From the Classicism of Jacques-Louis David to the Realism of Courbet and the Early Impressionism of Renoir the former Director of the Osterreichische Galerie at Vienna outlines the course taken by painting and sculpture on the continent of Europe during the nineteenth century. Faced with the untidy sprawl of individualism which followed the French Revolution and threw up isolated geniuses like Goya, Fritz Novotny nevertheless succeeds in charting the currents in what was predominantly a century of Naturalism and also-while artists were increasingly preoccupied with the 'inner man' of great landscape painting when Freidrich, Corot, and the Impressionists proper added light and atmosphere to the former achievements of the great Dutch masters.