Sunday, May 18, 2025

Narrative Tendencies (1845-1881)

Antoine Wiertz
Battle of Greeks and Trojans for the Body of Patroclus
ca. 1845
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Wilhelm Marstrand
Last Night of Carnival on the Corso in Rome
ca. 1848
oil on canvas
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

François-Joseph Navez
Pilgrimage in the Roman Campagna
1848
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Zenobia discovered by Shepherds
on the Banks of the Araxes

1850
oil on canvas
Musée de l'École Nationale Supérieure
des Beaux-Arts, Paris

Abbondio Sangiorgio
Mythological Scene
ca. 1850
drawing
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

François-Auguste Biard
Mal de mer sur une Corvette anglaise
1857
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Joseph Lies
Disasters of War
1858
oil on panel
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Ferdinand Heilbuth
Painter Luca Signorelli with the Corpse of his Son
1859
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

François Debon
Caesar among the Druids
1867
oil on canvas
Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Ernest Meissonier
The Information
(Peasant addressing Napoleonic General Desaix)
1867
oil on panel
Dallas Museum of Art

Arnold Böcklin
Ruggiero and Angelica
(scene from Orlando Furioso of Ariosto)
1873
tempera on panel
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Joseph Caraud
The Pricked Finger
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

John Frederick Lewis
The Street and Mosque al-Ghouri in Cairo
1875
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Hermann Julius Schlösser
Prometheus and Epimetheus before Pandora
1878
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jules-Charles Boquet 
Mourning
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Vasily Surikov
The Morning of Streltsy's Execution
1881
oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

"For one night I saw Urania in my sleepe appeare unto me, or better to say, my conscience taking the advantage of my bodyes rest, the hatefull enemie to the soules blisse, and in that quiet shewed unto mee, my deerest shepherdesse justly accusing me, and condemning mee.  I had no way to escape, if not by this meanes; I rose, I left Dalinea for Urania's fury, whose sweete substance I lost for Dalinea's love, I have now left both, both injur'd, both afflicted by me.  Why should I then continue such an affliction to the rarest of women? and a vexation to the worst, as I am unto my unblessed selfe.  Assist me, good Father, in my misery, this is truth I have told you, and more then ought to live on earth or I hope can be found againe; wherfore that as all ill is in mee, I desire, nay, covet to end, that the world may be no longer infected with that plague, but as knit in me, that knot may never be unty'd, but end, and conclude with me." 

– from The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, by the right honourable the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter to the right noble Robert, Earle of Leicester, and neece to the ever famous and renowned Sʳ Phillips Sidney knight, and to ye most excellant Lady Mary Countess of Pembroke, late deceased (London: John Marriott and John Grismand, 1621)