Charles Giraud

Charles Giraud: Taking of Fort Fautahua in Tahiti, December 17, 1846

Marie Eléonore Godefroy

Marie Eléonore Godefroy: Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, 

Baroness de Staël-Holstein, known as Madame de Staël

Madame de Staël was a prominent, and quite accomplished, lady. Among other things, she was an enemy of Napoleon, and managed to survive. She traveled widely, was an author, befriended the Duke of Wellington, and involved herself in politics.

Henri-Frederic Schopin

Henri-Frederic Schopin: Allegory, The Golden Age

Carle Vernet

Carle Vernet: His Majesty Giving Orders to 

His Marshals, the Morning of the Battle of Austerlitz

Vernet has been featured here before; he seems to have made a career out of painting Napoleon.

Robert Lefèvre

 Portrait of Two Elegantly Dressed Ladies

  

Portrait of Napoleon I

Alfred de Dreux

M de Dreux has been featured before.

 A Lady Sitting with Two Greyhounds

  

 A Young Horsewoman with a Yellow Tucker

  

Innocence Between Two Thieves

Alexandre Antigna

We have reached mid-century! I will spend a couple of weeks posting some undated paintings before diving into the second-half of the century. These are by Alexandre Antigna, who has been featured once here before.

 Death of a Pauper

  

 Jeune Fille Souriant

  

The Forced Halt

Moorish Dancers (1849)

Théodore Chassériau: Moorish Dancers

The Stonebreakers (1849-50)

Gustave Courbet: The Stonebreakers

The Stone Breakers (Les Casseurs de Pierres) was a work of social realism, depicting two peasants, a young man and an old man, breaking rocks. The painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1850. It was destroyed during World War II, along with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the castle of Königstein, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces in February 1945. [Wikipedia]

More about this painting:

• Museum of Industrialization and Poverty   
• KhanAcademy  
• Video commentary

Jewish Women of Algeria (1849)

Théodore Chassériau: Jewish Women of Algeria on a Balcony

Portrait of the Comtesse Charles d'Agoult (1849)

Jean-August-Dominique Ingres: Portrait of the Comtesse Charles d'Agoult, 

born Marie de Flavigny, and Her Daughter Claire d'Agoult

Rouget de L'Isle Singing La Marseillaise (1849)

Isidore-Alexandre-Augustin Pils: Rouget de L'Isle Singing La Marseillaise

Desdemona Retiring to her Bed (1849)

Théodore Chassériau: Desdemona Retiring to her Bed

Another Shakespearean scene from Chassériau.

Ploughing at Nevers (1849)

Rosa Bonheur: Ploughing at Nevers

Self-Portrait with a Pipe (1849)

Gustave Courbet: Self-Portrait with a Pipe

The Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies (1849)

François Biard: Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848

A Vase of Flowers on a Console (1848-49)

Eugène Delacroix: A Vase of Flowers on a Console

The Approaching Storm (1849)

Constant Troyon: The Approaching Storm

The Faïence Restorer (1848)

Paul-Narcisse Salières: The Faïence Restorer

Salières, who studied with the academic painter Paul Delaroche, made his exhibition debut at the Paris Salon of 1847 and showed this painting there the following year. This is ostensibly an unassuming scene of everyday life in the artist's native Languedoc region. But for many mid-nineteenth century viewers it would have evoked La cruche cassée (The Broken Pitcher), the iconic painting of lost innocence by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805), then as now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. [Metropolitan Museum]

Venus Anadyomene (1848)

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres: Venus Anadyomene

"Anadyomene" means "rising from the sea."

The Lightning (1848)

Alexandre Antigna: The Lightning

The 8th Napoleonic Cavalry Regiment (1848)

Jules-Antoine Duvaux: The 8th Napoleonic Cavalry Regiment Charging into Battle

Assault of the Monastery of Santa Engracia (1848)

Louis-Francois Lejeune: Assault of the Monastery of Santa Engracia

This episode took place during the second siege of Zaragoza during the Peninsular War.

Anacreon, Bacchus and Cupid (1848)

Jean-Léon Gérôme: Anacreon, Bacchus and Cupid

Gérôme would gain his greatest fame with his many Orientalist paintings (particularly those of harem scenes). But his early work was in the "Neo-Grec" school, including this example.

Louis-Philippe and the Royal Family, visiting the Galeries Historiques (1848)

Auguste Vinchon: Louis-Philippe and the Royal Family, visiting the Galeries Historiques in the Musée de Versailles, stopping in front of the statue of Jeanne d'Arc

The Birth of Pindar (1848)

Henri-Pierre Picou: The Birth of Pindar

Picou focused his work on mythological, historical, and allegorical scenes. He was an academic painter who studied with Delaroche and Gleyre. Together with several others, including Gérôme, he founded the "Neo-Grec" school, an extension of Neoclassicism.

Pindar (522-443 BC) was an ancient Greek lyric poet.

Portrait of Maria Pucci (1848)

Ernest Hébert: Portrait of Maria Pucci

Baronne de Rothschild (1848)

Jean-August-Dominique Ingres: Baronne de Rothschild

The sitter, Betty de Rothschild (1805–1886) had married banker James Mayer de Rothschild and was one of the wealthiest women in northern Europe, and one of the foremost Parisian patrons of the arts. Her beauty and elegance were widely known and celebrated, and inspired Heinrich Heine's poem The Angel. For her portrait, which is painted in oil on canvas, Ingres sought to infuse symbols of her material wealth with the dignity, grace and beauty of Renaissance art, especially that of Raphael, while at the same time adhering to the command of line as practiced by Jan van Eyck. It is this combination which, according to art historians, places Ingres so far apart from his early modernist contemporaries. Betty de Rothschild's portrait is regarded as one of Ingres' most accomplished works, and has been described as "perhaps the most sumptuous yet approachable image of mid-nineteenth-century opulence." [Wikipedia]