Art

Prehistoric, Celtic & Classical (25,000 B.C.-A.D. 500)

After England's Stonehenge, Europe's most famous prehistoric remains are France's Paleolithic cave paintings. Created 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, they depict mostly hunting scenes and abstract shapes. Whether the paintings served in religious rites or were simply decorative is anybody's guess.

Important examples of ancient art include:

Cave art. The caves at Lascaux, the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art, have been closed since 1963, but experts have created a replica, Lascaux II. To see the real stuff, visit Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, which boasts four caves (Font de Gaume is the best). In the neighboring Lot Valley, outside Cahors, is the Grotte du Pech-Merle, with France's oldest cave art (about 20,000 years old).

Celtic and classical art. Little remains of the art of Celtic (ca. 1,000 B.C.-A.D. 125) and Roman (A.D. 125-500) Gaul. Surviving items -- small votive bronzes, statues, jewelry, and engraved weapons and tools -- are spread across France's archaeology museums. Burgundy preserves the most of Celtic Gaul, including sites at Dijon, Châtillon-sur-Seine, Alise-Ste-Reine, and Auxerre. To see artifacts of Roman Gaul, visit the southern towns of Nîmes, Arles, Orange, St-Rémy-de-Provence, and Vienne. You'll also find some sculptures in Paris's Musée de Cluny.

Romanesque (900-1100)

Artistic expression in early medieval France was largely church-related. Because Mass was in Latin, images were used to communicate the Bible's lessons to the mostly illiterate people. Bas-reliefs (sculptures that project slightly from a flat surface) were used to illustrate key tales that inspired faith in God and fear of sin (the Last Judgment was a favorite). These reliefs were wrapped around column capitals and fitted into the tympanums, or arched spaces above doorways (the complete door, tympanum, arch, and supporting pillars assemblage is the portal).

Worshipers were also interested in specialized saints associated with everyday matters, such as crops, marriage, animals, and health. Chapels were built to house silver and gold reliquaries displaying bits of saints to which worshipers could pray. Saintly statues also began appearing on façades, though this became more of a Gothic convention.

The best examples of Romanesque art include:

Sculptures and statues. The best surviving examples are a Last Judgment tympanum by Gislebertus at St-Lazare in Autun; 76 Romanesque cloister capitals and one of France's best-carved 11th-century portals at St-Pierre Abbey in Moissac near Montauban; the tympanum over the inner main portal of huge Ste-Madeleine in Vézelay; reliefs of Christ and the Evangelists by Bernard Guildin in the crypt of St-Semin in Toulouse; and the wonderfully detailed façade frieze and statues of St-Pierre in Angoulême.

Wall paintings and frescoes. You'll find examples at Notre-Dame in Le Puy (ca. 1000), St-Savin near Poitiers (1100), and Berzé-la-Ville (1100) near Cluny.

Bayeux Tapestry (1066-1077). The most notable example of Romanesque artistry is the Bayeux Tapestry, 69m (230 ft.) of embroidered linen telling the story of William the Conqueror's defeat of the English.

Gothic (1100-1400)

Late medieval French art remained largely ecclesiastical. Church façades and choir screens were festooned with statues and carvings, and the French became masters of stained glass. Many painterly conventions began on windowpanes or as elaborate designs in illuminated manuscript margins, which developed into altarpieces of the colorful, expressive International Gothic style of posed scenes and stylized figures.

In Gothic painting and sculpture, figures tended to be more natural than in the Romanesque, but they were also highly stylized, flowing, and rhythmic. The features and gestures were usually exaggerated for symbolic or emotional emphasis.

The best examples of Gothic art include:

Sculpture and statues. The best-preserved examples are at the cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens, and Reims, and at Strasbourg, which boasts one of the most elaborate Gothic portals and rose windows in France.

Stained glass. All of the above churches (especially Chartres) contain some of the most stunning stained glass in Europe -- though first prize goes to Paris's Ste-Chapelle.

Painting. Burgundy was the first French area to embrace the High Gothic painting style of its Flemish neighbors. The great van der Weyden left works in Dijon and Beaune as well as at the Louvre. The Dutch Limbourg Brothers' Les Très Riches Heures (1413-16, finished after their deaths), now in Château de Chantilly, is considered a touchstone of the International Gothic style. Enguerrand Quarton was the most important French painter of the period. His only documented paintings are Virgin of Mercy (1452) at Chantilly and a work at the Musée de l'Hospice in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, but most scholars also attribute to him the Louvre's Villeneuve Pietà (1460).

Unicorn Tapestries (1499-1514). Now in Paris's Musée de Cluny, these tapestries shine brightly as a statement of medieval sensibilities while borrowing some burgeoning Renaissance conventions.

The Renaissance & Baroque (1450-1800)

Renaissance means "rebirth" -- in this case, that of classical ideals. Humanist thinkers rediscovered the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome, while artists strove for naturalism, using newly developed techniques like linear perspective. The French had little to do with this movement, which started in Italy and was picked up only in Germany and the Low Countries. However, many Renaissance treasures are in French museums, thanks to collectors such as François I.

Not until the 17th-century baroque did a few French masters emerge. This period is hard to pin down. In some ways a result of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, it reaffirmed spirituality in a simplified, monumental, and religious version of Renaissance ideals. In other ways, it delved even deeper into classical modes and a kind of superrealism based on using peasants as models and the chiaroscuro (contrast of light and dark) of the Italian painter Caravaggio.

Some view those two baroque movements as extensions of Renaissance experiments and find the true baroque in later, complex compositions -- explosions of dynamic fury, movement, color, and figures -- that are well balanced but in such cluttered abundance as to appear untamed. Rococo is this later baroque art gone awry: frothy and chaotic.

Paris's Louvre abounds with Renaissance works by Italian, Flemish, and German masters, including Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Leonardo's Mona Lisa (1503-05), perhaps the world's most famous painting, hangs there. Great baroque and rococo artists include:

Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). While his mythological scenes presaged the Romantic movement, on a deeper level his balance and predilection to paint from nature had closer connection to (and greater influence on) Impressionists like Cézanne. Find his works in the Louvre and in Nancy.

Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). A rococo painter of colorful, theatrical works now in the Louvre, Watteau began the short-lived fête galante style of china-doll figures against stylized landscapes of woodlands or ballrooms.

François Boucher (1703-70). Louis XV's rococo court painter, Boucher studied Watteau and produced decorative landscapes and genre works, now at the Louvre.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806). Boucher's student and master of rococo pastel scenes, Fragonard painted pink-cheeked, wispy, genteel lovers frolicking among billowing trees. His famous The Bathers hangs in the Louvre. More work is in Amiens's Musée de Picardie.

Neoclassical & Romantic (1770-1890)

As the baroque got excessive and the rococo got cute, and as the somber Counter-Reformation got serious about imposing limits on religious art, several artists, like Jacques-Louis David, looked to the ancients. Viewing new excavations of Greek and Roman sites (Pompeii, Paestum) and statuary became integral parts of the Grand Tour through Italy, while the Enlightenment (and growing revolutionary) interest in Greek democracy beat an intellectual path to the distant past. This gave rise to a neoclassical style that emphasized symmetry, austerity, clean lines, and classical themes, such as depictions of historical or mythological scenes.

The Romantics, on the other hand, felt that both the ancients and the Renaissance had gotten it wrong and that the Middle Ages were the place to be. They idealized tales of chivalry and held a deep respect for nature, human rights, and the nobility of peasantry, as well as a suspicion of progress. Their paintings were heroic, historic, and (melo)dramatic.

The greatest artists and movements of the era include:

Jacques-Louis David (1744-1825). David dropped the baroque after study in Rome exposed him to neoclassicism, which he brought back to Paris and displayed in such paintings as The Oath of the Horatii (1784) and Coronation of Napoléon and Joséphine (1805-08), both in the Louvre.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Ingres trained with David, from whom he broke to adapt a more Greek style. He became a defender of the neoclassicists and the Royal French Academy, and opposed the Romantics. His Grand Odalisque (1814) hangs in the Louvre.

Théodore Géricault (1791-1824). One of the early Romantics, Géricault painted The Raft of the Medusa (1819), which served as a model for the movement. This large, dramatic history painting hangs in the Louvre.

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). Painted in the Romantic style, his Liberty Leading the People (1830), in the Louvre, reveals experimentation in color and brush stroke.

The Barbizon School. This group of landscape painters, founded in the 1830s by Théodore Rousseau (1812-67), painted from nature at Barbizon, where the Musée Ganne is devoted to Rousseau's works. The paintings of Jean-François Millet (1814-75), who depicted classical scenes and peasants, hang in his studio nearby and in Paris's Musée d'Orsay. You'll find works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), a sort of idealistic proto-Impressionist, in the Louvre.

Impressionism (1870-1920)

Formal, rigid neoclassicism and idealized Romanticism rankled some late-19th-century artists interested in painting directly from nature. Seeking to capture the fleeting impression of light reflecting off objects, they adopted a free, open style characterized by deceptively loose compositions; swift, visible brushwork; and often, light colors. For subjects, they turned away from the historical depictions of previous styles to landscapes and scenes of daily life. Unless specified below, you'll find some of their best works in Paris's Musée d'Orsay.

Impressionist greats include:

Edouard Manet (1832-83). His groundbreaking Picnic on the Grass (1863) and Olympia (1863) weren't Impressionism proper, but they helped inspire the movement with their realism, visible brush strokes, and thick outlines.

Claude Monet (1840-1926). The Impressionist movement began with an 1874 exhibition in which Monet showed his loose, Turner-inspired Impression, Sunrise (1874), now in the Musée Marmottan. One critic focused on it to lambaste the whole exhibition, deriding it all as "Impressionist." Far from being insulted, the show's artists adopted the word for their movement. Monet's Water Lilies hangs in the basement of Paris's Musée de l'Orangerie. You can visit his studio and gardens at Giverny, north of Paris.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). Originally Renoir was a porcelain painter, which helps explain his figures' ivory skin and chubby pink cheeks.

Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Degas was an accomplished painter, sculptor, and draftsman -- his pastels of dancers and bathers are memorable.

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917). The greatest sculptor of the Impressionist era, Rodin crafted remarkably expressive bronzes, refusing to idealize the human figure as had his neoclassical predecessors. The Musée Rodin, his former Paris studio, contains, among other works, his Burghers of Calais (1886), The Kiss (1886-98), and The Thinker (1880).

Ppst-Impressionism (1880-1930)

Few experimental French artists of the late 19th century were considered Impressionists, though many were friends with those in the movement. The smaller movements or styles are usually lumped together as post-Impressionist.

Again, you'll find the best examples of their works at Paris's Musée d'Orsay, although the pieces mentioned below by Matisse, Chagall, and the Cubists are in the Centre Pompidou.

Important post-Impressionists include:

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). Cézanne adopted the short brush strokes, landscapes, and light color palette of his Impressionist friends, but his style was more formal and deliberate. He sought to give his art monumentality and permanence, even if the subjects were still lifes (Nature Morte: Pommes et Oranges, 1895-1900), portraits (La Femme a la Cafetière, 1890-95), and landscapes (La Maison du Pendu Auvers-sur-Oise, 1873).

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). Gauguin could never settle himself or his work, trying Brittany, where he developed synthetism (black outlines around solid colors), and hopping around the South Pacific, where he was inspired by local styles and colors, as in Femmes de Tahiti sur la Plage (1891).

Georges Seurat (1859-91), Paul Signac (1863-1935), and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). These artists developed divisionism and its more formal cousin, pointillism. Rather than mixing yellow and blue together to make green, they applied tiny dots of yellow and blue right next to one another so that the viewer's eye mixed them together to make green. Seurat's best work in the Orsay is Le Cirque (1891), though the lines are softer and subjects more compelling in the nude studies called Les Poseuses (1886-87).

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). He's most famous for his work with thinned-down oils, which he used to create paintings and posters of wispy, fluid lines anticipating Art Nouveau. He often depicted the bohemian life of Paris (dance halls, cafes, and top-hatted patrons at fancy parties), as in the barely sketched La Danse Mauresque (1895); the pastel Le Lit (1892) shows his quieter, more intimate side.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). A Dutchman, van Gogh spent most of his career in France. He combined divisionism, synthetism, and a touch of Japanese influence and painted with thick, short strokes. Never particularly accepted by any artistic circle, he is the most popular painter in the world today, even though he sold only one painting in his life. The Orsay contains such works as Le Chambre de Van Gogh à Arles (1889), a self-portrait (1887), a portrait of his psychiatrist Docteur Paul Gachet (1890), and La Méridienne (1889-90).

Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Matisse took a hint from synthetism and added wild colors and strong patterns to create Fauvism (a critic described those who used the style as fauves, meaning "wild beasts"), such as Interior, Goldfish Bowl (1914). He continued exploring these themes even when most artists were turning to cubism. When his health failed, he assembled brightly colored collages of paper cutouts (such as the Pompidou's Sorrow of the King, 1952). You'll find several of his works in the Musée Matisse in Nice. His masterpiece, the Chapelle du Rosaire (1949-51), a chapel he designed and decorated, is near Vence.

Georges Braque (1882-1963) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). French-born Braque and Spanish-born Picasso painted objects from all points of view at once, rather than using tricks like perspective to fool viewers into seeing three dimensions (in the Pompidou, Braque's Man with Guitar, 1914, and Picasso's 1907 study for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon). The result was called cubism and was expanded upon by the likes of Fernand Léger (1881-1955; Wedding, 1911) and the Spaniard Juan Gris (1887-1927; Le Petit Déjeuner, 1915). Braque developed the style using collage (he added bits of paper and cardboard to his images), while Picasso moved on to other styles. You can see work from all of Picasso's periods at museums dedicated to him in Paris, Antibes, and Vallauris, where Picasso revived the ceramics industry.

Marc Chagall (1889-1985). This Hasidic Jewish artist is hard to pin down. He traveled widely in Europe, the United States, Mexico, and Israel; his painting started from cubism and picked up inspiration everywhere to fuel a brightly colored, allegorical, often whimsical style. You'll find a museum devoted to him in Nice, several of his stained-glass windows in the Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens, his painted ceiling in Paris's Opéra Garnier, and To Russia, the Asses and the Others (1911) in the Pompidou.