page_title: History painting
section_title: History painting and historical painting
hierarchical_section_title: History painting / History painting and historical painting
caption_attribution_description: Wikipedia page - the model for the girl with the cards is Jane Frith
context_page_description: History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than artistic style. History paintings usually depict a moment in a narrative story, rather than a specific and static subject, as in a portrait. The term is derived from the wider senses of the word historia in Latin and Italian, meaning "story" or "narrative", and essentially means "story painting". Most history paintings are not of scenes from history, especially paintings from before about 1850.
  In modern English, historical painting is sometimes used to describe the painting of scenes from history in its narrower sense, especially for 19th-century art, excluding religious, mythological and allegorical subjects, which are included in the broader term history painting, and before the 19th century were the most common subjects for history paintings.
  History paintings almost always contain a number of figures, often a large number, and normally show some type of action that is a moment in a narrative. The genre includes depictions of moments in religious narratives, above all the Life of Christ, as well as narrative scenes from mythology, and also allegorical scenes.
caption: "No. 1, Misfortune" from Augustus Egg's Past and Present, 1858. The husband has discovered his wife's infidelity. Prayer and Despair complete the set.
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