Nineteenth-Century Art: Neoclassicism to Post-Impressionism
This independent art-history module develops nineteenth-century art. Study the named works, compare their materials and formal features, and explain how artistic choices relate to function, patronage and context. These examples support shared subject foundations; they do not establish the regional examination’s official prescribed works, question pattern or regional marking criteria.
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.