GENERAL DESCRIPTION
During the late 18th and early centuries, the spirit of romanticism began to be seen in works of art. It has often been viewed as a movement created in opposition to neoclassicism, but it was far more than this. The romantic also incorporated the ideal, rather than the real, in its outlook. Essentially, romanticism represented an attitude of mind, involving the expression of an idea that might have a poetic rather than visual origin: a romantic landscape built on classicizing tradition by incorporating emotional intensity and the theory of the sublime. The artist who best incorporated this romantic idea in his painting was Eugène Delacroix. His subjects were infused with the dramatic and exotic aspects of romanticism; scenes from works by Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott or themes illustrating the Greek War of Independence. The rich color and vigorous movement found the paintings of Delacroix and other Romantic artists visually link to Baroque aesthetics while their experimentation led to Impressionism. Some of the main artists associated with Romanticism include William Blake, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Caspar David Friedrich, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya, and J.M.W. Turner.
Adapted from
Anne Bromberg, DMA unpublished material, 1987.
NOTES
General Description: Anne Bromberg, docent notes on Romanticism, 1987, education files.
- A literary and artistic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
- Works of art often emphasized the beauty and power of nature and glorify human struggle and the hero/heroine.
- Focus on emotion over reason, which may lead to a disregard for formal rules and procedures.
- Interest in exotic locations and cultures including those in Asia and Africa.
Things to think about (after having gone through eight images and choosing whether it fits REALISM or ROMANTICISM:
1. As you think about and refer back to the works of art you just saw, how would you define romanticism and realism in your own words?
2. Comapre and contrast the subject matter seen in the artworks. Think about the descroptions of realism and romanticism. Why do you think the arists chose to focus on these themes?
3. Several of the realist and romantic srtists challenged ideas about art during their time. Are there present-day artists who challenge the accepted norms of society? If so, who are these artists, what is their subject matter, and how do they communicate their message?
Label copy for Rococo to Revolution, undated, education files.
ROMANTICISM:
• Focus on feeling, emotion, drama; "unsanitized" images
• Intense facial expressions
• Light vs. dark contrasts
• Sublime vs. picturesque subject matter
• Subjects: medieval, classical legend, literature
• Middle class audience
"European Art Recap: Main Points" document from European education files
Romanticism
The main artists associated with Romanticism were William Blake, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Eugene Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich, Henry Fuseli, Theodore Gericault, Francisco de Goya, Antoine Jean Gros, Samuel Palmer, Hubert Robert, Philipp Otto Runge, and Joseph Mallord William Turner.
"The artist's feeling is his law."
-Caspar David Friedrich, quoted in Carns, Friedrich der Landschaftsmaler (1841)
"A picture must not be devised, but perceived. Shut your corporeal eye, so that you see first your picture with your spiritual eye. Then bring to light that which you saw in darkness, that it may reflect on others from the outside to the inside."
-Caspar David Friedrich, quoted in Carns, Friedrich der Landschaftsmaler (1841)
"If you have ever in your life had one opportunity, with your eyes and heart open, of seeing the dew rise from a hill pasture, or the storm gather on a sea-cliff, and if you yet have no feeling for the glorious passages of mingled earth and heaven which Turner calls up before you into breathing tangible being, there is indeed no hope for your apathy, art will never touch you, nor nature inform."
-1ohn Ruskin, Modem Painters (1843-1860)
[Of Turner's attitude towards nature] "It is intangible, incalculable, a thing to be felt, not comprehended--a music of the eyes, a melody of the heart, whose truth is only known by its sweetness."
-10hn Ruskin, quoted in Johnson, English Painting from the 17th Century to the Present Day (1932)
"There is in me something that is often stronger than my body, which is often enlivened by it. In some people the inner spark scarcely exists. I find it dominant in me. Without it, I should die, but it will consume me (doubtless I speak of imagination, which mastersand leads me).
-Eugene Delacroix, Journal, 1822
"The art of Delacroix has the same power as the voice of Dante's Inferno, the Inferno of this century."
-Theodore Rousseau, Letter to La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1859
"Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) expressed characteristics of the 'terrible' sublime, that which causes pain and excites terror, as opposed to the beautiful, which calms and pleases. Burke's writings inspired numerous artists, such as William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West, and 1ames Barry."
-Donald Reynolds, The Nineteenth Century, pp. 12-13
"The philosophy of romanticism, as first expressed then in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, focused on the individual in revolt against the shackles of convention, whether social, political, or artistic. Rejecting the prevailing neoclassical style, the romantics went so far as to deny the validity of all objective rules and absolute values, demanding free rein for imagination, emotion, and subjectivity. Anti-intellectual, rejecting harmony and proportion in favor of inspiration and chaos, many romantics would find there was only a thin line between imagination and insanity. In painting, romanticism is characterized by the abolition of rules and boundaries, by the weakening of line to liberate color, and by a new fascination with the forces of nature....Romantic artists began by asserting the supremacy of landscape, then discovered that nature was not always benevolent and beautiful."
-Carol Dunlap, The Culture Vulture: A Guide to Style, Period, and Ism, p. 238
"Romanticism's enduring legacy includes the validation of unfettered emotion and the artistic imagination. The term Romanticism derives from the late eighteenth-century popularity of medieval tales such as the legends of King Arthur, which were dubbed "romances" because they were written in Romance languages, rather than Latin. Romanticism is less a matter of style than attitude. The critic and poet Charles Baudelaire called it "a mode of feeling." Emotional experience was prized above all, and Romanticism was both a reaction against the "establishment"--church, aristocratic state, and rational Enlightenment thought--and a manifestation of the revolutionary political spirit that animated the French and American revolutions. Unlike so many other artistic developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Romanticism arose in England and Germany rather than in France.
For painters, the Romantic craving for emotional intensity assumed astonishingly diverse forms. Subjects were culled from medieval and classical legend and literature (in this sense Neoclassicism should be regarded as the first of the Romantic revivals); contemporary events such as the Greek War of Independence and the Bonapartist adventures in Spain; and exotic Orientalist locales such as the harems of the Middle East and the Pyramids of Egypt. Romanticism also marked the flowering of varied approaches to landscape painting. The sublime and terrifying grandeur of the storms and avalanches depicted by Joseph Mallord William Turner share little with the intimate, picturesque approach pioneered by English watercolorists of the era. The eerily poetic landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich contrast vividly with the brash, sharply focused observation of Hudson River School paintings by Frederic Edwin Church, which proclaimed the United States' "divinely ordained" Manifest Destiny. The prevalence and appealing diversity of such unorthodox subjects helped undermine the authority of the Academic hierarchy, with its traditional view of the superiority of history painting.
The Western sense of individualism and of the inviolability of the self are ultimately Romantic ideas, as is the notion of the artist as the impassioned seeker of experience....The example of the Romantic artists was crucial to many late nineteenthcentury artists--especially the Symbolists--who labored to transcend the bounds of conscious thought and scientific rationalism."
-Robert Atkins, Art Spoke: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1848-1944, pp. 185-186
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WEB RESOURCES
- Khan Academy~Check out Khan Academy's "A beginner's guide to Romanticism."
- Khan Academy~Take this Khan Academy quiz "Romanticism in France."
- Romanticism and the School of Nature, Nineteenth-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection~Look through this 2000 exhibition catalogue available through the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- The Norton Anthology of Western Literature~Learn more about Romanticism in art and literature.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read an essay about Romanticism from the Met.
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General Description
During the late 18th and early centuries, the spirit of romanticism began to be seen in works of art. It has often been viewed as a movement created in opposition to neoclassicism, but it was far more than this. The romantic also incorporated the ideal, rather than the real, in its outlook. Essentially, romanticism represented an attitude of mind, involving the expression of an idea that might have a poetic rather than visual origin: a romantic landscape built on classicizing tradition by incorporating emotional intensity and the theory of the sublime. The artist who best incorporated this romantic idea in his painting was Eugène Delacroix. His subjects were infused with the dramatic and exotic aspects of romanticism; scenes from works by Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott or themes illustrating the Greek War of Independence. The rich color and vigorous movement found the paintings of Delacroix and other Romantic artists visually link to Baroque aesthetics while their experimentation led to Impressionism. Some of the main artists associated with Romanticism include William Blake, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Caspar David Friedrich, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya, and J.M.W. Turner.
Adapted from
Anne Bromberg, DMA unpublished material, 1987.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- Khan Academy~Check out Khan Academy's "A beginner's guide to Romanticism."
- Khan Academy~Take this Khan Academy quiz "Romanticism in France."
- Romanticism and the School of Nature, Nineteenth-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection~Look through this 2000 exhibition catalogue available through the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- The Norton Anthology of Western Literature~Learn more about Romanticism in art and literature.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read an essay about Romanticism from the Met.
Notes
General Description: Anne Bromberg, docent notes on Romanticism, 1987, education files.
- A literary and artistic movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
- Works of art often emphasized the beauty and power of nature and glorify human struggle and the hero/heroine.
- Focus on emotion over reason, which may lead to a disregard for formal rules and procedures.
- Interest in exotic locations and cultures including those in Asia and Africa.
Things to think about (after having gone through eight images and choosing whether it fits REALISM or ROMANTICISM:
1. As you think about and refer back to the works of art you just saw, how would you define romanticism and realism in your own words?
2. Comapre and contrast the subject matter seen in the artworks. Think about the descroptions of realism and romanticism. Why do you think the arists chose to focus on these themes?
3. Several of the realist and romantic srtists challenged ideas about art during their time. Are there present-day artists who challenge the accepted norms of society? If so, who are these artists, what is their subject matter, and how do they communicate their message?
Label copy for Rococo to Revolution, undated, education files.
ROMANTICISM:
• Focus on feeling, emotion, drama; "unsanitized" images
• Intense facial expressions
• Light vs. dark contrasts
• Sublime vs. picturesque subject matter
• Subjects: medieval, classical legend, literature
• Middle class audience
"European Art Recap: Main Points" document from European education files
Romanticism
The main artists associated with Romanticism were William Blake, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Eugene Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich, Henry Fuseli, Theodore Gericault, Francisco de Goya, Antoine Jean Gros, Samuel Palmer, Hubert Robert, Philipp Otto Runge, and Joseph Mallord William Turner.
"The artist's feeling is his law."
-Caspar David Friedrich, quoted in Carns, Friedrich der Landschaftsmaler (1841)
"A picture must not be devised, but perceived. Shut your corporeal eye, so that you see first your picture with your spiritual eye. Then bring to light that which you saw in darkness, that it may reflect on others from the outside to the inside."
-Caspar David Friedrich, quoted in Carns, Friedrich der Landschaftsmaler (1841)
"If you have ever in your life had one opportunity, with your eyes and heart open, of seeing the dew rise from a hill pasture, or the storm gather on a sea-cliff, and if you yet have no feeling for the glorious passages of mingled earth and heaven which Turner calls up before you into breathing tangible being, there is indeed no hope for your apathy, art will never touch you, nor nature inform."
-1ohn Ruskin, Modem Painters (1843-1860)
[Of Turner's attitude towards nature] "It is intangible, incalculable, a thing to be felt, not comprehended--a music of the eyes, a melody of the heart, whose truth is only known by its sweetness."
-10hn Ruskin, quoted in Johnson, English Painting from the 17th Century to the Present Day (1932)
"There is in me something that is often stronger than my body, which is often enlivened by it. In some people the inner spark scarcely exists. I find it dominant in me. Without it, I should die, but it will consume me (doubtless I speak of imagination, which mastersand leads me).
-Eugene Delacroix, Journal, 1822
"The art of Delacroix has the same power as the voice of Dante's Inferno, the Inferno of this century."
-Theodore Rousseau, Letter to La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1859
"Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) expressed characteristics of the 'terrible' sublime, that which causes pain and excites terror, as opposed to the beautiful, which calms and pleases. Burke's writings inspired numerous artists, such as William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West, and 1ames Barry."
-Donald Reynolds, The Nineteenth Century, pp. 12-13
"The philosophy of romanticism, as first expressed then in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, focused on the individual in revolt against the shackles of convention, whether social, political, or artistic. Rejecting the prevailing neoclassical style, the romantics went so far as to deny the validity of all objective rules and absolute values, demanding free rein for imagination, emotion, and subjectivity. Anti-intellectual, rejecting harmony and proportion in favor of inspiration and chaos, many romantics would find there was only a thin line between imagination and insanity. In painting, romanticism is characterized by the abolition of rules and boundaries, by the weakening of line to liberate color, and by a new fascination with the forces of nature....Romantic artists began by asserting the supremacy of landscape, then discovered that nature was not always benevolent and beautiful."
-Carol Dunlap, The Culture Vulture: A Guide to Style, Period, and Ism, p. 238
"Romanticism's enduring legacy includes the validation of unfettered emotion and the artistic imagination. The term Romanticism derives from the late eighteenth-century popularity of medieval tales such as the legends of King Arthur, which were dubbed "romances" because they were written in Romance languages, rather than Latin. Romanticism is less a matter of style than attitude. The critic and poet Charles Baudelaire called it "a mode of feeling." Emotional experience was prized above all, and Romanticism was both a reaction against the "establishment"--church, aristocratic state, and rational Enlightenment thought--and a manifestation of the revolutionary political spirit that animated the French and American revolutions. Unlike so many other artistic developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Romanticism arose in England and Germany rather than in France.
For painters, the Romantic craving for emotional intensity assumed astonishingly diverse forms. Subjects were culled from medieval and classical legend and literature (in this sense Neoclassicism should be regarded as the first of the Romantic revivals); contemporary events such as the Greek War of Independence and the Bonapartist adventures in Spain; and exotic Orientalist locales such as the harems of the Middle East and the Pyramids of Egypt. Romanticism also marked the flowering of varied approaches to landscape painting. The sublime and terrifying grandeur of the storms and avalanches depicted by Joseph Mallord William Turner share little with the intimate, picturesque approach pioneered by English watercolorists of the era. The eerily poetic landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich contrast vividly with the brash, sharply focused observation of Hudson River School paintings by Frederic Edwin Church, which proclaimed the United States' "divinely ordained" Manifest Destiny. The prevalence and appealing diversity of such unorthodox subjects helped undermine the authority of the Academic hierarchy, with its traditional view of the superiority of history painting.
The Western sense of individualism and of the inviolability of the self are ultimately Romantic ideas, as is the notion of the artist as the impassioned seeker of experience....The example of the Romantic artists was crucial to many late nineteenthcentury artists--especially the Symbolists--who labored to transcend the bounds of conscious thought and scientific rationalism."
-Robert Atkins, Art Spoke: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1848-1944, pp. 185-186
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