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.
Table of Content
1 The terms of narrative
2 Eloquent objects
3 Patterns of reception
4 Stories in paint
5 Epilogue: Into the twentieth century
Index
About the author
Nina Lübbren is Associate Professor of Art History and Film at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
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