Over the course of the 1800s, Britain underwent such significant social changes that by the close of the century, both the country’s cultural and physical landscape were almost unrecognisable. The Royal Academy remained the key institution for the training of artists and the subsequent display of their works. The century began with John Constable and JMW Turner dominating British art and celebrating the beauty and drama of the English countryside and coastline. However as time progressed, rebellious groups such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood challenged the conventions of image-making, both in terms of concept and technique. This was also the era of towering Victorian Academic artists including Lord Leighton. Revivals in the Gothic style affected not just architecture but also sculpture and key figures such as John Ruskin and William Morris encouraged a total rejection of industrial mass-production. The Arts & Crafts Movement was one aspect of this attitude. 

A new century brought with it aspects of the traditionalism of the previous era, with some artists continuing the themes of the Pre-Raphaelites. However, key factors, including the significant number of women artists studying at the Slade and Roger Fry’s organisation of a Post-Impressionist exhibition in London, contributed to the development of modernism. Two World Wars devastated a generation of young men and artists both at home and at the Front responded with both horror and sympathy to what they witnessed. Pop Art celebrated the optimism of post-War Britain in the Swinging Sixties. This confident attitude continued during the ‘Cool Britannia’ of the 1990s with the Young British Artists (YBAS). The artists who dominated this latter movement became household names, their work and attitude scandalised and fascinated in equal measure. 

This era was marked by political upheavals including two World Wars. Course 2 will look at how artists responded to such catastrophes. Subjects not visible to the naked eye, such as the human psyche were explored in very different ways in both Abstraction and Surrealism. Dadaism, a protest against society and the futilities of war, gave us some of the most radical works in the history of art. Artists such as Picasso, who had spent the first decade of the Twentieth Century upending the conventions of art, would abandon such aims and instead call for a ‘return to order’, celebrating classical art. We will look in-depth at the key figures and styles which dominated European art in the first half of the 20th Century and consider how their efforts would ultimately transform art on a global level.

The works of these individuals, often coinciding with tumultuous periods in history, are frequently considered the benchmark by which many of their peers have been measured. Integral to the development of new styles, or inspiring later generations of artists, the five examples chosen here have transcended the environs of the art gallery to become household names. All are synonymous with the concept of a ‘great’ artist, though in reality some struggled for recognition in their own lifetime while others achieved fame quickly and attained ‘legendary’ status. The periods in which they worked, from the second half of the 19th century to the present day, were crucial to their artistic development and we will examine this aspect alongside the techniques, subjects and life experiences which shaped their work and processes. Tracking their careers in chronological order, key achievements and canonical works by each will form the basis of this course. 

France, by the 1800s was seen by many as the main centre for developments in the avant-garde art of the time. Walter Benjamin described Paris as 'the capital of the 19th Century', home to some of the most progressive artistic minds in history and a city determined to be at the forefront of artistic expression. As the Capital evolved politically, socially and culturally, its artists responded either enthusiastically or with reservation to these new changes. From the Napoleonic era to the Haussmanisation of Paris during the Second Empire and the rise of the bourgeoisie; artists including Édouard Manet were confronted with new sights and attitudes which became subjects for their work. Set against this progression was the Paris Salon, a bastion of academic traditions and at odds with radical artists. This course looks at key movements from Romanticism to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism.

The restrictions female practitioners had historically faced in their art training, were by the Twentieth Century becoming more relaxed. Women now rightly took their place alongside their male peers, forming radical new styles and were frequently at the forefront of artistic developments. Both socially and culturally, the role of the female artist changed to such an extent that they were integral to the organisation of avant-garde events and establishing groups. This attitude was not confined to France, indeed other centres were often more progressive towards the inclusion and support of women artists in a male dominated system. We will look at practitioners from Europe and the US, focussing on the first half of the 20th Century, a period of great change for women and see how collectively, these practitioners changed the role of the artist and the course of art history. 

This course traces the developments and trends, which dominated European art, from the dawn of the Renaissance in the early 15th Century, through to the first decades of the 19th Century when Romanticism came to the fore in both art and literature. We will explore the social, cultural and political factors, which contributed to the practices of painters and sculptors from a range of European locations. We will discover how many of these styles were often a reaction against those preceding them. Part 1 traces painting, sculpture and architecture from the Early Italian Renaissance to the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th Century.

In Part 2 we will examine the French Rococo of the 1700s and its spread across other European centres. British artists at this time had a very different approach to the subjects they depicted, influenced by the dramatically changing world around them. Neoclassicism, an antidote to the frivolity of Rococo, coincided with the excavation of major ancient sites including Pompeii and Herculaneum. The course finishes with an exploration of Romanticism, a European-wide movement unlike any style which had gone before it and one which celebrated the natural world but also visionary scenes of imagination, heroism and tragedy.