Delaroche

It started with French painter Paul Delaroche in 1840 and exploded with Americans like Donald Judd and Frank Stella in the 1960s.

“It shouldn’t, and I hope it won’t be, a dead end for women willing to compete,” Delaroche says.

People queued up to see paintings like Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa or The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Delaroche.

It's a flash place, and the National Gallery cannot always be putting on exhibitions of Paul Delaroche.

Yet his pictures are weirdly compelling: a pupil of the historical painter Paul Delaroche, whose Execution of Lady Jane Grey hangs in London's National Gallery, he painted detailed, brilliantly lit spectacles such as gladiators fighting in the ancient Roman arena.