Art History Course

AN ERA AND ITS ART 

3. Country Living, Café Culture and the Urban Poor: Artists' Colonies and Social Realism

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The nineteenth century was a period of enormous upheaval: political, social, technological. It is, therefore, no surprise that avant-garde art at the end of the century looked very different from art being made in the early 1800s.

The plight of the rural poor was brought to public attention by Courbet and Millet. This would lead to the development of artists' colonies across Europe.

The century saw mass migration into cities. Paris underwent an enormous re-building programme under Baron Haussmann to become a city of wide boulevards, cafés and theatres.

In Victorian England, however, artists reflected growing calls for social reform to tackle inner city poverty, prostitution and destitution.

Join me to explore the lives of city and country folk in the second half of the nineteenth century.