European colonization of North America, c. 1750 (map: S. Netchev, World History Encyclopedia, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
The events of the 18th century—the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, expanding global trading networks, the acceleration of the transatlantic slave trade, the first European colonies demanding independence (the 13 British colonies in North America in 1776, and then Haiti in 1804) posed threats to established traditions and institutions. Tellingly, the century opens with the invention of the first practical steam engine (1712) and closes with the French Revolution (the Revolution began as an effort to limit the absolute authority of the monarchy). The French Revolution ended badly—with thousands of members of the aristocracy, along with the king and queen, meeting their death at the guillotine.
In this painting we see an orrery—a mechanical model of the solar system. In the center is a gas light which represents the sun and the arcs represent the orbits of the planets. With paintings like these, Wright invented a new subject: scenes of experiments and new machinery. Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery, c. 1766, oil on canvas, 147.2 x 203.2 cm (Derby Museum and Art Gallery)
This century is often referred to as the period of the Enlightenment. Influenced by the scientific revolutions of the previous century (Galileo Galilei, for example, held that mathematics is the key to understanding the reality behind the appearance of natural phenomena), there was a sense that shedding the light of science and reason could overcome the corruption of the aristocracies and monarchies of Europe and its colonies. Although there were earlier examples, Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedia (France, 1751–72) was a signal expression of the Enlightenment and was quickly followed by the Encyclopædia Britannica (Britain, 1768)—efforts that sought to make all human knowledge accessible. In accordance with the Enlightenment predisposition toward classification and cataloguing, this period also saw expanded efforts by Europeans to document the botany, topography, people, and traditions of Latin America’s interior. The knowledge acquired during these expeditions came mainly from first-hand experience, in keeping with the Enlightenment ideal of empiricism, which valued the concrete and measurable.
Attributed to Juan Rodríguez Juárez, Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo, c. 1715, oil on canvas (Breamore House, Hampshire)
Perhaps one of the most revealing types of images to emerge in the 18th century relates to racial and ethnic identity—casta paintings. These images were popular in Mexico and betray an anxiety about racial mixing and class mobility in New Spain through their attempt to categorize people based on their parentage and appearance. In New Spain there were Indigenous people, people born in Spain or of Spanish descent, and people born in Africa or of African descent and then every combination. Not surprisingly, people who were Spanish-born (peninsular) were at the top of the hierarchy.
Similar subjects can also be found in Spanish South America. Vicente Albán’s Noble Woman with a Black Slave is one of a series of six paintings that seek to define Quito‘s population as distinct racial types, all set against a lush natural landscape. They depict the people of Ecuador (which was then part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada) for a European audience curious about this far-off land. The paintings are linked to a series of expeditions sponsored by the Spanish to document the natural bounty of their American possessions; part of the larger colonial project of conversion, and of exploiting natural resources and indigenous labor for commercial gain.
Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1770, oil on canvas, 152.6 x 214.5 cm (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa)
In the 18th century, colonial powers fought for dominance in Europe, but also in North and South America, Asia, and Africa. Benjamin West, one of the first internationally successful painters born in what would become the United States, painted a decisive event in the Seven Years’ War (known as the French and Indian War in North America)—the moment when Major-General James Wolfe was mortally wounded outside Quebec. By depicting a contemporary event instead of one drawn from history or the Bible, West broke with tradition and set an important precedent. Like so many ambitious American artists who sought opportunities beyond what the colonies could offer, West traveled to Italy and then London, where he enjoyed tremendous professional success.
Artists in the 13 British colonies in North America faced significant hurdles since there were not yet any established art schools like the academies in Europe (the earliest, the Academy of San Carlos, was established in Mexico City in 1785). The artist José Campeche y Jordán (son of a formerly enslaved Black man and a working-class white woman from the Canary Islands) filled a niche in the local art market in Puerto Rico. Campeche painted both portraits and religious images and learned from a Spanish artist who arrived in Puerto Rico in 1775 and painted in the then-dominant European style, Rococo. French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing is perhaps the best representative of this highly decorative style, which was supported by Europe’s elite. We even find the Rococo style in a microscope owned by French King Louis XV who demonstrated his power and erudition through collecting scientific instruments.
Anishinaabe outfit, c. 1790, collected by Lieutenant Andrew Foster, Fort Michilimackinac (British), Michigan, birchbark, cotton, linen, wool, feathers, silk, silver brooches, porcupine quills, horsehair, hide, sinew; the moccasins were likely made by the Huron–Wendat people (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Across the Atlantic ocean, the border between the United States and Canada was contested between the Americans and British. The British engaged in mutual gift-giving with their Native American allies, and several British officers received complete outfits—like this one made by Anishinaabe women. The Anishinaabe artists created an astonishing synthesis of Indigenous traditions and global imports. The outfit features cotton sourced from India but manufactured in Great Britain and then exported to the Americas where it was embellished by Native American women, and then given to a British officer.
Ideas of the Enlightenment quickly gave rise to a questioning of the political status quo. The American Revolution (1763–83), the French Revolution (1789–99), and the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) sought to vest political power in the populace rather than the monarchy and in the case of Haiti, to end slavery. The nobility had ruled for so long that when historical models were sought, political thinkers, artists, and writers had to go all the way back to ancient Republican Rome and ancient Athens (Greece) for examples.
Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat, 1793, oil on canvas, 165 x 128 cm (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This interest in ancient Greece and Rome became known as Neoclassicism (new classicism) which heroicized the classical world for its moral courage and stoic resoluteness—values that accorded with the revolutionary moment. Classical architecture enjoyed yet another revival, and the canvases of the French painter Jacques Louis David have come to exemplify this pivotal moment. However, within only a few years, the ideals of the Enlightenment were used to justify political violence known as the Reign of Terror (where thousands of aristocrats were assassinated) resulting in a power vacuum soon filled by a young, ambitious general named Napoleon.
Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps or Bonaparte at the Saint Bernard Pass, 1800–1801, oil on canvas, 261 x 221 cm (Chateau de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison)
One could say that with Napoleon’s conquest of much of Europe, the old power centers of the church and the monarchy were replaced by more modern, more rational administrative systems. Though he ultimately declared himself emperor (1804), Napoleon wrote a code of laws and dissolved many monasteries and religious institutions. This was the culmination of anticlerical sentiment that was apparent during the Revolution, when so much religious art (associated as it was with the monarchy), was defaced and destroyed. The revolutionaries also looted collections and took control of historic and sacred sites and the Louvre (once the royal palace) was remade as a public museum. Napoleon also confiscated (and just outright looted) art from across Europe and brought many of the finest works to Paris. Much, though not all of this, was returned when he was defeated.
Joachim Michael Salecker, Cup with cover with Hebrew inscriptions, 1723, silver gilt, 16.5 cm diameter, 37.8 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
The emancipation of European Jews from ghettos (designated areas where Jews were forced to live in cities across Europe) became a benchmark of sorts indicating a nation’s transformation from the medieval to the modern. Upon the formation of a secular nation, French Jews received civil rights in 1791 and 1792. In the 17th and 18th centuries, many European courts welcomed religious minorities, including Jews, some of whom were part of mercantile networks that were useful to Christian elites.
Ogata Kōrin, Red and White Plum Blossoms, early 18th century (Edo period), pair of two-fold screens, ink, color, silver, gold, and unidentified materials on paper, 156 x 172.2 cm each, National Treasure (MOA Museum of Art, Atami)
Japan during the Edo Period was largely closed to the world with the exception of limited trade with China, Korea, the Dutch, and Portuguese. The country was relatively peaceful under the Tokugawa shogunate, and artists such as Ogata Kōrin produced lavish works of art including Red and White Plum Blossoms for powerful and wealthy patrons.
In China, literati (poet painters who sought to cultivate the arts often shared among a small circle of like-minded friends) looked to historical traditions found in older poetry and painting that they wove into their own work, as can be seen in Wang Shishen’s Garden scene album leaves from 1731. Meanwhile in Tibet, political and religious power merged as can be seen in an exceptional 18th-century painting of The Fifth Dalai Lama Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso with Previous Incarnations.
In South Asia, the British East India Company traded with the powerful Mughal Dynasty (having successfully displaced Dutch and Portuguese traders). The British however, began to seize territory when Mughal rule began to fracture in the early 18th century. One vivid expression of the Mughal reaction can be seen in Tipus’ Tiger, a remarkable mechanical cat that devours a British soldier. The British were not amused and turned the object into a type of propaganda that sought to justify their exploitation of India. The British borrowed so heavily from West and South Asian cultures that sometimes the origins of a given form is mistakenly credited to England. One example is the Paisley teardrop design that is Persian and became a favorite motif for Cashmere shawls first imported from the Kashmir region of the Indian subcontinent, and by the late 18th century imitated across Europe—a tradition continued by the luxury brand Hermès.
The Industrial Revolution transformed the world. In the past, goods were made in a small workshop or in the home, using simple hand tools and human-powered machines. In the second half of the 18th century in Britain, this long-established method was gradually replaced by factory production in which water and steam powered larger and more complex machines. This had global ramifications—cotton was grown in the United States, the Caribbean, and in India (among other places), manufactured in Britain and India, and sold around the world. In India, competition from these machine-made textiles severely impacted its textile trade and transformed the country from being a supplier of finished textiles to one that exported the raw materials used to make them.
In the Kingdom of Buganda (in present day Uganda), the production of barkcloth became widespread and was used to reinforce distinctions between members of royalty and commoners, as well as gender distinctions. However, barkcloth also became a unifying symbol of cultural identity as colonial pressures mounted.
The rise of wealthy urban centers and the desire for luxuries goods propelled global trade networks that became the infrastructure for colonial expansion and the transatlantic slave trade. Mercantile trade made Europe richer but political power remained with an aristocracy that had historically derived its wealth from vast land holdings. Europe’s cities grew, Enlightenment ideas and scientific and technical knowledge rapidly expanded—all of which laid the foundation for the the Modern era.
