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Academic Art

Sanctioned by the Royal academies, focusing on traditional subjects and highly polished technique.

Apotheosis

Elevation to divine status.

Art for Art's Sake

The painter's first loyalty is to the canvas and not to the outside world or patron.

Barbizon School

Specialized in detailed pictures of forest and countryside without sentimentalism or romanticism.

Class Struggle

The concept highlighted in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, calling for the working class to overthrow the capitalist system.

Daguerreotype

A 19th-century photographic process producing images on a silver plate made sensitive by iodine.

Empiricism

The search for knowledge based on observation and direct experience.

Gothick

Characterized by the ghoulish, infernal, nightmarish, grotesque, and sublime elements.

Hudson River School

A group of American artists focused on the American landscape, particularly undeveloped wilderness.

Lampoon

A form of satire and ridicule.

Landscape Painting

Often 'picturesque' in Romantic style, used nature as an allegory for spiritual, moral, or philosophical commentary.

Lithography

A printing process using a greasy crayon on stone that transfers drawings to paper via oil-based ink.

Modernism

Seeks to capture contemporary images and sensibilities, involving critical examination of art itself.

Napoleon

Established an Empire from 1789 to 1815 and favored the Neoclassical style in various art forms.

Odalisque

A female slave in Eastern harems, often depicted reclining in 19th-century art.

Pantheism

A doctrine equating God with the forces and laws of the universe.

Positivism

Developed by Auguste Comte, believing in scientific laws governing nature and society through empirical observation.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Founded in 1848 to create art free from what they viewed as tired and artificial art sponsored by academies.

Realism

Focused on everyday life and contemporary experiences, portraying previously unworthy subjects like working-class laborers.

Romanticism

A late 18th and early 19th century movement emphasizing emotion, nature, the mysterious, and the exotic.

Second Industrial Revolution

Focused on advancements in steel, electricity, chemicals, and oil.

Supine

Exhibiting indolent inertia or passivity.

Vista

A distant view through an opening.