ARTH748A

Classes will generally be held at the National Gallery of Art. While occupying a secondary position in the hierarchy of European art in the 18th and 19th centuries, the practice of imaging animals involved a broad range of social and political issues. Artists projected onto theirsubjects human emotional and psychological states, used them to comment on contemporary cultural considerations, and enlisted them in communicatingglobal power and imperial presence. Inspired by the Enlightenment s rationalist reconsideration of the world and man s placewithin it, painters approached animals with increasing empathy, as kindred beings within an interconnected natural ecology, rather than as dumb matter in service tomankind. Looking at paintings, sculpture and works on paper in the National Gallery s collection, we will investigatethe artistic shift from treating animals as symbolic emblems to capturing their anatomy, individuality, and psychological presence with invariably impressive skill.