Around 1790 -1880 · War, revolution, shipwreck and fall of heroism

Romantic painting transforms battle and catastrophe into a human experience: the hero still commands, but the wounded, the castaway and the victim now occupy the foreground.

The revolutions and wars that crossed Europe around 1800 profoundly modified history painting. Gros shows Napoleon in Eylau among the dead and wounded, making imperial compassion a visual strategy. Géricault chooses a contemporary scandal with the Raft of the Medusa and builds hope like a precarious pyramid of bodies. Delacroix gives Greek struggles a bright color and discontinuous energy, while Goya takes almost all glory from violence. Delacroix gives Greek struggles a bright color and discontinuous energy, while Goya takes almost all glory from violence. Delacroix gives Greek struggles a bright color and discontinuous energy, while Goya takes almost all glory from violence. Paul Delaroche shifts the drama to the moment preceding the execution, where silence, light and psychology replace military action. Further on, Matejko or Aivazovski pull out all the stops. scale in the service of national memory. Romanticism therefore does not eliminate the spectacular: it makes it unstable, divided between propaganda, testimony, emotion and criticism. The selection "Battles, revolutions and romantic dramas" notably compares Napoleon on the battlefield of Eylau - Antoine-Jean Gros and The execution of Lady Jane Grey. His reading favors figures.

In romantic drama, history ceases to be an ordered march: it becomes a shock where power, suffering and memory compete for the gaze.