19th-Century Art: Neoclassicism to Post-Impressionism
This domain covers five movements from about 1780 to 1900. The PAU tests style, subject matter, technique and the social function of art, and it often asks you to compare two works that use similar formats for different purposes. Dates matter here: 1784, 1819, 1830, 1850, 1874 and 1886 are all examinable markers.
Neoclassicism
- Winckelmann's formula of "noble simplicity and calm grandeur" drives an art of outline, shallow space and stoic virtue.
- David's Oath of the Horatii (1784) uses frieze-like figures and sharp contour to make a political point about loyalty and the state; Ingres continues linearity with elongated anatomy.
Romanticism
- Emotion, the sublime, dramatic color and national history replace antique restraint. Géricault's Raft of the Medusa (1819) turns a contemporary shipwreck scandal into a pyramidal tragedy; Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830) fuses allegory with street fighting.
- Friedrich's Rückenfigur makes landscape a vehicle for inner states; Turner dissolves form into atmosphere.
Realism
- Courbet's Burial at Ornans (1849–50) gives an ordinary provincial funeral the scale of history painting and refuses idealization; Millet's gleaners and Daumier's workers make labor visible. Realism is a subject choice as much as a style.
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
- The 1874 exhibition in Nadar's studio gives the group its name. Plein air, broken brushwork, modern leisure and shifting light: Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot.
- Post-Impressionism is not one style: Cézanne seeks structure through planes, Van Gogh uses color expressively, Gauguin moves toward symbolism, Seurat systematizes color with pointillism.
Worked example: Raft of the Medusa and Burial at Ornans
Both are large canvases. Géricault uses a pyramidal composition, extreme light and a rising diagonal of bodies to maximize emotional pressure; the subject is a national scandal, so scale fits Romantic history painting. Courbet uses a long frieze of ordinary mourners, flat lighting and no hero; the scale is deliberately mismatched with the subject, which is the Realist provocation. The comparison should conclude that both use size rhetorically, but toward opposite ends: emotional elevation versus democratic ordinariness.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing Realism with "realistic-looking" painting; it is a program about subject and politics.
- Treating Impressionism as only a brush technique, ignoring modern life and exhibition strategy.
- Lumping all Post-Impressionists into one style.
- Misplacing the 1874 exhibition or attributing it to the Salon.