Nineteenth-Century Art: Neoclassicism to Post-Impressionism
This domain follows European art from c. 1780 to 1900 through five movements. The exam expects chronological confidence, the ability to define each movement's formal and ideological programme, and careful reading of a single work within its Salon or exhibition context.
Core rules and vocabulary
- Neoclassicism. Winckelmann's ideal of noble simplicity, firm contour, moral exemplum: David's Oath of the Horatii (1784) and Death of Marat (1793); Canova; Ingres keeps the line but breaks the ethics.
- Romanticism. Subjectivity, the sublime, colour over outline, exotic and national pasts: Gericault's Raft of the Medusa (1819), Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830), Friedrich's landscapes, Turner's light, Constable's English countryside; neo-Gothic historicism in architecture.
- Realism. Courbet's Stone Breakers (1849) and Burial at Ornans (1849-1850), his 1855 Pavilion of Realism; Millet, Daumier; photography (Daguerre 1839) reshapes reportage and portraiture.
- Impressionism. 1874 exhibition in Nadar's studio; the label mocked Monet's Impression, Sunrise (1872); plein-air painting, broken brushwork, modern leisure, series (Rouen Cathedral); Morisot, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro.
- Post-Impressionism. Cezanne's constructive stroke and 'cylinder, sphere, cone'; Van Gogh's impasto and expressive colour (Arles, 1888-1889); Gauguin's synthetism and cloisonnism; Seurat's divisionism (Grande Jatte, 1884-1886); Symbolism as a parallel current.
Worked example
Prompt: analyse The Raft of the Medusa. Reasoning: history-painting scale given to a contemporary scandal (the 1816 wreck and official negligence); the composition climbs a double pyramid from corpses to the signalling figure; strong tonal contrasts and dead flesh in the foreground reject Neoclassical idealisation; Gericault researched hospitals and the morgue. The result is Romantic in subject and ambition, with academic figure studies underneath.
Traps that cost marks
Calling Courbet's realism Impressionism; giving Impression, Sunrise the date 1874 instead of its painting date 1872; attributing pointillism to Van Gogh; labelling Delacroix Neoclassical because Liberty uses a classical allegorical figure; ignoring photography's impact on Realism.