19th Century Art

The 19th century was a pivotal period in Western history, marked by a revolutionary phase involving not only politics but art and, more broadly speaking, taste. The roots of this change date back to the 1740s, when there was a call for a new kind of art, one that would be useful and educational, both aesthetically and morally, in contrast to the frivolous and “uncommitted” tendency of the Rococo. The new model identified with ancient Greece and Rome; it was believed that through the imitation of antiquity, art could aspire to the ideal beauty of true nature. Styles examined are Neoclassicism, Empire, Sturm und Drang, Romanticism, the Nazarenes, Biedermeier, the Pre-Raphaelites, Primitivism, the Gothic Revival and Realism. Featured artists include William Blake, John Constable, Gustave Courbet, Jacques-Louis David, Delacroix, Goya, Ingres, and Turner.