Neoclassicism

The return to the clarity and virtue of ancient Greece and Rome, from about 1760 to 1830, fed by the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum and by Winckelmann's praise of 'noble simplicity and calm grandeur'. In France Jacques-Louis David painted stern Roman heroes and then the Revolution itself (The Death of Marat); his pupil Ingres perfected an ideal, flawless line; Canova carved white marble gods. Figures stand in shallow, frieze-like spaces, outlines are hard, colour is subordinate to drawing, and subjects are civic sacrifice, history and myth. The style suited revolutions and empires alike, from Napoleon's Paris to St Petersburg.

How to tell it apart: Rococo before it is playful and pastel; Romanticism, its contemporary rival, prefers loose brushwork, rich colour and strong emotion.

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Artists

Salvador Dalí · Francisco Goya · Auguste Rodin · Jacques-Louis David · Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi · Jean-Léon Gérôme · Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun · Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres · Joshua Reynolds · Nicolas Poussin · Henry Fuseli · John Soane · Antonio Canova · Frederic Leighton · Gilbert Stuart · Benjamin West · Giovanni Battista Piranesi · Edmonia Lewis · Claude Lorrain · Angelica Kauffmann · John Singleton Copley · Charles Willson Peale · Bertel Thorvaldsen · Charles Le Brun · Philippe de Champaigne · Karl Friedrich Schinkel · John William Godward · François Gérard · Alexander Ivanov · Rembrandt Peale

Best-known works

“The Death of Marat” — Jacques-Louis David, 1793
“Grande Odalisque” — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1814
“The Oath of the Horatii” — Jacques-Louis David, 1784
“Napoleon Crossing the Alps” — Jacques-Louis David, 1801
“Statue of Liberty” — Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, 1886
“The Coronation of Napoleon” — Jacques-Louis David, 1807
“Lion Monument” — Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1821
“Marie Antoinette with a Rose” — Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1783
“The Source” — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1856
“The Lament for Icarus” — Herbert James Draper, 1898
“The Death of General Wolfe” — Benjamin West, 1770
“Lansdowne Portrait” — Gilbert Stuart, 1796
“The Slave Market” — Gustave Boulanger, 1882
“Marie Antoinette and Her Children” — Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1787
“Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss” — Antonio Canova, 1794
“A Dance to the Music of Time” — Nicolas Poussin, 1635
“Ulysses and the Sirens” — Herbert James Draper, 1909
“Italia and Germania” — Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 1811
“The Appearance of Christ Before the People” — Alexander Ivanov, 1847
“La Circassienne au Bain” — Merry-Joseph Blondel, 1814
“Oedipus and the Sphinx” — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808
“The Intervention of the Sabine Women” — Jacques-Louis David, 1799
“Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus” — Joshua Reynolds, 1788
“Farewell of Hector and Andromache” — Anton Losenko, 1773
“The Valpinçon Bather” — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808
“Athenaeum Portrait” — Gilbert Stuart, 1796
“A nude woman doing her hair before a mirror” — Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1841
“Morpheus and Iris” — Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, 1811
“Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus” — Angelica Kauffmann, 1774
“Vénus Anadyomène” — Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808