400 Years of French Art: A Timeline Quiz

The Baroque artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) painted "Et in Arcadia ego" (aka "Les bergers d'Arcadie") in 1638; it's to be found in the Louvre.

The painting depicts a pastoral scene with shepherds and a shepherdess grouped around a tomb that bears the Latin inscription "Et in Arcadia ego" - loosely translatable as "Even in Arcadia, there am I" (that is, Death). It's a classic work of the French Baroque period from the mid- to late 17th century, but it's noticeably less florid than the works produced in other countries at that time.

There are some interesting connections between this painting and the story surrounding Rennes-le-Château and the alleged treasure of Bérenger Saunière: it's said that the landscape in the painting is identical to that around the area of the town. The 1982 book "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" by Michael Baigent et al contains more details of this, and the story also influenced Dan Brown's 2003 book "The Da Vinci Code".

The late Baroque/early Rococo artist Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) painted "Pierrot" (aka "Gilles") in 1719; it's to be found in the Louvre.

Watteau was instrumental in the development from Baroque to the less severe and more naturalistic Rococo style. He was particularly known for his paintings of al fresco parties, but sadly he was often ill and died at the age of 36, leaving relatively few works behind him. I love this late painting of a group of commedia dell'arte characters, with Pierrot standing mournfully in the foreground.

The Neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) painted "The Death of Marat" in 1793; it's to be found in the Oldmasters Museum in Brussels.

David was the foremost painter of the French Revolution. Stylistically he belonged to the Neoclassical school, demonstrating classical austerity and severity in his work compared to that of the frivolous, florid Rococo school. Politically he was an extremist "Montagnard", and as an ally of Robespierre he'd voted for the execution of King Louis XVI. Jean-Paul Marat was similarly radical, and he published a radical periodical entitled "L'Ami du peuple" ("The Friend of the People"). However he was assassinated by Charlotte Corday in July 1793, and David painted this work in remembrance of him.

The similarity between the painting and "Pietà" sculpted by Michelangelo has been noted. Art historian T. J. Clark said that the painting was the first modernist work because of "the way it took the stuff of politics as its material, and did not transmute it".

Interestingly, after the heights of the Revolution David transferred his loyalties to Napoleon, and was made the official court artist to produce "The Coronation of Napoleon" in 1807.

The Romantic artist Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) painted "The Raft of the Medusa" in 1819; it's to be found in the Louvre in Paris.

This is an astonishing picture. First of all, it's huge - over 16 foot by 21 foot - and then the content is absolutely shocking, depicting dead and dying people in the grimmest of details. It tells of a real incident that took place in 1816, when mutineers on a French ship set adrift a raft with about 147 people on board. Only 15 were left alive when the survivors were rescued; it was clear that cannibalism had taken place on the raft.

The work is painted in graphic, realist detail; Gericault even spent time in morgues making sure that he could paint dead flesh properly. It's a wonderfully constructed painting based on two triangles, one with its apex at the tip of the mast and the other with its apex on the man waving to the ship that's about to rescue them.

I've sat in the Louvre and looked at it a number of times, and it's never failed to appall me - "the horror, the horror", to quote Joseph Conrad.

The Social Realist artist Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) painted "The Gleaners" in 1857; it's to be found in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.

This is a lovely work, depicting three peasant women gleaning a field after the harvest, bringing to mind the hard living conditions for the rural working poor. Many of Millet's later works mined this seam, depicting rural poverty. It can be seen, perhaps, as a companion piece to "The Angelus", which shows two peasants pausing to pray at the end of a long, hard day.

Millet's works of this nature prompted two interpretations: some critics saw them as a celebration of French strength deriving from a broad base of yeoman peasantry, while others saw them as highlighting the desperate straits in which the poor lived.

The Impressionist artist Claude Monet (1840-1926) painted "Impression, Sunrise" in 1872; it's to be found in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris.

This beautiful painting is, of course, the work that gave its name to the Impressionist movement. It's one of six contemporaneous works depicting Le Havre at different times and in different weather conditions, and it became famous when it was exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in April 1874.

The painting demonstrates the hazy style that became famous as true Impressionism. However, the majority of critics of the time were unimpressed!

The Neo-Impressionist artist Georges Seurat (1859-1891) painted "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" in 1886; it's to be found in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Another famous painting, although I think it's famed for its methodology rather than for its content. Seurat's development of Pointillism (or Divisionism, as he called it) depended upon various theories of colour that had been developed by contemporary physicists and chemists. His idea was that when miniature dots or small brushstrokes of colour were processed by the eye then they were perceived as a single shade or hue. Seurat developed his work, although it seems that his approach was very time-consuming.

At the time this work was severely criticised, but it's now seen as a founding work of the Neo-Impressionist movement, a new and rebellious form of Impressionism.

The Post-Impressionist artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) painted "At the Moulin Rouge, the Dance" in 1890; it's to be found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings of Paris nightlife are justifiably famous, bringing fin-de-siècle Paris to life. This painting, made in his favourite location, the Moulin Rouge, shows an elegant woman clad in pink watching two dancers rehearsing the can-can.

The work is normally included in the Post-Impressionist school, roughly between 1865 and 1905. It goes against the Impressionists' use of natural colour, going for more abstract content.

The Fauvist artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) painted "Dance" in 1910; it's to be found in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Fauvist painters are recognisable for their use of bright colour, and this work by Matisse is no exception: five figures in warm shades of red and orange join hands and dance in a circle on a background of green earth and deep blue sky. Judging by the forms of the dancers Matisse had also spent some time looking at primitive art, and there are echoes of Stravinsky's 1913 musical work "The Rite of Spring".

The Modernist artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) painted "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" in 1912; it's to found in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Into the 20th century which sees the start of the Cubist art movement, possibly the most influential artistic development of the century. Pioneers Picasso and Braque broke up the subjects they were painting and reassembled them in an abstract form from multiple perspectives.

Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2", however, was too modern even for the Cubists. It seems to represent a figure in shades of brown and ochre, but the question of whether the image represents a human body cannot be answered; it has no age, individuality or gender.

The picture was massively mocked and satirised when it first appeared with parodies produced everywhere; this was especially so when the picture was first exhibited in New York in 1913.