Trollope’s estimate of the position of women in England, which was not unlike that in America, forty-five years ago, when contrasted with that of the present day, affords another striking example of the expansion of the nineteenth century.

* * * * *

Although no important changes occur without some preparation, this may be so gradual and unobtrusive in its work that the result appears to have a Minerva-like birth.  Doubtless there were influences leading up to the remarkable landscape painting of this century.  The “Norwich School,” which took shape in 1805, was founded by Crome, among whose associates were Cotman, Stark, and Vincent.  Crome exhibited his works at the Royal Academy in 1806, and the twelve following years, and died in 1821 when the pictures of Constable were attracting unusual attention; indeed, it may be said that by his exhibitions at the Royal Academy, Constable inaugurated modern landscape painting, which is a most important feature of art in this century.

Not forgetting the splendid landscapes of the Dutch masters, of the early Italians, of Claude and Wilson, the claim that landscape painting was perfected only in the nineteenth century, and then largely as the result of the works of English artists, seems to me to be well founded.  To this excellence Turner, contemporary with Constable, David Cox, De Wint, Bonington, and numerous others gloriously contributed.

The English landscapes exhibited at the French Salon in the third decade of the century produced a remarkable effect, and emphasized the interest in landscape painting already growing in France, and later so splendidly developed by Rousseau, Corot, Millet, and their celebrated contemporaries.  In Germany the Achenbachs, Lessing, and many other artists were active in this movement, while in America, Innes, A. H. Wyant, and Homer Martin, with numerous followers, were raising landscape art to an eminence before unknown.

Formerly landscapes had been used as backgrounds, oftentimes attractive and beautiful, while the real purpose of the pictures centred in the human figures.  The distinctive feature of nineteenth-century landscape is the representation of Nature alone, and the variety of method used and the differing aims of the artists cover the entire gamut between absolute Realism and the most pronounced Impressionism.

* * * * *

About the middle of the century there emerged from the older schools two others which may be called the Realist and Idealist, and indeed there were those to whom both these terms could be applied, both methods being united in their remarkable works.  Of the Realists Corot and Courbet are distinguished, as were Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau among the Idealists.