[1] One of the early prominent figures in French romantic painting was Hubert Robert, famous especially capricci, picturesque depictions of real or imagined ruins in Italy and of France.

Delacroix introduced a dramatic contrast of action, violence and nudity in an exotic setting, in his Death at Sardanapale (1827), a theme inspired by Byron.

[5] He was famous as a teacher, and some of his students later became prominent in very different styles; they included Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

He was a teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and, like Gleyre, he taught a number of famous later painters, including Édouard Manet, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

In the center is a reclining woman with a look of despair, surrounded by all the possible vices of Rome, encircled by statues of ancient Roman heroes recalling the more virtuous classical age.

The model for the figure of the Genius of War, above the others with wings spread, sword pointed forward and arm raised, was Rude's wife, the painter Sophie Frémiet.

[9] In 1802 François-René de Chateaubriand, at the age of thirty-four, published The Genius of Christianity, describing the role that religion should play in politics, literature, and the arts.

[11] The poet Alfred de Musset gave a characteristically romantic definition of romanticism: "Romanticism is the star which weeps, the wind which cries out, the night which shivers, the flower which gives its scent, the bird which flies...It is the infinite and the starry, the warmth, the broken, the sober, and yet at the same time the plain and the round, the diamond-shaped, the pyramidal, the vivid, the restrained, the embraced, the turbulent.

His play Hernani, which premiered on 23 February 1830 at the Théatre-Français in Paris, a few months before the overthrow of the Charles X of France and the Bourbon monarchy, was a sort of manifesto of romanticism.

[14] Another important figure in French romanticism was Charles Gounod, best known today for his operas Faust and Romeo and Juliet and his arrangement of Ave Maria based on a melody by Bach.

[17] Other celebrated dancers of romantic ballet included Carlotta Grisi, the first Giselle, and Carolina Rosati, who originated the role of Medora in Le Corsaire (1856).

Various other stage devices and illusions were introduced in romantic ballet, including the use of trap doors and wires to make it appear that the dancers could fly.

[20] The revival of the Gothic style was also greatly enhanced by immense popularity of the novel Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo, published in 1821.

That led to a movement for the restoration of the Cathedral, and to the creation in 1837 of a commission of Historic Monuments, headed by Prosper Mérimée, who was himself the author of popular novellas and stories in the romantic style.

Movement for a Gothic revival led to the construction of the first neo-Gothic church in Paris, the basilica of Sainte-Clothilde, begun in 1845 by architects Christian Gau and Thédore Ballu.

The new church had two towers and a purely Gothic nave and apse, with an abundance of sculpture and stained glass, but was slightly more linear and streamlined, following the classical tendency.

Nonetheless, the project was harshly judged by the rigorously neoclassical faculty of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, who denounced it as "plagiarism" and "false Gothic.

Italian Renaissance architecture, combined with modern materials, was also adopted for use in the new train stations constructed in Paris, particularly in the Gare de l'Est by François Duquesnoy [22] Later in the 19th century, Some architects sought more exotic sources.

Byzantine architecture was the inspiration for French some buildings in the late 19th century, notably the domes of the church of Sacré-Cœur, Paris begun by Paul Abadie (1874–1905).