Historicism
also: Historism · Historismus
Historicism (or historism) names art and architecture that draws on recreating historic styles - the nineteenth century's great revival phase. After Neoclassicism, Romantic-era design began quoting Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque models, and from the 1850s revival architecture dominated monumental building across Europe and America: Gothic Revival parliaments and museums, Neo-Renaissance opera houses, Second Empire ministries. In history painting, subjects from the past were rendered with obsessive period detail. The fashion tracked the rise of the bourgeoisie and its appetite for monumental, historically legitimated display. Symbolism, Art Nouveau and modernism made historicism look dated by 1900, yet it survived in official commissions into the 1950s, and neohistorism followed postmodernism in the 1980s. Historicism is less a style than a method: the past as a design vocabulary.
Defining characteristics
- Revival vocabulary: Gothic pointed arches, Romanesque round arches, classical orders or Renaissance rustication, quoted per project
- Eclectic combinations - different historic styles mixed within a single design
- History painting with meticulous period detail: costume, architecture and props researched
- Ornament drawn faithfully from pattern books and engravings of earlier styles
- Monumental civic and domestic commissions designed to convey heritage and legitimacy
- Rich material display: carved stone, polychrome brick, iron and glass used historicistically
Key figures
- Augustus Wellesley Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) — Gothic Revival architect whose pointed-arch idiom defined Victorian historicism
- Charles Barry (1795-1860) — Architect of the Palace of Westminster, marrying Gothic detail to classical planning
- Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) — History painter of meticulously costumed scenes from the past
- Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) — Restorer of medieval monuments whose 'restorations' were themselves historicist recreations
- Leo von Klenze (1784-1864) — Bavarian court architect of Greek Revival and Neo-Renaissance monuments in Munich
Example works
- The Architect's Dream — Thomas Cole (1840)
- Palace of Westminster — Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin (1840-1876)
- The Execution of Lady Jane Grey — Paul Delaroche (1833)
Sources
- Historicism (art) - Wikipedia encyclopedia