Genre painting is a type of painting concerned with the realistic depiction of scenes from everyday life. Originally the term was applied to all paintings that were factual representations of nature (animals, fruit, and landscapes), as well as scenes of ordinary life, rather than to works of imagination, such as religious and historical paintings. Genre paintings deal with ordinary life, including family life, sports, street scenes, picnics, festivals, and tavern scenes. They are usually characterised by human interest and by the care and finish with which they are executed.
Genre painting originated in ancient times. Many of the scenes painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs represent the daily life of the people of ancient Egypt. Excavations in the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum have revealed many genre paintings, both conventional and erotic. In the late Middle Ages genre painting reappeared, represented chiefly in the religious calendars that formed part of the illuminations, or illustrations, of manuscript books; the calendars show people going about the occupations appropriate to each season of the year.
In Italy during the early Renaissance, many of the religious and historical pictures of such painters as the 15th-century Florentines Ghirlandaio and Benozzo Gozzoli and the later Venetians Giorgione and the Bassano family are considered genre paintings because of their contemporaneous backgrounds and costumes as well as their use of people of the times as models. In 17th- century Italy, Mannerist painters such as Caravaggio executed genre paintings of extreme realism and dramatic power. In the 15th century the Flemish painter Petrus Christus in some of his religious paintings represented scenes from ordinary life, and in the following two centuries genre painting rose to its highest level in history with the work of the Flemish artists Pieter Brueghel the Elder, David Teniers, and Adriaen Brouwer. The greatest national school of genre painting was that of the Netherlands in the 17th century. Probably never before or after was the ordinary life of a nation depicted so fully as was the Dutch life of this period. Not only the great masters but also the less outstanding Dutch painters excelled in it.
The most important of the Dutch genre painters were the so-called little masters, including Gerard Ter Borch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard Dou, and Adrian Van Ostade. The three leading 17th-century Dutch masters, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Vermeer, also created genre paintings of unrivalled beauty. French genre painting showed a vital development in the work of Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, Jean Baptiste Chardin, and Jean Honore Fragonard. One of the most noted English genre painters was the great satirist William Hogarth. In the 19th century, genre painting was widely practised in both Europe and the USA Among the outstanding European painters in this style were the French painters Jean Leon Gerome and Jean Meissonier, the English painter William Powell Frith, and the American painter William Sidney Mount, known as the 'JanSteen of Long Island.' Among the many 19th- and 20th- century American painters whose work included genre painting were Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Wesley Bellows, George B Luks, Charles E Burchfield, Reginald Marsh, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton. Research Genre Painting
The trumpet-fish or bellows-fish (Centriscus scolopax) is a small acanthopteryglous marine fish, about twelve centimetres long, red or green above and silvery below, with an elongated and tubular mouth. It is sometimes found on the southern coasts of Britain, and is eaten in the Mediterranean area. Research Trumpet-fish
The flame-thrower or flame projector (Flammenwerfer) is a weapon invented by the ancient Chinese using hand operated double-bellows to spray burning fuel, possibly petrol. It first developed in Europe as a military blow-lamp for cutting barbed-wire entanglements and used by the Germans during 1914 and 1915. The modern flame-thrower consists of a chamber of air or nitrogen under high pressure and a container filled with inflammable oil which is propelled by the high pressure gas. During the German attack at Hooge in 1916, flame-throwers were first employed by the Germans against the defenders, and were afterwards regularly employed as a short-range weapon effective for trench warfare. They were shortly afterwards adopted by the allies, and were used by the American forces during the Second World War for clearing fortifications. Research Flame-thrower
Bellows are an instrument or machine for producing a strong current of air, and principally used for blowing fires, either in private dwellings or in forges, furnaces, mines, etc. Bellows are so formed as, by being dilated and contracted, to inhale air by an orifice which is opened and closed with a valve, and to propel it through a tube upon the fire. It is an ancient contrivance, being known in Egypt, India, and China many ages ago, while forms of it are used among native tribes in Africa. Bellows of very great power are called blowing-machines, and were formerly wrought by machinery driven by steam. Research Bellows
A blow-pipe is an instrument by which a current of air or gas is driven through the flame of a lamp, candle, or gas jet, and that flame directed upon a mineral substance, to fuse or vitrify it, an intense heat being created by the rapid supply of oxygen and the concentration of the flame upon a small area. In its simplest form, the blow-pipe is merely a conical tube of brass, glass, or other substance, usually about 18 cm long and 2 cm in diameter at one end, and tapering so as to have a very small aperture at the other, within 5 cm or so of which it is bent nearly to a right angle, so that the stream of air may be directed sideways to the operator. The name is turned to a horizontal direction, assumes a conical shape, and consists of two parts of different colours.
The greatest heat is obtained at the tip of the inner blue flame. Here the substance subjected to it is burned or oxidized, a small piece of lead or copper, for instance, being converted into its oxide. Hence the name of the oxidizing flame. By shifting the substance to the interior blue flame, which is wanting in oxygen, this element will be abstracted from the substance, and a metallic oxide, for instance, will give out its metal; hence this is called a reducing flame. Thus various minerals can be either oxidized or reduced at pleasure, and the pipe forms a ready test in the hands of the mineralogist, who may use fluxes along with substances tested, watch how they colour the flame, what vapour they give out, etc.
The blow-pipe may be provided with several movable nozzles to produce flames of different sizes. The current of air is often formed by a pair of bellows instead of the human breath, the instrument being fixed in a proper frame for the purpose. The most powerful blow-pipe is the oxyhydrogen or compound blow-pipe, an instrument in which oxygen and hydrogen (in the proportions necessary to form water), propelled by hydrostatic or other pressure, and coming from separate reservoirs, are made to form a united current in a capillary orifice at the moment when they are kindled. The heat produced is such as to consume the diamond and to dissipate in vapour or in gaseous forms most known substances. The blowpipe is used by goldsmiths and jewellers in soldering, by glass-workers in sealing the ends of tubes, etc, and extensively by chemists and mineralogists in testing the nature and composition of substances. Research Blow-Pipe
A bellows pocket is a type of patch pocket which includes a pleat set behind it so that the pocket expands to accommodate its contents. Bellows pockets are usually found in work jackets and coats. Research Bellows Pocket
Abbreviations
Research Genre Painting
