The Acadamy

Academic Art is the painting and sculpture produced under the influence of the European Academies, where many artists received their formal training. It is characterized by its highly finished style, its use of historical or mythological subject matter, and its moralistic tone. Neoclassical Art was closely associated with the Academies.

The term "Academic Art" is associated particularly with the French Academy and its influence on the Salons in the 19th century. Artists such as Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme epitomize this style.  

• Adolphe William Bouguereau

• [French Academic Painter, 1825-1905]

• I accept and respect all schools of painting which have as their basis the sincere study of nature, the search for the true and the beautiful. As for the mystics, the impressionists, the pointillists, etc., I don't see the way they see. That is my only reason for not liking them.

• - Bouguereau

Romanticism•

Romanticism might best be described as anti-Classicism. A reaction against Neoclassicism, it is a deeply-felt style which is individualistic, beautiful, exotic, and emotionally wrought.

Although Romanticism and Neoclassicism were philosophically opposed, they were the dominant European styles for generations, and many artists were affected to a greater or lesser degree by both. Artists might work in both styles at different times or even mix the styles, creating an intellectually Romantic work using a Neoclassical visual style.

•   In the United States, the leading Romantic movement was the Hudson River School of dramatic landscape painting.

Impressionism, and through it almost all of 20th century art, is also firmly rooted in the Romantic tradition.

J.M. William Turner

John Constable

Delecroix

• France, Mid-19th Century

• The Barbizon School was a group of landscape artists working in the region of the French town of Barbizon. They rejected the Academic tradition, abandoning theory in an attempt to achieve a

truer representation of the countryside, and are considered to be part of the French Realist movement.

Théodore Rousseau is the best-known member of the group.

The Barbizon School artists are often considered to have been forerunners of the Impressionists, who took a similar philosophical approach to their art.

  • Consider This…Previously, Paints had to be made by hand and were often stored in Pigs

Bladders. About this time, paint in tubes became available as well as collapsible easels. This enabled artists to go out into the world and observe and examine nature with the same intensity as the figure in the studio. For the first time the Landscape itself became a legitimate subject in painting.

The Barbizon School

Rousseau, Théodore [French, 1812-1867]

Camille Pissarro:The First Impressionist

Eugene Boudin

Monet

Haystacks

Water Lillies

Renoir

Degas

Sisley

Van Gogh

Seuret