How did the Neue Pinakothek define modern painting in the 19th century?

The Neue Pinakothek in Munich did not define modern painting through a specific aesthetic movement or radical departure from tradition; rather, it defined "modern" in the 19th-century context as contemporary art of that era.1

Opened in 1853, the museum was established to house the collection of 19th-century paintings that Louis I of Bavaria had begun assembling as early as 1809. While the Alte Pinakothek was designed to display the historical Old Masters collection of the house of Wittelsbach, the Neue Pinakothek served as a repository for the work of living artists and recent acquisitions, effectively categorizing 19th-century production as the "modern" counterpart to the historical canon.1