eHistory Timelines
Stay on the old site to get timelines that have an international focus giving events by year in 5 categories:  government, politics and war; art and culture; science and technology; religion and philosophy; and daily life and health.  Includes links to articles about famous people and topics.  The new site may help with history research if you have an American author. Created by the Ohio State University Department of History.

WhoWhatWhen

These are fun interactive historical timelines.  Put in your author's name and create a timeline of events which occurred in his or her lifetime and what other authors, musicians, artists, architects and sculptors were active then.  There are also categories for events in politics, sports, war and disasters.  You need java installed on your computer to view the timelines.

Timelines of History

International focus and gives specific years when significant events occur.  Includes some cultural events.

History Mole

"Historical timelines from anywhere in history."  Search by events or your author's name or browse through pre-made topics.  This site gives internal and external links to other topics and biographies.  A downside is the pages are large and take time to load.

The Web Chronology Project

These timelines are arranged by subject matter.  Choose a chronology from the left side of the homepage.  For example, the "Music in the Western Tradition" chronology may help you find musicians in your author's time period.

Early Twentieth Century Timelines 1904-1914

This site is narrow in focus, but full of information.  Scroll down the page to find Literature, Music and Visual Arts chronologies for this decade.

Timelines from the BBC

There are brief surveys of British history here.  Choose from a particular time period.  There are links to events, mostly political, to help you understand the age.

Eighteenth Century Chronology

This website created by a Rutgers University professor focuses on the years between 1660 and 1800.  Click on a year to get a run down on events in categories such as literature, theatre, art, music, science and politics, mainly in Britain.

The Romantic Chronology

Details events and literary occurrences surrounding the romantic movement from 1700 to 1851.  Includes a search function.

American Literature and Events: Pre-1620 to 1920

Click on a time period to view events in political and social history as they relate to literary events.  There are links to author biographies, literary movements, and articles about events.

Literature & Culture Use these sites to expand your understanding of history and literary movements that affect your author.

Art Use these sites to help research artists and artistic movements that relate to your author and find images for illustrations.  Most museums have an international focus.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History

One of the best sites on the Internet about art history, here objects in the collection from around the world illustrate time periods and places.  Clicking on the timeline and choosing a region to explore will give you an historic overview of the time period chosen, representative art works, and links to more information.  Additionally, you can search by time period, location, theme, or artistic movement.  There are also in depth examinations of special topics.

National Gallery of Art

Click on search to browse the collection by artist's name, title of piece, or subject.  Click on "The Collection" to look through paintings, sculpture, prints and photographs by geographical area and time period.  There are online tours and in depth artist studies which can provide you with a great deal of information.

The Louvre Museum, Paris

Search under sculpture, paintings, prints or decorative arts and then choose to browse through selected works. You can then sort the images by date or browse through thumbnails of images.  Clicking on the thumbnails gives you more information about the object and the artist.  The timeline and map functions under each genre may also be helpful.

The British National Gallery

Paintings from Western Europe from 1250 to 1900 are represented in this collection.  It is helpful to have an artist's name to search for, but you can also use the "Artists at a Glance" feature to get to artist biographies with links to their paintings.  The "Collection Explorer" includes a timeline with discussions of various paintings and artists from the time period.  Get to these features by clicking on "The Collection" on the home page.

The Tate Museum

This museum is the national collection of British art from the 16th century to the present.  Click on Tate Collection and choose from an alphabetical list of artists or search by subject.

Hermitage Museum

This website is from the huge museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Click on Collection Highlights to access what the musem owns.  In the "Russian Culture" section there are historical overviews of different periods in Russia. Clicking on Digital Collection allows you to browse by artist, genre or school.  To use the search features you need to have java installed.

Artlex

This site is an illustrated dictionary of artistic terms and movements.

Modernism

A showcase of 250 objects illustrating one of the major art movements of the 20th century. Includes British, American, and European works from 1880 to 1940. Created by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Web Gallery of Art

Featuring European art from 1100 to 1850, this site allows you to create an artist list by time period with names, dates, genre of work, and nationality.  Start by clicking on Artists from the bar at the top of the screen.  When you choose an artist there will be links to their works.  There is also a glossary of terms.  By clicking on music, you can even listen to appropriate background music.  Alternatively, you can browse through online tours on topics by geographic location and time period.

Resources for the Study of Art History

Built and maintained by an art history professor at Sweet Briar College, this portal provides links to descriptions of artists and pieces of art.  It is organized by country, time period and genre of art.  It includes links to museums with the artists' works.

Victoria & Albert Museum Image Search

Here is a way to search through the 25,000 images from England's Victoria & Albert Museum.  This museum has artifacts from the world's cultures including paintings, sculpture, prints and decorative arts.

British Museum

Searching the enormous British Museum collections is easier if you have a clear idea of an artist or time period to search.  Use the index function to help.

Artchive

This site is fundamentally an image collection.  Click on the "Mona Lisa" and a list of artistic movements appears with representative artists listed underneath.  You can also search by artist name, title of work, or location.

Art Images for College Teaching

Another place to get images of artworks.  Try clicking on a time period and then choosing either architecture, sculpture or painting to get thumbnails of works of art with their associated artists.

 

The Classical Music Pages

Here you can look through time periods to correlate composers, time periods and artistic movements.  Selected composers have biographies and lists of works.  There is also a short essay on the history of western music.

The Classical Music Navigator

Choose from an A to Z list of composers; a Geographical Roster with a list of countries with associated composers; or an Index of Forms & Styles of music which lists composers under the style with which they are most connected.  There is also a Glossary of terms.

Classical Composers Database

Search for composers by nationality or time period.  For example, clicking on nationality leads to a list of countries, which in turn leads to an alphabetical list of composers under that country.  Clicking on the composer's name will lead you to a brief biography and list of works by date.

ClassicalNet Composer Master Index

Here is another A to Z list of composers with links to biographies and lists of works.

Classical Music Graphic Timeline

Timelines for 2 historic periods showing birth and death dates for classical music composers in pdf format.

Music History 102

This site, from the Internet Public Library, gives a brief history of Western music from the middle ages to the present.  Music & artistic movements are correlated and examples of composers from each time period and style are given.

Essentials of Music

There are three sections to explore here:  Eras, which has discussions of musical movements by time periods and includes representative composers; Composers, which gives brief biographies of 70 different composers; and a Glossary of terms.  This site is created by W. W. Norton.

Composers

If you already know the composer's name, this site may be helpful.  The University of Indiana School of Music has created a list of links to composers' web sites.

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