As lawyers rose to prominence in life during the nineteenth century, two artists in particular targeted them with their scathing satire: Honoré Daumier and Jean-Louis Forain.

For the satirical eye of Honoré Daumier, Three Lawyers (1855-57) meeting was the gathering of an elite who were out to help themselves, rather than the unfortunate people they purported to represent. Their heads tipped back and clutching thick bundles of papers, Daumier had less respect of them than they had for themselves.

In his undated Two Lawyers Conversing, you can be sure that they’re up to no good, except for themselves.

Jean-Louis Forain was a successful painter, caricaturist and political satirist in the late nineteenth century, who had long admired Daumier’s work. When Forain turned his attention to justice and the law after about 1902, he went beyond Daumier’s biting images of lawyers by entering the courtroom itself.

Forain’s The Court from about 1902-03 is one of the first of his series of courtroom views, and most neutral in its approach. In the foreground, a lawyer discusses the case with a woman, who is bent forward to hear his whispering. In the distance the court appears detached, perhaps disinterested, the judges sat behind large piles of papers, under a large painting of the crucifixion. The artist sold this work to Edgar Degas.

By the time that Forain painted this Trial Scene from 1904, his satire had come to the surface. The court here is so completely disinterested in the case before it that its judge is incapable of remaining awake, and the jurors at the left are hardly attentive either.

A young woman stands out in Forain’s Scene at the Tribunal (1906), as a lawyer turns and scowls disapprovingly at her.

Two women are shown in his Scene of the Tribunal from 1910, a lawyer talking to them as the court appears oblivious to their presence.

Legal Assistance (c 1900-12) shows an ordinary family man, cradling his young child in his arms as he presents a paper to a barrister or judge (wearing his short cylindrical hat). This painting was bought by Henri Rouart, an industrialist who was a good patron of the arts, as well as a fine amateur painter himself.

Sadly only available in this monochrome image, Forain’s undated painting of Recess of the Court is his most scathing. The judge leans back, fast asleep, as chaos takes hold in the court. Laywers are talking among themselves, and furniture is being moved around. Where is justice?

It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that a growing interest in contemporary courts, and well-publicised trials, made them more popular in paintings. As few people ever see the inside of a courtroom, one of the first tasks of artists was to reveal what they looked like.

Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin’s painting of The Old Bailey, Known Also as the Central Criminal Court from 1808, here seen in an aquatint, is a good topographic view of this most famous English court. The presiding judge sits under a Damoclean sword of justice at the left, and the twelve men of the jury are to the right of centre. At the far right stands the accused, in front of whom is a large collection of witnesses ready to testify.

That was, and remains, an exceptional court. More typical of the type of court that ordinary citizens might encounter is Adolph Tidemand’s Scene before a Magistrate in the Country (before 1858), seen here in a lithograph. Set somewhere in rural Norway, the bench of magistrates sits at the right in more cramped and modest surroundings. Its justice may have been rougher, but the experience was far less daunting, and less overwhelmed by lawyers.

Ferdinand Brütt’s Before the Judges from 1903 shows the end of an era in the courtroom, as an official lights the candles in its chandelier, and its three judges sit hearing the case being put to them.

The last of these artists who were influenced by the German Romantic painters, notably Caspar David Friedrich and J C Dahl, is the Norwegian Hans Gude (1825–1903).

Born and initially educated in Christiania (now Oslo, Norway), Gude started his studies at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1842. There he joined a recently formed landscape class taught by Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. Gude rejected the conventional teaching that landscape paintings should be composed according to classical or aesthetic principles, preferring instead to paint thoroughly realistically, and true to nature. On completion of his studies, probably in about 1846, he returned to Norway.

Landscape Study from Vågå (1846) is an excellent example of one of his early oil studies, and was probably completed in front of the motif, in Norway’s mountainous Oppland county north of the Jotunheimen Mountains. Although its background is loose and vague, foreground detail is meticulous for a work that appears to have been painted en plein air.

Winter Afternoon from 1847 is a studio painting that wouldn’t look out of place on a greetings card, and a stark contrast.

Tessefossen in Vågå at Midday (1848) is a relatively large studio painting that seems more typical of an American landscape painter of the day.

Early in his career, Gude struggled to paint realistic figures, and in several works he enlisted the help of Adolph Tidemand to paint those in for him.

Among the results of this collaboration are some of his most spectacular works, such as Bridal Journey in Hardanger from 1848. Gude’s highly detailed and realistic landscape is set in the far south-west of Norway, in the region to the east of Bergen, where one of the world’s largest and most spectacular fjords carves its way from glacier to the sea.

Although not a particularly large canvas, it’s as meticulously detailed as might have been expected from a Pre-Raphaelite or German Romantic artist, although its colours aren’t as brash. Gude became particularly interested in reflections on water later in his career.

By the Mill Pond (1850) seems to have been another plein air study, but is so detailed that it would be hard to class it as a sketch. When looked at more carefully, though, many of its apparently precise passages turn out to consist of highly gestural marks, as in the lichens on the boulders in the foreground, and the small waterfall at the back. It’s also interesting in containing a figure, who may be Betsy Anker, whom Gude married in the summer of that year.

This later collaboration with Tidemand, Fishing with a Harpoon (1851), is a wonderful nocturne showing night fishing in sheltered waters, another masterpiece of detailed realism and influenced by German Romanticism.

In 1854, Gude was appointed professor in succession to his former teacher Schirmer, which was remarkable recognition for the Norwegian who was not yet thirty years old. He tendered his resignation three years later, but didn’t leave Düsseldorf for a further five years.

Although painted in the studio, his Norwegian Highlands from 1857 appears based on studies made in front of the motif, and retains traditional earth-based colours typical of Friedrich or Dahl.

During the 1850s his paintings had aroused some interest in the UK, so in 1862 Gude travelled to Wales to try to develop his British market.

This painting of what he called ‘Eføybroen’, which might be an ‘Efoy’ Bridge, in North Wales was completed in 1863 from studies made in the previous autumn.

He also painted some grander landscapes of The Lledr Valley in Wales (1864), where he stayed during this campaign.

Gude continued to work by painting studies en plein air, which he took back to the studio and worked up into finished paintings. In contrast, local British painters at the time tended to complete their finished works in front of the motif, and seldom painted landscapes in the studio. When his paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863 and 1864, they achieved little recognition, and failed to sell.

At the end of 1863, Gude was offered the post of professor at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe, which he accepted, as there was still no academy of fine art in Norway. During his tenure there, many Norwegians were students, including Kitty Kielland, Eilif Peterssen, Christian Krohg, and Frits Thaulow.

While he was teaching in Karlsruhe, Gude continued to promote the practice of painting en plein air, and his figures steadily improved. Fjord Landscape with People (1875) shows a typical period scene, with figures, cattle, horses, sailing vessels, and another of his wide open views.

Gude also worked in watercolours, and during his later career visited Scotland on several occasions, where he painted this almost monochrome view of an Estuary at Brodick, Arran, Scotland in 1877.

Gude’s watercolour Landscape with Tarbert Castle, Scotland (1877) shows one of the most famous ruined castles on the west coast of Scotland, on the shore of East Loch Tarbert, at the north end of the Kintyre peninsula.

Sandvik Fjord (1879) is a startlingly detailed depiction of a view from above Sandviken, now the northern suburbs of the Norwegian city of Bergen, looking to the west and the island of Askøy.

In 1880, Gude moved to teach at the Academy of Art in Berlin.

He painted Oban Bay in 1889 following another visit to Scotland, showing the small bay beside the town of Oban on the west coast of northern Scotland. This bay opens out to the Sound of Kerrera, and is now a busy ferry port serving the Western Isles; at this time it seems to have been but a small fishing port. The prominent building in the distance just to the left of the centre of the painting is Saint Columba’s Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop for the Western Isles. The distant mountains are those of the Morvern Peninsula, on the opposite shore of Loch Linnhe.

The Jetty at Feste near Moss (1898) shows another marine view in the far south-east of Norway, on the eastern side of the broad fjord that leads north to Oslo.

Gude retired to Berlin in 1901, and died there in 1903, one of the founding fathers of Norwegian and Nordic landscape painting.

Reference

Wikipedia.