Artiquity

Keep the day the way a painter would

Choose the kind of day, take the picture with its composition in the viewfinder, and a hand from five thousand years keeps it — Cassatt for the first day of school, van Eyck or Klimt for a wedding, Morisot for a new baby, Hokusai or Turner for the view from where you stood.

Ten kinds of day

• The first day of school At the door, bag on the shoulders, one look back.
• A wedding Two people, side by side, hands joined.
• A new baby Asleep, from above, in soft light.
• A birthday Faces round a table, lit by the candles.
• A travel journal The view from where you stood.
• A meal with friends The long table, dishes and hands.
• The family portrait Everyone in a row, each one looking out.
• A quiet morning The window, the cup, the first light.
• The garden, a walk The path leading in, the season's first flowers.
• A farewell, a homecoming Two figures at a threshold: a station, a door, a car.

The hands

Ancient Egypt 3100 BCE–30 BCE

Three millennia of remarkably continuous artistic convention in the Nile valley: art served the afterlife, the gods, and the divine kingship. Figures follow strict canonical proportion; permanence mattered more than individuality — with…

• The Memphite Old Kingdom Sculptors 2600 BCE–2500 BCE
• The Painter of Nebamun 1390 BCE–1350 BCE
• Thutmose 1380 BCE–1330 BCE

Classical Antiquity 800 BCE–476

Greek and Roman civilization set the terms Western art would argue with for two thousand years: the idealized human body, narrative composition, naturalism, and the artist as a named, celebrated maker.

• The Sumerian Temple Sculptors 2600 BCE–2100 BCE
• The Olmec Sculptors 1200 BCE–400 BCE
• The Assyrian Palace Sculptors 700 BCE–630 BCE
• Exekias 570 BCE–525 BCE
• The Andokides Painter 540 BCE–510 BCE
• Euphronios 535 BCE–470 BCE
• The Berlin Painter 500 BCE–460 BCE
• The Nok Sculptors 500 BCE–200
• Phidias 490 BCE–430 BCE
• Praxiteles 400 BCE–330 BCE
• The Villa of the Mysteries Master 90 BCE–40 BCE
• The Fayum Portraitists 50–250
• The Teotihuacan Workshops 150–550
• The Moche Potters 200–700

Medieval World 476–1400

After Rome, art in Europe turned from the body to the soul: icons, mosaics, illuminated manuscripts, and cathedral programs taught the faith to the unlettered. Meanwhile Song China reached a peak of landscape painting Europe would not…

• The Maya Court Sculptors 600–800
• The Maya Vase Painters 650–800
• The Painters of the Book of Kells 750–820
• The Hagia Sophia Mosaicists 850–1350
• Fan Kuan 960–1030
• Guo Xi 1020–1090
• The Goryeo Celadon Potters 1100–1250
• The Ife Court Sculptors 1100–1400
• The Chartres Portal Sculptors 1145–1170
• Ma Yuan 1160–1225
• The Mixtec Manuscript Painters 1200–1520
• Cimabue 1240–1302
• Zhao Mengfu 1254–1322
• Duccio di Buoninsegna 1255–1319
• Giotto di Bondone 1267–1337
• Ni Zan 1301–1374
• Jacopo di Paolo 1345–1430
• Lorenzo di Bicci 1350–1427
• Andrei Rublev 1360–1430
• Andrea di Bartolo 1360–1428
• The Limbourg Brothers 1385–1416

Renaissance 1400–1600

The rebirth of classical learning met new tools — oil paint, linear perspective, the printing press — and a new idea: the artist as intellect, not artisan. From Florence, Bruges, and Nuremberg, the visible world was measured, mastered, and…

• Donatello 1386–1466
• Jan van Eyck 1390–1441
• Fra Angelico 1395–1455
• The Mexica (Aztec) Court Sculptors 1400–1521
• Masaccio 1401–1428
• Piero della Francesca 1415–1492
• Sesshū Tōyō 1420–1506
• Shen Zhou 1427–1509
• Giovanni Bellini 1430–1516
• Vittore Crivelli 1440–1501
• Liberale da Verona 1441–1529
• Sandro Botticelli 1445–1510
• Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād 1450–1535
• Hieronymus Bosch 1450–1516
• Leonardo da Vinci 1452–1519
• Goswijn van der Weyden 1455–1543
• Pietro di Francesco degli Orioli 1458–1496
• Giovanni Agostino da Lodi 1470–1519
• Albrecht Dürer 1471–1528
• Lucas Cranach the Elder 1472–1553
• Michelangelo Buonarroti 1475–1564
• Giorgione 1477–1510
• Raphael 1483–1520
• Bonifazio Veronese 1487–1553
• Titian 1488–1576
• Gerolamo Giovenone 1490–1555
• Pseudo-Granacci 1490–1525
• Francesco Ubertini, called Bacchiacca 1494–1557
• Jacopo da Pontormo 1494–1557
• Hans Holbein the Younger 1497–1543
• The Benin Bronze Casters (Igun Eronmwon Guild) 1500–1700
• Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1525–1569
• Paolo Veronese 1528–1588
• Sofonisba Anguissola 1532–1625
• El Greco 1541–1614
• Kanō Eitoku 1543–1590
• Lavinia Fontana 1552–1614

Baroque Age 1600–1750

Art as persuasion and drama: the Counter-Reformation church wanted images that seized the heart, while the new Dutch Republic built the first modern art market — pictures of ordinary life sold to ordinary citizens.

• Pieter Brueghel the Younger 1564–1638
• Reza Abbasi 1565–1635
• Tawaraya Sōtatsu 1570–1643
• Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio 1571–1610
• Peter Paul Rubens 1577–1640
• Frans Hals 1582–1666
• Artemisia Gentileschi 1593–1656
• Nicolas Poussin 1594–1665
• Francisco de Zurbarán 1598–1664
• Diego Velázquez 1599–1660
• Claude Lorrain 1600–1682
• Rembrandt van Rijn 1606–1669
• Judith Leyster 1609–1660
• Salomon Koninck 1609–1656
• Bada Shanren (Zhu Da) 1626–1705
• Johannes Vermeer 1632–1675
• Ogata Kōrin 1658–1716
• Rachel Ruysch 1664–1750
• William Hogarth 1697–1764
• Jean-Siméon Chardin 1699–1779

Age of Revolution 1750–1850

Political and industrial revolution shattered old certainties, and art followed: Goya recorded war without heroism, Turner dissolved form into light and steam, and in closed Edo Japan the ukiyo-e print reached a perfection that would soon…

• Itō Jakuchū 1716–1800
• Francisco Goya 1746–1828
• Jacques-Louis David 1748–1825
• Kitagawa Utamaro 1753–1806
• Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun 1755–1842
• Katsushika Hokusai 1760–1849
• Caspar David Friedrich 1774–1840
• J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851
• John Constable 1776–1837
• Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780–1867
• Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl 1788–1838
• Théodore Géricault 1791–1824
• George Catlin 1796–1872
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot 1796–1875
• Utagawa Hiroshige 1797–1858
• Eugène Delacroix 1798–1863
• Thomas Cole 1801–1848
• Alfred Jacob Miller 1810–1874

Modern Age 1850–1945

In under a century painting moved from Impressionist sensation to pure abstraction. Japan's opening flooded Europe with prints; the paint tube took artists outdoors; photography freed painting from description; and two world wars made the…

• George Peter Alexander Healy 1813–1894
• Jean-François Millet 1814–1875
• Gustave Courbet 1819–1877
• Worthington Whittredge 1820–1910
• Rosa Bonheur 1822–1899
• Frederic Edwin Church 1826–1900
• Gustave Moreau 1826–1898
• Thomas Hill 1829–1908
• Albert Bierstadt 1830–1902
• Édouard Manet 1832–1883
• Edgar Degas 1834–1917
• James McNeill Whistler 1834–1903
• Winslow Homer 1836–1910
• Thomas Moran 1837–1926
• Paul Cézanne 1839–1906
• Claude Monet 1840–1926
• Odilon Redon 1840–1916
• Berthe Morisot 1841–1895
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841–1919
• Giovanni Boldini 1842–1931
• Mary Cassatt 1844–1926
• Thomas Eakins 1844–1916
• Henri Rousseau 1844–1910
• Paul Gauguin 1848–1903
• Vincent van Gogh 1853–1890
• Carl Larsson 1853–1919
• John Singer Sargent 1856–1925
• Mikhail Vrubel 1856–1910
• Maurice Prendergast 1858–1924
• Lovis Corinth 1858–1925
• Georges Seurat 1859–1891
• The Southern Cheyenne Ledger Artists (Maffet Ledger) 1860–1885
• Anders Zorn 1860–1920
• Marianne von Werefkin 1860–1938
• Frederic Remington 1861–1909
• Charles Schreyvogel 1861–1912
• Hilma af Klint 1862–1944
• Gustav Klimt 1862–1918
• Edvard Munch 1863–1944
• Charles M. Russell 1864–1926
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864–1901
• Alexej von Jawlensky 1864–1941
• Robert Henri 1865–1929
• Akseli Gallen-Kallela 1865–1931
• Félix Vallotton 1865–1925
• Valentin Serov 1865–1911
• Wassily Kandinsky 1866–1944
• Pierre Bonnard 1867–1947
• Käthe Kollwitz 1867–1945
• Édouard Vuillard 1868–1940
• Henri Matisse 1869–1954
• Ernst Barlach 1870–1938
• William Glackens 1870–1938
• John Marin 1870–1953
• John Sloan 1871–1951
• Florine Stettheimer 1871–1944
• Emily Carr 1871–1945
• Piet Mondrian 1872–1944
• Joaquín Torres-García 1874–1949
• Nicholas Roerich 1874–1947
• Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876–1907
• Ivan Bilibin 1876–1942
• Marsden Hartley 1877–1943
• Raoul Dufy 1877–1953
• Paul Klee 1879–1940
• Kazimir Malevich 1879–1935
• Francis Picabia 1879–1953
• Franz Marc 1880–1916
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1880–1938
• Arthur Dove 1880–1946
• Fernand Léger 1881–1955
• George Bellows 1882–1925
• Umberto Boccioni 1882–1916
• Theo van Doesburg 1883–1931
• Charles Demuth 1883–1935
• Maurice Utrillo 1883–1955
• Amedeo Modigliani 1884–1920
• Max Beckmann 1884–1950
• Robert Delaunay 1885–1941
• Jules Pascin 1885–1930
• Juan Gris 1887–1927
• August Macke 1887–1914
• Kurt Schwitters 1887–1948
• Paul Nash 1889–1946
• Egon Schiele 1890–1918
• Grant Wood 1891–1942
• Chaïm Soutine 1893–1943
• Reginald Marsh 1898–1954
• Oliver Luckett b. 1903
• Amrita Sher-Gil 1913–1941

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