The first half of the 19th century witnessed a profound shift in the course of Western art, which was dominated largely by French painting. It was a period of transition: new attitudes about painting were pervasive, many of which represented a break with the tradition of Renaissance illusionism and were harbingers of the modern painting forged by Édouard Manet and the impressionists. These new attitudes were present in both neoclassicism and romanticism, the two dominant styles of French painting between 1780 and 1850.