Realism, as the name may suggest, was meant to show real life. These paintings did not show grand landscapes like in romanticism, or show metaphors like symbolism. It was meant to depict real people going about their ordinary daily lives.

Symbolism used symbols to represent the true message that the painter was trying to convey. This era saw the dawn of many of the common symbols we know now. Such as the grim reaper symbolizing death. 

Charles Dickens is known as a leader of Realism. He featured realistic characters, harsh story lines, and gritty details of industrial life. Romantics, on the other hand, expressed ideas using strong emotions, passion, and were inspired by nature.

Impressionism was a type of painting that became very famous thanks to its primarily French artists who painted in this form, making some of the most famous works ever made. Impressionism has also been an artistic movement in literature, film, and theater, but the movement had by far the greatest impact on painting, and very little on etching, sculpting or any of the other options.

Claude Monet is the sole impressionist in this group. The rest came later in the 1800's and were classified as post-impressionists due to their deviation from traditional impressionism in style and the gap in time between their oeuvres.

Logically, following impressionism was post-impressionism. This movement was in many ways similar to impressionism, but it deviated in several ways. Thus making is a new form of painting. It rose to prominence due to the works of famous painters such as Vincent van Gogh, and Henri Rousseau.

Vincent van Gogh is arguably the most famous artist of all time. He was a prolific post-impressionist painter. In his time as a painter he produced over  pieces of artwork. He also was a leading light of the post-impressionist movement, taking the torch from earlier impressionist masters such as Monet and Manet.

Romanticism as a literary movement was started by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. As a movement Romanticism advocated for the use of common language, and the treatment of all manner of subject (including low-income people and nature) in poetry.

As industrialization progressed throughout the 1800's more and more people began working in factories and with industrial goods. This shift away from the natural world caused a backlash in the form of Romanticism. Romanticism was meant to encourage people to go back to nature and appreciate its beauty. While more people were living in cities, well in excess of half the population was still living in rural, primarily farming, communities.

Most artists in the French Royal Painting and Sculpture Academy were male, but a small minority were female.

After the French Revolution, the Academy was suspended as it was a project of the Royal family.

Jacques-Louis David was one of the most famous Academy artists, but his fame originated before the Revolution.

Some Academy students, such as the Swedish painter Adolf Wertmuller, were not French.

The Academy was a prestigious institution that was patronized by French Royalty, but nevertheless prided itself on skill and professionalism; it was not a collection of artists lacking talent, but rather talented artists with connections to power.