Beelden van historisch leven : historisch genre in de negentiende-eeuwse schilderkunst van Midden-Europa

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century many genre and history painters from Central-Europe, as elsewhere, chose to depict scenes from everyday life in the past. At the time writers of historiographic and literary texts, reviews of books and works of art often expressed a longing to be able to ´see´ such personal life in history, and to sympathize with its positive moments. Scenes of historical genre were particularly apt to meet those wishes. The preference for eras and locations underwent changes during the course of that century, and the same goes for the situations and activities that ´historical´ people were shown involved in. The variance in historical ideals in Germany, Austria and Poland led to a wide variety of scenes within Central-European historical genre, whilst producing, at the same time, sometimes surprising similarities. Object of this study has been the cultural-historical context of some of the most frequently painted themes and types of historical genre, as well as contemporary comments, in order to find out what meaning these images held for the nineteenth-century beholder.