French Landscapes

Neoclassicism/Romanticism (1750-1850) followed the Enlightenment with Voltaire and Rousseau calling for reason and common good to replace the authority of tradition. Artists turned away from the ornate and sensuous Rococo with its aristocratic subjects back to nature and morality expressed by Greuze in his paintings of the common people, and by David in his historical masterpieces inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution. His followers split between Ingres' defense of David, and the others led by Delacroix who turned to Romantic literature for inspiration. Landscape pictures became the most characteristic form. Carot was the first and best. A group of younger artists settled in tiny Barbizon near Fontainebleau and began to paint modern landscape pictures in nature, en plein air (Rousseau, Millet). Their approachable subject matter appealed to the new, more democratic market and was widely collected in America. Below you will find the artists arranged chronologically. For other periods, Art Directory; for posters and fine prints Art by French Artists;  French Architecture.

Neoclassicism and Romanticism 19th-century

General

•  Modernity and Modernism : French... by Frascina

•  Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters,... by Bann

Ernest Meissonier 

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805)

 Greuze is best known  for bust-length images of tender young girls. He also left a large collection of drawings and studies in red chalk, pen and wash.

Learn more:

•  Jean-Baptiste Greuze : The Laundress... by Bailey
   

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

He was an unofficial painter to the Republic during the French Revolution. He is perhaps best known for his large canvases of Napoleon during the Empire. 

Jean-Antoine Houdon (sculptor)

Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767-1824)

Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835)

Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867)

Learn more:

• Portraits by Ingres Image of an Epoch

•   Ingres 

Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) 

Honore Daumier (1808-1879)

Camile Carot (1796-1875) First and greatest French landscape pictures

Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867) Landscape pictures: Barbizon School

Jean Francois Millet (1814-1875)

Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) Animals 

Francois Rude (sculptor) (1784-1855)

Antoine Louis Barye (sculptor)

Auguste Preault (sculptor)

Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (sculptor)

Auguste Bartholdi 

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