The Funeral of Patroclus
Jacques-Louis David

1778-9

Homeric subject matter, typical of history paintings. Painting includes characters, symbols, and scnees from other parts of the Iliad, all combined into one panoramic format. 

David eventually abandons this direction and never completes more than this sketch.

Belisarius Begging Alms

Jacques-Louis David

1781

Like The Funeral of Patroclus, David's previous work, this draws inspiration from antiquity but the theme is more immediately relevant and the composition is more instantly legible.  

It speaks to the historically relatable sentiment of people in power suddenly being reduced to rags due to the tumultuous political climate in David's France.  The painting is on-trend, by being classically inspired, and all the same critical of and engaged with current events.

Oath of the Horatii

Jacques-Louis David

1785

Like Belisarius Begging Alms, David combines classical subject matter with immediate and relevant emotional impact.  The fatal collision between cousins, the over-investment in civic duty, and the familial distance contribute to his convoluted subject matter.

David's sterile use of scenery and space creates a stoic and critical isolation and a visually harsh image.  

This painting was 150% David's allotted canvas size.

The Death of Socrates

Jacques-Louis David

1787

This image celebrates Socrates' decision to consume hemlock and die aligned with his own principles.  This reflects revolutionary independence from tyranny. 

This painting is much smaller than Oath due to being a private commission.  The visible exit reduces the sombre quality of the painting- as well as the second "exit" as indicated by Socrates' pointed finger.  

Antoine Lavoisier and His Wife 

Jacques-Louis David

1788

This image of familial harmony, accented by seductively textured velvets & sheers, creates an intimate portrayal of the scientist instrumental to experimentation with and documentation of combustion.

The image displays the interests of both Lavoisier and his wife by depicting both combustion chambers and the wife's canvas.  

Contrast with Oath, which is much stiffer and divided.  Cf David's Paris & Helen, a classical subject that is mirrored in this work.

Lictors Returning To Brutus The Bodies of his Sons 

Jacques-Louis David

1789

Brutus was an early republican figure in Ancient Rome, during the period in history when "modern" civic virtues were established.  

When Brutus' sons are found to be participants in a conspiracy to reestablish monarchy, they are sentenced to death.  

The women are active in this image (cf Oath) and Brutus is obscured in shadow and malaise. The sewing basket, a feminine object, is symbolic of violence within domesticity, or the inability to mend this difficult situation.

Intervention of the Sabine Women

Jacques-Louis David

1799

David's Sabine Women elevates Oath's Camilla in Hersilia's action.  Hersilia pleads Romans and Sabines to overcome their differences and embrace rather than conflict.  

Post Revolutionary Era France was an era that well knew interfamilial bloodshed, making the painting highly relevant in its time.

Tennis Court Oath

Jacques-Louis David

1791

This sketch commemorates an oath made by the common people of France to stay united and uphold the new Revolutionary ideals of France.  This was one of the first major events of the French Revoltionary Era.  

Due to political turmoil and lack of funding, David never finished the painting he planned to make from this sketch.

Death of Marat

Jacques-Louis David

1793

my favorite David painting tbh

David's response to the Revolutionary's assassination was to depict his passing not as a violent struggle, but as a hushed, private, almost beautiful scene.  The Caravaggio-esque use of light and shadow and delicately gestural form creates a martyr of Marat, appearing more a saint than a modern man.

The Return of Marcus Sextus

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin

1799

This image depicts Marcus Sextus' return from a long exile, when he discovers his wife on her deathbed and his once-infant child grown and mourning.

This image had topical resolance with Guérin's audience, because many who were exiled or who fled France during the Reign of Terror (1793-4) were now returning under the supposedly stable consulate. 

1. History painting
2. Portraits
3. Genre scenes (images of everyday life)
4. Landscape
5. Still life

Jean-Baptiste Belley

Anne-Louis Girodet

1797

The former slave, Belley, is juxtaposed alongside a French Enlightenment philosopher.  This painting was made as commentary regarding France's abolition of slavery in 1794, following the Haitian Revolution. 

Revolt at Cairo

Anne-Louis Girodet

1810 

Girodet depicts an uprising of Middle Eastern citizens after Napoleon's invasion of Cairo.  This painting is an early hallmark of Romanticism due to its bright colors and energetic brushstrokes.  

Artist Moved to Despair by the Grandeur of Antique Fragments

Henry Fuesli 

1778-9

This sketch is a sentimental reflection on the historically significant role that art played in antiquity.  The figure in the painting weeps at the sculpture's sheer scale, and at the way that art was adulated and heroic in Classical times.

The Nightmare

Henry Fuesli

1781

Fuesli explores a fragmented, disjointed state in terms of gestural orientation, composition, and subject matter.  The scene exists between reality and fiction, and possibly indicates posession. The painting seems more modern and psychoanalytic than others in the academy at the same time.

Fuesli doesn't aim to depict a story from mythology or from the Bible– this scene is ostensibly one he imagined and chose to depict.  It has no grounding moralizing subject, which frightened viewers.

Glad Day (Albion Rose)

William Blake

1780

The mythological figure of Albion, who represents Britain, freeing himself of the shackles of materialism.

Heroic nude!

I don't really like or get this picture.  Whatever.

The Book of Urizen

William Blake 

1794

Urizen is the figure of isolated Reason in William Blake's stories.  Frontispiece.  Blake wrote and illustrated his own works.

Newton

William Blake

1795

Blake often employed the male heroic nude to remove a time period from the image, making it universally significant.  Newton is at the bottom of the ocean, symbolically removed from the normal and natural universe.  Newtom becomes a sort of mythical hero instead of a historical figure.

The Tyger

William Blake

1789 

Illustrated poem.  For Blake, words and art were inseparable.  He was a historically significant painter and poet.  

Don Sebastian Martinez 

Francisco Goya

1802

Respectful high-strata court portrait.  Personal friend of Goya's.  Martinez made a large amount of money from the slave trade. 

Madhouse

Francisco Goya

1812-19

Depicts a world in turmoil, like Spain in Goya's time.

The Miracle of St. Anthony

Francisco Goya

1798

Biblical subjects portrayed in a very mundane/secular manner.  Nothing celestial or supernatural, aside from the resurrection occurring.  By making the painting more mundane, Goya subverts expectations.  

The Grape Harvest

Francisco Goya

1786

This court painting is traditionally saccharine with its doll-like family in the foreground enjoying the fruits of the harvest, but also contains workers toiling in the background.

Carlos IV of Spain

Francisco Goya

1800-1801

The Bourbon monarchy– related to the recently deposed French Bourbons, hired Goya to be their court painter.  This painting contains many questionable pictoral aspects.  For isntance, King Carlos looks a little foolish (as he was known to be), and a few older individuals pictured look somewhat gruesome.  

The most likely interpretation is that Goya's dedication to representing the truth is more of an influence on the painting's less savory aspects, more than a desire for him to undermine their power. 

a plate from Los Capricios 

Francisco Goya

Late 1799

A series of subversive, pithy, and ironic situations, which were ultimately censored.  

Second of May 1808

Francisco Goya

1814

This image is a subverted history painting, in which the central figure is distorted and vulnerable, and not necessarily a protagonist.  There is no single definite protagonist.  The visual experience is almost sensual. 

Third of May

Francisco Goya

1814

This image is a secularization of martyrdom.  The victims are innocent and have faces to go with them, and the firing squad is anonymous.  This horrifying event lacks biblical transcendence and redemption. 

Cf Goya's print series, The Disasters of War 1810-1820

The Royal Company of the Philippines

Francisco Goya

1815

The shareholder's meeting of a company that profits off of colonialism.  The image is vacuous, ominous, and boring.  

The Forge

Francisco Goya

1819

This monumentally scaled genre subject has an earthy mien.  It refuses the tradition of virtuosity in subject matter. 

Knife Grinder

Francisco goya

1808-12

Once again, elevated version of a common scene.  

Napoleon Crossing the St. Bernard Pass

Jacques-Louis David

1800

I know all I need to know about this one tbh.

The Emperor Napoleon in his Study at the Tuileries

Jacques-Louis David

1812

poo 

Napoleon in the Plague House at Jaffa

1804

Antoine-Jean Gros

The male nude is reduced from heroism to a figure worth pity in this vivid, lurid painting.  This competition-winning image brims with fury and frustration, as well as Gros' "improvisatory flair." 

This image demonstrates the arbutary divide between Occidental and Oriental symbols.

Battle of Eylau

1808

Antoine-Jean Gros

Bloody and inconclusive battle.  Horror and the sublime meld together in the sprawling composition.  Napoleon's hand is extended in blessing of the wounded Prussians, who bow to him despite his own devastated troops and subsequent Pyrhhic victory.

Charging Chasseur

Théodore Géricault

1812

The propose of this painting is left ambiguous; is this a portrait, a piece of propaganda, or an allegory?  

The man is a soldier, a powerful character, but bears hesitance/reflection on his face.  This image is contradictory and tumultuous.  The scene of war is indicative of how intrigued Géricault was in the face of disaster.

Wounded Cuirassier 

Théodore Géricault

1814

The uneasy gaze of the soldier suggests an important presence beyond the bounds of the painting.  Heaven? Danger?  

The cuirassier's wound is not visible.  He is awkward and uncertain.  The battle seems far away in time and distance.

Cattle Market

Théodore Géricault

1817

Very anachronistic scene, putting classical-looking figures into a crass, mundane setting.  Done in Italy, while Géricault was experimenting with subjects and styles.

Alfred Dedreux as a Child

Théodore Géricault

1814

Géricault took an alternative stance to child portraiture.  He depicted children neither as dolls nor as miniature adults, but as uncannily self-confident lucid entities of their own sort.

Raft of the Medusa

Théodore Géricault

1818-19

This uncanny painting is of a well known and highly publicized disaster much akin to the sinking of the Titanic.  Géricault transforms a recent real event into a sort of epic narrative.

Géricault toyed with many different scenes regarding the Medusa, but settled on a moment of false hope– the survivors are trying to catch the attention of a ship sailing in the distance.  He was very interested in portraying the event truthfully, and interviewed survivors and examined drawings of the actual raft. 

The pyramidal/triangular motions of the survivors are positioned in counterpoint; the humans are making a pyramid leaning towards the boat, and the sail (and the wind) push them away.

Decapitated Heads

Théodore Géricault

1818

This painting of severed heads is part of a morgue-based series of studies Géricault did in preparation for Medusa.  This painting is very uncanny, and reminds one of the prevalent theory at the time (that turned out to be true); the head remains alive for some seconds after decapitation. 

Kleptomanaic, Gambling Addict, Insane Woman

Théodore Géricault

1822

Géricault was commissioned to do portraits of different kinds of insanity, as directed by an Enlightenment asylum-keeper who wished to study an objective relationship between inner insanity and outer presentation.  These paintings are markedly unidealized.  

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Insane Man

Théodore Géricault 

1822

Géricault was commissioned to do portraits of different kinds of insanity, as directed by an Enlightenment asylum-keeper who wished to study an objective relationship between inner insanity and outer presentation.  These paintings are markedly unidealized.  

The Insane Man notably displays delusions of grandeur in his military-esque outfit.  He gets his own flashcard because they couldn't all four fit on one flashcard.

Goulding Constable's Flowering Garden

John Constable

1815

Constable engaged landscape with an idealizing brush.  His landscapes seem to imply ghostly upkeep, as they are rarely populated, and certainly not by working people like gardeners.

The Hay Wain (Originally Landscape: Noon)

John Constable

1821

A rural scene.  Not accepted into the academy (because it's boring.) 

A hay wagon on John Constable's father's property.

Cloud Studies

John Constable

1820's or 30's

Constable was quite interested in the languid fluidity of cloud formation. 

If you look closely, you can see some pij flying in sky.

The Cenotaph

John Constable

1836

This memorial work, commissioned in honor of the artist Joshua Reynolds, locates academmy principles amidst the untamed wild.  Rather than busts of garden gods, Michaelangelo and Raphael flank this lone tombstone.