Editing Genre art (section)

==Genre painting==
{{main|Genre painting}}
[[Image:Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. 014.jpg|thumb|280px|left|''Peasant Dance'', c. 1568, oil on wood, by [[Pieter Brueghel the Elder]]]]

''Genre painting'', also called ''genre scene'' or ''petit genre'', depicts aspects of [[everyday life]] by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively—thus distinguishing ''petit genre'' from [[history painting]]s (also called ''grand genre'') and [[portrait]]s. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person—a member of his family, say—as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the [[bourgeoisie]], or [[middle class]]. Genre themes appear in nearly all art traditions. Painted decorations in ancient [[Art of Ancient Egypt|Egyptian]] tombs often depict banquets, recreation, and agrarian scenes, and [[Peiraikos]] is mentioned by [[Pliny the Elder]] as a [[Hellenistic]] panel painter of "low" subjects, such as survive in [[mosaic]] versions and provincial wall-paintings at [[Pompeii]]: "barbers' shops, cobblers' stalls, asses, eatables and similar subjects".<ref>Book XXXV.112 of ''[[Natural History (Pliny)|Natural History]]''</ref> Medieval [[illuminated manuscripts]] often illustrated scenes of everyday peasant life, especially in the ''[[Labours of the Months]]'' in the calendar section of [[books of hours]], most famously [[Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry]].

===To 1800===
[[File:Merry company, by Dirck Hals.jpg|thumb|''[[Merry company|Merry Company]]'', by Dirck Hals]]
The [[Low Countries]] dominated the field until the 18th century, and in the 17th century both [[Flemish Baroque painting]] and [[Dutch Golden Age painting]] produced numerous specialists who mostly painted genre scenes.  In the previous century, the Flemish [[Renaissance]] painter [[Jan Sanders van Hemessen]] painted innovative large-scale genre scenes, sometimes including a moral theme or a religious scene in the background in the first half of the 16th century. These were part of a pattern of "[[Mannerist]] inversion" in [[Antwerp]] painting, giving "low" elements previously in the decorative background of images prominent emphasis. [[Joachim Patinir]] expanded [[landscape painting|his landscapes]], making the figures a small element, and [[Pieter Aertsen]] painted works dominated by spreads of [[still life]] food and genre figures of cooks or market-sellers, with small religious scenes in spaces in the background. [[Pieter Brueghel the Elder]] made peasants and their activities, very naturalistically treated, the subject of many of his paintings, and genre painting was to flourish in Northern Europe in Brueghel's wake.
[[File:Wybrand Hendriks - Interieur met naaiende vrouw.jpg|thumb|Interior with woman by [[Wybrand Hendriks]] ]] [[Adriaen van Ostade|Adriaen]] and [[Isaac van Ostade]], [[Jan Steen]], [[Adriaen Brouwer]], [[David Teniers the Younger|David Teniers]], [[Aelbert Cuyp]], [[Johannes Vermeer]] and [[Pieter de Hooch]] were among the many painters specializing in genre subjects in the Low Countries during the 17th century. The generally small scale of these artists' paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a genre painting was based on a popular ''emblem'' from an [[emblem book]]. This can give the painting a double meaning, such as in [[Gabriel Metsu]]'s [[:Image:Gabriel Metsu 003.jpg|''The Poultry seller'', 1662]], showing an old man offering a [[rooster]] in a symbolic pose that is based on a lewd engraving by Gillis van Breen (1595–1622), with the same scene.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jong076erot01_01/jong076erot01_01_0001.htm|title=E. de Jongh, 'Erotica in vogelperspectief. De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks zeventiende-eeuwse genrevoorstellingen' |website=DBNL|access-date=16 March 2018}}</ref> The ''[[merry company]]'' showed a group of figures at a party, whether making music at home or just drinking in a tavern. Other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities ("kermesse"), or soldiers in camp.
[[File:Jean-Baptiste Greuze - Filial Piety - WGA10664.jpg|thumb|left|[[Jean-Baptiste Greuze]], ''Filial Piety'', 1765]]

In [[Italy]], a "school" of genre painting was stimulated by the arrival in [[Rome]] of the Dutch painter [[Pieter van Laer]] in 1625. He acquired the nickname "Il Bamboccio" and his followers were called the ''[[Bamboccianti]]'', whose works would inspire [[Giacomo Ceruti]], [[Antonio Cifrondi]], and [[Giuseppe Maria Crespi]] among many others.

[[Le Nain|Louis le Nain]] was an important exponent of genre painting in 17th-century France, painting groups of peasants at home, where the 18th century would bring a heightened interest in the depiction of everyday life, whether through the [[romanticism|romanticized]] paintings of [[Antoine Watteau|Watteau]] and [[Jean-Honoré Fragonard|Fragonard]], or the careful [[realism (arts)|realism]] of [[Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin|Chardin]]. [[Jean-Baptiste Greuze]] (1725-1805) and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting.

In England, [[William Hogarth]] (1697–1764) conveyed comedy, social criticism and moral lessons through canvases that told stories of ordinary people full of narrative detail (aided by long sub-titles), often in serial form, as in his ''[[A Rake's Progress]]'', first painted in 1732–33, then engraved and published in print form in 1735.

Spain had a tradition predating [[The Book of Good Love]] of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition, practiced by many of its painters and [[illuminated manuscript|illuminators]]. At the height of [[Spanish Empire|the Spanish Empire]] and the beginning of its slow decline, many [[picaresque]] genre scenes of street life—as well as the kitchen scenes known as [[bodegones]]—were painted by the artists of The [[Spanish Golden Age]], notably [[Velázquez]] (1599–1660) and [[Bartolomé Esteban Murillo|Murillo]] (1617–82). More than a century later, the Spanish artist [[Francisco de Goya]] (1746–1828) used genre scenes in painting and [[printmaking]] as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition. His ''[[The Disasters of War]]'', a series of 82 genre incidents from the [[Peninsular War]], took genre art to unprecedented heights of expressiveness.

===19th century===
[[File:Wassilij Grigorjewitsch Perow 004.jpg|thumb|right|280px|[[Vasily Perov]], ''The Hunters at Rest'' (1871)]]
[[File:The Wood Sawyer - MET 2018.6.jpg|thumbnail|280px|''[[The Wood Sawyer (Weir)|The Wood Sawyer]]'', Charles E. Weir, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1842]]
[[File:1820-Country-Wedding-John-Lewis-Krimmel.jpg|thumb|280px|[[John Lewis Krimmel]], ''Country Wedding'' (1820)]]

With the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them. [[Realism (art)|Realists]] such as [[Gustave Courbet]] (1819–77) upset expectations by depicting everyday scenes in huge paintings—at the scale traditionally reserved for "important" subjects—thus blurring the boundary which had set genre painting apart as a "minor" category. [[History painting]] itself shifted from the exclusive depiction of events of great public importance to the depiction of genre scenes in historical times, both the private moments of great figures, and the everyday life of ordinary people. In French art this was known as the [[Troubador style]]. This trend, already apparent by 1817 when [[Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres|Ingres]] painted ''Henri IV Playing with His Children'', culminated in the [[pompier]] art of French academicians such as [[Jean-Léon Gérôme]] (1824–1904) and [[Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier]] (1815–91).  In the second half of the century interest in genre scenes, often in historical settings or with pointed social or moral comment, greatly increased across Europe.

[[William Powell Frith]] (1819–1909) was perhaps the most famous English genre painter of the Victorian era, painting large and extremely crowded scenes; the expansion in size and ambition in 19th-century genre painting was a common trend. Other 19th-century English genre painters include [[Augustus Leopold Egg]], [[Frederick Daniel Hardy]],<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Hardy Family of Artists: Frederick Daniel, George, Heywood, James and their descendants|last=Hardy|first=Kimber|publisher=ACC Art Books|year=2016|isbn=978-185149-826-0|location=Woodbridge, Suffolk UK|pages=12–63}}</ref> [[George Elgar Hicks]], [[William Holman Hunt]] and [[John Everett Millais]].  Scotland produced two influential genre painters, [[David Allan (painter)|David Allan]] (1744–96) and [[David Wilkie (artist)|Sir David Wilkie]] (1785–1841). Wilkie's ''The Cottar's Saturday Night'' (1837) inspired a major work by the French painter [[Gustave Courbet]], ''[[After Dinner at Ornans]]'' (1849). Famous [[Russia]]n realist painters like [[Pavel Fedotov]], [[Vasily Perov]], and [[Ilya Repin]] also produced genre paintings.

In Germany, [[Carl Spitzweg]] (1808–85) specialized in gently humorous genre scenes, and in Italy [[Gerolamo Induno]] (1825–90) painted scenes of military life. Subsequently, the [[Impressionism|Impressionists]], as well as such 20th-century artists as [[Pierre Bonnard]], [[Itshak Holtz]], [[Edward Hopper]], and [[David Park (painter)|David Park]] painted scenes of daily life. But in the context of modern art the term "genre painting" has come to be associated mainly with painting of an especially anecdotal or sentimental nature, painted in a traditionally realistic technique.

The first true genre painter in the United States was the German immigrant [[John Lewis Krimmel]], who learning from Wilkie and Hogarth, produced gently humorous scenes of life in Philadelphia from 1812 to 1821. Other notable 19th-century genre painters from the United States include [[George Caleb Bingham]], [[William Sidney Mount]], and [[Eastman Johnson]]. [[Harry Roseland]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.safran-arts.com/42day/art/art4may/art0512.html|title=ART / 4 / 2DAY|first=John F.|last=Canu|website=www.safran-arts.com|access-date=16 March 2018}}</ref> focused on scenes of poor African Americans in the post-[[American Civil War]] South,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Schatzki |first=Stefan C. |date=May 1992 |title=Visit from the Doctor-A Serious Case |url=https://www.ajronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2214/ajr.158.5.1566698 |journal=American Journal of Roentgenology |volume=158 |issue=5 |page=970 |doi=10.2214/ajr.158.5.1566698|pmid=1566698 }}</ref> and [[John Rogers (sculptor)|John Rogers]] (1829–1904) was a sculptor whose small genre works, mass-produced in cast plaster, were immensely popular in America.  The works of American painter [[Ernie Barnes]] (1938–2009) and those of illustrator [[Norman Rockwell]] (1894–1978) could exemplify a more modern type of genre painting.

===Genre in other traditions===
[[Japan]]ese [[ukiyo-e]] prints are rich in depictions of people at leisure and at work, as are [[Korean art|Korean]] paintings, particularly those created in the 18th century.

===Gallery of Flemish genre paintings===
<gallery>
File:Jan Sanders van Hemessen 002.jpg|[[Jan Sanders van Hemessen]], ''Brothel scene'', {{Circa|1545–1550}}.
File:David Teniers (II) - Tavern Scene - WGA22082.jpg|[[David Teniers the Younger]], ''Tavern scene'', 1640.
File:Joos van Craesbeeck - Soldiers and Women.jpg|[[Joos van Craesbeeck]], ''Soldiers and Women'', 1640s
</gallery>

===Gallery of Dutch 17th-century genre paintings===
<gallery>
File:Hendrick_Avercamp_-_Winterlandschap_met_ijsvermaak.jpg|[[Hendrick Avercamp]] painted almost exclusively winter scenes of crowds.
File:Gerard van Honthorst - Der liederliche Student - 391 - Bavarian State Painting Collections.jpg|[[Gerard van Honthorst]], ''Merry Company'', 1623, with the [[chiaroscuro]] composition often used by the [[Utrecht Caravaggists]].
File:Judith Leyster A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel.jpg|[[Judith Leyster]], ''A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel'', {{Circa|1635}}
</gallery>