The history of painting dates back about 40,000 years, with the earliest paintings found in caves in Western Europe’s Franco-Cantabrian region and on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. These paintings consisted of hand stencils and simple geometric shapes, with the oldest certain representations of humans dating to about 35,000 years ago. Painting has continued to flow as a stream of creativity across cultures, continents, and millennia, from ancient times to the present day. Initially used for practical purposes, it later received imperial, private, civic, and religious patronage, with Eastern and Western paintings finding audiences among nobility and the middle class. In modern times, painters from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance worked for the church and wealthy nobility. From the Baroque period, they began receiving private commissions from a more educated and affluent middle class. In the West, the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’ was expressed in the works of Romantic painters such as Francisco de Goya, John Constable, and J.M.W. Turner. The 19th century saw the emergence of commercial art galleries, and the 20th century brought patronage.
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