: Conflict & Invasion

Dig for Victory, by Mary Tunbridge.

Marguerite Patten

Marguerite Patten OBE has been teaching Britain how to cook since the 1930s. During the Second World War, as a leading Home Economist for the Ministry of Food’s Food Advice Division, Marguerite and her colleagues worked tirelessly to make people aware of the importance of keeping their families well fed on the rations available.

The diet, imposed by necessity, was low in fats and sugars and high in fibre and vegetables with Potato Pete and Lord Carrot leading the way in this surprisingly healthy new lifestyle. The Food Advice Division travelled all over Britain and set up demonstrations in markets, shops, factories, canteens and welfare clinics to buoy the nation into getting through the war on the Home Front with the same spirit as the Forces in action. A contributor to the Kitchen Front, broadcast daily by the BBC, Marguerite was able to pass on her favourite recipes to the nation, and these recipes more often or not contained potatoes.

When war broke out in 1939, farmers were told to increase potato production by ploughing up grasslands and the quantity of potatoes produced increased significantly as the war continued. As a result of this careful planning and planting, rationing potatoes was not necessary during the war.

Dig for Victory

Home gardeners added to potato production in a response to the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. However, the Ministry of Agriculture urged home growers not to grow too many potatoes at the expense of other vegetables, and to stick to the official cropping plan. Varieties such as Arran Pilot, Duke of York and King Edward were recommended and are still as popular today. Austerity gardening, as it became known, is demonstrated to perfection at St Fagans National Museum of History’s B2 prefab garden with vegetables, fruits and herbs all grown using the techniques and cropping plans recommended by the Ministry of Agriculture during the 1940s.

A Third Class Carriage

Honore Daumier (1808 - 1879)

Workmen on the Street

, 1838-40
Honore Daumier (1808 - 1879)

The Gust of Wind

Jean-François Millet (1814 - 1875)

The Retreat
Louis Eugène Benassit (1833 - 1904)

Amgueddfa Cymru has one of the most exceptional collections of nineteenth-century French Art in the United Kingdom. Engaging with the turbulence of nineteenth century France and the relationship between the revolutions of the people and revolutionary developments in art, we take a fresh look at the Museum's collection of pre-Impressionist French paintings, researched and interpreted by postgraduate students from the University of Bristol.

The Century of Revolution

The turbulent social and political history of France during the nineteenth century led many artists to document the shifting realities and expectations of life. The 1789 French Revolution, which established the First French Republic, sparked a century of uprisings and uncertainty for the population. While some artists sought to represent current events, others looked to recapture lost traditions.

Revolution and the rise of Realism

From the seventeenth century, the state-run Academy of Fine Arts and its official exhibition, the Salon, led the direction of French art. During the nineteenth century, many artists began to challenge its approach, and to examine how the lives of the people were altered by the dramatic changes of the nineteenth century. Increasingly artists abandoned the biblical figures and Roman heroes that had previously dominated the walls of the Salon.

In A Third Class Carriage Honoré Daumier refers to a key invention of the century, the steam train. In contrast, Jean-François Millet's The Peasant Family depicts rural farmers and idealises the French countryside. While these are very different paintings their common theme is that they are representations of real, contemporary, humble life.

It was during this period that French artists first began to paint like this; an approach sometimes known as 'Realist' painting. These changes in subject matter laid the groundwork for much of Modern Art as we understand it today.

Political Unrest

The overthrow of King Charles X in the July Revolution of 1830 led to the July Monarchy of Louis-Phillippe, ousted in the Revolution of February 1848. The Second Republic gave all men a right to vote and promised democracy. However, a brutal suppression of the workers' rebellion demonstrated that frustration was still present. Daumier's Workmen on the Street indicates such tensions and his imagery criticised continuing class distinctions.

Millet's later The Sower highlights rural labour and peasant life. Agriculture was an ingrained part of the French national identity, however, Millet mourned the mass migration from rural areas into the cities.

During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 many artists went into exile in safer rural locations. Millet fled from Barbizon to the Normandy coast. He painted The Gust of Wind on his return; the frightening strength and power of the storm representing both change and the violence of war.

The Second Empire collapsed with France's defeat in 1871, causing a group of French radicals to briefly seize control of Paris in the 'Commune' of the same year. Soon quashed, it was replaced by the Third Republic.

The distress and loneliness within these desolate landscapes may be read as a response to the turbulent events in France at this time. Most importantly they show how political events shaped national identity and, in turn, its art.

The Peasant Family (1871-2)
Jean-François Millet (1814 - 1875)
Oil on canvas
The Davies Sisters Collection

The Sower

, 1847-8
Jean-François Millet (1814 - 1875)

Lunch in the Country

, 1868
Honore Daumier (1808 - 1879)

Beach at Trouville

, 1890
Louis Eugéne Boudin (1824 - 1898)

The Heavy Burden

Honore Daumier (1808 - 1879)

Leisure

During the second half of the nineteenth century, changes in class structure in France led to a growth in the wealth of the middle classes, known as the bourgeoisie.

In particular, they enjoyed paintings that showed themselves in the pursuit of leisure and inferred their new status in society. Artists responded by creating paintings to suit the tastes of this growing audience.

1804 saw the invention of the steam powered locomotive and within 50 years, railway lines were being constructed across France. Daumier's Lunch in the Country and Boudin's Beach at Trouville are depictions of bourgeois tourist activities.

In addition to reflecting revolutionary developments in tourism and transport, artists employed bright colour and loose linear structure to create an air of entertainment and recreation. Such revolutionary light effects and loose brushstrokes had a strong influence on the emerging style of Impressionism.

Women and Domesticity

Paintings of women feature significantly in the Museum's collection of nineteenth-century French paintings. It is, however, interesting to note that all these women were painted by male artists, so viewers are observing women from the perspective of the nineteenth-century man.

With this in mind we can begin to understand the role of women in society. Daumier's The Heavy Burden presents us with the activities of working class women, while the other paintings depict fashionable and delicate beauties of a higher social ranking. This shows us that class and gender divisions were still intact following the Revolution.

Society's expectations for women to be demure and feminine run through several of the paintings. Whether they are active and working or seated and passive can be seen as an indication of their situation within society.

Roman arrowhead with three ribs from Dinorben, north Wales

Roman arrowhead with four ribs from Caerleon, south Wales

Replica arrowheads

jig used to form a four-vane arrowhead

The Romans used many different types of arrowheads. The most characteristic had a series of vanes: the early type had three vanes, but by the 3rd century examples with four vanes are found. One possible reason for this change is that the four-vane type was easier to produce.

In 2008 St Fagans National History Museum hosted the World Field Archery Championship, and the Museum held a number of small exhibitions on archery. A number of replica Roman arrowheads were produced especially for the Roman archery display, to show what Roman arrowheads looked like when new.

Careful conservation work on some of the Museum's Roman arrowheads revealed enough original surface detail to help us work out how the Romans had made them. The Museum's blacksmith at St Fagans was keen to produce the replicas in the same way, and he experimented until he could produce copies that closely matched the originals.

This experimental work revealed that the four-vane type was easier and quicker to make, as the vanes could be formed in a jig. The vanes on the three-vane type, being more spread out, had to be individually hammered into shape. While doing this one vane tended to get in the way of working on another. Was this why four-vane types started to be produced?

If this is true, why did the Romans start off with three-vane arrowheads? Roman archery equipment was based on that developed in the Near East. There, the original metal arrowheads had been cast in bronze. The three-vane form of these bronze arrowheads was simply copied when iron arrowheads started to be made.