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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (novel)
Beginning with the iconic opening line “Call me Ishmael” and describing the epic sea voyage of Ahab in search of the white whale, steeped in metaphor and imagery, the novel is a seminal work of Romantic literature. Other famous novelists have called it one of the greatest books ever written. -
Sokokura, from the series Seven Hot Springs of Hakone (Hakone shichiyu zue) by Utagawa Hiroshige (woodblock print)
Hiroshige is considered by some the last great artist of the Edo period in Japan, or of the ukiyo-e genre, which he challenged with his natural landscapes. He was one of many 19th century Japanese artists who also greatly influenced the Impressionists and Art Nouveau designers when Japan was opened for trade in this era. Now housed at Galerie Zacke Vienna. -
La Traviata by Guiseppe Verdi (opera)
Based on the Dumas play about a young courtesan dying of consumption, the beloved opera features Violetta’s emotional aria of freedom, “Sempre Libera.” Listen to Maria Callas in the role. -
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (poetry)
Whitman rejected poetic formalism and opened up an innovative and ultimately influential, energetic free verse style using catalogues of images, immediate physical descriptions, exalting both nature and humans and their creations and work. Includes “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric.” Whitman continued to add to and edit the collection until his death in 1892. -
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (novel).
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” begins Dickens’ novel of the upheavals in London and France around the time of the French Revolution. -
Aurora Borealis by Frederic Edwin Church (painting)
Church was central to the Hudson River School of painting, the first significant American painting movement, capturing realistic and romanticized scenes from nature. Church captured phenomena like Niagara Falls and lighting effects, like Aurora Borealis, with detail, awe, and sensitivity. The painting resides at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. -
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (novel)
Written under a pen name for author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was an influential work of fantasy and imagination. It appeals to a childlike sense of literary nonsense and an adult adeptness at wordplay and symbols, featuring unforgettable creations like the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledum, and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, and the Mad Hatter. -
Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet (painting)
). In the painting that is said to have given the Impressionism movement its name and identity, the painting depicts Monet’s hometown of Le Havre, France. Monet used visual brushstrokes to capture the sense of a fleeting glimpse of the sunrise over the water. First shown in the "Exhibition of the Impressionists" in April 1874, it now resides at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. -
The Negress by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (sculpture)
A humanist statement against slavery first cast in 1868, the inscription on the base of this 1872 terra cotta casting housed at the Met reads "Pourquoi! Naître esclave!" or “Why born a slave,’ while the subject is treated with dignity and emotion as she looks away from her bonds. Carpeaux created later casts in bronze and a sculpture in marble. It is now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. -
Idylls of the King by Julia Margaret Cameron (photographic collection)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson asked the Indian-born British photographer to make photographic illustrations of his poems of Arthurian legends. She responded that “it is immortality to me to be bound up with you” (metmuseum.org) and created an ethereal collection of imaginative depictions of the poems. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. -
Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho by Timothy O’Sullivan (photograph)
O’Sullivan took the first photos of American Western landscapes, as well as clear-eyed portraits of Navajo and other Native Americans as they lived at the time. O'Sullivan captured stunning images that would greatly inspire Ansel Adams and other nature photographers years later with their vision and composition, like this striking image of Shoshone Falls. -
The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage by Edgar Degas (painting)
Degas used the subject of ballet dancers for numerous studies of form, color, and formal elements. In The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage, he paid special attention to the composition, the unstudied details of the dancers, and presenting a formal art in a surprisingly informal way. The dancers are not just filling a role, but are individuals, and their rehearsal scene shows their long hours and dedication in their yawns and stretches. -
Swan Lake, composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (ballet)
The first production was for the Bolshoi Ballet, with the more famous choreography still produced worldwide today debuting in the 1895 revival by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, also the choreographers of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. Perhaps the best known ballet of all time, it showcases the amazing precision and physicality of the ballerinas in the story of the white swan princess Odette and her black swan rival. -
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen (drama)
Ibsen used a natural dialogue and realistic characters and situations to critique social issues. The shocking and moving play about Nora leaving her husband Torvald and her family broke with tradition. Its premiere was at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, and it is still produced around the world. -
The Thinker by Auguste Rodin (sculpture)
Rodin created the original Thinker in plaster in 1880 as part of Gates of Hell, his depiction of Dante’s Divine Comedy. There would later be 28 full size bronze casts, some produced by Rodin himself and others after his death. The Thinker depicts philosophy and poetry as heroic qualities after the classical tradition but with an innovative modern approach that shows energy and tension beneath the surface. -
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (novel)
A Russian masterpiece of philosophy and narrative, this gripping and complex novel is widely considered one of the greatest ever written. -
The Eiffel Tower by Stephen Sauvestre, Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, and Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (architecture)
The tower built for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris has become one of the most loved architectural and cultural icons in the world. It was the world’s tallest structure from its completion until 1930. -
Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh (painting)
Painted after a view from his asylum room following a mental breakdown, van Gogh first considered Starry Night a failure. It is now one of the most esteemed paintings in history and is a masterwork of post-Impressionism and an early example of expressionism, using stylized swirls to depict the energy and emotion that can be found in viewing a night sky. -
Poems by Emily Dickinson (poems)
Dickinson published about a dozen poems during her lifetime, but the discovery of hundreds led to the posthumous publication of this volume four years after her death to immediate success and mixed critical reviews, many praising her striking originality and insight in poems that presaged modernism like “Hope is the Things with Feathers” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” -
Symphony No. 9 in E minor (New World Symphony) by Antonín Dvořák (symphony)
Bohemian composer Dvořák used new influences from Native American and African American traditional movement in one of the most popular symphonies of all time. Composed while serving as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. -
The Scream by Edvard Munch (oil pastel/ painting)
Munch’s The Scream of Nature was inspired by a sunset walk in which Munch perceived a scream through nature. It is one of the most recognizable paintings in art history and has been likened to a Mona Lisa of Expressionism. -
The Child’s Bath by Mary Cassatt (painting)
Cassatt used Impressionistic style and the influence of Japanese woodblocks to portray scenes of everyday life, regularly capturing unguarded and tender moments between mother and young children. The painting has become one of the most popular at the Art Institute of Chicago. -
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy (orchestral work)
Debussy was considered one of the foremost composers of Impressionist music, using nontraditional scales and unexpected forms. He was inspired by diverse influence including Javanese gamelan music and French Symbolist poetry. Inspired by the poem by Stéphane Mallarmé and later the basis of Nijinsky’s famous ballet, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun was a revolutionary work that highlighted the timbre of each instrument in the ensemble. -
Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? By Paul Gauguin (painting)
Gauguin’s post-Impressionism emphasized an emotional response and personal mythology, and he led the way for Symbolism, Cubism, and Primitivism. Gauguin left Paris for an idealized simpler life in Tahiti, where he lived for years, and his paintings are full of the Tahitian influence. In the monumental Where Are We Going, which Gauguin painted in Tahiti and considered his masterwork, Gauguin illustrates his vision for the beginnings, middle, and end of a human life, and the beyond.
