James Oddie Gallery: A 19th Century Artistic Journey

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The James Oddie gallery is a room in the art gallery of Ballarat which contains Thirty Two paintings, all of which were created in the Nineteenth century. Many of the paintings featured in the room have an overarching narrative or landscape theme, which provided the european-born population with historic stories and a nostalgic visual reminder of home.

The Thirty Two paintings that make up the James Oddie gallery share many similar characteristics. A considerable amount of the paintings are quite monumental in size, this coupled with the narrative and landscape style each one possesses, to create an almost complete immersive experience. As a viewer observing the paintings throughout the room you can almost feel what it would have been like to …show more content…

They ignite the imaginations of those who look at their work, creating a flowing narrative from a still image. Karl Theodor von Piloty’s, Beneath the arena is an oil on canvas painting created between 1860 and 1880 and is the largest painting in the James Oddie Gallery measuring a colossal 250 x 295 cm. The piece depicts a young male priest who is soberly contemplating the body of a women who has been martyred in the arena above. This thoughtful grievance the audience can see is Piloty symbolising the beginning of the transition from the old religion of Rome to the new religion the would become most prominent in the future (Christianity). Such a painting provides the people of the Nineteenth century an educational insight into how such common beliefs and institutions may have made their way into society, as well as an entertaining story for each individual viewer to interpret. Looking at a piece of art and understand the story that is being portrayed in it, is similar to reading book and using your consciousness to creatively visualise the story. This also made a paintings ability to entertain even more valued due to a high portion of of the population within the era being unable to

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