Old '76 and Young '48
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| Old '76 and Young '48 |
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| Richard Caton Woodville , 1849 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 53.3 x 68.2 cm |
| Walters Art Museum |
Old '76 and Young '48 is the title of a genre painting and main work by the American painter Richard Caton Woodville . The painting was created in 1849 in a narrative and realistic style of the Düsseldorf School of Painting and shows the members of three generations of a middle-class American family in the interior of their salon when their son returned from the Mexican-American War in 1848 .
Description and meaning
A young soldier in a dark blue officer uniform of the United States Army - "Young '48" - has just returned from the war to his family and reports to them. The father is standing, mother and sister sit with the returnees at a table that has been set for him with food and red wine, and follow his stories spellbound. Their faces show the features of Woodville's parents and sister. The painter portrayed his brother in the young soldier and his great-uncle Richard Caton (1763–1845) in the old man.
From the open door and a hallway, three black house servants watch what is happening from a distance, while the family dog, a piebald hound , lovingly lays its head on the soldier's thigh. The servants - probably slaves - remain in the dark due to the painter's lighting. The actual family circle including the dog is illuminated, especially the faces of the young soldier, his mother and the old man stand out. Also clearly visible are a classicist gray marble fireplace, which reflects the contemporary antebellum architecture and Federal style , an oriental carpet in the foreground and the ceilings on the table.
The elderly head of the family - "Old '76" is sitting in the armchair. On the wall behind the old man is the bust of George Washington . On the mantelpiece there is a still life-like arrangement of objects, in addition to a classical pendulum clock, small rococo porcelain vases and candlesticks, also unusual for this place: an apple, a dried corn on the cob, a small bottle, possibly for medicine, and a book, perhaps the Bible . An engraving after John Trumbull's painting Declaration of Independence (1819), which shows the signing of the Declaration of Independence by the founding fathers of the United States in 1776, hangs above the ledge in an elaborate gold frame . Like the Washington bust, this image relates to the life story of the old man. As a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, they give him special authority.
The young soldier's cap and sword have been lying on the oriental carpet since the greeting. Dried mud sticks to the uniforms and riding boots. Because of a war injury, the young veteran has his left arm in a bandage. To confirm his lecture, he points with his right hand to an oval portrait on the wall, while his gaze is fixed on the old patriarch, as if awaiting his confirmation and approval. He does not return the boy's gaze, however, but stares, his hands on a stick, pensive into the room, as if he is lost in his own memories.
What the young veteran wants to explain remains as open in the picture as the thoughts that the old veteran might indulge in. Apparently the young man’s remarks do not reach the old man, and so it seems that the space charged with memories and symbols, especially those with references to United States history , is a cross-generational drama between “Young '48” and "Old '76" could play. The painter hid an indication of such tensions in a detail: the pane of glass on the engraving for the Declaration of Independence from 1776 cracked, as if to suggest that the legacy of the founding fathers was not going well.
Origin and provenance
Richard Caton Woodville painted the picture in 1849 in Düsseldorf , where he had lived with his wife from 1845 after a broken medical degree and was trained as an academic painter in private lessons from Karl Ferdinand Sohn until 1851 . His greatest role model within the Düsseldorf School of Painting was Johann Peter Hasenclever , who - deviating from the official line of the Düsseldorf Art Academy - cultivated genre painting and in this genre a humorous and socially critical realism. He adopted various stylistic devices from Hasenclever, from his 1848 painting Workers in Front of the Magistrate, for example, the stylistic device of the bust in order to establish a reference to a political personality and epoch, as well as the representation of a cracked glass pane to indicate an existing conflict.
As the watercolor The Soldier's Experience shows, Woodville was already working on the subject in 1847.
Woodville was distantly related to one of the founding fathers of the United States through his great-uncle Richard Caton, who died in 1845 and married Mary "Polly" Carroll, a daughter of the US politician Charles Carroll . This great-uncle, whose name he bore, stood before his eyes in the figure of "Old '76".
A special personal connection to the Mexican-American War was given for Woodville by the fact that his friend Stedman Rawlings Tilghman (1822-1848) had served as a surgeon in the US Army from 1846 and had died under the rigors of the war after two years. That Woodville was also interested in the complex political and social backgrounds of this war can already be seen in the painting War News from Mexico , which he had created in 1848. In the genre painting Politics in an Oyster House , created in the same year , he also dealt with the issue of generational conflict and the culture of political debate .
In 1850/1851 Joseph Ives Pease (1809–1883) made an engraving based on the original painting.
In 1852 the picture was offered at an exhibition of the American Art-Union in New York City and acquired by the New York ship designer William Henry Webb . The painting later moved to Baltimore , where it had different owners over the years before it was bought by the Walters Art Museum in 1954 .
literature
- Edward L. Widmer: Young America. The Flowering of Democracy in New York City . Oxford University Press, New York 1999, 0-19-510050-6, p. 136.
Web links
- Old '76 and Young '48 , explanation of pictures in the portal art.thewalters.org ( Walters Art Museum )
- Old '76 and Young '48 , explanation of images in the portal artsandculture.google.com
Individual evidence
- ^ Wend von Kalnein : The influence of Düsseldorf on painting outside Germany . In: Wend von Kalnein: The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Düsseldorf 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 204
- ↑ Old '76 and Young '48 , object data sheet in the portal digital.librarycompany.org