War and Glory From Meissonier to Detaille, Part One Born during the revolutionary year of 1848, Jean-Baptiste Édouard Detaille (1848-1912) did not live to see the fate of the French army during the Great War. Riding the nostalgic wave of the cult of Napoléon, which...
MANET AND MODERN LIFE Édouard Manet was not the artist that the Second Empire would have selected to be its chronicler, but, in the end, it was Manet’s impressions of France’s last monarchy that would make an indelible mark on the public memory. Napoléon III followed...
THE RISE AND FALL OF GUSTAVE COURBET Part Two The early career of Gustave Courbet is discussed within the historical context of class struggles during the middle of the nineteenth century. The Realism in Courbet’s paintings of the 1850s manifested itself not...
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...