British artists relate more to the urban worker and so do novelists, intellectuals, and legislators, who witness the devastation of the human condition caused by the shameless race for progress and profit. Industrial novels written by Dickens introduced a certain type of low-class character of London and illustrators follow the lead in illustrated newspapers. An iconography of the poor, in which the child and the woman are the main characters, starts to take place and spreads largely through the new medium of mechanical reproduction. The illustrated newspaper The Graphic caught our attention because some of its illustrators – Francis Montague Holl (1845-1888), Samuel Luke Fildes (1843-1927), and Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914) – were also painters and transposed subjects they already exploited in woodcarving on to canvas. In this thesis, we will explore the fictional aspects and rhetorical manipulations used by the illustrators and the painters to get across their message. Certain of these manipulations are imposed by the historical and political context, by the need of not shocking the rich classes by showing them a potential insurrection, but rather by encouraging charity. Others prefer to change medium, by switching from engraving to painting, form small to big canvas, from private buyers to public exhibition, and thereby imposing new and different compositional strategies.
Great Britain 19th century Social Realism Illustrated Newspapers Painting