Narrative painting in nineteenth-century Europe

This ground-breaking book presents a critical study of pictorial narrative in nineteenth-century European painting. Covering works from France Germany Britain Italy and elsewhere it traces the ways in which immensely popular artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme Karl von Piloty and William Quiller Orchardson used unique visual strategies to tell thrilling and engaging stories. Regardless of genre content or national context these paintings share a fundamental modern narrative mode. Unlike traditional art they do not rely on textual sources; nor do they tell stories through the human body alone. Instead they experiment with objects spaces cause-and-effect relations and open-ended ambiguity prompting viewers and reviewers to read for clues in order to weave their own elaborate tales.