Lucien & Esther Pisarro, a page from Ishtar Descending to the Netherworld, 1903.
Image, color, and ornament combine to generate intense expressionistic energy.
Paul Rieth, Jugend, illustration for magazine cover, 1915.
Jugend became known for showcasing the German version of Art Nouveau. It was also famed for its shockingly brilliant covers, radical editorial tone, and avant-garde influence on German arts and culture for decades, ultimately launching the eponymous Jugendstil.
3.
Alphonse Mucha, Gismonda, a poster featuring Sarah Bernhardt, 1894.
Gismonda is Victorien Sardou's four-act play, which premiered in the autumn of 1894 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris. Placing her life-size figure on an arched platform, Mucha rendered the beauty and dignity of her personality onstage rather than representing her realistic features or the story.
4.
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Hector Guimard, Art Nouveau entrance for the Metro, Paris, 1900.
The sinuous, organic lines of Guimard’s design and the stylized, giant stalks drooping under the weight of what seem to be swollen tropical flowers, but are actually amber glass lamps, made this a quintessentially Art Nouveau piece.
The Beggarstaffs, Kasama Corn Flour, poster, 1894.
In the Belle Epoque age of excess, this poster stands out in is expert simplicity. Their works significantly impacted the course of British graphic design; the bold, simple and eye-catching works marked a shift from the often fussy, contemporary Victorian designs used for such advertising.
6.
Antoni Gaudí, Casa Milá, Barcelona, 1906-1910.
Gaudí designed this masterpiece around two large, curved courtyards, with a structure of stone, brick and cast-iron columns and steel beams. It has a total of five floors, plus a loft made entirely of catenary arches and two large interior courtyards, one circular and one oval.
Henri van de Velde, Tropon food concentrate, poster, 1899.
This famous poster was issued for the German food manufacturer Tropon. It moves from realism to more abstract forms, emphasizing a pattern. Here he evokes the shapes and colors of the egg white and yolk, as well as the trademark of the manufacturer, three sparrows.
8.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Hill House, 1904.
Every item of furniture, textile, and decorative feature in the house was custom-made by Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald, a well-established artist in the Arts and Crafts movement who was also his wife.
The end result, finished in 1904, is a sophisticated blend of the latest international fashion for Art Nouveau and local Scottish traditions.
9.
Randolph Caldecott, Babes in the Wood, cover illustration, 1879.
Caldecott created a world where dishes and plates are personified, cats make music, children are at the center of society, and adults become servants. His drawings became prototypes for children's books and later for animated films.
10.
William Morris, The Works of Geoffry Chaucer, book print, 1896.
Morris combined a system of types, initials, borders, and illustrations to create the dazzling Kelmscott style.
Thomas Nast, The American River Ganges, illustration, Harper's Weekly, 1871.
Nast was the first journalist who did not own his newspaper to play a significant role in shaping public opinion. He is considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon."
12.
Ford Madox Brown, Work, painting, 1852-1865.
Brown's famous work erupts into proliferating details from the dynamic center of the action as the workers tear a hole in the road – symbolically, in the British social fabric, with each character representing a particular social class and role in the modern urban environment.
William Blake, Dante's Inferno, illustration, 1824.
Blake’s illustrations (done in watercolor over black ink) evoke nightly hallucinations and ghostly visitations – something he claims he experienced from a very young age. His art combines Miltonian themes with gothic themes.
14.
Eugene Grasset, Three Women and Three Wolves, print, 1900.
Grasset produces a scene with magic expressionist overtones. Three young witches dressed in transparent robes fly in a panic through the enchanted forest. The main witch's facial expression and undulating hair contrast with the black wolves lurking behind red spruce trees with blinding eyes.
15.
Prive Livemont, Rajah Coffee, poster, 1899.
Livemont produces a catchy design where the steam of the coffee cup and the product name become intertwined in a fascinating interplay of forms.
Arthur H. Mackmurdo, chair, 1881.
This is a dining chair, as suggested by its shape and practical leather upholstery, which is a copy of the original covering. The chair combines two completely different styles. While the legs and seat are both based on Georgian furniture of the 1780s, the serpentine design of the back is highly innovative, a harbinger of Art Nouveau.
17.
Jules Cheret, Les Girard, lithography poster, 1877.
A master of lithography, Cheret’s charming, frivolous Harlequins, columbines, and Pierrots, his girls and boys in masks and fancy dresses, were a delight to the eye; his brilliant yet delicate colors danced like flickering sunbeams over the gray stonewalls of Paris. He influenced artists like Lautrec and Degas.
18.
John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents, painting, 1850. An essential piece of PreRephaelite art.
The public reaction to the picture was one of horror, and Millais was viciously attacked by the press. The Times described the painting as "revolting" and objected to how the artist had dared to depict the Holy Family as ordinary, lowly people in a humble carpenter's shop "with no conceivable omission of misery, of dirt, of even disease, all finished with the same loathsome minuteness."
19.
Dana Gibson, The Weaker Sex II, illustration, 1903.
A capable illustrator, Gibson is best known for the "Gibson Girl," an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent Euro-American woman at the turn of the 20th century.
20. 
Edward Steichen, Pond, manipulated photography, 1904.
Pictorialism was an international style that dominated photography during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph to create an image rather than simply recording it.
Margaret MacDonald: White Cockade Tea Room Menu, 1911.
This menu design for a tea room at the Glasgow Exhibition shows the evolution toward geometric and modular forms. The composition of motifs, borders, and delicately defined solid volumes established a language of interlaced lines and flat shapes that works abstractly. The attention to order and arrangement of forms moves from the illustration dramatically, although the female face, rose, and hand hint at sensuality. The degree of abstraction of this work indicates the readiness for the repeatable modularity essential to design in an industrial context.
22.
Walter Crane, Railroad Alphabet, illustration, 1865.
Crane was one of the most influential designers of children's books. Before the Victorian era, children tended to be treated as "little adults." Victorians developed a more tender & didactic attitude through the development of "toy books" for preschool children.
Richard Doyle, Punch Magazine cover, illustration, 1916.
A British weekly magazine of humor and satire, Punch was most influential in the 1840s and 1850s when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration.
Joseph Paxton, The Crystal Palace, 1851.
Paxton's construction was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. It has 990,000 square feet (92,000 m2) of exhibition space to display examples of technology developed during the Industrial Revolution.
25.
Jan Toroop, binding for Psyche, by Louis Couperus, 1898.
This is an excellent example of Toorop's "whiplash" lines; the lettering blends in with the illustration, especially on the spine. Toorop adopted the batik style from the design of the Dutch East Indies.
26.
A. H. Wald, cover for Harper's Weekly, 1864.
This cover, engraved after a sketch by a visual journalist in the field, is a forerunner of the newsmagazine coverage of so-called "current events."
Herbert Horne, title page for Poems, by Lionel Johnson, 1895.
Symmetry, outline type letterspacing, and alignment are superb & the letter form is a perfect companion for the illustration.
28.
Will Bradley, cover for The Inland Printer, illustration, 1895.
Bradley achieves a design where figures are reduced to organic symbols in dynamic shape relationships.
29.
Rafael Nadar, Eugene Delacroix, photo, 1857.
Nadar is famous for posing his subjects in natural, relaxed positions with sympathetic, atmospheric lighting. He became famous (and wealthy) for his ability to capture the character of his sitters, not just their physical resemblance. His portraits were typically full-face, searchingly frank, without any of the epoch's conventional trappings, drapes, or formal costumes.
30.
Henry Fox Talbot, Pencil of Nature, photo, 1844.
This is considered the first commercially published book illustrated with photographs, a milestone in the book's art since Gutenberg's invention of moveable type.
31.
Johannes Gutenberg, Bible, 1450.
First major book printed using moveable type. The superb typographic legibility, generous margins & excellent presswork make this first printed book a canon of quality that has not been surpassed.
32.
Codex Sinaiticus, Greek Bible, 4th Century AD (found in 1841).
Biblical scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus one of the most important Greek texts of the New Testament, along with the Codex Vaticanus. In the biblical uncial style, the words are written in scriptio continua, without separation between characters.
34.
Geoffroy Tory, a page from Champ Fleury, book, 1529.
Tory contributed diacritics, cedillas, and apostrophes, as well as "grave" and "acute" accents to the French language. This work undoubtedly decided Francis I to choose Tory as his official printer in 1531.
35.
Aldus Manutius, pages from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, incunable, 1499.
The woodcut images represent the best illustrations of their period and are exquisitely blended with the typography, producing a book of serenity and grace.
36.
Erhardt Ratdolt, Euclid's Elements, book, 1482.
Ratdolt's design uses a large outer margin. Small geometric figures whose sheer delicacy of the line represents a technical breakthrough are placed in the margins of the supporting text.
37.
Hartman Schedel, Nuremberg Chronicle, book of world history, incunable, 1493.
The large workshop of Michael Wolgemut, Nuremberg's leading artist in various media, provided an unprecedented 1,809 woodcut illustrations.
38.
Book of Kells, Christ enthroned, illuminated manuscript, 800 AD.
This book represents the culmination of Celtic illumination.