Liberator-Hero Analysis:Eulogies and Portraits

What is a Liberator Hero?

• Circa 18th-19th c. • Usually male• Usually with military experience• Intended to become a symbol (real or

imagined) of what the revolution stands for)

• Reflects standards of the time• Portrayed through portraits and eulogies

George Washington

• Gilbert Stuart, one of the most noted portraitists of his time.

• April 12, 1796

• 8 feet by 5 feet

• Why didn’t Stuart choose to paint Washington in uniform?

George Washington

• Facial expression?

• Clothing? Pose? Books on the floor? Table leg? The chair in the background?

• What is the overall image that Stuart sought to convey of Washington? Of the American Revolution?

Liberator-Hero

Eulogy to George Washington

Commissioned by the Massachusetts legislature and delivered in Boston’s Old South Meeting House by Fisher Ames

George Washington

• How does Ames portray Washington?

• When he spoke of Washington conducting “a civil war with mildness, and a revolution with order,” Ames was telling his listeners how HE wanted them to think about the nature of the Revolution…what was that?

George Washington

• To Ames, what was the true glory of the American Revolution?

• Think about how Ames was trying to portray Washington as a liberator-hero…

Jean-Paul Marat

• Jacques Louis David

• France’s best known Neoclassical painter and supporter of French Revolution

• Arranged funeral of Marat

• “one of the world’s most skillfully executed propaganda pictures

Jean-Paul Marat

• Why did he choose to show Marat this way?

• Bath water tinted with blood, the bloody wound, the knife on the floor, the note of Corday

• Why did David ignore the truth in his painting?

Jean-Paul Marat

• What image of Marat did David seek to communicate?

• What image of the French Revolution did the thousand who viewed the painting receive?

• Why were reproductions distributed by the thousands?

Jean-Paul Marat

• Eulogy delivered to the National Convention by a Marat ally, F. E. Guiraut

• Member of the Paris Jacobin club• Most widely circulated

Jean-Paul Marat

• How did Guiraut portray Marat as a liberator-hero?

• What did Guiraut want the essence of the French Revolution to be?

• The name of the newspaper…L’Ami du Peuple…does Guiraut play on this title in the eulogy?

Toussaint

• J. Barlow• Know nothing about

the artist• How can we use

Barlow’s portrait to analyze what Haitians thought of Toussaint as a liberator-hero?

Toussaint

• Can we assume that Barlow painted Toussaint as he, himself, wanted to be portrayed?

• Clothing? Right hand rests on his sword? Haiti’s constitution? Background matter?

Toussaint

• What image of Toussaint Louverture did Barlow seek to communicate?

• What image of the Haitian Revolution?

Toussaint Louverture

• Part of 1814 manifesto written by Henri Christophe

• Rally Haitians to repulse French invasion of the island

• What lessons did Christophe intend that his readers learn from the life of Toussaint?

Toussaint Louverture

• What did Christophe think of Toussaint’s goal to have all live in relative equality in Haiti?

• What does Christophe see as the true meaning of the Haitian Revolution?

Simon Bolivar

• Describe what you see in this painting by Jose Gil da Castro.

• Compare this painting to the one of George Washington.

• How do you think Bolivar wanted to be remembered?

Simon Bolivar

• Dr. Calcano’s Oration at the reinterment of Bolivar (1876)

• Seeks to establish Bolivar’s role in Latin America’s greatness

Simon Bolivar

• How does Calcano use hyperbole to emphasize Bolivar’s greatness?

• How does he characterize Bolivar as a ‘liberator-hero’?

Conclusions

• What conclusions can you make about liberator heroes?

• How might you take this information and incorporate it within your baking?