Narrative Painting in Nineteenth-Century Europe

By Nina Lübbren

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-L on G r me, 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1807074560
• ISBN13: 9781807074562
• Release Date: January 2027
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Length: 240 Pages