Dadaism

Dada was an artistic and literary movement that had began in 1916 during World War 1 in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a reaction against World War 1, nationalism, rationalism, materialism which many thought to have brought war to Europe. Dada was influenced by many ideas and innovations such as Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Expressionism. Dada was quite universal with the arts ranging from performance art, poetry, photography, sculpture, paintings and collages. Dada was a powerful influence on artists in many cities which included Berlin, New York, Paris, Hanover and Cologne.  Dada's characteristics presented an interesting paradox in that they demystified artworks but still remained cryptic in some way to allow the viewer/reader to interpret the work in many ways. Dadaists portrayed people and scenes in order to create form and movement. Dada was intended to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer. Abstraction and Expressionism were the main influences on Dadaism. Dada had self-destructed itself when people started to accept the movement.  

Art Story, 2013. [online] Available at: <http://www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm>

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Art History, 2013. About.com. [online] Available at: <http://arthistory.about.com/cs/arthistory10one/a/dada.htm>

[Accessed 28th April 2013]

Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert on March 30th, 1853 in Holland ( The Netherlands) and died in 1890. Van Gogh was raised by a religious family with his father being a minister/pastor. Vincent was a highly strung person and lacked self-confidence.  Between 1860 and 1880 Van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage. He remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his early Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year Van Gogh traveled to Antwerp and discovered Japanese prints and purchased many of them. In 1886 he went to Paris to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris, van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably met Pissarro, Monet, and Gauguin, and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brushstrokes of the Impressionists.  Van Gogh's paintings contained a technique that grew more and more impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension, and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative, and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the spiritual essence of man and nature. In May of 1890 Van Gogh shot himself ''for the good of all''. 

Van Gogh Gallery ,2013. [online] Available at <http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/bio.html>

[Accessed 28th April 2013]

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau (New Art) was a movement that started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is known by various names such as The Glasgow Style or as the Germans had called it Jugendstil. Art Nouveau was an aim at modernising design and to escape the historical styles that had previously been popular. Artists had drew inspiration from nature and geometrical forms. Art Nouveau's characteristics included organic, flowing lines- forms resembling the stems and blossoms of plants - as well as geometric forms such as squares and rectangles.  

Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909 

A good example of an Art Nouveau artist would be Alphonse Mucha. The painting above was painted in Chicago in 1909 this picture depicts the American actress Maude Adams in the role of Joan of Arc. The portrait was made specifically for the one-night gala performance of the play at Harvard and was displayed as a poster for the event. Mucha also designed the costumes and sets and supervised the direction. Afterwards, at the actress' request, the painting served as the lobby poster for the Empire Theater in New York.

Helbrunne Timeline of Art History, 2013. Metmuseum. [online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/artn/hd_artn.htm>
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The Art Story, 2013. [Online] Available at:< http://www.theartstory.org/movement-art-nouveau.htm#>
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Helbrunne Timeline of Art History, 2013. Metmuseum. [online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/20.33>
[Accessed on 28th April 2013] 

The creation of photography

The first ''working camera'' was created by Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham) who had lived around the time of 1000 AD invented the first pinhole camera also called the Camera Obscura. It is the effect of a lighted area seperated from a dark area with only a pin hole between them. An inverted (upside down) image of the lighted area will be produced on a flat surface in the dark area. As early as the 1400's it was documented that inserting a lens in the hole would produce a crisper, clearer image. Camera Obscura was often used by used by artists to sketch objects more quickly and ease the difficulties of depth perception. The image was allowed to be projected on a piece of paper inside a dark box and the artist would trace outlines of the projected image. 

                                       

The first photograph was made by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1827 using the Camera Obscura. Niepce had created the first photograph by placing an engraving onto a metal plate coated in bitumen  then exposing it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, but the whiter areas permitted light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When Niepce placed the metal plate in a solvent, gradually an image, until then invisible, appeared. However, Niepce's photograph required eight hours of light exposure to create and after appearing would soon fade away.

Louis Daguerre was the first inventor of a more practical process of Photography. In 1829 he had teamed up with Joseph Nicephore Niepce to improve Niepce's process that he had developed. In 1839 after several years of experimenting and testing Daguerre developed a more convenient and much more effective method of photography and named it after himself ''The Daguerreotype''. Daguerre's process 'fixed' the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sensitive to light. Then, he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image, one that would not change if exposed to light.

About.com, 2013, Information on Inventors. [online] Available at: <http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm>

[Accessed on 28th April 2013] 

PS, 2013, Pieces of Science. [online] Available at: <http://fi.edu/pieces/watson/hist.htm>

[Accessed on 28th April 2013] 

The Arts and crafts movement

The Arts and crafts movement began in Britain around 1880 and quickly spread across America and Europe before emerging into the Mingei (Folk Crafts) movement in Japan. The origins of the movement began in Britain because of the disastrous effects of industrial manufacture which had been recognised since 1840 but it wasn't until the 1860's and 1870's that architects, designers and artists began to create new approaches to design and the decorative arts thus leading to the foundation of the Arts and crafts movement. The movement was born out of ideals and it grew out of concern for the effects of industrialisation such as design, traditional skills and lives of ordinary people trying to make a living who had depended on handmade craftsmanship. The arts and crafts movement had established a new set of principles for living and working and it had turned the home into a work of art.  The Movement took its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society which was founded in 1887. The two most influential founding leaders of the Arts and crafts movement were John Ruskin who was a theorist and a critic  and William Morris who was a designer, writer and activist. Ruskin examined the relationship between art, society and labour and Morris put Ruskin's philosophies into practice placing great value on handmade work, the joy of craftsmanship and the natural beauty of the materials used. 

VAM, 2013. Victoria and Albert Museum. [Online] Available at: <http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-arts-and-crafts-movement/>

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Claude Monet

Claude Monet also known as Claude Oscar Monet was born in November on the 14th 1840 and died in December on the 5th 1926. Monet was raised in Normandy, he was the son of Claude-Adolphe and Louise-Justine Aubree Monet. His father owned a grocery store and his mother was a singer. Monet was a founder of the french impressionist movement. On the first of April 1851 entered the the Le Havre secondary school of the arts. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting. In 1862 Monet became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken color and rapid brushstrokes, in what later came to be known as Impressionism.

San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk 1912

This is one of Monet's most famous impressionist paintings. Monet and his wife were invited to stay in Venice when he arrived in Venice he became mesmerized by the sights of Venice. San Giorgio Maggiore is a sanctuary and monastery off of the Italian coast. Monet’s depiction of San Giorgio Maggiore is all about the effects of light, Monet uses small,thin brush strokes, with an emphasis on the accurate depiction of how light changes the qualities of the subject, and movement in the water, using unusual visual angles. Monet emphasized capturing the moment, with sunlight effects, and the overall visual effect, instead of details. Monet disliked the sun setting, because with the sunset, colors began to disappear.

Claude Monet, 2013,  Claude Monet The complete works. [Online] Available at : <http://www.claudemonetgallery.org/biography.html>

[Accessed on 28th April 2013]

Met Museum, 2013. [Online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm>

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TH, 2013. Total History. [Online] Available at: <http://totallyhistory.com/san-giorgio-maggiore-at-dusk/>

[Accessed on 28th April 2013]

Vivienne Westwood: Contemporary Designer

Vivienne Isabel Swire was born in Glossopdale, Derbyshire, on the 8th April 1941. Westwood's father came from a family of shoe makers and her mother worked at the local mills as a weaver.  In 1965 Vivienne Westwood had met Malcolm McLaren and had relationship together. In 1971 McLaren and Westwood opened a shop named ''Let it rock'' where they sold creepers, drape coats, mohair jumpers and drainpipe trousers.  Westwood's approach to clothes is that she is very anarchical and perverse about what she does with her clothes but then she likes to also simplify them in a way, she wants her clothes to make the person feel grand and sexy and emphasise the persons body and make the person aware of it. 

                                                              Creepers at the time.

In 1979-1981 Vivienne Westwood started to look at history and designed a collection named The Pirates Collection which was influenced by the romanticism era. She had come about to her designs by first researching  in the National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and had found patterns for 18th century mens clothing. These formed the base style of her Pirates collection. The clothes evoked the golden age of piracy, highwaymen, dandies and buccaneers. The collections garments included asymmetric tee-shirts, petti-drawers, pirate shirts and breeches in rich brocades and ikat fabric. 

Vivienne Westwood had used mixed materials in the clothes shown in the photo above such as rayon and cotton ensemble with printed plain weave cotton shirt and sash, muslin stockings, and a hat made of felt trimmed with leather and a braid.  

In 1990-1991 Westwood debuted another one of her collections named Portrait which was another historically inspired collection. The intention for this collection was that her models had just stepped out of a painting. She had used Rococo designs which were derived from 18th century furniture printed in gold ink on to stretch black velvet and she had also designed photographic prints of Boucher's paintings onto shawls and corsets. Vivienne said that she believes in copying things from the past and that she takes something from the past that has a sort of vitality that has never been exploited before and make something very intense because she believes that in the end you create something original because you can overlay your ideas and add things to it. 

For her other pieces of the portrait collection she had found inspiration from the furniture which had been made and designed by Andre Charles Boulle. She created elegant dresses made from black velvet which were over-printed in gold. 

Piece of furniture she was inspired from.

                                                    A couple of pieces from her Portrait Collection.

Personally I love Vivienne Westwood's style, I love how she combines things from past era and modernises them to make these sexy tight garments that emphasise ones body. I also love how she can make such kooky wacky colours and things that usually wouldn't match together work.

08245498D, 2009. Vivienne Westwood 1990 A/W Collection : Portrait. http://08245498d.blogspot.com/ fashion blog, [blog] 23rd March, Available at: <http://08245498d.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-post_30.html>  [Accessed 27th April 2013]

National Gallery of Australia, 2005.  Vivienne Westwood
34 years in fashion. [Online] Available at: <http://nga.gov.au/westwood/Wilessay.cfm>
[Accessed 27th April 2013]

Victoria and Albert Museum, 2013. Vivienne Westwood designs. [Online] Available at: <http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/vivienne-westwood-designs/>
[Accessed 27th April 2013]

Gothic Art

The Gothic Art period/movement had began in Europe between the 12th and 16th century. The Gothic art period mostly influenced architecture but it also brought significant changes to the way sculptures and paintings were done. The Gothic style was intended to replace the Romanesque style of architecture. The Romanesque architecture was creating space by adding bays, unit by unit. While Gothic architecture is created as an entire space that is then sub-divided into units.  Gothic Art was introduced at the Abbey of St.Denis. In 1144 Abott Suger commissioned Gothic architects to rebuild the church in the new Gothic style.  The movement was an immediate success and by 1250 the Gothic art movement had dominated Europe. Gothic Architecture was used mostly for cathedrals. The Gothic style could be usually characterised by its pointed arches, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults. The architects had made the cathedral walls thinner to allow stained glass windows to be placed instead of the mosaics. Gothic Sculptures were then created for the purpose of decorating the cathedrals entrances. The sculptures usually depicted figures from the old testament. Paintings of the Gothic period were inspired by the designs and colours of stained glass windows. Many Gothic painters favoured bright reds and blues.  

Art Ed, 2013. Art Education. [online] Available at: <http://www.arteducation.com.au/art-movements/gothic.php>
[Accessed on 28th April 2013]

Bauhaus

The Bauhaus movement began in Wiemar, Germany in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius had founded a school with the vision of bridging a gap between art, design, industry and unifying all three together. The students at the school were taught theoretical and practical training in all of the fine arts such as ceramics, murals, stained glass, typography, metalwork, book binding, stone sculpture and furniture-making and learned to combine all the fine arts skills that they had learned with new technologies to design and manufacture products that were both beautiful and practical. Gropius was influenced to create this school by the old Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th which had emerged as a response to the intense industrialization of Victorian England.  Its aim had been to bring artists and craftspeople together to ensure the survival of beautiful craftsmanship in the face of mechanized labour. The Bauhaus movement is characterized by economic sensibility, simplicity and a focus on mass production. “Bauhaus” is an inversion of the German term “hausbau,” which means “building house” or house construction. 

 

ABF, 2013. Abstract Art Framed. [online] Available at: < http://www.abstract-art-framed.com/bauhaus.html>
[Accessed on 28th April 2013]

BI, 2013, Bauhaus Interiors. [online] Available at: <http://bauhausinteriors.com/blog/the-bauhaus-movement/>
[Accessed on 28th April 2013] 

The Pre-Raphaelites 

The Pre-Raphaelites were formed in the Autumn of 1848 in England, they were a group of nineteenth century painters, poets and critics who had reacted against the contemporary Victorian trend towards materialism and against the Neoclassicism conventions of Academic Art. The group was made up of seven young men who's names were Rossetti, his brother William, James Collinson, the sculptor Thomas Woolner, Hunt and John Millais.  The Pre-Raphaelites turned to the middle ages ''before Raphael ' for inspiration. Their subjects were mostly primarily drawn from literature, the bible, Shakespeare and poets from their own age. The Pre-Raphaelites aims were to paint the natural world and depiction of subjects such as moral issues of justice, piety, familial relationships and the struggle of purity against corruption for the viewer to contemplate. The characteristics of the Pre-Raphaelites works were usually with archaizing compositions, intense sharp focus and absence of shadows. 

A painting done by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the model was his mistress Fanny Cornforth. 

Lady Lilith, 1867. 

Heilbrunn timeline of art history, 2013. Metmuseum. [online] Available at: <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/praf/hd_praf.htm>

[Accessed 21st April 2013]

PRB , 2013. Pre-Raphaelite Art information. [online] Available at <http://www.preraph.org/>

[Accessed 21st April 2013]

TW, 2013. Toffs World. [online] Available at <http://toffsworld.com/lifestyle/art-information/pre-raphaelites/#>

[Accessed 21st April 2013]

Impressionism 

Impressionism can be called the first modern movement in painting.  Impressionism came about when it was created by a group of artists named The Anonymous Society of painting, sculptors, print makers etc who were later nicknamed ''The Impressionists''. The groups founding members included Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissaro, among others. The group of artists rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions or salons and they were constantly shunned by powerful academic art institutions and they decided to gain independence and organised their own exhibition in Paris in 1874 to showcase their paintings. The term ''Impressionist'' was first used by the French critic Louis Leroy in 1874 who was criticising Monet's painting Impression, Sunrise. Leroy had found that the term was fitting to describe the paintings loose, undefined and unfinished style that Monet and several other artists applied to their paintings.  Impressionist painters wanted to break away from the traditional rules of subject matter, technique and composition of painting and created their own unique style and opened their minds to experimenting. In their attempts to capture a moment they discarded detail in favour of the overall effect of the painting. They looked at their subjects from unusual angles and often cropped or framed their work in a way that was new to painting. The Impressionists chose to paint ordinary scenes from everyday life, nature, people and still lives. The Impressionists avoiding using sombre tones such as black and earthy toned colours and instead used light, vibrant colours to give their paintings luminosity and to capture the changing effect of sunlight on the scenes they painted, they also used bright contrasting colours without mixing or blending. The Impressionists used quick, sketchy brush strokes and gave the painting an unfinished appearance.  

II, 2013. Impressionism info. [Online] Available at: <http://www.impressionism.info/info.html>

[Accessed 21st April 2013]

Heilbrunn timeline of art history, 2013. Metmusem. [Online] Available at:<http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm> 

[Accessed 21st April 2013]

Japonisme 

Japonisme/Japonism is a french term that refers to the influence of Japanese art on Western art. In 1853/1854 Japan had re-opened their ports to trade with the western world. A tidal wave of foreign imports flooded Europe, the imports consisted of fans, porcelains, woodcuts, kimonos, lacquers, wood block prints, bronzes and silks. In 1862 the World Fair hosted in Europe brought even more attention to Japanese Art. In the 1860's Japanese wood block prints became very popular and were a source of inspiration to many impressionist and post-impressionist artists in the west such as Monet, Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. Western artists were fascinated by the Japaneses decorative arts because it offered a new freedom from imitative or photographic representation, and introduced new angles of vision and an entirely different treatment of perspective.  The aesthetics and characteristics that are noticeable in Japanese art are elongated pictorial formats, asymmetrical compositions, aerial perspective, spaces emptied of all but abstract elements of colour and line, a focus on singularly decorative motifs, cropped close-up partial views of objects in the foreground and the use of bold, unshaded colour. Quite a few well known western painters in that time show characteristics of Japanese art in their paintings such as Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec etc.  

An example of an artist that showed Japanese influences in his paintings is Henri Toulouse Lautrec. 

The dance hall named Moulin Rouge had made a competition and chose Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's poster design. The appearance of the poster Moulin Rouge: La Galoue on the Parisian streets made him famous over night and launched his artistic career. The poster above shows Japanese characteristics because of its bold colours and abstract lines and flatness.

VGG, 2013. Van Gogh Gallery. [Online] Available at <http://www.vangoghgallery.com/influences/japonisme.html>
[Accessed on 21st April 2013]

TBH, 2013. The British Museum. [Online] Available at <http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/articles/j/japonisme.aspx>
[Accessed on 21st April 2013]

TMMA, 2013. The metropolitan museum of art. [Online] Available at <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jpon/hd_jpon.htm>
[Accessed on 21st April 2013]

NGA, 2013. The national gallery of Australia. [Online] Available at <http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=200125>
[Accessed on 21st April 2013]

The Great Exhibition 

The Great Exhibition was an idea dreamt up by Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, to display the wonders of industry and manufacturing from around the modern world a. The Great Exhibition was held in the Crystal Palace which was situated in Hyde Park in London and was opened on the 1st of May to the 15th of October. The Crystal palace was made of glass and iron columns.The Great Exhibition was the first international exhibition of manufactured products and was enormously influential on the development of many aspects of society including art and design education, international trade and relations, and even tourism. There were over 13,000 exhibits that were displayed from all around the world with some 100,000 objects displayed among more then ten miles and had over 15,000 contributors to the exhibition. Britain who was hosting the exhibition occupied half of the display space available inside the Crystal Palace. The exhibits consisted of a massive hydraulic press, a steam-hammer, adding machines, defensive umbrellas, A printing machine that could churn out 5,000 copies of the popular newspaper of the time Illustrated London News in an hour, carriages and saddlery, sculptures and furniture, fantastic jewels and diamonds. By the time The Great Exhibition had closed over six million people had visited the exhibitions.

BL, 2013. British Library. [Online] Available at <http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/victorians/exhibition/greatexhibition.html>

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

V&A, 2013. Victoria and Albert Museum. [Online] Available at <http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-great-exhibition/>

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

VS, 2013. Victoria Station. [Online] Available at <http://www.victorianstation.com/palace.html>

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

Neoclassicism 

Neoclassicism was the movement that began in the late 18th century and early 19th century. It was a desire to rekindle the spirit and forms of classical art from ancient Greece and Rome. Neoclassicism was a reaction against Baroque and Rococo style that had dominated European Art during the early 18th Century. Neoclassical works were serious, unemotional and heroic. The paintings generally depicted subjects from classical literature and history using archaeologically correct settings and costumes. They used sombre  shadows with occasional brilliant highlights to communicate the moral narratives of self-denial and self sacrifice.  

An example of a neoclassical painter was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. 

The Apotheosis of Homer, 1827

The Apotheosis of Homer is an oil painting that measures 13x17 Feet.  It was commissioned in 1826 as a ceiling decoration for the Louvre and was completed and exhibited in 1827. The painting is symbolic of Ingres's  belief in a hierarchy of timeless values that were based on classical precedent.  

Impressionist, 2013. [Online] Available at: <http://impressionist1877.tripod.com/neoclassicism.htm>

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

Visual Arts, 2013, History of Art. [Online] Available at: <http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/neo-classical.htm#definition> 

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

Pop Art

Pop Art was a movement that was born in Britain in the 1950's. It was the creation of several artists who named themselves The Independent Group. They came up with the idea of Pop Art during a group discussion.Pop Art was the visual art movement that characterised a sense of optimism during the post war consumer boom of the 1950's and 1960's. Pop Art uses images and icons that are popular in the modern world such as celebrities, commercial items like soup cans, soft drinks, comic books and other items that are popular in the commercial world.  Pop Art included different styles of painting and using collages, changing the colour or texture, uses very bright hues and putting different items together to make a picture. It was a reaction against the seriousness of the abstract expressionist art movement.  Pop Art was used in advertising an example would be Andy Warhol's famous design of the Campbell's tomato soup which was very appealing to the eye due to the bright hues. 

Art Factory, 2013. [Online] Available at: <http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/pop_art.htm>

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

Ducksters, 2013. Art History and Artists. [Online] Available at: <http://www.ducksters.com/history/art/pop_art.php>

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

About.com, 2013. Art History. [Online] Available at: <http://arthistory.about.com/od/modernarthistory/a/Pop-Art-Art-History-101-Basics.htm>

[Accessed 20th April 2013]

  

The Steam Engine 

In the late 17th Century, England faced a timber crisis as shipbuilding and firewood consumed forests. The wood for the ships was necessary due to trading and defense, coal was a good alternative to wood but producing more coal meant that they had to dig deeper coal mines, which had increased the chance of water seeping into the mines causing problems. They needed a new method of pumping water out of the mines. 

In 1698, Thomas Savery who was a military engineer had created a steam pump device which he nicknamed ''The Miners Friend''.The device consisted of a boiling chamber that routed steam into a second container where a pipe with a non-return valve descended into the water that needed to be removed. Cold water was poured over the container of steam and as the water vapor inside cooled to a liquid state, the resulting vacuum drew up water from below. The sucked-up water was unable to flow back past the non-return valve and was then drained through another pipe. His invention was not used very much by the mining industry and most of his sales were made to private homes for home and gardening needs that wanted to draw out excess water from their homes. The reason for his invention being so unsuccessful was the fact that the steam chamber's heating and cooling had to be managed manually and the engine could only draw up water from a limited depth which meant that if they had to dig a deep mine they would have had to put several engines installed at different levels. 

Though in 1712 Thomas Newcomen who was a blacksmith and his assistant John Calley who was a glass blower created a much more effective steam powered pump system. It was called the Newcomen Engine combined Thomas Savery's separation of the boiler and steam cylinder with Papin's steam-driven Piston. Newcomen's engine was similar to Thomas Savery's it included a steam-filled chamber that was cooled by a quick injection of cold water to create a vacuum-inducing change in atmospheric pressure. This time, however, the force of the vacuum pulled a piston down and pulled a chain that activated a pump on the other end of a suspended beam. When the water in the piston cylinder turned to steam again, it pushed the piston up and a weight on the other side of the beam reset the pump. The Newcomen engine was a major success and was used in hundreds of mines all over Britain and abroad.

But the steam engine of now is of James Watts creation. Watt was in employment at a business near the Glasgow University when one of the universities Newcomen  engines needed repairs. When watt was fixing the steam engine he realised that there was a flaw in the design such as time, steam and fuel were being wasted by having both heating and cooling take place in the piston cylinder.  Watt had solved the problem by adding a separate condenser. 

Howstuffworks, 2013, Howstuffworks. [Online] Available at: <http://science.howstuffworks.com/steam-technology2.htm> [Accessed 20th April 2013]

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution had began in England around 1733 with the first cotton mill. The Industrial revolution was a period were important changes happened in agriculture, textile and metal manufacture, transportation, economic policies and the social structure of England. Agriculture had advanced due to the industrial revolution resulting in increased supplies of food and raw materials. Industrial organisation had advanced and new technology had been created due to the advancements resulting in increased production, there was also an increase in profits and efficiency. Though the Industrial Revolution had a big down side to it as well and brought dire consequences to society. Factory Owners needed workers who were unskilled that would accept cheap payment profited by using children and women to run the machines. The majority of the workers had got sick and died due to the toxic fumes, others would die due to being severely injured by the dangerous machines. 

Yale Guide Entry, 2006. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. [Online] Available at <http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html#c> 

[Accessed 19th October 2013]

Library Information Page, 2013. IRWeb. [Online] Available at <http://library.thinkquest.org/4132/info.htm>
[Accessed 19th October 2013]

Realism

Realism was a movement that had began in France 1840 and ended in 1880. Realism was a revolt against Romanticism, it was a revolt because of the fact that they had found Romanticism too exaggerated and emotional. Writers and Artists wanted to explore the reality of everyday life. Realism artists and writers had painted and written the world as it is with no imagination or superstition added to it . The artists/writers did not add any of their personal/emotional feelings to the painting/writing, they captured the moment exactly according to the scene. 

A good example of a realist artists work is Jean Francois Millet.

The Gleaners, 1857

This painting is of three peasant women gleaning a field for some pieces of leftover wheat. They are bending their backs which is a very uncomfortable position, in the hopes of finding some scraps of food to eat. This painting shows the harsh reality of poverty and how hard life was for peasants.

Ducksters, 2013, Duckers [Online] Available at <http://www.ducksters.com/history/art/realism.php>
[Accessed 19th April 2013]