LibGuides: Art & Architecture: Start Here

Burges, William (English architect and designer, 1827-1881), Northam Towers, 1888, Trinity College Watkinson Library, Hartford, CT.

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784, 330 x 425 cm. Musée du Louvre.

Thomas Rowlandson, The Comforts of Bath, Plate 7, 1798. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Muybridge, Eadweard, 1830-1904, Galloping Horse (The Horse in Motion), 1878, cabinet card.

Unknown photographer, James John Audubon's Birds of America exhibit in Trumbull Room, Watkinson Library, Trinity College (Hartford, Conn.), ca. 1958. Trinity College Watkinson Library, Hartford Connecticut.

Unknown artist, A Review of the London Volunteer Cavalry and Flying Artillery in Hyde Park in 1804, ca. 1804, Oil on board laid down on panel, 15 7/8 x 20 1/16 inches (40.3 x 51 cm). Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

How to Begin Researching

Oxford Art Online

An encyclopedia is an excellent resource to do background research on your topic and gather keywords that will be useful for other sources and databases.

Formerly known as Grove Art Online, this is a great place to begin research or assist course studies. Oxford Art Online is considered to be the most comprehensive art reference work in the world. Provides fully searchable text and thousands of image links. From prehistory to the 1990s.

Getting Started with Art Research

Perhaps you have never done research for an art or art history specific course before. The way we think about art and artists is not about how successful they are, but in the relationships that the styles and movements have with others, in the features that make up a unique artistic/architectural movement or style, and how those movements or styles relate to the larger context of the historical, religious, or political world.