Although watercolor painting is extremely old, dating perhaps to the cave paintings of paleolithic Europe, and has been used for manuscript illumination since at least Egyptian times but especially in the European Middle Ages, its continuous history as an art medium begins in the Renaissance.
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The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion.
What's the easiest entry point to the tapestry of art history? Art revolves around ideas, groups of artists creating work that explores similar themes. The broadest of these categories are the Movements, and we've collected artworks into 10 movements, from before man developed writing through the abstraction of Modern Art.
From as long ago as 40,000BC humans were creating evocative objects in stone and metal. These works from preliterate cultures are considered Prehistoric.
Over 3000 years the cultures of Mesopotamia created witten language to regulate commerce and developed some of the first recorded examples of written law.
The rise of the modern world. Curious minds drove a cultural rebirth though education, philosophy, and intellectual inquiry from the 14th to the 17th century.
Rococo was a lifestyle. An opulent, playful embrace of ornate furniture and sculpture, ornamental mirrors, and florid tapestry and architecture. 18th century swag.
Revolution in France and America fueled a two-faced portrait of revolution - the melodrama of classical imagery animating glorious democratic ideals and the bloody hands of change.
As the industrial revolution reshaped Europe, Romanticism became an artistic, literary, and intellectual revolt against the Age of Enlightenment and the scientific rationalization of nature.
Realism believed in objective reality and revolted against the high emotion of Romanticism. Truth, accuracy, and the absence of personal bias drove the Realists.
In 1822, French inventor Nicéphore Niépce made the first permanent chemical photoetching - a scientific breakthrough that forever changed the artistic practices of painting and sculpting.
Emphasizing light, mundane subjects, and movement as the crux of human perception, the Impressionists gained prominence in Paris during the 1870s and 1880s.
Tradition be damned. Modernism revolted against the certainty of Enlightenment thinking in favor of the abstract, unconventional and uncertain. Realism was rewritten, remade, and parodied.
