ROMANTICISM

Started: c.1780
Ended: 1830

At the end of the 18th century and well into the 19th, Romanticism quickly spread throughout Europe and the United States to challenge
the rational ideal held so tightly during the Enlightenment. The artists emphasized that sense and emotions - not simply reason and order
- were equally important means of understanding and experiencing the world. Romanticism celebrated the individual imagination and
intuition in the enduring search for individual rights and liberty. Its ideals of the creative, subjective powers of the artist fueled avant-garde
movements well into the 20th century.

Romanticist practitioners found their voices across all genres, including literature, music, art, and architecture. Reacting against the sober
style of Neoclassicism preferred by most countries' academies, the far reaching international movement valued originality, inspiration,
and imagination, thus promoting a variety of styles within the movement. Additionally, in an effort to stem the tide of increasing
industrialization, many of the Romanticists emphasized the individual's connection to nature and an idealized past.

ORIGINS

After the French Revolution of 1789, a significant social change occurred within a single generation. Europe was shaken by political
crises, revolutions and wars. When leaders met at the Congress of Vienna (1815) to reorganize European affairs after the Napoleonic
Wars, it became clear that the peoples' hopes for 'liberty, equality and fraternity' had not been realized. However, during the course of
those agitated 25 years, new ideas and attitudes had taken hold in the minds of men.

Respect for the individual, the responsible human being, which was already a key element in Neoclassical painting, had given rise to a
new but related phenomenon - emotional intuition. Thus cool, rational Neoclassicism was now confronted with emotion and the individual
imagination which sprang from it. Instead of praising the stoicism and intellectual discipline of the individual (Neoclassicism), artists now
also began to celebrate the emotional intuition and perception of the individual (Romanticism). Thus, at the beginning of the 19th century,
a variety of styles began to emerge - each shaped by national characteristics - all falling under the heading of 'Romanticism'.

The movement began in Germany where it was motivated largely by a sense of world weariness ("Weltschmerz"), a feeling of isolation
and a yearning for nature. Later, Romantic tendencies also appeared in English and French painting.
GERMAN ROMANTICISM (1800-1850)

In Germany, the young generation of artists reacted to the changing times by a process of introspection: they retreated into the world of
the emotions - inspired by a sentimental yearning for times past, such as the Medieval era, which was now seen as a time in which
men had lived in harmony with themselves and the world. In this context, the painting Gothic Cathedral by the Water by Karl Friedrich
Schinkel, was just as important as the works of the 'Nazarenes' - Friedrich Overbeck, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Franz Pforr -
who took their lead from the pictorial traditions of the Italian Early Renaissance and the German art of the age of Albrecht Durer. In
their recollection of the past, Romantic artists were very close to Neoclassicism, except that their historicism was critical of the
rationalist attitude of Neoclassicism. To put it simply, Neoclassical artists looked to the past in support of their preference for
responsible, rational-minded individuals, while Romantics looked to the past to justify their non-rational emotional intuition.

The Romantic movement promoted 'creative intuition and imagination' as the basis of all art. Thus the work of art became an
expression of a 'voice from within', as the leading Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) put it. But this new subjectivity
(unlike that of the contemporary age) did not entail neglect of the study of nature, or painting craftsmanship. On the contrary: Romantic
artists retained the academic traditions of their art, indeed their painterly qualities still represent a highpoint of Western art.

The preferred genre among Romanticists was landscape painting. Nature was seen as the mirror of the soul, while in politically
restricted Germany it was also regarded as a symbol of freedom and boundlessness. Thus the iconography of Romantic art includes
solitary figures set in the countryside, gazing longingly into the distance, as well as vanitas motifs such as dead trees and overgrown
ruins, symbolizing the transience and finite nature of life. Similar vanitas painting motifs had occurred previously in Baroque art: indeed
Romantic painters borrowed the painterly treatment of light, with its tenebrist effects of light and shade, directly from the Baroque
masters. In Romanticism, the painter casts his subjective eye on the objective world, and shows us a picture filtered through his
sensibility.

By the time the European Restoration was set in motion by the Carlsbad Resolutions (1819), and the persecution of the demagogues
commenced, the appetite for German Romanticism had already faded, and rebellion had been replaced by resignation and
disappointment. The emancipatory aspirations of German Romanticism were set aside in favour of those of the Restoration. In the face
of such political conservatism, the artist-citizen withdrew into his private idyll, ushering in the Biedermeier period (1815-1848) of Late
Romanticism, exemplified by the works of Moritz von Schwind (1804-71), Adrian Ludwig Richter (1803-1884), and Carl Spitzweg (1805-
85). Spitzweg was perhaps the outstanding representative of the Biedermeier style: narrative, anecdotal family scenes were among his
favourite pictorial themes, although his cheerful and peaceful paintings have a deeper meaning. Behind his innocent prettiness, he is
satirizing the materialism of the German bourgeoisie.

SPANISH ROMANTICISM (1810-30)

Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) was the undisputed leader of the Romantic art movement in Spain, demonstrating a natural flair for
works of irrationality, imagination, fantasy and terror. By 1789, he was firmly established as official painter to the Spanish Royal court.
Unfortunately, about 1793, he was afflicted by some kind of serious illness, which left him deaf and caused him to become withdrawn.
During his convalescence (1793–1794), he executed a set of 14 small paintings on tin, known as Fantasy and Invention, which mark a
complete change of style, depicting a dramatic world of fantasy and nightmare. In 1799, he published a set of 80 etchings entitled Los
Caprichos commenting on a range of human behaviours in the manner of William Hogarth. In 1812-15, in the aftermath of the
Napoleonic War, he completed a set of aquatint prints called The Disasters of War depicting scenes from the battlefield, in a disturbing
and macabre fashion. The prints remained unpublished until 1863. In 1814, in commemoration of the Spanish insurrection against
French troops at the Puerta del Sol, Madrid, and the shooting of unarmed Spaniards suspected of complicity, Goya produced one of his
greatest masterpieces - The Third of May, 1808 (1814, Prado, Madrid). Another masterpiece is The Colossus (1808-12, Prado,
Madrid). After 1815 Goya became increasingly withdrawn. His series of 14 pictures known as the Black Paintings (1820-23),
including Saturn Devouring His Son (1821, Prado, Madrid), offer an extraordinary insight into his world of personal fantasy and
imagination.
FRENCH ROMANTICISM (1815-50)

In France, as in much of Europe, the Napoleonic Wars ended in exile for Napoleon and a reactionary wave of Restoration policies. The
French republic once again became a monarchy. In fine art terms, all this led to a huge boost for Romanticism, hitherto restrained by
the domination of Neoclassicists such as the political painter Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) and other ruling members of the French
Academy who had reigned unchallenged. Broader in outlook than their German counterparts, French Romantic artists did not restrict
themselves to landscape and the occasional genre painting, but also explored portrait art and history painting.

Another strand of 19th-century Romanticism explored by French artists was Orientalist painting, typically of genre scenes in North
Africa. Among the finest exponents were the academician Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) as well as the more maverick Eugene
Delacroix.

The first major Romantic painter in France was Jaques-Louis David's top pupil - Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835). The chronicler of
Napoleon's campaigns and an accomplished portraitist, Gros was associated with the academic style of painting, although he also had
a significant influence on both Gericault and Delacroix.

Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) was an important pioneer of the Romantic art movement in France. His masterpiece Raft of the
Medusa (1819, Louvre) was the scandal of the 1820 Paris Salon. No painter until then had depicted horror so graphically. The impact
of the painting was all the more effective for being based on a true-life disaster. Gericault's powerfully arranged composition forcefully
undermined the calculated, intellectual painting of academic Neoclassicism. The three-dimensionality of the figures, allied to the
meticulous arrangement of the raft, with its symbolic hopelessness. This symbolic portrayal of a shipwreck (of popular political
aspirations) gives the painting the same drama that marked the works of Baroque Old Masters like Rubens and Velazquez. Gericault
also adopted a Romantic approach to his famous portraits of asylum inmates.

Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), who later became the leader of French Romanticism, followed in Gericault's footsteps after the latter's
early demise, painting pictures whose vivid colours and impetuous brushwork were designed to stimulate the emotions and stir the
soul. In doing this he deliberately rekindled the centuries-old argument about the primacy of drawing or colour composition. Delacroix
countered what he considered to be 'Neoclasssical dullness' - exemplified, as far as he was concerned, by Jean Auguste Dominique
Ingres (1780-1867) and the conservative French Academy - with dynamic motion, and a colour-based composition not unlike that of
Titian or Rubens. His masterpiece in the Romantic style is Liberty Leading the People (1830, Louvre), painted on the occasion of the
1830 Revolution.

Delacroix was also an avid student of colour in painting, in particular the interaction of colour and light. He discovered that "flesh only
has its true colour in the open air, and particularly in the sun. If a man holds his head to the window, it is quite different from within the
room; herein lies the stupidity of studio studies, which strive to reproduce the wrong colour". One important result of his studies was the
discovery that nuances of colour can be produced by mixing complementary primary colours - a fact which was taken up with great
interest by the Impressionists. As it was, Delacroix himself was heavily influenced by John Constable, the great English landscape
artist, who also had a huge impact on the painters of the 'Barbizon school', near Fontainebleu, who devoted themselves to plein-air
painting in the 1830s.

Other French artists who worked in the tradition of Romanticism include: Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758-1823), Anne-Louis Girodet-
Trioson (1767-1824), Francois Gerard (1770-1837), George Michel (1763-1843), Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835) and Jean-Baptiste-
Camille Corot (1796-1875). An unusual case is the classical history painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), who specialized in
melodramatic historical scenes typically featuring English royalty, such as the Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833, National Gallery,
London). Immensely popular during his life, he made a fortune from selling engravings of his pictures.

In America, the Romantic history-painting tradition of Delacroix was maintained by the German-American artist Emanuel Gottlieb
Leutze (1816-68) whose masterpiece is Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
ROMANTICISM IN ENGLAND (C.1820-1850)

John Constable (1776-1837) belonged to an English tradition of Romanticism that rejected compositions marked by a heightened
idealisation of nature, such as those of Caspar David Friedrich, in favour of the naturalism of 17th century Dutch Baroque art, and also
that of Claude Lorrain (1604-82). This tradition sought a balance between (on the one hand) a deep sensitivity to nature and (on the
other) advances in the science of painting and drawing. The latter were exemplified by the systematic sky and cloud studies of the
1820s which characterized the work of Constable. Precise observation of nature led him to disregard the conventional importance of
line, and construct his works from free patches of colour.

This emancipation of colour is particularly characteristic of the painting of William Turner (1775-1851). For Turner, arguably the
greatest of all English painters of Romanticism, observation of nature is merely one element in the realisation of his own pictorial
ambitions. The mood of his paintings is created less by what he painted than by how he painted, especially how he employed colour
and his paint-brush. Many of his canvases are painted with rapid slashes. Thick impasto alternates with delicate alla prima painting,
tonal painting with strong contrasts of light and dark. It often takes a while for the depicted object to emerge from this whirling
impression of colour and material. Thus for instance in his painting Snowstorm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth (1842, Tate,
London), Turner did not try to depict the driving snow and lashing wind, but rather translated them into the language of painting. In this,
Turner is an important precursor of modern abstract painting. More immediately, his art had a huge impact on the Impressionists, who,
unlike Romantic painters, were realists - they were not interested in visions of light that heightened expressiveness but in real light
effects in nature. This movement towards realism appeared around 1850. At this point, a widening gulf opened up between emotion
and reality. The Romantics, including groups like the Pre-Raphaelites, focused on emotion, fantasy and artistically created worlds - a
style very much in tune with the era of Victorian art (1840-1900) - an excellent example being the highly popular sentimental portraits of
dogs by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-73). By comparison, the Realists adhered to a more naturalistic idiom, encompassing such diverse
styles as French Realism (with socially-aware themes) and Impressionism.

Other English Romantic painters include William Blake (1757-1827) and John Martin (1789-1854).

KEY IDEAS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS

 In part spurred by the idealism of the French Revolution, Romanticism embraced the struggles for freedom and equality and
the promotion of justice. Painters began using current events and atrocities to shed light on injustices in dramatic compositions
that rivaled the more staid Neoclassical history paintings accepted by national academies.
 Romanticism embraced individuality and subjectivity to counteract the excessive insistence on logical thought. Artists began
exploring various emotional and psychological states as well as moods. The preoccupation with the hero and the genius
translated to new views of the artist as a brilliant creator who was unburdened by academic dictate and tastes. As the French
poet Charles Baudelaire described it, "Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a
way of feeling."
 In many countries, Romantic painters turned their attention to nature and plein air painting, or painting out of doors. Works
based on close observation of the landscape as well as the sky and atmosphere elevated landscape painting to a new, more
respectful level. While some artists emphasized humans at one with and a part of nature, others portrayed nature's power and
unpredictability, evoking a feeling of the sublime - awe mixed with terror - in the viewer.
 Romanticism was closely bound up with the emergence of newly found nationalism that swept many countries after the
American Revolution. Emphasizing local folklore, traditions, and landscapes, Romanticists provided the visual imagery that
further spurred national identity and pride. Romantic painters combined the ideal with the particular, imbuing their paintings
with a call to spiritual renewal that would usher in an age of freedom and liberties not yet seen.