Painting and history during the French Restoration

In this interdisciplinary study, Beth S. Wright examines the profound impact that contemporary debates on history, the central focus of French intellectual and political activity in the first decades of the nineteenth century, had on painting. Analyzing the narrative strategies of historians such as Barante, Marchangy, Chateaubriand, and Thierry, Wright then demonstrates how artists created visual analogues to these various historical constructions.

Works by Ingres, Gericault, and Delacroix, as well as rarely seen works by the Troubadour school and contemporary book illustrations, are used to shed new light on Romantic historical painting and its immediate cultural context.