Around the middle of the 19th century, disaster struck academic painting. Extinction threatened whole families of subject-matter - histories, moralities, fantasies - and the genres which dominate our own view of the following decades began to flourish: pictures made in the open air, scenes of modern life. What had happened? Was academic painting pushed off its perch by competing styles, or did it grow unsteady because of some failure of its own or from some fatal infection?

LRB 19 June 1997 | PDF Download