Romanticism

Grande Odalisque, also known as Une Odalisque or La Grande Odalisque, is an oil painting of 1814 by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres depicting an odalisque, or concubine. Ingres' contemporaries considered the work to signify Ingres' break from Neoclassicism, indicating a shift toward exotic Romanticism. Grande Odalisque attracted wide criticism when it was first shown. It has been especially noted for the elongated proportions and lack of anatomical realism. The work is housed in the Louvre, Paris. This eclectic mix of styles, combining classical form with Romantic themes, prompted harsh criticism when it was first shown in 1814. Critics viewed Ingres as a rebel against the contemporary style of form and content. When the painting was first shown in the Salon of 1819, one critic remarked that the work had "neither bones nor muscle, neither blood, nor life, nor relief, indeed nothing that constitutes imitation".[3] This echoed the general view that Ingres had disregarded anatomical realism.[4] Ingres instead favored long lines to convey curvature and sensuality, as well as abundant, even light to tone down the volume. Ingres continued to be criticized for his work until the mid-1820s.

Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X of France. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricolore flag of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The painting is perhaps Delacroix's best-known work. Delacroix depicted Liberty, as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people, an approach that contemporary critics denounced as "ignoble". The mound of corpses acts as a kind of pedestal from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer. The Phrygian cap she wears had come to symbolize liberty during the first French Revolution, of 1789-94. The painting has been seen as a marker to the end of the Age of Enlightenment, as many scholars see the end of the French Revolution as the start of the romantic era. The fighters are from a mixture of social classes, ranging from the bourgeoisie represented by the young man in a top hat, to the revolutionary urban worker, as exemplified by the boy holding pistols (who may have been the inspiration for the character Gavroche in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables). What they have in common is the fierceness and determination in their eyes. Aside from the flag held by Liberty, a second, minute tricolore can be discerned in the distance flying from the towers of Notre Dame.

Oath of the Horatii (French: Le Serment des Horaces), is a work by French artist Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784. It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities; Rome and Alba Longa, when three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to end the war by fighting three brothers from an Alba Longa family, the Curiatii. The three brothers, all of which appear willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Rome, are shown saluting their father who holds their swords out for them. The principal sources for the story behind David's Oath are the first book of Livy (sections 24-6) which was elaborated by Dionysius in book 3 of his Roman Antiquities. However, the moment depicted in David's painting is his own invention. It grew to be considered a paradigm of neoclassical art. The painting increased David's fame, allowing him to rear his own students.

The portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière was painted in 1806 by the French Neoclassical artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and today hangs in the Louvre. It is the third of three portraits of the Rivière family the artist painted that year. Caroline's father, Philibert Rivière, was a successful court official under Napoleon's empire, and sought to commemorate himself, his wife and daughter through a commission with the then young and rising artist - his portraits of Philibert and his wife are also still extant. Although Ingres favoured subject matter drawn from history or Greek legend, at this early stage in his career he earned his living mainly through commissions from wealthy patrons.[1] The family lived outside Paris, at St. Germain-en-Laye, and Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière would have been between 13 and 15 at the time she was portrayed; according to Ingres the "ravishing daughter". The younger Rivière's portrait describes slightly-built and youthful femininity and hints at a hesitant openness. The painting is rendered in bright hues and set against a serene white–blue early spring landscape, the freshness of which was intended to reflect the youth of the sitter. The background is not deeply portrayed; the perspective is shallow and rises—according to the art historian Robert Rosenblum—in "flattened horizontal tiers against which the figure seems crisply silhouetted as if in low relief." Typical of portraits by Ingres of the time, Caroline Rivière is drawn with a disregard for anatomical accuracy. Her neck is overly elongated, and the bridge of her nose extends too far.Rivière is portrayed with a stiffness and awkwardness typical of her age, and shown in a manner which was intended to emphasise a sense of the nascent purity and simplicity of her youth. Yet the painting is generally seen in the light of pathos and tragedy, as the sitter died within a year of the work being completed

Baronne de Rothschild is a 1848 oil and canvas portrait by the French Neoclassical artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The sitter, Betty de Rothschild (1805-1886) had married banker James Mayer de Rothschild and was one of the wealthiest women in northern Europe, and one of the foremost Parisian patrons of the arts. Her beauty and elegance were widely known and celebrated, and inspired Heinrich Heine's poem The Angel. For her portrait, Ingres sought to infuse symbols of her material wealth with the dignity, grace and beauty of Renaissance art, especially that of Raphael, while at the same time adhering to the command of line as practiced by Jan van Eyck. It is this combination which, according to art historians, places Ingres' so far apart from his early modernist contemporaries. Betty de Rothschild's portrait is regarded as one of Ingres' most accomplished works, and has been described as "perhaps the most sumptuous yet approachable image of mid-nineteenth-century opulence."

Death of Sardanapalus (La Mort de Sardanapale) is an oil painting on canvas, dated 1827 by Eugène Delacroix. Its dominant feature is a large divan, with its golden elephants, on which a nude prostrates herself and beseeches the apathetic Sardanapalus for mercy. Sardanapalus (Detail) had ordered his possessions destroyed and sex slaves murdered before immolating himself, once he learned that he was faced with military defeat.

The Third of May 1808 (also known as El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid, or Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío, or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo) is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's suggestion. The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a groundbreaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May 1808 marks a clear break from convention. Diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, The Third of May 1808 is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention".

The work had tremendous appeal for the time. Before the opening of the Salon, the French Revolution had begun. The National Assembly had been established, and the Bastille had fallen. The royal court did not want propaganda agitating the people, so all paintings had to be checked before being hung. David’s portrait of Lavoisier, who was a chemist and physicist as well as an active member of the Jacobin party, was banned by the authorities for such reasons. When the newspapers reported that the government had not allowed the showing of The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, the people were outraged, and the royals were forced to give in. The painting was hung in the exhibition, protected by art students. The painting depicts Lucius Junius Brutus, the Roman leader, grieving for his sons. Brutus's sons had attempted to overthrow the government and restore the monarchy, so the father ordered their death to maintain the republic. Thus, Brutus was the heroic defender of the republic, at the cost of his own family. On the right, the Mother holds her two daughters, and the servant is seen on the far right, in anguish. Brutus sits on a klismos on the left, alone, brooding, but knowing what he did was best for his country. The whole painting was a Republican symbol, and obviously had immense meaning during these times in France. Note Brutus' tense, crossed feet in the picture, the sharp scissors that lay dead in the center of the painting, and the use of light and dark to draw a distinction between Brutus and his wife. Brutus does not even look back as his headless sons are brought into the room.

The Death of Marat (French: La Mort de Marat) is a 1793 painting in the Neoclassical style by Jacques-Louis David, and is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. This work depicts the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat lying dead in his bath on 13 July 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday. Corday, who was from a minor aristocratic family, blamed Marat for the September Massacres and feared an all out civil war, claimed "I killed one man to save 100,000." It has been described as the first modernist painting.

The Intervention of the Sabine Women is a 1799 painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David. The work was considered when Jacques-Louis David was imprisoned in the Luxembourg Palace in 1795; he hesitated between representing either this subject or that of Homer reciting his verses to the Greeks. He finally chose to make a canvas representing the Sabine women interposing themselves to separate the Romans and Sabines, as a 'sequel' to Poussin's The Rape of the Sabine Women. Its realization took him nearly four years.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (also known as Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass or Bonaparte Crossing the Alps) is the title given to the five versions of an oil on canvas equestrian portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. Initially commissioned by the king of Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May 1800.

The Coronation of Napoleon (French: Le Sacre de Napoléon) is a painting completed in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David, the official painter of Napoleon. The painting has imposing dimensions, as it is almost ten metres wide by approximately six metres tall. The crowning and the coronation took place at Notre-Dame de Paris, a way for Napoleon to make it clear that he was a son of the Revolution.

Judith Slaying Holofernes is a painting by the Italian early Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi completed between 1611–12. The work shows an apocrypha scene from the Old Testament Book of Judith which details the delivery of Israel from the Assyrian general Holofernes. In this scene, Judith and her maidservant behead the general after he has fallen asleep drunk. The painting is relentlessly physical, from the wide spurts of blood to the energy of the two women as they try to wield the large dagger. The effort of the women's struggle is most finely represented by the delicate face of the maid, which is grasped by the oversized, muscular fist of Holofernes as he desperately struggles to survive. Although the painting depicts a classic scene from the Bible, Gentileschi drew herself as Judith and her mentor Agostino Tassi, who was tried in court for her rape, as Holofernes.

The Blue Boyis an oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough. Perhaps Gainsborough's most famous work, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall (1752–1805), the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, although this has never been proven. It is an historical costume study as well as a portrait: the youth in his 17th-century apparel is regarded as Gainsborough's homage to Anthony Van Dyck, and in particular is very close to Van Dyck's portrait of Charles II as a boy.

Sarah Siddons was the outstanding tragic actress of her time. Reynolds and other artists also painted her portrait. Gainsborough is reported to have had difficulties with the nose.

Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan is an oil on canvas portrait painted by Thomas Gainsborough between 1785 and 1787. It was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 1937. Mrs. Sheridan (Elizabeth Ann Linley) was a talented musician who enjoyed professional success in Bath and London before marrying Richard Brinsley Sheridan in 1773 and abandoning her career. She was 31 when she sat for Gainsborough. She died from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-eight.