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...
FRENCH REVOLUTION IN ART By the eighteenth century being part of the beaux-arts rather than being involved in “crafts” was often a matter of class. Artists tended to come from the middle class and shared the aspirations of upward social mobility typical of...
THE ACADEMY IN FRANCE The seventeenth century was the century in which the modern idea of “nation” or of a modern “state” came into being, based upon the idea of absolute rule. The territory under the absolute despot might be disparate and...
ROMANTICISM AND CHANGING METHODOLOGIES IN ART HISTORY What is the impact of methodologies of art history upon the recounting of the history of art? A methodology is a way of telling or constructing the past. This act of re-construction is, in fact, as Hayden White...
NEO-CLASSICAL SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE Canova and Ledoux When Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768) advised eighteenth century artists to imitate the Greeks, he was probably thinking more of sculpture than of painting and upon sculptors fell a particular burden–to...
NEO-CLASSICISM IN FRANCE The Early Years In any academy, whether from the seventeenth or the eighteenth or the nineteenth century, history painting was the most elevated form of painting due to the designated “important” themes treated by the artists. In...
