Masculinities in nineteenth-century art through the lens of gender and queer history Male bonds were omnipresent in nineteenth-century European artistic scenes, impacting the creation, presentation, and reception of art in decisive ways. Men’s lives and careers bore the marks of their relations with other men. Yet, such male bonds are seldom acknowledged for what they are: gendered and historically determined social constructs. This volume shines a critical light on male homosociality in the arts of the long nineteenth century by combining art history with the insights of gender and queer history. From this interdisciplinary perspective, the contributing authors present case studies of men’s relationships in a variety of contexts, which range from the Hungarian Reform Age to the Belgian fin de siècle. As a whole, the book offers a historicizing survey of the male bonds that underpinned nineteenth-century art and a thought-provoking reflection on its theoretical and methodological implications.

This title was first published in 2000. The nineteenth century saw the emergence of numerous artistic brotherhoods - groups of artists bound together in communal production, sharing spiritual and aesthetic aims. Although it is widely acknowledged that this is an unique feature of the period, there has not previously been a separate study of the phenomenon. This collection of essays provides a thorough and wide-ranging exploration of the issue. Situating artistic brotherhoods within their historical context, it offers unique insights into the social, political, economic and cultural milieu of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the most celebrated and influential brotherhoods, while also bringing to light lesser-known or forgotten artists. The essays explore the artistic fraternity from a wide variety of perspectives, probing issues of gender, identity, professional practices and artistic formation in Europe and the United States. This book investigates the Nazarenes, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Russian Abramatsova, the Primitifs, the Nabis as well as other leading groups. The book contains a substantial introduction, which establishes the key questions and issues surrounding the phenomena of the artistic brotherhood, including their relation to the larger artistic community, their association with other social and political organizations of the period, and the ways in which mythologies have been built around them in subsequent histories and recollections of the period.

Material and Visual Cultures Beyond Male Bonding, 1870-1914 presents the first cross-disciplinary analysis of the visual and material representations and spaces of male same-sex culture in turn-of-the-century Britain which positions intimacy as its central object. Through both historical and theoretical lenses, this groundbreaking study considers photographs, interior design, decorative art, architecture and illustrations from the popular press to reveal the interwoven narratives of intimacy, aesthetics and identity. The author sustains close readings to expose the challenges the representations of 'men together' posed not only for the men of the time, but also for the contemporary viewer and scholar.

Throughout the fin de siècle, "energy" was a buzzword that was used far beyond the boundaries of the sciences to negotiate the formative scope as well as limits of Western modernity. The human body was positioned at the center of the visualization of this enigmatic drive of all movement in discourses on labor and economics, physical culture, sport, art, and literature. It was through the body that this all-pervading and conditioning physical principle as well as its perceptual qualities were to be made tangible. This volume is dedicated to these "energetic bodies." The transdisciplinary individual contributions trace body scenarios of force and energy over the course of history from 1800 to the peak phase around 1900 and up to the present.

This richly illustrated volume paints a complex portrait of Caillebotte, masculinity, and identity in late nineteenth-century France. More than any other French Impressionist, painter Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894) observed and depicted the many men in his life, including his brothers and friends, employees, and the workers and bourgeois in his Parisian neighborhood. Male subjects feature prominently in some of his best-known works, such as The Floor Scrapers, Man at His Bath, Young Man at His Window, Boating Party, and Paris Street, Rainy Day. The originality of his paintings of men is fully explored for the first time in this catalogue, published to accompany a major international exhibition co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Musée d’Orsay, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Alongside paintings, drawings, and photographs, as well as an appendix featuring maps and new biographical research that sheds light on Caillebotte’s social network, this volume includes historically grounded thematic essays by curators and leading scholars. By exploring the complex and varied facets of Caillebotte’s identity—as son, brother, soldier, bachelor, amateur, sportsman, and so on—these essays pose questions of identity, leaving space for ambiguous and fluid expressions of gender and masculinity—for both Caillebotte and the larger late nineteenth-century French world. This volume is published to accompany an exhibition on view at the Musée d’Orsay from October 8, 2024, to January 19, 2025, J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from March 25 to May 25, 2025, and The Art Institute of Chicago from June 29 to October 5, 2025.

Rethinking Rufus is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by enslaved women, with comparatively little attention paid to the stories of men. However, a careful reading of extant sources reveals that sexual assault of enslaved men also occurred systematically and in a wide variety of forms, including physical assault, sexual coercion, and other intimate violations. To tell the story of men such as Rufus--who was coerced into a sexual union with an enslaved woman, Rose, whose resistance of this union is widely celebrated--historian Thomas A. Foster interrogates a range of sources on slavery: early American newspapers, court records, enslavers' journals, abolitionist literature, the testimony of formerly enslaved people collected in autobiographies and in interviews, and various forms of artistic representation. Foster's sustained examination of how black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women makes an important contribution to our understanding of masculinity, sexuality, the lived experience of enslaved men, and the general power dynamics fostered by the institution of slavery. Rethinking Rufus illuminates how the conditions of slavery gave rise to a variety of forms of sexual assault and exploitation that affected all members of the community.

"An examination of the paintings Monet made en plein air alongside his artist colleagues, and the meaning and impact that this practice had on his fellow impressionists"--