Holland Cotter: On the relationship between Classicism and Romanticism

"....an old but very modern truth: Classicism is the sun-facing side of Romanticism."

-Holland Cotter, art critic of the N.Y. Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/arts/design/15pous.html?pagewanted=all

Paintings by Nicholas Poussin, the leading French painter of the 17th century, the period of French classicism:

L'inspiration du poete.  (Inspiration of the Poet).   Private Collection.   U.K

Paysage avec Orion aveugle cherchant le soleil.   1658.   Metropolitan Museum of Art.

L'empire du Flore.   1631.  Dresden.

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Baigneuse de Valpincon.  1808.  Louvre.

The leading exponent of Neo-classicism in the 19th century.

Eugene Delacroix, "La Liberté guidant le peuple" (1830)
The leading exponent of Romanticism in the 19th century.