Presents the historical context behind the 19th-century's artistic movements, including Romantic Painting, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Realist Painting , Academic Painting, and Impressionist Painting.

Paris was the epicenter of art during the latter half of the nineteenth century, luring artists from around the world with its academies, museums, salons, and galleries. Despite the city's cosmopolitanism and its cultural stature, Parisian society remained strikingly conservative, particularly with respect to gender. Nonetheless, many women painters chose to work and study in Paris at this time, overcoming immense obstacles to access the city's resources. 'Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900' showcases the remarkable artistic production of women during this period of great cultural change, revealing the breadth and strength of their creative achievements. Guest Curator Laurence Madeline (Chief Curator at Musées d'art et d'histoire, Geneva) has selected close to seventy compelling paintings by women of varied nationalities, ranging from well-known artists such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Rosa Bonheur, to lesser-known figures such as Kitty Kielland, Louise Breslau, and Anna Ancher.

This study identifies and analyzes the different types of landscape painting that dominated the Scandinavian countries in the 19th century. The author shows how the wilderness became a symbol of Nordic strength, as well as a counter-image to industrialization and European urban culture.

Reveals why the domestic interior figured prominently in visual culture from the 1850s to 1920s.

In late nineteenth-century France, when Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution had finally begun to permeate French culture and society, several academic artists turned to a relatively new sub-genre of history painting, the prehistoric-themed subject. This artistic interest in Darwin’s theories was manifested as paintings and sculptures of prehistoric humanity engaged in physical conflict with each other or other animals, struggling for food, or hunting—all nineteenth-century popular understandings of “survival of the fittest.” This book examines how this sub-genre captured the imagination of French Salon painters from the 1880s to early 1900s, in particular that of Fernand Cormon (1845–1924), one of the foremost academic painters during the final quarter of the nineteenth century. A central argument of this book concerns the unique interpretation of prehistoric humanity that Cormon visualized in his paintings. While the vast majority of prehistoric-themed images made by his salon colleagues focused on violence, combat, and sexual conquest, Cormon’s paintings depict a conflict-free humanity, in which collaboration and cooperation dominate, rather than physical struggle. This study probes the French intellectual understanding and appropriation of Darwin’s theories and considers how the French (mis)translation of The Origin of Species by Clémence-Auguste Royer, the first French translator of the text—along with Neo-Lamarckism and republican ideology in Third Republic France—may have collectively shaped Cormon’s representation of early humanity. The art press overwhelmingly favored Cormon’s visualization of the prehistoric world over that of his Salon peers. Through extended analysis of the art criticism concerning Cormon’s work, Shalon Parker argues that critics’ very clear preference for Cormon’s paintings was rooted in their awareness that he utilized the sub-genre of the prehistoric as a forum in which to reimagine and revive academic figurative painting at a time when the critical reception of Salon art had reached its nadir. Additionally, this study provides a broad overview of the visual models, in particular the anthropological and ethnographic texts and imagery, most readily available to Cormon as sources for shaping his vision of the prehistoric world.

Originally published twenty years ago, "Nineteenth Century Art, Second Edition "remains true to the original, with its superior survey of Western painting and sculpture presented in four historical parts, beginning in 1776 and ending with the dawn of the new century. This book draws on the historical documentation of the period, tracing the dynamics of the making and viewing of art, and examining the reciprocal influences of art and technology, art and politics, art and literature, art and music. For nineteenth century art enthusiasts.