
Main articles: Prehistoric art, Art of the Upper Paleolithic, Art of the Middle Paleolithic, and List of Stone Age art Pettakere Cave are more than 44,000 years old, Maros, South Sulawesi, Indonesia
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The 19th century saw the rise of the commercial art gallery, which provided patronage in the 20th century. Finally in the West the idea of " art for art's sake" began to find expression in the work of the Romantic painters like Francisco de Goya, John Constable, and J. Beginning with the Baroque era artists received private commissions from a more educated and prosperous middle class. From the Modern era, the Middle Ages through the Renaissance painters worked for the church and a wealthy aristocracy.

Initially serving utilitarian purpose, followed by imperial, private, civic, and religious patronage, Eastern and Western painting later found audiences in the aristocracy and the middle class. African art, Jewish art, Islamic art, Indonesian art, Indian art, Chinese art, and Japanese art each had significant influence on Western art, and vice versa. Until the early 20th century it relied primarily on representational, religious and classical motifs, after which time more purely abstract and conceptual approaches gained favor.ĭevelopments in Eastern painting historically parallel those in Western painting, in general, a few centuries earlier. Across cultures, continents, and millennia, the history of painting consists of an ongoing river of creativity that continues into the 21st century.

It represents a continuous, though periodically disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts and artwork created by pre-historic artists, and spans all cultures.
