The National Gallery's collection encompasses the neoclassicism of Jacques-Louis David as well as the naturalism of the Barbizon painters. The works of Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, such as the Gallery's famous portrait of Madame Moitessier, are precursors to the classical style that dominated later in the century. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's verdant landscapes, Honoré Daumier's political satires, and Jean-François Millet's realism are also included in this richly illustrated volume.

The core of the Clark's collection was assembled by Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), who once declared, "I like all kinds of art if it is good of its kind." This monumental, two-volume publication is the first fully documented catalogue of the Institute's collection of European paintings. The quality of this collection reflects the founder's philosophy in its inclusion of masterpieces as diverse as William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr (1873) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's A Box at the Theater (1880); works by academic painters such as Jean-Léon Gérôme; Barbizon painters such as Camille Corot and Jean-François Millet; and the Impressionists Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas. More recent acquisitions include Théodore Rousseau's Farm in the Landes (1844-67) and Claude Monet's Rouen Cathedral (1894), and works by John Constable and J. M. W. Turner. Published on the 100th anniversary of Sterling Clark's first purchase of a European painting, these handsome volumes document each of the 374 paintings in the collection, with essays by prominent scholars, detailed bibliographic and art historical apparatus, technical notes, and over 450 color illustrations. Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

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.

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.