//NINETEENTH CENTURY
Background
The museum’s collection of 19th-century paintings includes a group of works representing the different artistic currents having appeared in the years between the Empire and the annexation of Alsace and Moselle by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War. Alongside works bearing witness to local history, the leading artistic currents, such as history, romantic and genre painting, in addition to still lifes, share space with portraits and miniatures. As a result of acquisitions and gifts intended to enrich the museum’s collections, these holdings later expanded to include works purchased by the French state during Salons to supplement public collections: Tobias and the Angel by Gustave Doré (1865) and The Child Jesus Among the Doctors (1895), a work by the young Georges Rouault, are among the highlights of the allocations received by the Unterlinden Museum from the French state.
The museum possesses a large collection of romantic landscape paintings, as well as works by major Alsatian artists.
Over the course of the 18th century, portraiture began to upset the traditional hierarchy of genres and turned to techniques less costly than easel painting, such as miniatures or pastels.
