In the opening to his 1863 manifesto, “The Painter of Modern Life,” the French art critic and essayist Charles Baudelaire urges his readers to embrace the aesthetics of a “particular beauty, the beauty of circumstance and the sketch of manners.” One may also consider a “particular” beauty to be one that is distinct, individual, or subjective. Indeed, the historical arc of nineteenth-century French art has been a specific one, one reflecting the cultural and political positions of white male artists. While the long nineteenth century witnessed cultural advances, including the manufacturing of the first steam engine connecting two international European capitals, the invention of photography, industrialization, increased globalism, and the use of electric lighting, the era was also tarnished by colonial operations, pseudoscientific constructions of race, pollution, and labor exploitation.
A Particular Beauty: 19th-Century French Art at the McNay, reflects upon whom the nineteenth-century European art historical canon has traditionally represented and served. With a refreshed approach towards presenting European artworks in the McNay’s collection, the exhibition and accompanying essay confront topics on exoticism, colonialism, class, gender, ecocriticism, race, disability studies, and LBGTQ+ studies. The exhibition displays 12 paintings and works on paper from the McNay’s permanent collection by artists including Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Gustave Courbet, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among others.
A Particular Beauty: 19th-Century French Art at the McNay is curated by Noelle Yongwei Barr, Semmes Foundation Intern in Museum Studies.
Image credit: Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917), Seated Dancer, ca. 1885. Charcoal and chalk on paper. Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay, 1950.31.