The works of James Ensor, with their strange imaginings and macabre visions, resist categorisation. Ensor and Fernand Khnopff were founding members of the Belgian avant-garde group Les XX – or The Twenty.

Max Beckmann was a hugely influential German painter. A young prodigy, he dismissed Expressionism and abstraction and insisted that art be an unsentimental look at contemporary life.

In 1874 Impressionists Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley mounted a series of exhibitions in defiance of the powerful Paris Salon.

An introduction to Claude Monet’s pre-Impressionist work and French Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix, who brought passion and intensity to historical and mythological subject matter.

Although a member of the group, Degas’s painting style contrasted with the predominant French Impressionist style. He was a classical painter and draftsman who depicted modern life.

Symbolism was a pan-European phenomenon that developed as a reaction to the ‘grubby truths’ of Realism. Gustave Moreau was an important precursor to the Symbolism movement, which included Odilon Redon.

German anti-Naturalist artists looked to the golden age of Antiquity for their subject matter. Arnold Böcklin, Max Klinger, Anselm and Feuerbach relocated to Rome and became known as ‘German Romans’.

Beckmann’s outlook and style were profoundly affected by his experience of World War I. His paintings are tense and angular, conveying his sense of disquiet and anxiety.

Declared a degenerate artist by the Nazis, Max Beckmann was banned from exhibiting. His later works are full of the dread that settled around Europe during the war years.

The proto-Modernist movement, the Blaue Reiter group was interested in Cubism and Abstraction. It included Wassily Kandinsky and August Macke, Franz Marc, Alexej Jawlensky and Paul Klee.