Interior View

Definition

The interior view is the nineteenth-century genre of pictures of rooms as ends in themselves — watercolours and drawings of domestic interiors painted "as a specific genre" from the beginning of the nineteenth century, rather than "as a background to a narrative, anecdotal or portrait painting." Charlotte Gere's account (quoted by Rice): "The depiction of rooms for their own sake… germinated, reached its fullest flowering and died within the space of one century. It was not unusual for such interiors to form a group, representing different aspects of several rooms. They were intended to be placed in albums rather than to be framed and hung, and remained an almost secret possession." The genre is tied directly to decoration practice — "so many of them show rooms that must just have been decorated and newly arranged" (prompted by the Percier & Fontaine and Hope publications) — making the interior view the imagistic twin of the interior decoration whose professional birth Rice dates to the same years (Hope 1807; Percier & Fontaine 1801; the first domestic use of "interior" dated 1829).

The genre's fate is its theory. When fashion passed in the second half of the century, "their very existence seems to have been forgotten. They were rendered obsolete by the development of a photographic camera capable of focusing on a great depth of field and thus able to do the job of the interior view-painter much more quickly and no less efficiently" — and the photographic albums of 1880–1910 that superseded them were themselves forgotten. Praz's 1964 rediscovery "was a revelation" — and the recovery's meaning is Rice's critical point: "the shift of visual representations of the interior from being familial possessions to becoming historical, and therefore public, documents." The genre that once recorded a family's rooms for itself became the evidence-base of the interior's public history — carrying with it the essentialist misuse Rice diagnoses.

Key Thinkers

• Charles Rice — the genre's theorist: the interior view as the historical specific whose specificity Praz's history ignores; the familial-to-public document shift named as the genre's historiographic fate; the "essentialised view of the domestic interior" diagnosed as the genre's evidence misused transhistorically (2004/2006).
• (Discussed in the source, not yet paged — see log: Charlotte Gere, Nineteenth Century Interiors: An Album of Watercolours (1992), the genre's historian; Mario Praz, whose 1964 Illustrated History of Interior Decoration rediscovered and then generalized the genre; Peter Thornton, whose Authentic Décor supplies the complementary dates (the view-drawing fashion of c. 1815–1840; its cessation c. 1840 when display gave way to "familial privacy").)
• (Named in the source, not yet paged — see log: George Eliot, whose 1858 diary records the genre-sense ("The two interiors of Westminster Abbey by Ainmueller admirable"); Ainmueller, the genre's practitioner.)

Related Concepts

• Doubleness — the genre's structural position: the interior view is the interior's imagistic sense taking itself as its own object — the room's picture that the OED's birth-definition already counted as part of "interior."
• Representation — the genre's theoretical problem: representations construct interiors rather than record them; the view is the constructivist claim's historical archive.
• Architectural Photography — the genre's successor and its own obsolescence: photography killed the view-painter and was itself forgotten ("like the albums of paintings they had superseded") — the interior's evidentiary media doomed to recurrent obsolescence.
• Bourgeois Interior — the genre's subject: the rooms pictured are the newly decorated rooms of the bourgeois interior's emergence — image and formation born together.
• House Museum — the genre's institutional afterlife: the shift "from being familial possessions to becoming historical, and therefore public, documents" is the same movement the house museum completes on buildings — the private interior made publicly legible.
• Interior as Biography — the genre's misuse: Praz's "retrospective exhibition of furnished rooms" declaring "the varying personalities of the rooms' occupants" — the view as involuntary biography.
• Trace — what the albums collect: "Praz collects traces of the inhabitant through their visibility in the interior" — the view as trace-accumulation.
• The Decorative — the genre's twin practice: the views "show rooms that must just have been decorated and newly arranged" — decoration and its image co-emerging.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Rethinking Histories of the Interior (Rice 2004/2006) — the concept's defining source: the genre's dating ("from the beginning of the nineteenth century… as a specific genre"); Gere's decoration-link quoted; the life-cycle (germinated, flowered, died "within the space of one century"); the albums as "almost secret possession"; obsolescence by camera; the 1880–1910 photographic albums; Praz's 1964 rediscovery; the familial-to-public shift; and the essentialist misuse diagnosed.
• Proximities (Taylor & Preston 2006) — the historiographic frame in which the genre figures: the editors name Praz, Gere and Thornton as the style-manual tradition whose documentation "of furnishings and accessories" suppressed the decorative — the genre's albums are that documentation's primary form.
• Rethinking Histories of the Interior (Rice 2004/2006) — the obsolescence register: the view-genre killed by "the development of a photographic camera capable of focusing on a great depth of field," and the photographic albums of 1880–1910 themselves forgotten — the interior's evidentiary media doomed to recurrent obsolescence; the wiki's Architectural Photography page carries the successor regime's theory.
• Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (Hope 1807/2006) — the publication Rice names (with Percier & Fontaine) as the decoration-practice whose vogue the genre documents: the views "show rooms that must just have been decorated" in Hope's manner.

Open Questions

• The genre is the interior's imagistic sense documenting itself — but Gere's album, by Rice's own account, "hides an essentialist view." Can the interior view be used against the genre's ideology (as evidence of decoration practice and of the doubleness) or is every evidentiary use a re-commitment of the transparency error?
• The albums "remained an almost secret possession" — the interior view as privacy's own image. What does it mean that privacy's first mass image was made for the family album, and that its public career began only when Praz made the albums history? (Compare Perrot: "the ultimately private nature of the evidence of privacy.")
• The genre died of a technology (the deep-focus camera) that was then itself forgotten. Is the interior's evidentiary media structurally recurrent-obsolescent — and what does that predict for the current image-regime (the Instagram interior) as future evidence?
• Thornton dates the display-to-privacy turn at c. 1840 (house visits ceasing when the interior became "the space of familial privacy and the cultivation of domestic virtues"), while the view-genre flourished on. Do the view-albums then record the last display-interior — the image of a formation already turning inward — making them evidence of the separate-spheres transition rather than of decoration?
• Rice critiques the genre's essentialist use; Hollis's reflexive thesis says history is itself "(re)construction of preexisting structures." Is a history of the interior view — the genre as object rather than evidence — Rice's programme's missing positive half?