Abstract
During the decades before 1914, nationalism pervaded cultural discourse more than ever before as a new type of subjectivist, organic nationalism came to the fore. At the same time nations were seen as consisting of a harmonious whole of organically grown regional folk cultures. Thus, a new more activist nationalism coincided and overlapped with the rise of a more folkloristic and regionalist interpretation of the respective national identities. But how did this affect the arts? Paintings by highly relevant fin-de-siècle artists such as Simon and Cottet in France, Bantzer and Mackensen in Germany and Zuloaga in Spain could be seen as interpretations of a specific national or regional ‘soul’. A detailed, comparative analysis of the reviews of their work in the major art magazines of the period shows that their paintings skilfully translated the new, more activist and popular nationalist ideology into art, using similar arguments and rhetorical devices.
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