Movements, styles and different traditions.

c. 1400–1600 · Historical period

The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret

Renaissance

Artists reworked classical models while exploring bodily presence, pictorial space and new forms of patronage. Italian and northern European developments followed different paths.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1520–1620 · Historical style

Mannerism

Elongated figures, intricate poses and cultivated artifice challenged expectations of balanced naturalism. The label covers varied practices across sixteenth-century European courts and workshops.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1600–1750 · Historical style

Baroque

Dramatic light, bodily movement and emotionally direct encounters animate many seventeenth-century works. Painting, sculpture and architecture often work together to involve the viewer.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1710–1780 · Historical style

Rococo

Curving ornament, playful settings and intimate luxury shaped eighteenth-century interiors and images. Decorative objects are central to this history alongside paintings and prints.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1750–1830 · Historical style

Neoclassicism

Classical antiquity offered artists and designers models of ordered composition, restrained ornament and public virtue. Archaeology and collecting helped reshape contemporary visual culture.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1790–1850 · Movement

Romanticism

Emotion, imagination and encounters with nature or history unsettled academic conventions. Romanticism encompassed contrasting political positions and highly individual approaches.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1840–1880 · Movement

Realism

Ordinary people, material conditions and contemporary experience became ambitious subjects. Realism describes a historical challenge to idealization, not simply any lifelike image.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from 1848 · Movement

Pre-Raphaelite movement

British artists pursued vivid detail, intense colour and literary subjects while questioning academic conventions. Later associates extended the Brotherhood’s early interests in different directions.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1860s–1920s · Movement

Impressionism

Broken brushwork and changing light help describe modern life, landscapes and domestic experience. Exhibitions and artistic exchanges connected a group with diverse working methods.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

18 artworks in this collection

c. 1880s–1910s · Retrospective grouping

Post-Impressionism

A later umbrella term groups distinct responses to Impressionism, from constructed form to expressive colour and symbolism. Its artists did not form one unified school.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

5 artworks in this collection

from the 1880s · Movement

Neo-Impressionism

Separated touches of colour and carefully planned compositions explored optical mixture. Artists used these methods for very different social and decorative purposes.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1880–1910 · Movement

Symbolism

Suggestive imagery, myths and inward states take priority over straightforward description. Symbolist artists sought ways to evoke ideas and moods through forms and colour.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1890–1914 · Design movement

Art Nouveau

Flowing lines and organic structures linked design, architecture and decorative arts. Workshops adapted natural motifs to modern interiors, materials and production.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1905–1908 · Movement

Fauvism

Intense, independent colour and direct brushwork reshape familiar subjects. The short-lived grouping helped make colour an expressive structure rather than a descriptive tool.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1905–1930 · Movement

Expressionism

Distorted bodies, forceful marks and heightened colour communicate psychological or social tensions. German-speaking networks were influential, but expressive approaches travelled widely.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from c. 1907 · Movement

Cubism

Fragmented planes and multiple viewpoints rethink how objects occupy pictorial space. Painting, collage and sculpture questioned the single fixed viewpoint.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from 1909 · Movement

Futurism

Speed, machines and fractured movement became subjects and compositional forces. Italian Futurist experiments also carried political commitments that deserve critical attention.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from 1915 · Movement

Suprematism

Basic geometric forms and restricted colour detach painting from recognizable objects. Malevich pursued an art centred on sensation and non-objective relationships.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from the 1910s · Movement

Constructivism

Constructed forms, industrial materials and design proposals connected artistic experimentation with social transformation. Russian and international practices developed different relationships to politics and production.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1916–1920s · Movement

Dada

Chance, found materials and disruptive performances challenged artistic conventions amid war and its aftermath. Different centres developed distinct forms of provocation.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

1 artwork in this collection

from 1917 · Movement

De Stijl

Grids, primary colours and pared-down relationships pursued a new visual order. Painting, architecture and design shared ambitions without becoming identical practices.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from 1924 · Movement

Surrealism

Dreams, chance encounters and unexpected transformations opened alternatives to rational description. Artists developed diverse methods for investigating desire, the unconscious and everyday strangeness.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

1940s–1960s · Movement

Abstract Expressionism

Large fields, gestural marks and varied abstract structures opened new approaches to painting. The term joins artists whose processes and ambitions remained markedly different.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from the 1950s · Movement

Pop Art

Advertising, mass media and consumer goods became material for art. Repetition and appropriation examined the circulation of familiar images and commodities.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from the 1960s · Movement

Minimalism

Repeated units, industrial fabrication and simple geometries emphasize objects in real space. Meaning emerges through scale, material, placement and the viewer’s encounter.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from the 1960s · Movement

Conceptual Art

Ideas, instructions and language can take precedence over a unique crafted object. Artists investigate how art is defined, documented, distributed and understood.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from the Song and Yuan periods · Painting tradition

Schools and painting traditions

Literati painting

Brushwork, poetry and cultivated references connect painting to scholarly pursuits. Literati practice changed across periods and should not be treated as one timeless Chinese style.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

from the early 1600s · School and lineage

Rinpa

Decorative rhythms, stylized natural forms and literary references connect generations of Japanese artists. Later painters renewed earlier designs rather than following a single institution.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1600s–1800s · Print and painting tradition

South Wind, Clear Sky, from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji

Ukiyo-e

Urban entertainment, celebrated places and everyday encounters supplied subjects for paintings and prints. Commercial printmaking depended on collaboration among designers, carvers, printers and publishers.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1500s–1800s · Court painting tradition

Mughal painting

Imperial workshops brought Persianate, South Asian and other visual resources into dialogue. Portraits and illustrated narratives developed through collaboration and changing court interests.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

c. 1600s–1800s · Court painting traditions

Rajput painting

Distinct court workshops developed narrative, devotional and musical imagery. This broad label covers different regional practices rather than a uniform style.

History · Artists · Lasting influence

1800s–early 1900s · Painting school

Jatayu hinders Ravana’s chariot, trying to prevent the abduction of Sita (recto), from a Kalighat album

Kalighat painting

Painters around Calcutta’s Kalighat temple developed swift, bold images for a changing urban market. Religious narratives and sharp social observations shared the same sheets.

History · Artists · Lasting influence