In the decades following the French Revolution, this new movement began to flourish in France.
Romanticism: c. 1800-1848
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 ...
Napoleon masterfully manipulated his image, and this painting meant for Parisian audiences is pure propaganda.
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the ...
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
Géricault’s massive canvas takes its format from history painting, but its subject is ripped from the headlines.
Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa
Bare-breasted with a bayonet? Liberty leads a revolution that won’t be televised but will be seen in the Paris Salon.
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
Delacroix’s scene of Greek survivors is anything but heroic and offers no relief to the suffering depicted.
Eugène Delacroix, Scene of the Massacre at ...
Delacroix paints an anti-hero who presides over a chaotic, violent scene of corruption and luxury.
Eugène Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus
Goya’s taste in home décor is called into question by this cannibalistic meditation on the nature of power.