Nina Lübbren is Associate Professor of Art History and Film at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

• 1 The terms of narrative2 Eloquent objects3 Patterns of reception4 Stories in paint5 Epilogue: Into the twentieth centuryIndex

'Narrative Painting in Nineteenth-Century Europe provides a new lens through which to appreciatively view works that might not have previously seemed worthy of close analysis. It reveals the impressive ingenuity with which artists and critics of the second half of the nineteenth century sought to bring pleasure to viewers and readers hungering for engaging stories. Given that pleasure is not prominent in the earnest academic discourse of the early twenty-first century, it is refreshing to see its pursuit treated as a legitimate topic of research. This is one more reason to be grateful for Nina Lübbren’s well-crafted book.'Jonathan P. Ribner, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide'The real achievement of Lübbren’s study, allows us to see narrative painting with fresh eyes, while avoiding the tendentious special pleading that so often accompanies re-readings of neglected art from the period. Thanks to her research, we can now begin to tell a new story about an important, and unjustly overlooked, aspect of nineteenth-century European painting'Neil McWilliam, The Burlington Magazine‘Lübbren performs this task with unquestioned authority. She has an enviable mastery of the national cultures and languages that are involved. She rightly claims that she is consistent in applying a method derived from narrative theory, while remaining attentive to the individual testimonies of critics and writers over the period, an approach that ‘builds on Kemp’s narratological and reception-orientated method while paying more detailed attention to the actual language used by contemporary recipients’ (p.27). As well as being a work of great intellectual authority, the study is indeed a pleasure to read, as demonstrated in deft descriptions such as that of Karl von Piloty’s Seni before Wallenstein’s corpse (1855, Neue Pinakothek, Munich).’Stephen Bann, The Burlington Magazine‘Lübbren’s central claim is that narrative painting as it developed in nineteenth-century Europe differs from earlier such pictures in three fundamental ways. Firstly, it shifts the narrative focus away from figures to the objects and spaces around them; secondly, it is less reliant on source texts, instead adopting a distinctively visual mode of narration; thirdly, this mode of narration developed in the context of new patterns of reception. […] Lübbren makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge and understanding of a broad strand of nineteenth-century artistic practice that endured right up until 1900 and even beyond. Her book stands out for the way that it ranges across Western Europe […]’Emma Barker, Oxford Art Journal‘The arguments are […] clear and precise, making both [books] appropriate reads for non-specialists. […] Lübbren and Smyth … engage with artists who developed ingenious modes of self-promotion and survival amidst the growing number of media […] they join a growing caucus of dix-neuvièmistes […] concerned with the important role of the receiver in interpreting works of art, honouring the value of avant-gardes and academistes alike.’ (p.616)Glynnis Napier Stevenson, reviewed together with Patricia Smyth, Paul Delaroche: Painting and Popular Spectacle, 2022 in Art History