↑Rembrandt 1640’s? Dürer, 1524 →

↑ Raphael, detail of St. Cecilia, 1514, Bologna ↑ Velazquez, detail, Las Meninas, 1656/7, Prado

Andrea del Sarto, 1528, Pitti ↑ Titian, , S. Salvadore, Venice →

Piero della Francesca Annunciation c Fresco, 329 x 193 cm San Francesco, Arezzo

Poussin Holy Family on the Steps 1648 Oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington Rubens The Holy Family with St Anne c Oil on canvas, 115 x 90 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid

Perhaps one of the longest, most divisive, art controversies took place in France during the mid-1800s. The two camps were called the Poussinistes and the Rubenistes after their titular idols, Nicholas Poussin and Peter Paul Rubens. The Poussinistes proclaimed the primacy of drawing and draftsmanship in painting while the Rubenistes argued that color should rule the day. The Poussinistes followed the well-worn path of classical art from Greek and Roman antiquities up through the Renaissance. The Rubenistes adored the vibrant colors and aggressive brushstrokes of the more recent Baroque artists. Actually, Poussin and Rubens themselves had little or nothing to do with the controversy. The real protagonists were Jean-Aguste-Dominique Ingres (pronounced Ang) and Eugene Delacroix (pronounced Dela-qua). Ingres had been a student of the outstanding classical master-painter Jacques-Louis David (pronounced Da-veed) and was 18 years older than his rival. The competition between the two split the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture down the middle and continued largely unabated from the early 1820s until both men died in the mid-1860s. Of course by that time, the young Turks of Impressionism were deciding the whole matter was something of a moot point anyway. And while they might tend toward The Rubenistes color theories and painting techniques, they hated the academic arguments and classical subject matter of BOTH camps.

IngresDelacroix The Turkish BathAlgerian Women in Their Apartments Musee du Louvre

Turner Procession of Boats with Distant Smoke, Venice c. 1845; Oil on canvas, 90 x cm; Tate Gallery, London J. M. W. Turner Shipwreck, the Rescue, c1802 Location?

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, 1843

William Holman Hunat, Our English Coasts, 1852 (Strayed Sheep) Tate