REALISM IN THE SALONS IN THE 1850s Realism had many faces. As an international impulse seen in European and American art, Realism was not so much a style or a look as a new approach to art, overtaking the old ideas of exhausted Romanticism. By the 1840s, due to the...
DELACROIX THE ROMANTIC Part One A member of the famous Bohemian crowd of French avant-garde art, Delacroix was considered the rebellious leader of French Romanticism. Like all artists of his generation, he had missed out on Napoléonic glory but found excitement in the...
THE MODERNISM OF INGRES Part One Often assumed to be the bastion of conservatism in French art, Ingres was actually an astute observer of his own time and was, therefore, thoroughly modern. Like Gros and Girodet, Ingres had to find his own way past both his teacher,...
PAINTING IN THE ACADEMY The Role of History Painting The roots of academic art in France were long and deep and were integral to the tradition of painting in the École des Beaux-Arts, as well in as the provincial academies. In fact, within the art circles in France,...
FRENCH ROMANTICISM Romanticism in France was an artistic movement that was born of the excitement of Napoleonic art and its depictions of the glory and horrors of total war. But after the Emperor was deposed, the new generation of artists could find...