History of Western Civilization - Culture, Arts and Sciences 1815-1914

Culture, Arts and Sciences 1815-1914

The 19th and early 20th centuries saw important contributions to the process of modernisation of Western art and Literature and continuing evolution in the role of religion in Western societies.

Napoleon re-established the Catholic Church in France through the Concordat of 1801. The end of the Napoleonic wars, signaled by the Congress of Vienna, brought Catholic revival and the return of the Papal States. In 1801, a new political entity was formed, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, thus increasing the number of Catholics in the new state. Pressure for abolition of anti-Catholic laws grew and in 1829 Parliament passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, giving Catholics almost equal civil rights, including the right to vote and to hold most public offices. While remaining a minority religion in the British Empire, a steady stream of new Catholics would continue to convert from the Church of England and Ireland, notably John Henry Newman and the poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and Oscar Wilde. The Anglo-Catholic movement began, emphasizing the Catholic traditions of the Aglican Church. New churches like the Methodist, Unitarian, and LDS Churches were founded. Many Westerners became less religious in this period, although a majority of people still held traditional Christian beliefs.

The 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, by the English naturalist Charles Darwin, provided an alternative hypothesis for the development, diversification, and design of human life to the traditional poetic scriptural explanation known as Creationism. According to Darwin, only the organisms most able to adapt to their environment survived while others went extinct. Adaptations resulted in changes in certain populations of organisms which could eventually cause the creation of new species. Modern genetics started with Gregor Johann Mendel, a German-Czech Augustinian monk who studied the nature of inheritance in plants. In his 1865 paper "Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden" ("Experiments on Plant Hybridization"), Mendel traced the inheritance patterns of certain traits in pea plants and described them mathematically. Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister made discoveries about bacteria and its effects on humans. Geologists at the time made discoveries indicating the world was far older than most believed it to be. Early batteries were invented and a telegraph system was also invented, allowing global communication. In 1869 Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his Periodic table. The success of Mendeleev's table came from two decisions he made: The first was to leave gaps in the table when it seemed that the corresponding element had not yet been discovered. The second decision was to occasionally ignore the order suggested by the atomic weights and switch adjacent elements, such as cobalt and nickel, to better classify them into chemical families. At the end of the 19th century, a number of discoveries were made in physics which paved the way for the development of modern physics — including Marie Curie's work on radioactivity.

In Europe by the 19th century, fashion had shifted away from such the artistic styles as Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo which followed the Renaissance and sought to revert to the earlier, simpler art of the Renaissance by creating Neoclassicism. Neoclassicism complemented the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment, which was similarly idealistic. Ingres, Canova, and Jacques-Louis David are among the best-known neoclassicists.

Just as Mannerism rejected Classicism, so did Romanticism reject the ideas of the Enlightenment and the aesthetic of the Neoclassicists. Romanticism emphasized emotion and nature, and idealized the Middle Ages. Important musicians were Franz Schubert, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Richard Wagner, Frédéric Chopin, and John Constable. Romantic art focused on the use of color and motion in order to portray emotion, but like classicism used Greek and Roman mythology and tradition as an important source of symbolism. Another important aspect of Romanticism was its emphasis on nature and portraying the power and beauty of the natural world. Romanticism was also a large literary movement, especially in poetry. Among the greatest Romantic artists were Eugène Delacroix, Francisco Goya, Karl Bryullov, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Caspar David Friedrich, Ivan Aivazovsky, Thomas Cole, and William Blake. Romantic poetry emerged as a significant genre, particularly during the Victorian Era with leading exponents including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Burns, Edgar Allan Poe and John Keats. Other Romantic writers included Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Alexander Pushkin, Victor Hugo, and Goethe.

Some of the best regarded poets of the era were women. Mary Wollstonecraft had written one of the first works of feminist philosophy, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which called for equal education for women in 1792 and her daughter, Mary Shelley became an accomplished author best known for her 1818 novel Frankenstein, which examined some of the frightening potential of the rapid advances of science.

In early 19th century Europe, in response to industrialization, the movement of Realism emerged. Realism sought to accurately portray the conditions and hardships of the poor in the hopes of changing society. In contrast with Romanticism, which was essentially optimistic about mankind, Realism offered a stark vision of poverty and despair. Similarly, while Romanticism glorified nature, Realism portrayed life in the depths of an urban wasteland. Like Romanticism, Realism was a literary as well as an artistic movement. The great Realist painters include Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Camille Corot, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas (both considered as Impressionists), Ilya Repin, and Thomas Eakins, among others.

Writers also sought to come to terms with the new industrial age. The works of the Englishman Charles Dickens (including his novels Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol) and the Frenchman Victor Hugo (including Les Miserables) remain among the best known and widely influential. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls). Then came Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Leskov and Ivan Turgenev. Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, Anna Karenina) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov) soon became internationally renowned to the point that many scholars such as F. R. Leavis have described one or the other as the greatest novelist ever. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in writing short stories and became perhaps the leading dramatist internationally of his period. American literature also progressed with the development of a distinct voice: Mark Twain produced his masterpieces Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In Irish Literature, the Anglo-Irish tradition produced Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde writing in English and a Gaelic Revival had emerged by the end of the 19th century. The poetry of William Butler Yeats prefigured the emergence of the 20th century Irish literary giants James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Patrick Kavanagh. In Britain's Australian colonies, bush balladeers such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson brought the character of a new continet to the pages of world literature.

The response of architecture to industrialisation, in stark contrast to the other arts, was to veer towards historicism. The railway stations built during this period are often called "the cathedrals of the age". Architecture during the Industrial Age witnessed revivals of styles from the distant past, such as the Gothic Revival — in which style the iconic Palace of Westminster in London was re-built to house the mother parliament of the British Empire. Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris was also restored in the Gothic style, following its desecration during the French Revolution.

Out of the naturalist ethic of Realism grew a major artistic movement, Impressionism. The Impressionists pioneered the use of light in painting as they attempted to capture light as seen from the human eye. Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, were all involved in the Impressionist movement. As a direct outgrowth of Impressionism came the development of Post-Impressionism. Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat are the best known Post-Impressionists. In Australia the Heidelberg School was expressing the light and colour of Australian landscape with a new insight and vigour.

The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the 18th century brought increased leisure time, leading to more time for citizens to attend and follow spectator sports, greater participation in athletic activities, and increased accessibility. The bat and ball sport of cricket was first played in England during the 16th century and was exported around the globe via the British Empire. A number of popular modern sports were devised or codified in Britain during the 19th century and obtained global prominence — these include Ping Pong, modern tennis, Association Football, Netball and Rugby. The United States also developed popular international sports during this period. English migrants took antecedents of baseball to America during the colonial period. American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts in the United States. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a Frenchman, instigated the modern revival of the Olympic Games, with the first modern Olympics were held at Athens in 1896.