This course surveys the history of European art the second half of the nineteenth century in a variety of media: painting, sculpture, print media, architecture and design. This is a rich and fascinating period of art-making as well as cultural and technological transformation ―a period during which political instability, industrialization, colonialism, and the growth of popular culture had an enormous impact on the production, style, and presentation of art. Old systems of patronage and institutional control over artists dissolved, leaving them to experiment with how to give form to “modernity,” and how to address a widening public audience for their art. Lectures and readings will shift between broad themes in 19th-century art coupled with in-depth examination of singular works, the goal being to strike a balance between close attention to art’s formal means and an account of what its chosen subject matter may have meant, to the artists themselves and to their public.