European Painting and Sculpture Collections

The European collections of the R.W. Norton Art Gallery span over five centuries of art. Among the oldest items are a set of tapestries based on cartoons by Giulio Romano which were created during the sixteenth century and which depict events from the Second Punic War involving the famed Roman general Scipio Africanus. The oldest paintings in the collection are two early Dutch landscapes, "Landscape" by Jacob van Ruisdael, circa 1650, and "Forest Scene" by Meyndert Hobbema, circa 1662. There is also an outstanding collection of "fantasy" etchings entitled "The Prisons" which were created by Italian artist and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi during the eighteenth century. Another eighteenth century work is the portrait of Richard Robert Graham by the famed British artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Among the many nineteenth century European artists represented in the Gallery are Antoine Louis Barye, Rosa Bonheur, Jean Baptiste Corot, and Auguste Rodin. Barye was especially known for his spirited portrayal of animals in the wild as demonstrated by over 140 bronze sculptures in the collection. The popularity of pastoral scenes in nineteenth century France, particularly those involving cattle, is evident in paintings like "Boeufs et Taureaux de la Race du Cantal" and "Muletiers des Pyrenees" by Rosa Bonheur and "Cows and Their Herders in a Pasture Near a Large Tree" by Corot, the latter of which is also exemplary of the French Barbizon School. French sculptor Auguste Rodin was renowned for the range of human emotions explored in his bronze and marble figures, as is clearly seen in the well-known late nineteenth century works, "The Thinker" and "The Kiss".