From the eighteenth century, organised circuses toured cities, and some were established to operate year-round. Here are paintings to make you gasp with wonder.
Friant
A lot changed in painting in the 1890s. Within just a few years, Naturalism went from being all the rage to old hat. These paintings show how.
From physicists to photographers developing their plates, Naturalist painters recorded the science and technology of their time.
Was painting ‘invented’ by the maid of Corinth? What is ‘shadow play’, and how have painters extended it to religious works? A short history of shadows in painting.
Eight of Cabanel’s most precocious and brilliant pupils. Only one won the Prix de Rome, and the others went on to develop Naturalist art. Was Cabanel the father of this new movement?
In search of realist or naturalist paintings of ballooning and early powered flight. Some surprises, and paintings by Watteau, Puvis de Chavannes, and Henri Rousseau.
After a series of major paintings in the 1890s, he devoted himself to print-making. An aviation enthusiast, he painted ballooning, and an early air ambulance.
Trained in the same studio as Bastien-Lepage and Gervex, he emerged a bitter critic of academic painting. He painted several masterpieces of Naturalism.
