# Art > Art & Art History >  Literature in art.

## Zee.

I was going to post this in the general chat thread, but thought it was more appropriate to post it here.

Is there any art that you admire, that focuses on characters or works of literature?

John William Waterhouse paints a lot of women from literature:


Ophelia

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## Saladin

The Lady from the Sea (an Henrik Ibsen play):a painting of Edvard Munch.



White Bear King Valemon (a norwegian fairy tale - Kvitebjørn Kong Valemon) - The painting is painted by Theodor Kittelsen:



Tideman and Gude - Bridetrip in Hardanger (Brudeferd i Hardanger)



The last one is not specific literature in art, it just one of my favourite paintings.

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## Paulclem

I've just bought Guernica - the book not the painting, (I wish), - by Dave Boling. I haven't read it yet. It's about a family during the Spanish civil War and the blurb infoms that Picasso makes an appearance. 

http://www.caribousmom.com/2008/09/1...a-book-review/

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## LitNetIsGreat

The Pre Raphaelites represent an obvious starting point, such as Millais Ophelia by the Rocks (see my page) amongst others. 

(By the way is there an easy way to insert pictures, the insert image button above doesn't seem to work very well for me?)

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## Saladin

> The Pre Raphaelites represent an obvious starting point, such as Millais Ophelia by the Rocks (see my page) amongst others. 
> 
> (By the way is there an easy way to insert pictures, the insert image button above doesn't seem to work very well for me?)


*[img]*the link*[/img]*

 :Thumbs Up:

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## Manchegan

I've always wondered if any one ever did a decent painting of the scene Joyce describes in The Dead. I've always thought that if I could paint, I would make that image of the wife standing on the stairs listening to the distant music in her striped skirt. 

Does anyone know if such a painting exists?

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## mal4mac

Any of you watching BBC's latest foray into costume drama - Desperate Romantics? I'm finding it to be a guilty pleasure. Shallow but fun... especially the scene of Millais almost drowning his model for Ophelia. Here's a working link for the pic:

http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/per...is_ophelia.jpg

Not too shallow then :-)

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## LitNetIsGreat

> Any of you watching BBC's latest foray into costume drama - Desperate Romantics? I'm finding it to be a guilty pleasure. Shallow but fun... especially the scene of Millais almost drowning his model for Ophelia. Here's a working link for the pic:
> 
> http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/per...is_ophelia.jpg
> 
> Not too shallow then :-)


Yes, I'm watching it it's quite a fun romp.

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## mmmmmm

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Daumier

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## stlukesguild

Like the discussion of the influence of literature on music, the same is true of the influence of literature on art: it is almost endless. Again, in Western art, the most obvious influence is that of the Bible... followed closely by the Greco-Roman narratives. Artists of the Romantic era forward began to base a great deal of art upon more contemporary examples of literature: Shakespeare, Dante, Petrarch, Cervantes, etc... What I find truly intriguing is the fact that it while visual art and music began to pull away from the influence of literature in more recent times... the terms "literary" and "narrative" becoming insults of a sort... literature, on the other hand... makes increasing reference to works of visual art and music in more recent times. 

As the field is immense, I'll just throw out a few favorites that may not be so well known... as well as a few non-Western examples:

As a writer as well as an artist almost all of William Blake's works are rooted in literature ranging from the Bible, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton to his own writings. Blake's images based upon Dante's _Comedia_ are among his most powerful:





The great French Romanticist, Eugene Delacroix, based his masterpiece, the _Death of Sardanapolis_ loosely upon Byron:

 

The great English Romantic, J.M.W. Turner, makes some of the most sophisticated use of literary narrative and allusion. In _Odysseus Deriding Polyphemus_ a magnificent seascape with a brilliant sunset reveals a ship laden with Greeks mocking the blinded giant Polyphemus who howls at the gods above (barely discernible in reproduction on the hilltop to the top left):

 

In _Regulus_, a blinding sunset seen from a classical harbor takes on a new depth of meaning as we connect it with the narrative of Regulus. According to the narrative account of the Punic Wars (Rome vs Carthage) used by Turner, Marcus Atilius Regulus was a Roman general and consul who had shattered the Carthaginian fleet. The terms of peace he proposed to Carthage, however, were so severe that they elected to remain at war with Rome. Regulus was captured at the Battle of Tunis and remained in captivity until the defeat of the Carthaginians at the Battle of Panormus. At this time, Regulus was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate for peace or an exchange of prisoners. Regulus, however, urged Rome to continue fighting. Refusing to dishonor himself, however, he returned to Carthage per the terms of his parole. When the Carthaginians realized what Regulus had wrought upon them, he was tortured to death. Among his tortures, he was strapped to a post facing the sun and his eyelids were cut off so that the setting sun would effectively burn out his eyes and blind him. In Turner's painting, we the viewers are Regulus... staring into the blinding Mediterranean sun. We are also aware that just as the sun is setting for Regulus it is also the setting of the sun for the great Carthaginian Empire:



In another marvelous painting by Turner, _Angel Standing in the Sun_, the blinding light is that of God on the Day of Judgment. We see the angel of of the Apocalypse taken from the Biblical _Book of Revelations_. The light of God is so blinding that it devours the human bodies to the point where we can see through one figure to his very skeleton. The sky swarms with birds waiting to devour humanity: "That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.":



The Impressionists made little use of literary narratives... but one of their followers, the English painter, Walter Sickert, is an interesting case. Sickert was fond of the tales and narratives of urban crime and murder in London to be found in the newspapers. His tawdry scenes of sweaty sexual encounters in cheap apartments and motel rooms in the big city have more than a little suggestive of the sleazy sexual crimes to them. In fact, Sickert's paintings were so disturbing to many that he was actually a suspect in the "Jack the Ripper" murders:







Another great use of literary narrative to justify the blatantly erotic might be found in Luis Ricardo Falero's over-the-top festival of naked flesh which is loosely (very) based upon the Walpurgisnacht scene from Gothe's _Faust_.



One of the artists to make the most magical use of literary narratives was the french painter and pastel artist, Odilon Redon. Redon's work includes dream-like images of Orpheus...





the drowned Ophelia...



and even Buddha:





Contemporary art makes reference to literature... but often in a very personal, interpretive manner. One of my favorite contemporary painters is the New Orleans native, Douglas Bourgeois. Bourgeois builds upon the cultural mix that makes up the city of New Orleans... drawing from sources both "high" and "low". One of my favorite paintings by him is that of _Ed and L'il Kim_... 



...in which Edgar Allen Poe... certainly an emblem of Southern Gothic literary decadence hangs out with the provocatively dressed L'il Kim in a dream-like setting drawn directly from the great Italian Renaissance painter, Fra Angelico. Fra Angelico's painting is of the _Annunciation_ leading one to wonder what L'il Kim is announcing to "Ed".



Among my favorite works of Non-Western art I must surely count the illuminated manuscripts of Persia and the Islamic world. A great many of the finest of these illuminate the tales from the _Shanameh_... the Persian epic by Firdowsi. The magical, fairy-tale imagery of these images is what first drew me toward exploring Islamic literature. As an artist I am not alone in my fascination with the "Orient" as Delacroix, Renoir, Matisse, Klee, and endless others were equally seduced by the art of Islam:







I'm so fond of this art that I actually wrote a rather lengthy blog post with many more examples of the art that can be seen here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=6446

The Japanese are my other great artistic obsession among the Non-Western world. One of the most fascinating fusions of visual art and literature must be found in the collaboration of Sotatsu and Koetsu. These two... poet/calligrapher and painter created some spectacular mergers of text and image. Where writing has not been a great visual art-form in the West since the middle ages, it remains a central art form in China, Japan, and the Islamic world. In the examples of Koetsu and Sotasu the text, calligraphy, and image become so intertwined as to be inseparable... as the text in music in a great song by Schubert or Debussy.





Again, one can explore the work of these two artists in a bit more depth at the bog I posted here:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=6445

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## wessexgirl

> Any of you watching BBC's latest foray into costume drama - Desperate Romantics? I'm finding it to be a guilty pleasure. Shallow but fun... especially the scene of Millais almost drowning his model for Ophelia. Here's a working link for the pic:
> 
> http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/per...is_ophelia.jpg
> 
> Not too shallow then :-)


Yes, I am. I mentioned it in the Pre-Raphaelite group a few days ago, saying pretty much the same, that it's just a bawdy romp. There were a couple of links to the programme on there too. 


*08-15-2009 03:45 PMwessexgirl 
Hi. I've just joined this group, I didn't realise it existed until now. I love the PRB, and have loads of pictures around the house. For anyone in the UK we have a programme airing at the moment called Desperate Romantics, which is supposed to be about them, but it's really a bawdy romp, we don't get to find out that much about them really. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXjjO...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGROprjgZqk

It's a fun programme though. Lots of humour, even if Rossetti is a bit of a ****!*

Just checked the first link isn't working here. It seems to be working over on the PRB group  :Confused:

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## Paulclem

The Impressionists made little use of literary narratives... but one of their followers, the English painter, Walter Sickert, is an interesting case. Sickert was fond of the tales and narratives of urban crime and murder in London to be found in the newspapers. His tawdry scenes of sweaty sexual encounters in cheap apartments and motel rooms in the big city have more than a little suggestive of the sleazy sexual crimes to them. In fact, Sickert's paintings were so disturbing to many that he was actually a suspect in the "Jack the Ripper" murders:

Patricia Cornwell's book Portrait of a Killer names Sickert as the Ripper. There was an earlier book though which also had him as a suspect. 

Tremendous post StLukes. I'd like to study art history sometime in the future.

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## mono

One of my personal favorites, "The Fall of Icarus" by Brueghel.



For tremendous amounts of literature portrayed in paintings, you may want to look into Gustave Doré, whose art almost entirely consisted of literary adaptions, everything from _The Divine Comedy_ to _Paradise Lost_, from Shakespeare to Balzac, and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to _Don Quixote_.

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## kasie

> One of my personal favorites, "The Fall of Icarus" by Brueghel.......[/I].


...which in turn inspired W H Auden to write _Musee des Beaux Arts_.

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## mono

> ...which in turn inspired W H Auden to write _Musee des Beaux Arts_.


Amazing cycle, eh? How ironic it would seem if someone painted an adaption to Auden's work.  :Biggrin: 


One of Doré's many sketches for Dante's _Purgatorio_, featuring Arachne:

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## Emil Miller

[QUOTE=Paulclem;764187]
Patricia Cornwell's book Portrait of a Killer names Sickert as the Ripper. There was an earlier book though which also had him as a suspect. [QUOTE]

It's certainly an intriguing thought but there is documented evidence that Sickert was in France at the time of the murders. One does, however, wonder why a complete set of surgeons knives were among Sickert's belongings at the time of his death.

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## DanielBenoit

Another one by Bruegel "Netherlandish Proverbs" composed of a multitude of scenes, each illustrates over 100 proverbs.




I am particuarly enchanted by this one by John Everett Millias, illustrating the drowning of Ophelia. It so elegantly matches Shakespeare's description:

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

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## DanielBenoit

More Ophelia



Alexandre Cabanel




John William Waterhouse




Paul Steck




Joan Bevelaqua



Don't know




Steven Graber




Another John Waterhouse




I don't particuarly like this one becuase it is _sooo_ melodramatic, and I see Ophelia's death as a sort of silent despair.

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## mal4mac

More Millais/Ophelia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnNFT...eature=related

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## hannah_arendt

> Any of you watching BBC's latest foray into costume drama - Desperate Romantics? I'm finding it to be a guilty pleasure. Shallow but fun... especially the scene of Millais almost drowning his model for Ophelia. Here's a working link for the pic:
> 
> http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/per...is_ophelia.jpg
> 
> Not too shallow then :-)


I`ve seen it :Smile:  Not very profound but sometimes funny and worth seeing.

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## Paulclem

I quickly read through the thread and noted St Luke's piece on Persian illuminations. For a good discussion about Western representational art and the Turkish/ Muslim perspective, Orhan Pamuck's "My Name is Red" provides a good discussion embedded in a very rich novel.

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