After years of cultural stand-off, the period of high Romanticism (1820-1840) was one of fervent artistic exchange between France and Britain, in the aftermath of Waterloo, British artists contributed regularly to Paris Salons, shared studios with French artists, collaborated with Parisian print publishers, and established themselves as drawing masters to the French aristocracy. Artists from both countries criss-crossed the Channel. Watercolour painting, universally acknowledged as an 'English medium', caught the imagination of French painters and collectors for the first time. France was swept by enthusiasm for the romances of Sir Walter Scott, the publication of Ivanhoe in 1819 caused as much of a sensation in Paris as the exhibition of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa did in London in the same year.
Key shared themes emerged between the artists of the two nations: landscape; literature; history; portraiture; and painting in watercolour. These themes are explored and illustrated by man of the acknowledged masterpieces of Romantic painting, including works by Constable, Corot, Delacroix, Géricault, Ingres, Turner, Vernet and Wilkie among others