Neoclassicism Paintings

What is Neoclassicism?

Neoclassicism emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theater, music and architecture, drawing inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome, largely due to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann during the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Its popularity expanded throughout Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals.

The main Neoclassical current emerged from the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment and reached its peak in the early-to-mid-19th century, eventually competing with Romanticism. In architecture the style endured through the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st, which is why the word is often used for a building first and a painting second.

In painting, neoclassicism art means ancient Rome and ancient Greece used as a moral argument. Clear drawing, sculptural figures, a shallow stage, a subject taken from Roman history, Greek myth or the classical ideal of duty, and none of the movement and drama of the Baroque century before it. Jacques-Louis David is the artist this style is usually explained through, and the French Revolution and Napoleon are what it ends up painting. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres carried the same discipline into the middle of the 19th century, and William-Adolphe Bouguereau carried it to the end.

The word also covers a revival of classicism that had happened once before, in the 17th century, with Nicolas Poussin in Rome. Renaissance art had gone back to classical antiquity in its own time; this was the third time Europe did it, and the first time it was done as a deliberate program. The rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum is what set it off, and the Grand Tour is how it travelled: an art student went to Italy, saw ancient sculpture, and went home with a new idea of fine art. That is why the same period produced neoclassical buildings in Edinburgh, Philadelphia and Saint Petersburg, and why the artists in this collection come from eight different countries. The period influenced everything from a coin to a cathedral, and the painting is only the part of it you can hang at home.

Famous Neoclassicism painters

Five painters of neoclassicism art, each with a collection here. Three are French, one Italian, one American, which is roughly the shape of the style itself. Each line below says how many of that artist we hold, because with a period this large the depth of the collection matters as much as the name.

• Jacques-Louis David: 64 works, including The Oath of the Horatii of 1784 and Napoleon Crossing the Alps. The painter of the Revolution and then of the Empire, and the one name every account of neoclassical art begins with
• Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: 100 works. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was David's pupil and the artist who carried the style into the middle of the 19th century, at which point the Romantics were already winning the argument
• Nicolas Poussin: 115 works, the 17th-century classicism the Neoclassical movement looked back to, including Et in Arcadia ego of 1637 to 1638
• Pompeo Batoni: 140 works from Rome, the painter the Grand Tour sat for on its way home, and the reason so many English gentlemen were painted with a piece of ancient sculpture behind them
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau: a French academic painter who used mythological themes in realistic genre paintings, making modern interpretations of classical subjects with an emphasis on the female human body, and who received top prices for his work in his lifetime. 342 works here, alongside 66 by Benjamin West and 59 by Angelica Kauffman, one of the few women artists of the period with a body of work large enough to fill a collection. 45 more by Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, who painted the French court before the Revolution and half of Europe after it

Famous Neoclassicism paintings

Famous neoclassical paintings you can order as oil on canvas. The list runs from the Roman history subjects that defined the style, through the Napoleonic portraits that made it official, to the classical nudes that kept it alive for another fifty years. Life-size bodies, clear edges, and a finish that hides the brush: those are the three things to look for, and they influenced European taste for a full century. Each one is painted by hand in oil, in seven sizes, and photographed for your approval before it ships.

Rome, Greece and the moral subject

The core of the style. A scene from Livy or Plutarch, staged like a relief, with everyone arranged so the moral is legible from across the room. These are the pictures the Age of Enlightenment wanted: history as an argument about how to live, painted in the grammar of ancient sculpture.

• The Oath of Horatii, Jacques-Louis David, 1784
• Et in Arcadia ego, Nicolas Poussin, 1637 to 1638, a pastoral scene with idealised shepherds from classical antiquity gathered around an austere tomb
• Roman Women Offering Their Jewellery, Vincenzo Camuccini
• Scythian Envoys to King Darius of Persia, Pranciskus Smuglevicius, an ancient subject painted by a Lithuanian in Rome
• Aurora and Cephalus, Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, a Greek subject in the grand manner
• Antiochus and Stratonice, Pompeo Batoni, a story from antiquity about love and duty
• Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty, Pompeo Batoni, an allegory of a life running out
• Peace and Justice, Pompeo Batoni, allegory in the Roman style
• Satan, Sin and Death, William Hogarth, from Milton, painted by an artist better known for satire

Napoleon, revolution and the state portrait

What happens when the style meets its own time. The Revolution, the Empire, the execution of a queen, and the official portrait, which is where the movement earned its keep. Every head of state in Europe wanted to be painted as a Roman for about forty years, and many of them were.

• Napoleon Crossing the Alps, Jacques-Louis David
• Marie Antoinette Taken to her Execution, William Hamilton, dated 16 October 1793
• Portrait of Kyrylo Rozumovsky, Pompeo Batoni, the most viewed painting in this collection
• Portrait of Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck and his Family, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
• Portrait of Emperor Pedro I, Simplicio Rodrigues de Sa, the style exported to Brazil

The classical body

The last and longest chapter of the style is the nude and the mythological figure, held in a classical pose and finished until the brush disappears. William-Adolphe Bouguereau is the artist who kept this going into the 1890s, and 342 works here are his. It is the part of this history that fell out of critical favor for a hundred years and never fell out of demand. Bouguereau received top prices for his work in his own lifetime and enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, and his death in 1905 closes the account.

• Nymphs and Satyr, Bouguereau, four nymphs and a life-size satyr, the work of his that sells most often here
• Dante and Virgil, Bouguereau, the eighth circle of the Inferno, and the least classical thing he ever painted
• Pieta, Bouguereau, a religious subject in a classical frame
• Night, Bouguereau, an allegory of the hours
• The Dance, Bouguereau
• The Abduction of Psyche, Bouguereau, Greek myth at full scale
• The Return of Spring, Bouguereau
• Regina Angelorum, Bouguereau, the religious side of the same discipline
• Roman Charity, Bouguereau, a subject from ancient Rome
• Pandora, Bouguereau
• Song of the Angels, Bouguereau, the best selling work of his in this catalogue
• The Young Shepherdess, Bouguereau
• Achilles and the Centaur Chiron, Pompeo Batoni, Greek myth from the Roman studio
• Allegory of Sensuality, Pompeo Batoni
• Portrait of Georges Anthony, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

Related styles

Romanticism paintings for sale are the movement Neoclassicism ended up competing with in the early-to-mid-19th century. High Renaissance art reproductions took classical antiquity as their foundation three centuries earlier, and were themselves the model for this later revival. academic art for sale are where the style continues after 1850, Bouguereau included, and where the French academy kept the classical ideal alive until Impressionism took the audience away.

Frequently asked questions

What is neoclassical art?

A Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theater, music and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. It was born in Rome, largely through the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann during the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and it spread as a generation of European art students finished the Grand Tour and went home with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. In a painting it shows up as clear outline, sculptural modeling and a subject from ancient history: the design of the picture is meant to be read, not felt.

When was Neoclassicism?

It emerged from the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment and reached its peak in the early-to-mid-19th century, eventually competing with Romanticism. In architecture the style continued through the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st, and in France it never really stopped: Ingres was still working in it in the 1860s and Bouguereau to the end of the century, by which time modern painting had moved on without him. The date of a painting matters less here than the discipline it was made with.

Which neoclassical painting is best known here?

Jacques-Louis David's The Oath of the Horatii and Napoleon Crossing the Alps, and Poussin's Et in Arcadia ego. Pompeo Batoni's Portrait of Kyrylo Rozumovsky is the most viewed page in the collection, and Bouguereau's Nymphs and Satyr is the one that sells. For a room rather than a hall, the portraits work better than the history pictures: they were designed for a house, and the history pictures were designed for a wall thirty feet high.