Western painting, history of Western painting from its beginnings in prehistoric times to the present.
Painting, the execution of forms and shapes on a surface by means of pigment (but see also drawing for discussion of depictions in chalks, inks, pastels, and crayons), has been continuously practiced by humans for some 20,000 years. Together with other activities that may have been ritualistic in origin but have come to be designated as artistic (such as music or dance), painting was one of the earliest ways in which man sought to express his own personality and his emerging understanding of an existence beyond the material world. Unlike music and dance, however, examples of early forms of painting have survived to the present day. The modern eye can derive aesthetic as well as antiquarian satisfaction from the 15,000-year-old cave murals of Lascaux—some examples testify to the considerable powers of draftsmanship of these early artists. And painting, like other arts, exhibits universal qualities that make it easy for viewers of all nations and civilizations to understand and appreciate.
The major extant examples of early painting anywhere in the world are found in western Europe and the Soviet Union. But some 5,000 years ago, the areas in which important paintings were executed shifted to the eastern Mediterranean Sea and neighbouring regions. For the purposes of this article, therefore, Western painting is to be taken as signifying painting not only in Europe but also in regions outside Europe that share a European cultural tradition—the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin and, later, the countries of the New World.
Western painting is in general distinguished by its concentration on the representation of the human figure, whether in the heroic context of antiquity or the religious context of the early Christian and medieval world. The Renaissance extended this tradition through a close examination of the natural world and an investigation of balance, harmony, and perspective in the visible world, linking painting to the developing sciences of anatomy and optics. The first real break from figurative painting came with the growth of landscape painting in the 17th and 18th centuries. The landscape and figurative traditions developed together in the 19th century in an atmosphere that was increasingly concerned with “painterly” qualities of the interaction of light and colour and the expressive qualities of paint handling. In the 20th century these interests contributed to the development of a third major tradition in Western painting, abstract painting, which sought to uncover and express the true nature of paint and painting through action and form.
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European Stone Age
During the Upper Paleolithic Period, just before the final retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age (15,000–10,000 bc), much of Europe was peopled by small bands of nomadic hunters preying on the migratory herds of reindeer, cattle, bison, horses, mammoth, and other animals whose bodies provided them with food, clothing, and the raw materials for tools and weapons. These primitive hunters decorated the walls of their caves with large paintings of the animals that were so important for their physical well-being. Most surviving examples of such murals have been found in France and Spain (see Stone Age), but similar figures from caves in the Ural Mountains in the Soviet Union may indicate that the practice was more widespread than has been supposed.
Ever since the first examples of these paintings came to light in the late 19th century, they have excited admiration for their virtuosity and liveliness. The simplest figures are mere outline drawings, but the majority combine this technique with sophisticated shading and colour washes that modulate the surface and suggest the differing textures of pelts, horn, and bone. Volume is indicated by carefully controlled changes in the thickness of brushstrokes, and the astonishingly advanced draftsmanship conveys a considerable sense of movement and life. Most of the animals were originally depicted as individual figures without narrative import, and what appear to the modern observer to be sophisticated groupings of figures are, in reality, the end result of a long additive process.
The lack of a clear narrative element in these paintings has caused problems in their interpretation. Man is seldom portrayed, and depictions of human figures unambiguously interacting with the numerous animal figures are rare. One of the few exceptions to this rule is a scene at Lascaux in southern France depicting a bison butting a falling male figure. The “Sorcerer” at Les Trois Frères, also in southern France, is more characteristic. Although he is draped in the skin of an animal and seems to be engaged in stalking or a ritual dance, his complete isolation from any other figure leaves his exact significance unclear. It is also interesting that, in contrast to the obvious care taken in the detailed portrayal of animals, the few human figures are usually executed in a perfunctory and schematized fashion. Sometimes the only hint of man is provided by depictions of darts wounding or killing a few of the animal figures. These projectiles have been interpreted as exercises in sympathetic magic designed to induce success in a future hunt. Conversely, they might just as easily commemorate past kills. But certain features suggest that such simple explanations do not tell the whole story: first, such portrayals are rare (in inverse proportion to the amount of scholarly discussion they have engendered) and, second, the beasts that are shown as wounded—indeed the vast majority of the species depicted on the cave walls—were not significant items in the diet of the cave artists. Contemporary habitation deposits indicate that most of the meat consumed came from reindeer, and reindeer appear almost as infrequently as man himself among the surviving paintings. One fact is clear: individual initiative seems paramount, both in the execution of the animal figures and in the recording of the activities of the isolated humans. Any hint of social interaction is absent, and it has been assumed that society as such existed at a relatively low level. Nature provided the impetus for change, and in the art of the following period man finally emerged as part of a community.
At the end of the Ice Age the great herds that had provided sustenance for the Paleolithic hunters disappeared from France and Spain. Forests cloaked the landscape and harboured much smaller groups of deer and related species. These were fleet and elusive and, in consequence, much more difficult to hunt and kill. Thus, although the climate was warmer than before, it was much harder to live by hunting alone. Man had to modify his hunting techniques and forage for the seeds and fruits that the forests provided, or the fish and shellfish that he could find in rivers or on the coasts. Cooperation was essential, and the new situation is clearly reflected in the art of the period.
In the southern and eastern parts of what is now Spain, small bands of such hunter-gatherers left a record of their activities in the rock shelters where they camped periodically. In some ways the new paintings resemble the old. Although a simple silhouette technique for the most part replaced the outline and shading techniques of the Paleolithic style, facility of brushwork and accuracy of observation continued to imbue the new creations with a vivacity and sense of movement similar to those of their predecessors. There are obvious conceptual differences between the two artistic complexes, however. The new paintings constitute the first real compositions having a clear narrative meaning, and man finally emerges as the chief actor in the dramas played out on the rock walls. At Remigia three hunters are depicted stalking a leaping ibex, while at Los Caballos a line of archers fires arrows into a small herd of panic-stricken deer, presumably driven into the ambush by beaters. Scenes of battle or groups of dancers also occur, while social status is implied in a carefully executed archer found at Santolea: he is dressed in painstakingly portrayed finery and is flanked by two other figures. This emphasis on man is new, but even more significant is the element of cooperation as part of a group whose social cohesion in warfare, hunting, or ritual was probably necessary if the group was to survive and prosper.
The subsequent Neolithic Period saw the introduction from western Asia of farming and the raising of domesticated animals. The new way of life appeared in the Balkans sometime before 6000 bc and rapidly spread across Europe. For the first time man was able to live a relatively settled village life and accumulate a wide range of household goods. So far as large-scale painting is concerned, however, this period is something of a disappointment. Thus far, there is no evidence that the farming communities decorated their house walls with painted designs, in this at least failing to imitate their Asiatic mentors whose walls, as in the shrines at Çatalhüyük in Turkey, were often embellished with ambitious decorative schemes. In different places and at different times the European farmers did indeed indulge their aesthetic drive by producing highly decorated painted pottery whose patterns reflect contemporary basketwork or textiles. Few of these styles include human or animal figures and, despite their undoubted charm, these vases are the products of craft traditions that have little to do with large-scale art.
Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Metal Age
In Greece and the Aegean, influence from the adjacent areas of western Asia helped promote the rise of small towns by about 3000 bc. The cultural development is usually divided into three separate strands: Minoan on Crete, Cycladic on the islands of the central Aegean, and Helladic on the Greek mainland. A fourth area, Cyprus, is often included in this development, though its culture was closer to those of Syria and Asia Minor and it was only during the 13th century bc that Greek invaders brought Cyprus fully into the Aegean orbit.Peter John Callaghan
The Metal Age in Europe started in the early 3rd millennium bc, when the peoples around the Aegean Sea began to work copper, under the influence of the neighbouring peoples of western Asia. By 2500 bc coppersmiths were also active across the Alps. Bronze began to be used in Europe at the beginning of the 2nd millennium bc, and iron was used in Greece by the 11th century bc and north of the Alps by the 8th century bc. Bronze was always a luxury item because the sources of its constituent metals, tin and copper, occurred in scattered deposits, often far from the producing centres. Its use, therefore, encouraged trade. But iron, when it came into use, was cheaper and easier to work; moreover, the ore lodes were often close at hand. Its use, especially for agricultural implements, allowed more intensive exploitation of the countryside, especially those areas where heavy soils had precluded farming with more primitive tools. The end of this period is usually placed at the point where written records supplement the archaeological record. In Greece and Italy this happened during the 8th century bc or a little later, whereas in northwestern Europe the Celtic and Germanic peoples had to wait for the Roman conquests of the 1st century bc before emerging into history. Beyond the imperial frontiers old patterns continued longer. Throughout this long period it was the Mediterranean, with its flourishing towns and cities, that produced major works of painting.Ole Klindt-Jensen Peter John Callaghan
Early Bronze Age (3000–2000 bc)
In Crete the Early Minoan peoples lived in small towns and villages with a basically agricultural economy. Although traces of their houses have been preserved, it is clear that they did not paint their walls with decorative designs. The fine plaster introduced at this time, however, did provide the basis for later developments. Their pottery was at first plain or decorated with simple, arresting patterns of straight lines. (Pottery is an important source for modern knowledge of painting in the last three millennia bc because, although fired clay objects—even when decorated—may be broken, they are not easily pulverized, so many fragments have survived.) In the following phase (2500–2200 bc) a similar style flourished, though other vases with a mottled surface imitating variegated stones were produced. During the third phase (2200–2000 bc) most fine vases were decorated with designs in white or cream paint on a dark ground. Elegant running spirals and other curvilinear motifs, as well as the occasional use of other colours, revolutionized the style and paved the way for the greater advances of the Middle Minoan period.
In the islands there was little interest in painted designs. Most decoration consisted of incised or impressed geometric schemes, though there were some vases with similar designs in paint. The typical pottery of the second and third phases (2500–2000 bc) was decorated in semilustrous paint, either as an allover wash or in angular patterns.
On the Greek mainland there was a similar lack of interest in painted decoration on pots. Although monumental buildings have been found in the Peloponnese dating to the Early Helladic II period (2500–2200 bc), none of these had decorated walls. New settlers arrived about 2200 bc and destroyed the old centres of power. Their houses were primitive affairs and only a few of their finer vases bore painted designs, these being of straight lines or other simple patterns.
Middle Bronze Age (2000–1600 bc)
The Middle Minoan period saw the evolution of a monarchical society based on palaces situated in the most fertile districts of Crete. There were undoubtedly frescoes in these large buildings before 1600 bc, but little survived the disastrous earthquake of about 1700 bc, and once again it is the pottery that gives the best idea of contemporary aesthetics. The decorative style is basically a development of the previous period’s. Curvilinear patterns in white, yellow, and red swirl around the surfaces of these bulbous vases. The latest Middle Minoan style is similar, but its static formality seems better suited to wall decoration, and it is likely that monumental frescoes from the old palaces influenced the vase painter. The combination of modeled flowers and animals with painted motifs on the vases certainly reflects similar developments in wall painting, where stucco reliefs were combined with simple painted backgrounds.
Middle Cycladic and Middle Helladic
On the mainland and in the islands, native styles of plain or simply painted pottery continued to be executed, but Cretan influence was felt toward the end of the period in both areas, and they began to be drawn into the wider cultural orbit characteristic of the following period.
Late Bronze Age (1600–1100 bc)
The three separate areas of the Aegean were brought into intimate contact during the Late Bronze Age; indeed the whole eastern Mediterranean saw intense cross connections and cultural diffusion. Great palaces arose on the Greek mainland and Crete and even on some of the lesser islands. Although there were probably differences in the natures of the societies that built them (resulting in fortified structures on the Greek mainland and unfortified ones on Crete), the palaces and great houses were decorated with complex frescoes whose style was based on Cretan models. Many of the figured scenes are merely decorative and depict landscapes with birds and animals or figures gathering flowers. Others show ceremonies connected with a cult or the court (“The Toreador Fresco”) and were probably useful in bolstering the power of the royal or priestly classes. The style is a combination of dark outline drawing, to delimit the object shown, and solid painted areas within it. On some birds and animals the feathers or pelts are imitated by slightly more impressionistic brushstrokes. Most of these frescoes are in fragmentary condition, but a better idea of what they must once have looked like can be gained from the house walls at Akrotíri on Thera (one of the Cyclades of the southern Aegean). Thera was destroyed by volcanic eruption during the 15th century bc and is often referred to as the Greek Pompeii. The wall paintings there were heavily influenced by those of Crete, both as to style and subject matter, though the popularity of outline figures on a pale background stemmed from the local pottery tradition. One of the most exciting discoveries is a long frieze depicting a fleet of gaily decorated ships sailing against a backdrop of hilly islands with towns, shepherds, and hunters scattered along the shores or set upon the forested peaks among gushing streams. Another painting shows a group of women at a religious festival and—in the first known instance at this period—ordinary people: two boys boxing and a fisherman proudly displaying his catch. These paintings decorated well-to-do houses. In the great palaces of Crete and on the Greek mainland many of the scenes are rather more formal. At Knossos on Crete there are long lines of offering bearers in the vestibule leading to the state rooms. The throne in one ritual chamber is flanked by fresco paintings of griffins whose presence must have had a protective value. Griffins also flank the throne at Pylos in Greece, and the same site has produced fragments of another fresco showing battle scenes. Mycenae (also on the Greek mainland) possesses a small sanctuary whose walls are decorated with ritual episodes, and religious ceremonies do indeed appear to have been an important part of the wall painters’ repertoire. There are, however, none of the historical or annalistic scenes so characteristic of the palaces and temples of western Asia and Egypt. In particular there are no depictions of investitures or battles with accompanying inscriptions; in short, Aegean paintings are far less bombastic than their Middle Eastern equivalents. This is not to say that the visitor would have been less impressed by the ruler’s power in these first great European civilizations, merely that the iconographic emphases were different.Peter John Callaghan
The light-on-dark style of pottery was by now replaced by dark-on-light ornamentation. At first (roughly 1600–1500 bc), curvilinear patterns and simple designs of vegetation predominated. Between 1500 and about 1450 bc, however, there flourished the Marine style, possibly the most successful of all Minoan pottery styles. Nearly every form of marine life is accurately reproduced in a riotous allover arrangement: octopuses, argonauts, dolphins, and fish, against a background of rocks and waves. In the 70 or 80 years after 1450 bc, the spontaneity of the early Marine style degenerated into a rigid formality. Subsequently, Late Minoan pottery became little more than a provincial version of Mycenaean ware.
For about two and a half centuries after around 1600 bc, Mycenaean pottery painting echoed Minoan. After the eclipse of Knossos, however, Minoan influence declined, and Mycenaean potters fell back on their own resources. Minoan plant and marine motifs became simpler until virtually unrecognizable as representations of anything in real life. A figure style also developed. Adapted at first from frescoes and later from textiles, this style is seldom successful, however. Unlike the classical Greeks who came later, the Mycenaean potters were not able to adapt their fresco style so as to form a convincing figure style for vases.
The Cypriot pottery of the Late Bronze Age is of three main kinds: (1) a handmade ware with a glossy brown surface called base-ring ware, vases and statuettes of humans and animals being the most common examples of this type, (2) white-slip ware, in which handmade vases of a leathery appearance are decorated with patterns in black on a white slip (slip is liquid clay covering the pottery body), and (3) local imitations, made on the wheel, of imported Mycenaean pottery, which was evidently popular.Reynold Alleyne Higgins Peter John Callaghan