Napoleon masterfully manipulated his image, and this painting meant for Parisian audiences is pure propaganda.
Romanticism: c. 1800-1848
Géricault’s massive canvas takes its format from history painting, but its subject is ripped from the headlines.
Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa
Runge’s painting ushered in a new era in the representation of children—focused on individual selfhood, interiority, and youthful innocence.
Runge, Hülsenbeck Children
Contemporary artist Enrique Chagoya discusses the transcendent meanings of Goya's etchings of Spanish society at the turn of the 19th century
Enrique Chagoya on Goya’s Los Caprichos
To fill the visual void, the westerner had to rely on his fantasies of harem life, for which opera libretti and novels offered, fortunately, enough material. For the photographer the same, of course, was also true.
Staging the Egyptian Harem for Western Eyes
In the decades following the French Revolution, this new movement began to flourish in France.
Romanticism in France
Landscape painting was considered lowly subject, but Constable gives them the six-foot treatment.
John Constable, The Hay Wain
Fancy a trip to Tate Britain? Visit the largest collection of work by Turner anywhere—no passport required.
J.M.W. Turner at Tate Britain
There are two types of people in the world: those who preserve their lamp oil, and those who don’t. Which are you?
William Blake, The Parable of the Wise ...
Beautifully rendered details of the Dieppe harbor are second only to Turner’s true love—the sublime sun.
J. M. W. Turner, The Harbor of ...
Refusing to idealize, Constable fills his landscapes with the specificity of a fleeting summer day.
John Constable, View on the Stour near ...
A beautiful sunset, but look closer. One of humanity’s most hideous acts—seen in the waves of the indifferent sea.
J. M. W. Turner, Slave Ship
Fuseli’s fairies resist his era’s embrace of the rational in favor of the emotive and fantastic.
Henry Fuseli, Titania and Bottom
An ancient, gnarled tree, not the shepherd at its base, is the protagonist of Friedrich’s landscape.
Caspar David Friedrich, Solitary Tree (or Lone ...
The woman in this painting invites us to share the view out her shuttered window, but leaves us to wonder about her thoughts.
Caspar David Friedrich, Woman at a Window
The eagles have landed in this imperial portrait of Napoleon inspired by antique and early modern sources.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Napoleon on His Imperial Throne
A medieval abbey in ruins, within an ancient forest that predates—and will outlast—man’s creations.
Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest
In a time when horses were the fastest mode of transit, the railroad was as radical as Turner’s abstraction.
J. M. W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and ...
Goya depicts the king’s family in scintillating detail… but the sparkle of the monarchy is beginning to fade.
Francisco Goya, The Family of Charles IV
Bare-breasted with a bayonet? Liberty leads a revolution that won’t be televised but will be seen in the Paris Salon.
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