Nineteenth-Century Painters and Painting: A Dictionary

📘 Many people would probably consider the important and representative painters of the nineteenth century to be French, and would be most likely to name Gericault, Delacroix, Goya, Degas, Cezanne and the Impressionists. Because of their great relevance to and influence on twentieth-century art, these artists have received disproportionate attention; yet in their own lifetimes they represented the avant-garde of the nineteenth century, totally untypical of the mainstream of artistic activity, many almost entirely unknown. The main painting activity during this period was of a very different kind which, very rich and diverse as it was, has generally been branded with condescension, if not contempt, as academic. Academies sometimes were dismissed by the pioneers of new approaches to art, although they still had prestige among the general public and the established critics. Moreover, although it is usually associated with France, nineteenth-century painting was uniquely international: an enormous amount of cross - painterly influences produced an art of great diversity and importance in Russia, other east European countries, Italy, Germany, northern Europe and America. Although Paris was the focus of this activity, national schools emerged throughout the western world. And if there was one unifying feature between them, this was a preoccupation with subject matter, the realistic rendering of scenes from history and daily life, the interest in still life, landscape, the human face a...