Restoration

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.

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

Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

"The depth and breadth of [Crow’s] learning is stupendous."---Tim Blanning, Art Newspaper

"[A] profoundly revealing and stimulating book."---Michael Prodger, Literary Review

"Winner of the Silver Medal, Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies, Nanovic Institute, University of Notre Dame"

“A major scholarly achievement and an exhilarating read, Restoration provides an absorbing narrative about European art during and after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire. With a wealth of fresh interpretations, this extraordinarily wide-ranging, authoritative, and concise book gives us a new understanding of art under the Restoration as uniquely unstable, provisional, and mobile.”—Bridget Alsdorf, Princeton University

“This thrilling book offers an entirely fresh and compelling set of perspectives on some of the most important artists of the early nineteenth century. Fusing tightly structured analysis with rich and colorful descriptions, anecdotes, and observations and offering stunning interpretations of individual works, Restoration takes us on a stimulating art historical journey.”—Mark Hallett, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art