The 19th century moved from the emotion of Romanticism, through the truth-telling of Realism, to the light and colour of Impressionism and the dreams of Symbolism. These are the movements that began between 1800 and 1899, in order.
Romanticism
Emotion, imagination and the overwhelming power of nature, in reaction to the age of reason.
Key artists: Francisco Goya, William Blake, Taras Shevchenko, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Key features: Emotion and imagination valued above reason; Awe before the power of nature: storms, mountains and the sea (the 'sublime'); Interest in the exotic, the supernatural and the medieval past.
Hudson River School
American landscape painters who celebrated the wilderness of the Hudson Valley and, later, the American West.
Key artists: Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Asher Brown Durand
Key features: Large, detailed landscapes of American wilderness; Romantic sense of awe and the divine in nature; Carefully observed light, often golden and atmospheric.
Barbizon School
French painters who worked near the village of Barbizon in the Forest of Fontainebleau and painted nature directly.
Key artists: Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Frédéric Bazille, Charles-François Daubigny, Théodore Rousseau
Key features: Landscape treated as a subject in its own right; Painting from direct observation, often outdoors; Muted, earthy colours and loose brushwork.
Realism
Ordinary people and everyday life, painted without idealisation.
Key artists: Ilya Repin, Gustave Courbet, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet
Key features: Everyday subjects and working people instead of myth or history; Truthful, unidealised depiction of the world; Often a social or political edge.
Pre-Raphaelites
A brotherhood founded in London in 1848 that rejected academic convention in favour of sharp detail, bright colour and literary subjects.
Key artists: John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, John William Waterhouse, Edward Burne-Jones
Key features: Intense detail and bright, jewel-like colour; Painting on a wet white ground to make colours glow; Subjects from the Bible, medieval legend, Shakespeare and poetry.
Arts and Crafts Movement
A design reform movement that championed handcraft, honest materials and beauty in everyday objects.
Key artists: William Morris, Carl Larsson, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Eric Gill
Key features: Handcraft valued over machine production; Simple forms and honest use of materials; Patterns inspired by nature, especially plants and birds.
Modernism
The broad break with tradition that ran from Manet and the Impressionists to Abstract Expressionism and beyond.
Key artists: Auguste Rodin, Jean Cocteau, Amedeo Modigliani, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Key features: Deliberate break with academic tradition; Experiment with new materials, techniques and forms; Emphasis on the flat surface of the painting and its materials.
Impressionism
Light, colour and modern life caught with quick, visible brushwork. The group held its first exhibition in Paris in 1874.
Key artists: Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet
Key features: Visible, broken brushstrokes; Capturing fleeting effects of light, weather and atmosphere; Painting outdoors (en plein air).
Symbolism
Dreams, myth and mood rather than the observed world.
Key artists: Auguste Rodin, Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, Wassily Kandinsky
Key features: Ideas, dreams and emotions rather than the visible world; Myth, religion, death and desire as recurring themes; Mysterious, often unsettling atmosphere.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who built on Impressionism but pushed towards structure, symbolism and expressive colour.
Key artists: Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin
Key features: Builds on Impressionist colour but rejects its focus on fleeting effects; Strong structure and geometric form (Cézanne); Expressive, emotional colour and brushwork (Van Gogh).
Naïve Art
Art by artists without formal training, with clear outlines, bright colour and a direct, childlike vision.
Key artists: Maria Prymachenko, Niko Pirosmani, Henri Rousseau, Grandma Moses
Key features: Artists without academic training; Simple, flat forms and bright colours; Unusual or no perspective.
Pointillism
Pictures built from small dots or dabs of pure colour, pioneered by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.
Key artists: Henri Matisse, Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac
Key features: Small, separate dots or dabs of pure colour; Colours mix in the viewer's eye rather than on the palette; Based on contemporary scientific theories of colour and optics.
Les Nabis
A group of young Paris painters, including Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, inspired by Paul Gauguin.
Key artists: Pierre Bonnard, Émile Bernard, Félix Vallotton, Aristide Maillol
Key features: Flat areas of bold, non-naturalistic colour; Decorative patterns and simplified forms; Intimate domestic interiors as well as spiritual subjects.
Art Nouveau
Flowing, organic lines in painting, posters, design and architecture.
Key artists: Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, Victor Horta, Otto Wagner
Key features: Flowing, curving 'whiplash' lines; Forms inspired by plants, flowers and insects; Unity of the arts: architecture, furniture, glass, jewellery and posters.
Frequently asked questions
What art movement came before Impressionism?
Realism, led by Gustave Courbet from the 1840s, and the Barbizon School of landscape painters directly preceded Impressionism.