Eighteenth During the 18th cen tury the art of the Netherlands passed into an eclipse, recognized, and deplored, by the na tional historians, and of Germany into another, which was long hailed as a Belgium, the battle-ground of Europe for so many years, exhausted and ravaged under its constantly changing rulers, could furnish no encouragement to the arts, and the painters, like those of Holland, with a very few excep tions, abandoned their own initiative and the study of native art for the servile imitation of the works of their predecessors,— the portrait ists and the figure painters, such as Rubens and Lebrun ; the landscapists, like Poussin; the bat tle painters, like Philips Wouwerman (q.v.), etc. In Germany, the revolt against the general decline was called the Classic Movement, the first of the three great epochs into which this revival is divided, and which is dated from the arrival of Raphael Mengs (q.v.) in Rome, in 1741. The future leaders in the second phase of this movement, Cornelius, Overbeck, Veit, Schadow, etc., were all born in the very last years of the century. Great Britain and France, on the contrary, developed, in a number of distinct schools each, fresh evidences of a national and original art, in practically all the branches of painting. In portraiture, the British record the names of Reynolds, Gains borough, Romney and Raeburn ; in genre, not always satiric, Hogarth— one of the most pre eminently national of all artists, and Wilkie; in landscape, Gainsborough, Old Crome, Con stable and Turner. In academical and historic art, the Americans, Copley and West, rose to international eminence. In France, the last days of the monarchy were made illustrious by the delicate and graceful courtly art of Watteau (q.v.), Pater, Lancret and Fragonard, the frail idylism of Greuze (q.v.) and the admirable naturalism of Chardin (q.v.)— to be succeeded in their turn by the pedantic °classicism)) of David and the Empire. This century is dis tinguished also by the growing recognition of the popular interest in art, encouraged by the opening of royal galleries and the dissemination of engraving. Three female painters appear, whose graceful talents entitle them to recogni tion,— in Venice, Rosalba, Carriera (q.v.) 1675 1757) ; in Germany, Angelica Kauffmann (q.v.) (1741-1807); and in France, Mme. Vigee-Lebrun (q.v) (1755-1842). In Italy, the last glories of the Venetian school flamed up in the daring and truly decorative work of Giambattista Tiepolo (q.v.) (1696-1770).
Nineteenth During the 19th cen tury the supremacy in painting and sculpture was transferred to France; Paris, with its annual official Salons, became the recognized capital of the fine arts for Europe and America. French art in this century has been considered to have passed through three great periods, cor responding closely with changes in the national government,—Classicism, Romanticism and the third period, dating from 1848, the schools of the Second Empire and the Third Republic. All these have naturally had many subdivisions. The classicism of Louis David (q.v.), with its sacrifice of everything in painting to the outline and to what was considered to be an imitation of the antique, was obliged to yield gradually to the Napoleonic art, representations of battles and of state ceremonies, and to genre painting,— the last not being officially recognized till 1816. Classical painting, which dominated in Europe for 50 years, was almost exclusively figure painting; its rigid formalism gave way to a greater sympathy with nature even in the works of David's immediate pupils and followers, Regnault (q.v.), Picot (q.v), Baron Girard (q.v.), Gros (q.v.) and Ingres (q.v.). And much more living and sympathetic classic taste than David's was that of Prud'hon (q.v.). Ro manticism found its first expression in painting in the works of Giricault (q.v.), though Delacroix
(q.v.), more emotional and more of a colorist, is considered to have been the leader. The essential narrowness of this form of art was also gradually tempered by naturalism, so that its range became wider,— as in the very differ ent art of Decamps (q.v.), first of the Oriental ists, and of Ary Scheffer (q.v.) and Paul Delaroche (q.v.). Landscape painting began to assume that great importance which it has ever since maintained in modern art, and the way was opened for the famous Fontainebleau school of Corot (q.v.), Rousseau (q.v.), Troyon (q.v.), Diaz (q.v.), Daubigny (q.v.) and Jules Du pre (q.v.), in which the painting of cattle is also raised to its highest eminence. The school of the peasant — as it might be called — which has played so large a part in contemporary painting, both of France and of all the na tions whose students have imbibed French methods and conceptions, permits of such a wide range of treatment as that between the very frank realism of Courbet (q.v) and the gloom) .of Jean-Francois Mil let (q.v.). Somewhere between these extremes are the rural scenes of Lhermitte (q.v.) and those of Jules Briton (q.v.), in which realism is tempered with a certain style, with a strong desire to avoid the merely commonplace.
The latter half of the 19th century saw the rise of so many and so widely differing move ments and tendencies in French painting that no general classification is possible. Under the Second Empire the official art, that of the Academie and the Institut, included such cele brated names as those of Gerome (q.v.), Jules Joseph Lefebvre (q.v.), Bonnat (q.v.), Cabanel (q.v.), Baudry (q.v.), Bouguereau (q.v.) and Henner. In Genre, characterized usually by excessive delicacy and accuracy of finish, the highest place was held by Meissonier (q.v.) ; and but little inferior was the work of Louis Leloir and Vibert (q.v). Something of the haunting antique influence appears in the work of Gleyre, Couture (q.v.) and Flandrin (q.v.), protesting against the rising flood of "realism)); something also in that of the so-called Neo Grecs, of which the two most sincere and per sistent were Hamon (q.v.) and Aubert. The most graceful of the Orientalists was Fromentin (q.v.), and the painters of Eastern subjects, in very varying methods, include many of the most celebrated names of this epoch, Gerome, Henri Regnault (q.v.), Benjamin-Constant (q.v.), Belly, Boulanger and others. Of the mystical school, uninfluenced by any conventions or traditions, the most striking example is that of Gustave Moreau (q.v.) ; and one of the most distinguished and honored of the older men is Hebert (q.v.), whose delicate, melancholy art has not varied since 1850. Nearly all the French figure painters are portraitists. Military subjects have been rendered with a realistic accuracy and a dramatic force never before attained, by Yvon (q.v.), Detaille (q.v.), De Neuville, Aime Morot, Roll and others; mural paint ing received a new inspiration from Puvis de Chavannes (q.v.) ; a warmer splendor of color than that of the Venetians was revived by Mon ticelli (q.v.) ; and the still-life of the early Dutch painters equaled by that of Dosgoffe and Vollon (q.v.) One of the most im portant manifestations of this contemporary school was that of the Impressionists (q.v.), with their new theories of presenting absolute realities, and of which the most uncompromis ing advocates among the leaders were Manet (q.v.), Monet (q.v.), Sisley, Pissaro, Caillebotte, and others. While the influence of this innova tion still lingers, the contemporary art of the Salons shows but very little trace of it. It is to be noticed that the great decline in all artistic value of these annual Salon exhibitions, and of the national art generally, within the last 10 years, has been admitted by the French themselves.