Atlas

Northern Renaissance

Artists north of the Alps developed detailed oil painting and close observation of the visible world.

Led to Dutch Golden Age

Renaissance

European artists renewed interest in classical culture, perspective, and naturalistic figures.

Led to Baroque

Pahari Painting

Painting from Himalayan hill courts, often illustrating poetry, devotion, and courtly life.

Dutch Golden Age

Seventeenth-century Dutch painting included portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and scenes of daily life.

Baroque

European art known for dramatic light, movement, and emotional intensity.

Led to Rococo

Qing Dynasty Painting

Painting in China under the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), from rule-breaking Individualists to the merchant-funded art of Yangzhou and Shanghai.

Venetian School

Venetian painters emphasized rich color, light, and expressive brushwork.

Rococo

An eighteenth-century style marked by light colors, playful subjects, and ornate decoration.

Romanticism

Artists emphasized emotion, imagination, and the power of nature.

Led to Realism, Hudson River School

Ukiyo-e

Japanese woodblock prints of actors, courtesans, landscapes, and urban life.

Led to Shin-hanga

Hudson River School

American landscape painters portrayed rivers, mountains, and wilderness on a grand scale.

German Realism

German artists depicted people and places through close observation rather than idealization.

American Folk Art

Work made outside academic traditions, often with direct forms and local subjects.

Hague School

Dutch painters used muted tones and atmospheric light for landscapes and rural life.

Impressionism

Painters used broken brushwork and changing light to capture a passing moment.

Led to Neo-Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, American Impressionism

Academicism

Art shaped by European academies, with formal training, polished technique, and ranked subjects.

Realism

Artists depicted contemporary life and labor without idealizing their subjects.

Led to Impressionism

American Realism

American painters represented ordinary people and places with close attention to observed life.

Art Nouveau

A decorative style built around flowing lines and forms drawn from plants and nature.

Naturalism

Artists represented subjects with close attention to observed detail and ordinary life.

Post-Impressionism

Artists built on Impressionism while pursuing structure, symbolic color, or personal expression.

Led to Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism

Victorian

Art produced in Victorian Britain across many styles, often reflecting social and moral themes.

Neo-Impressionism

Painters placed small marks of color side by side, drawing on contemporary color theory.

Led to Fauvism, Luminism

American Impressionism

American painters adapted Impressionist light and broken brushwork to local landscapes and daily life.

Vienna Secession

Austrian artists broke from the academy and promoted modern art and design.

Led to Art Deco

Expressionism

Artists distorted form and used strong color to convey emotion.

Led to Der Blaue Reiter, Abstract Art

Fauvism

French painters used vivid, non-naturalistic color and simplified forms.

Led to Expressionism

Symbolism

Artists used myth, dreams, and suggestive imagery to express ideas beyond visible reality.

Orientalism

European artists depicted North Africa and West Asia, often through colonial viewpoints.

Abstract Art

Art that does not depict recognizable subjects, or reduces them to color, line, and form.

Mexican Modernism

Mexican artists combined modern forms with local history, politics, and identity.

Luminism

A late Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist style devoted to effects of light, practised in Belgium and the Netherlands.

American Modernism

American artists explored new forms, abstraction, and urban subjects in the twentieth century.

Shin-hanga

Japanese printmakers renewed traditional woodblock printing with modern light and atmosphere.

Cubo-Futurism

Russian artists combined Cubist fragmentation with Futurist movement and energy.

Led to Abstract Art

Der Blaue Reiter

A Munich group that used expressive color and abstraction to explore spiritual ideas.

Led to Abstract Art, Bauhaus

Cubism

Artists broke objects into geometric parts and showed more than one viewpoint at once.

Led to Orphism, Cubo-Futurism, Art Deco

Orphism

Artists used vivid color and circular forms to explore rhythm and abstraction.

Led to Abstract Art

Modernism

Artists sought new visual forms in response to modern life and changing ideas about art.

Mir iskusstva

A Russian art circle and journal that championed design, theater, and the decorative arts.

Art Deco

A decorative style using streamlined shapes, geometry, and modern materials.

American Regionalism

American painters depicted local landscapes and communities, especially in the Midwest and South.

Bauhaus

A German school that joined art, craft, and design around functional modern forms.