Historical and Cultural Context

Events that shaped the arts during the late 1700's to the end of the 1800's.

1791 - Olympe de Gouges demanded the same rights for French women that French men were demanding for themselves (WH, p. 488).

1800-1810 - Napoleon built Europe's greatest empire since Roman times. The only major European countries outside Napoleon's power were Britain, the Ottoman empire, Russia, and Sweden (WH, p. 495).

1812 - Napoleon took his first steps on; the road to disaster, an attack on Russia (WH, p. 498).

1814 - Congress of Vienna, convened by the Great Powers -- Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia, used diplomacy to create the Vienna Settlement which effectively redrew the map of Europe and brought about 40 years of relative stability. (WH, p. 527)

1815 - Napoleon defeated at Waterloo in Belgium. Sent by the British to St. Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic, where he lived in exile for six years (1821) until he died of stomach ailments (cancer) (WH, p. 499).

1821-1830 - Greeks fight for independence from the Ottoman empire and become the first new nation-state. Nationalism, the belief that a person's greatest loyalty should be to a nation-state, starts to reshape the map of Europe. (WH, p. 531)

The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes. - Delacroix | Top

Eugene Delacroix - La Liberté Guidant Le Peuple -
Painted on 28 July 1830, to commemorate the July Revolution
that had just brought Louis-Philippe to the French throne -
http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/

1850-1864 - The Tai ping Rebellion was a radical political upheaval that was probably the most important event in China in the 19th century. It ravaged 17 provinces, took almost 20,000,000 lives, and irreversible altered the Ch'ing dynasty. Both the Chinese Communists and the Chinese Nationalists trace their origin to the Tai pings. - encyclopedia britanica (http://www.wfu.edu/Academic-departments/History/whistory/timeline/seasia/Taiping_1850.htm)

1855 - Since the begining of the seventeenth century, Japan chose to be cut off from the rest of the world. They lived, contently, in isolation. This allowed them to preserve their culture and ways of life. Around the year 1855, Japan realized that their traditional military defenses were inferior to that of Europeans and Americans. - McNeill, William. A History of the Human Community (http://www.wfu.edu/Academic-departments/History/whistory/timeline/seasia/1855.htm)

1883 - The French took Vietnam over as a colony in 1883. This lasted until 1939 when Vietnam once again gained partial independence, becoming a possession of the French until 1945. (http://www.wfu.edu/Academic-departments/History/whistory/timeline/seasia/French%20Vietnam.htm)

• Allston
• Bierstadt
• Blake
• Church
• Cole
• Constable
• Cozens
• Delacroix
• Etty
• Friedrich
• Fuseli
• Gericult
• Goya
• Martin
• Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner - Snowstorm - 1842 -
http://www.uh.edu/engines/romanticism/