The city of Baltimore boasts one of the finest collections of 19th- and early 20th-century French art to be found anywhere in the United States. Together, its two premier art institutions -- the Walters Art Gallery and the Baltimore Art Museum -- house a collection which charts the development of French painting from the early 19th-century neo-classicism to early 20th-century post-impressionism. All major movements and schools are presented in this beautiful and informative catalogue.

The Paris Salons of the mid-nineteenth century are famous today above all for the paintings that were rejected more than for those that were actually shown. The rejected works form today's canon of art history and are regarded as heralds of a modern age. This book looks to reassess the other side of the art history of the nineteenth century. Salon Painting has often been dismissed as overly academic or staid. Now art historian Norbert Wolf turns back the pages of history as he reintroduces readers to the artistry and excellence of the Salon Painting in Europe, Britain, Russia and the US. In an opulent new book, illustrated throughout with gorgeous reproductions, Wolf looks at Salon painting from a variety of perspectives, such as the rise of the bourgeoisie and Paris's position as Europe's cultural capitol. Wolf examines masterpieces by Cabanel, Manet, Bierstadt, The Pre-Raphaelites, and Sargent, demonstrating how classical subjects gave way to modern concerns.

Here approximately two hundred works by French and Spanish artists chart the development of this cultural influence and map a fascinating shift in the paradigm of painting, from Idealism to Realism, from Italy to Spain, from Renaissance to Baroque. Above all, these images demonstrate how direct contact with Spanish painting fired the imagination of nineteenth-century French artists and brought about the triumph of Realism in the 1860s, and with it a foundation for modern art."--BOOK JACKET.