According to the Text Art of the Romantic Period Valued Emotional Restraint and Clarity of Form
Romanticism
Romanticism, fueled by the French Revolution, was a reaction to the scientific rationalism and classicism of the Historic period of Enlightenment.
Learning Objectives
Discuss the political and theoretical foundations of Romanticism
Key Takeaways
Cardinal Points
- The ethics of the French Revolution created the context from which both Romanticism and the Counter- Enlightenment emerged.
- Romanticism was a revolt against the aloof social and political norms of the Historic period of Enlightenment and also a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.
- Romanticism legitimized the individual imagination as a disquisitional authorization, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.
- The Industrial Revolution also influenced Romanticism, which was in function about escaping from modernistic realities.
- Romanticism was also influenced past Sturm und Drang, a German Counter-Enlightenment motion that emphasized subjectivity and intense emotion.
Key Terms
- Romanticism: 18th century artistic and intellectual motion that stressed emotion, freedom, and individual imagination.
- Sturm und Drang: "Storm and Stress," a German proto-romantic movement signifying turmoil and emotional intensity.
- Counter-Enlightenment: A movement that arose primarily in tardily 18th and early 19th century Germany against the rationalism, universalism, and empiricism commonly associated with the Enlightenment.
Overview
Romanticism was an creative, literary, and intellectual move that originated in Europe toward the stop of the 18th century. In most areas the movement was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 CE to 1840 CE. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism.
The Influence of the French Revolution
Though influenced by other creative and intellectual movements, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution created the primary context from which both Romanticism and the Counter-Enlightenment emerged. Upholding the ideals of the Revolution, Romanticism was a revolt confronting the aristocratic social and political norms of the Historic period of Enlightenment and also a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what information technology perceived equally heroic individualists and artists, whose pioneering examples would elevate society. It likewise legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authorization, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.
The Passion of the German Sturm und Drang Motion
Romanticism was as well inspired by the German Sturm und Drang movement (Storm and Stress), which prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism. This proto-romantic motility was centered on literature and music, but too influenced the visual arts. The movement emphasized individual subjectivity. Extremes of emotion were given costless expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated artful movements.
Sturm und Drang in the visual arts can exist witnessed in paintings of storms and shipwrecks showing the terror and irrational destruction wrought by nature. These pre-romantic works were stylish in Frg from the 1760s on through the 1780s, illustrating a public audience for emotionally charged artwork. Additionally, disturbing visions and portrayals of nightmares were gaining an audience in Germany every bit evidenced by Goethe's possession and admiration of paintings by Fuseli, which were said to be capable of "giving the viewer a skillful fear." Notable artists included Joseph Vernet, Caspar Wolf, Philip James de Loutherbourg, and Henry Fuseli.
The Shipwreck by Claude Joseph Vernet, 1759: Vernet participated in the proto-Romantic Sturm und Drang movement.
The Industrial Revolution as well had an influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism. Indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, "Realism" was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism.
Painting in the Romantic Period
Romanticism was a prevalent artistic movement in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Learning Objectives
Discuss Romanticism as seen in the paintings from this menstruation
Key Takeaways
Key Points
- " History painting," traditionally referred to technically hard narrative paintings of multiple subjects, but became more often focused on recent historical events.
- Gericault and Delacroix were leaders of French romantic painting, and both produced iconic history paintings.
- Ingres, though firmly committed to Neoclassical values, is seen as expressing the Romantic spirit of the times.
- The Spanish artist Francisco Goya is considered maybe the greatest painter of the Romantic period, though he did not necessarily self-identify with the motion; his oeuvre reflects the integration of many styles.
- The German variety of Romanticism notably valued wit, humor, and beauty.
Key Terms
- Romanticism: 18th century artistic and intellectual movement that stressed emotion, freedom, and private imagination.
- Neoclassicism: The name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theater, music, and compages that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Aboriginal Hellenic republic or Ancient Rome.
- history painting: A a genre in painting defined past its subject matter rather than artistic mode. These paintings unremarkably depict a moment in a narrative story, rather than a specific and static subject.
Romanticism
While the arrival of Romanticism in French art was delayed by the agree of Neoclassicism on the academies, it became increasingly popular during the Napoleonic catamenia. Its initial form was the history paintings that acted as propaganda for the new government. The key generation of French Romantics built-in between 1795–1805, in the words of Alfred de Vigny, had been "conceived between battles, attended school to the rolling of drums." The French Revolution (1789–1799) followed past the Napoleonic Wars until 1815, meant that war, and the attending political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism.
History Painting
Since the Renaissance, history painting was considered among the highest and most difficult forms of art. History painting is divers past its subject thing rather than artistic mode. History paintings usually depict a moment in a narrative story rather than a specific and static subject. In the Romantic period, history painting was extremely pop and increasingly came to refer to the depiction of historical scenes, rather than those from religion or mythology.
French Romanticism
This generation of the French school adult personal Romantic styles while still concentrating on history painting with a political message. Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa of 1821 remains the greatest achievement of the Romantic history painting, which in its 24-hour interval had a powerful anti-government bulletin.
The Raft of the Medusa past Jean Louis Theodore Gericault, 1818–21: This painting is regarded every bit one of the greatest Romantic era paintings.
Ingres
Profoundly respectful of the past, Ingres causeless the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic mode represented by his nemesis Eugène Delacroix. He described himself every bit a "conservator of good doctrine, and not an innovator." Nevertheless, mod opinion has tended to regard Ingres and the other Neoclassicists of his era as embodying the Romantic spirit of his time, while his expressive distortions of form and space make him an important forerunner of modernistic art.
Achilles Receiving the Envoys of Agamemnon past Ingres, 1801: Ingres, though firmly committed to Neoclassical values, is seen every bit expressing the Romantic spirit of the times.
Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) had bully success at the Salon with works like The Barque of Dante (1822), The Massacre at Chios (1824) and Death of Sardanapalus (1827). Delacroix'south Liberty Leading the People (1830) remains, with The Medusa, ane of the best known works of French Romantic painting. Both of these works reflected current events and appealed to public sentiment.
Liberty Leading the People, by Delacroix, 1830: The history paintings of Eugene Delacroix epitomized the Romantic period.
Goya
Spanish painter Francisco Goya is today generally regarded every bit the greatest painter of the Romantic period. However, in many ways he remained wedded to the classicism and realism of his training. More than whatever other artist of the menstruation, Goya exemplified the Romantic expression of the artist's feelings and his personal imaginative globe. He also shared with many of the Romantic painters a more than gratis treatment of paint, emphasized in the new prominence of the brushstroke and impasto, which tended to be repressed in neoclassicism under a self-effacing finish. Goya's work is renowned for its expressive line, color, and brushwork every bit well as its distinct subversive commentary.
The Milkmaid of Bordeaux by Goya, ca. 1825–1827: Though he worked in a variety of styles, Goya is remembered as possibly the greatest painter of the Romantic catamenia.
German Romanticism
Compared to English Romanticism, German Romanticism developed relatively late, and, in the early on years, coincided with Weimar Classicism (1772–1805). In contrast to the seriousness of English Romanticism, the German diverseness of Romanticism notably valued wit, humour, and beauty.
The early High german romantics strove to create a new synthesis of art, philosophy, and scientific discipline, largely by viewing the Middle Ages equally a simpler catamenia of integrated culture, even so, the German romantics became aware of the tenuousness of the cultural unity they sought. Late-phase German Romanticism emphasized the tension between the daily earth and the irrational and supernatural projections of artistic genius. Cardinal painters in the German Romantic tradition include Joseph Anton Koch, Adrian Ludwig Richter, Otto Reinhold Jacobi, and Philipp Otto Runge among others.
The Hulsenbeck Children by Phillip Otto Runge, oil on canvas: Runge was a well-known German Romantic painter.
Mural Painting in the Romantic Period
Landscape painting in Europe and America profoundly increased in prominence during the 18th and particularly the 19th century.
Learning Objectives
Describe the emergence of mural painting in France, England, The netherlands, and the United states of america during the years of the Enlightenment
Primal Takeaways
Key Points
- The pass up of explicitly religious works, a consequence of the Protestant Reformation, contributed to the ascension in the popularity of landscapes.
- English painters, working in the Romantic tradition, became well known for watercolor landscapes in the 18th century.
- Artists in the Barbizon School brought landscape painting to prominence in France, and were inspired by English mural artist John Constable. The Barbizon school was an important forerunner to Impressionism.
- The glorified depiction of a nation's natural wonders, and the development of a distinct national style, were both ways in which nationalism influenced landscape painting in Europe and America.
- The Hudson River Schoolhouse was the most influential landscape art movement in 19th century America.
Key Terms
- Romanticism: 18th century artistic and intellectual movement that stressed emotion, liberty, and individual imagination
- plein air: En plein air is a French expression that means "in the open air," and refers to the act of painting outdoors. In the mid-19th century, working in natural low-cal became particularly of import to the Barbizon School and Impressionism.
Dutch and English Landscape Painting
Mural painting depicts natural scenery such every bit mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, in which the main subject is typically a wide view and the elements are arranged into a coherent composition. During the Dutch Aureate Historic period of painting of the 17th century, this type of painting greatly increased in popularity, and many artists specialized in the genre. In item, painters of this era were known for developing extremely subtle, realist techniques of depicting light and weather condition. The popularity of landscape painting in this region, during this fourth dimension, was in part a reflection of the virtual disappearance of religious art in kingdom of the netherlands, which was then a Calvinist guild. In the 18th and 19th centuries, religious painting declined across all of Europe, and the motion of Romanticism spread, both of which provided important historical ingredients for landscape painting to ascend to a more prominent place in art.
In England, landscapes had initially only been painted as the backgrounds for portraits, and typically portrayed the parks or estates of a landowner. This changed as a upshot of Anthony van Dyck, who, along with other Flemish artists living in England, began a national tradition. In the 18th century, watercolor painting, mostly of landscapes, became an English language speciality. The nation had both a buoyant market for professional works of this variety, and a large number of amateur painters. By the beginning of the 19th century, the virtually highly regarded English language artists were all, for the most part, dedicated landscapists, including John Constable, J.M.Westward. Turner, and Samuel Palmer.
The Hay Wain by John Constable, 1821: Lawman was a popular English language Romantic Painter.
French Mural Painting
French painters were slower to develop an interest in landscapes, but in 1824, the Salon de Paris exhibited the works of John Constable, an extremely talented English language landscape painter. His rural scenes influenced some of the younger French artists of the fourth dimension, moving them to abandon formalism and to draw inspiration directly from nature. During the revolutions of 1848, artists gathered in Barbizon to follow Constable's ideas, making nature the subject of their paintings. They formed what is referred to every bit the Barbizon School.
During the belatedly 1860s, the Barbizon painters attracted the attention of a younger generation of French artists studying in Paris. Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille amidst others, practiced plein air painting and developed what would afterwards exist called Impressionism, an extremely influential movement.
In Europe, as John Ruskin noted, and Sir Kenneth Clark confirmed, landscape painting was the "primary artistic creation of the 19th century," and "the dominant fine art." Every bit a result, in the times that followed, it became common for people to "presume that the appreciation of natural beauty and the painting of landscape was a normal and indelible part of our spiritual activity."
Nationalism in Landscape Painting
Nationalism has been implicated in the popularity of 17th century Dutch landscapes, and in the 19th century, when other nations, such every bit England and France, attempted to develop distinctive national schools of their own. Painters involved in these movements often attempted to limited the unique nature of the landscape of their homeland.
The Hudson River School
In the United States, a like movement, chosen the Hudson River School, emerged in the 19th century and chop-chop became 1 of the virtually distinctive worldwide purveyors of landscape pieces. American painters in this motion created works of mammoth scale in an attempt to capture the epic size and scope of the landscapes that inspired them. The work of Thomas Cole, the schoolhouse's more often than not best-selling founder, seemed to emanate from a similar philosophical position as that of European landscape artists. Both championed, from a position of secular faith, the spiritual benefits that could be gained from contemplating nature. Some of the later Hudson River School artists, such as Albert Bierstadt, created less comforting works that placed a greater emphasis (with a great deal of Romantic exaggeration) on the raw, terrifying power of nature.
The Oxbow by Thomas Cole, 1836: Thomas Cole was a founding member of the pioneering Hudson School, the most influential landscape art movement in 19th century America.
Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-arthistory/chapter/neoclassicism-and-romanticism/