Painting and History during the French Restoration
Painting and History during the French Restoration
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In this interdisciplinary study, Beth Wright examines the profound impact that contemporary debates on history, the central focus of French intellectual and political activity in the first decades of the nineteenth century, had on painting. Analysing the narrative strategies of historians such as Barante, Marchangy, Chateaubriand and Thierry, Wright then demonstrates how artists reflected these various historical constructions. Works by Ingres, Gericault and Delacroix, as well as rarely seen works by the troubadour school and contemporary book illustrations, are used to shed new light on Romantic historical painting and its immediate cultural context. Awarded the Dallas Museum of Art 1998 Vasari Award.
- Closely analyses original art works and literary texts citing contemporary historians and art critics
- Incorporates theatrical literature, book illustration and graphic arts
- Examines Romantic historical painting in the context of political events, historiography and historical fiction
Reviews & endorsements
' … offers an exciting, persuasive, and original interpretation of the interrelationship between historical writings and historical paintings from the fall of Napoleon to the July Revolution in 1830. This excellent interdisciplinary study makes a very significant contribution to cultural history as well as art history and will be important to scholars and students in many fields.' Eighteenth-Century Studies
' … bold conceptual framework for understanding the painting of the Restoration breaks with the standard developmental narrative tracing the rise of historicism in French art in the first half of the nineteenth century. As such, it is greatly to be welcomed …' Art History
Product details
October 1997Hardback
9780521572033
285 pages
262 × 187 × 24 mm
1.01kg
60 b/w illus.
Unavailable - out of print August 2004
Table of Contents
- 1. Imagining the Past in 1827: A Note on Methodology
- 2. Everything is Optical: The Revolution in Historical Narration and the Dilemma of Historical Painting
- 3. Precious Relics from the Shipwreck of Generations: The Morality of Local Color
- 4. Witnesses to Catastrophe: The Dramatization of History
- 5. Painting Thoughts: Romantic Liberalism and the Challenge to Historical Representation
- 6. Restoration Historiography's Legacy in the Visual Arts.
