The Eye of the Beholder

"If we could but paint with the hand what we could see with the eye."-Honore de Balzac

Paintings, as we've learned, are a form of visual rhetoric, a contemporary argument stressing that art conveys cultural and sensory meanings as opposed to purely aesthetic appeal. This image was painted during General Warren's death at the Battle of Bunker Hill, an American defeat, by John Trumbull. And anyone who looks closely at the painting can see that it was meant to incite anti-British emotions.

Analyzing a painting 101. Almost always, the painter has an ulterior motive in choosing colors because they are known to create strong emotions. Trumbull makes an emotional appeal to religion, when he paints the British a bright, bloody red, an allusion the demons and the devil. In contrast, the revolutionaries are painted in a simplistic, wholesome white, a possible reference to God and the angels. The pale blue sky juxtaposes the black showing the irony of war on a beautiful day. Lighting also plays an essential part of a piece. Here there is almost a spotlight on the dying man. Directional focus points here as well: any man with a face is seen looking at the dying man. The dying General Warren is the primary focus in the piece because his brutal death can evoke colonial sympathy and rally them to fight even after a devastating loss. The British ruthlessness is emphasized here as the soldiers try to kill the injured fighter. Also, if you divide the painting up in thirds, the middle third is filled with British soldiers, while the left side has a notably smaller number of colonial fighters. The painter subtly insinuates that the revolutionaries were outnumbered by showing a limited view of the battle and shrouding much of the colonial side in blackness. A painting bias is clearly shown here. But how much of it was true?

Trumbull was in fact at the Battle of Bunker Hill, but it is not known for sure if he witnessed General Warren's death. He obviously couldn't have been painting this as the battle went on so it is based off a a mere memory. It looks realistic in its portrayal of human form. but the lighting, colors, and schematics, are too convenient to be true. So paintings became the earliest forms of meta-fiction. Here Trumbull displays the emotional truth, the fear, horror, and grief, that he felt. But whether or not it is what actually happened cannot be discerned.

In a time where non persuasive writing contained only statistical and quantitative facts with little skew, paintings showed the completely biased emotional truths. In literature, writers could leave out what they felt was emotional bias, but in paintings, leaving out information makes the piece incomplete. And as we move towards the present day we can see the two genres of communication merging together. Paintings become more abstract, entering the realm of fiction, while books now show the emotional truth. All previous boundaries have now become in-distinctive. So what is real? Well, truth is in the eye of the beholder.