How social upheavals after the collapse of the French Empire shaped
the lives and work of artists in early nineteenth-century Europe
As the French Empire collapsed between 1812 and 1815, artists throughout
Europe were left uncertain and adrift. The final abdication of Emperor
Napoleon, clearing the way for a restored monarchy, profoundly unsettled
prevailing national, religious, and social boundaries. In Restoration,
Thomas Crow combines a sweeping view of European art centers--Rome,
Paris, London, Madrid, Brussels, and Vienna--with a close-up look at
pivotal artists, including Antonio Canova, Jacques-Louis David, Théodore
Géricault, Francisco Goya, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Thomas
Lawrence, and forgotten but meteoric painters François-Joseph Navez and
Antoine Jean-Baptiste Thomas. Whether directly or indirectly, all were
joined in a newly international network, from which changing artistic
priorities and possibilities emerged out of the ruins of the old.
Crow examines how artists of this period faced dramatic circumstances,
from political condemnation and difficult diplomatic missions to a
catastrophic episode of climate change. Navigating ever-changing
pressures, they invented creative ways of incorporating critical events
and significant historical actors into fresh artistic works. Crow
discusses, among many topics, David's art and influence during exile,
Géricault's odyssey through outcast Rome, Ingres's drive to reconcile
religious art with contemporary mentalities, the titled victors over
Napoleon all sitting for portraits by Lawrence, and the campaign to
restore art objects expropriated by the French from Italy, prefiguring
the restitution controversies of our own time.
Beautifully illustrated, Restoration explores how cataclysmic social
and political transformations in nineteenth-century Europe reshaped
artists' lives and careers with far-reaching consequences.
Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the
Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
