Some notes
taken from Dr. Noelle Paulson, Christine Zappella, and Khan Academy.
“Romantic artists start with the
belief that human imperfection is caused by imperfect societies. Unfortunately,
this often leads them to believe they can improve people by smuggling
improvements into society through the Trojan Horse of art.” – Brad Holland
What was
it about? What were the goals?
Romanticism
was an artistic and intellectual movement that started in the second half of
the 18th century and continued all through the 19th. It
was a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment, in defence of the
passions and emotions which enlightenment philosophers rejected. Caspar David Friedrich
said, “the artist’s feeling is his law.” Rousseau said, "To feel is to
exist. And, our feelings come, most incontestably, before our thoughts."
Romanticism wasn’t simply about love or devotion. They explored all
emotions: excitement, awe, anger, fear, horror. It’s all part of the human
experience. Romantic artists felt that emotions were just as important to
humanity as logic, and that to ignore one’s emotions was to live a lie. So,
they looked for the emotional impact of everything they painted. They sometimes
painted classical and Biblical themes, but also about modern life and problems.
Romantics lamented the changing landscape, as the industrial revolution
transformed it with factories and urban slums. Romantic artists rejected
Classical art (in general), finding inspiration and nostalgia in medieval European
stories. They also explored supernatural ideas and spirituality – believing
there was more to the universe than what we could see through science. One
other thing they rejected was the hero worship of neo-classical art. Gone are
the morally upright role models. Instead, most of the figures in romantic
paintings face insurmountable problems and mysteries, with no clear answers.
The artist Gericault even focused on portraits of the insane.
About
the name:
It’s funny
that romantic comes from Rome, and yet romantic art was anti-classical
(rejecting Greek and Roman art). In the 18th century, romantic
was used to mean natural, having to do with beautiful landscapes and
sunsets. So, romantic art wasn’t Roman. It’s just another bad
label for an art movement.
A bit of
historical context:
In Europe,
the romantic period, 1780-1880, was a time of turmoil, poverty, revolution, and
injustice. Romantics hoped to change the world with their art, to guide people
in a better direction––this is what Brad Holland was joking about.
The
Hudson River School:
This was
America’s companion to European romanticism. These artists painted beautiful
landscapes along the Hudson River in New York. They studied the beauty and
mystery of American nature.
How was
it represented in the other arts – music, architecture, and literature?
Romantic literature got its start with British poetry, with writers like
William Blake, Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and John Keats writing some of the
greatest works in English literature. Gothic novels were also popular, such as
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The best known romantic authors today are
Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, William
Hawthorne, and Herman Melville.
Romantic music is also considered some of the best of all time, with
works by Brahms, Dvorak, Chopin, and others still being played today, all
around the world.
Due to nostalgia for medieval Europe, architects began a Gothic Revival.
Famous examples include the Palace of Westminster (containing the houses of
parliament) in London, the houses of parliament in Budapest, and the church of
St. Ludmila in Prague.
What
made it great?
Romantic
artists were incredibly skilled. Their vision and imaginations were vivid and
exciting. They were ambitious, making huge, iconic masterpieces that are some
of the most well-known and loved in art history.
Some
leading figures:
Henry
Fuseli (Swiss-English, 1741-1825)
Francisco
de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828)
William
Blake (English, 1757-1827)
Pierre-Paul
Prud’hon (French, 1758-1823)
Caspar
David Friedrich (German, 1774-1840)
Joseph
Mallord William Turner (English, 1775-1851)
John
Constable (English, 1776-1837)
Jean Louis
Theodore Gericault (French, 1791-1824)
Jean-Baptiste
Camille Corot (French, 1796-1875)
Ferdinand
Victor Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863)
Jean-Léon
Gérôme (French, 1824-1904)
George
Inness (American, 1825-1894)
William
Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)
Thomas
Moran (1837-1926)
Ferdinand Keller
(German, 1842-1922)
Edmund Kanoldt (German,
1845-1904)
Some of
the most famous artworks of the time:
The
Nightmare, by
Henry Fuseli, 1781
This
painting shows a monster (sometimes called an imp, incubus, or mara) that sits
on his victim’s stomach as she sleeps, causing her to have a nightmare, and
suffocating her. The demonic horse may be a part of her dream or a friend to
the mara. This painting has no moral lesson. Its goal is to frighten you with
wonder at the dark mysteries of life.
The
Abbey in the Oak Wood, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1809-10.
This
painting shows a funeral procession, as a line of monks carry a coffin into a
ruined abbey for burial, at twilight. It’s the dead of winter and the few trees
surrounding the ruin are tall, stumpy, gnarled, and bare. The mood is quiet and
sombre. There’s an uncomfortable tension created by the dark forest beneath and
the cold grey sky above, with its sickly yellow highlight. The tree branches
seem to point up like arthritic fingers. Everything looks incredibly old, and
the painting illustrates the vastness of time, and our tiny place in the universe.
Human time is represented by the ruined abbey and the funeral. Natural time is
shown with the old, tortured trees. And cosmic time is shown by the crescent
moon, barely visible in the centre right sky. It’s the only positive element in
the work, as it reminds us of cycles and rebirth. This painting exemplifies how
Romantics viewed nature and landscapes – not as simple pretty trees, but as
metaphors for life and universal mysteries. It’s not just a funeral in the
woods in winter. It asks larger questions about where we come from, where we’re
heading, what exists beyond death, etc.
The
Third of May, 1808, by Francisco de Goya, 1814
In this
painting, part of a series, Goya protests the war crimes of Napoleon in Spain.
France and Spain had signed an alliance, allowing Napoleon to send his army
through to war with Portugal. But, it was a trick, and Napoleon quickly used
his army to depose the king and install his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the
new king of Spain. When the people of Madrid rebelled, they were massacred.
This image shows Spanish patriots being shot by a French firing squad, at
night. A lantern casts an intense, spiritual light on the main figure, a martyr
who takes on a Christ-like pose with his hands above his head. His hands even
bear stigmata marks, like Jesus did.
This painting was one of the first to portray war as terrible, not
glorious or noble. There’s no honour in these killings, no fair fight. It’s a
mass execution, a war crime, and the closeness of the faceless killers to their
victims emphasizes the brutality of their actions. This work represents Goya’s
own opinion, not that of the state or church, and all this explains why some
people consider this “the first modern painting”. Additionally, instead of the
Neoclassical approach, this work is more painterly and gestural: figures are
loosely painted and unfinished, almost blurry, giving a sense of motion and night-time
vision.
The
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1818
This
painting shows a man who has hiked up one of the Elbe sandstone mountains
(between Germany and the Czech republic) and views the land around him. The
foggy landscape represents a metaphor of the mysterious world in which we, and
the man in the painting, live. We can contemplate that mystery, but who knows
if the fog will ever lift?
The
Raft of the Medusa, by Jean Louis Theodore Gericault, 1818-19
This
painting illustrates a terrible tragedy and political scandal. The Medusa was a
French ship taking settlers to Senegal. It ran aground at sea and sank, and
there weren’t enough life-boats (same situation as the Titanic). The captain
and all the other wealthy passengers took the life boats, and promised to tow
the other passengers on a raft built by one of the carpenters, using wreckage
from the ship. But, the captain soon saw that they couldn’t tow such a large
raft so he cut the rope, leaving over 150 people to drift away. These people
quickly resorted to murder and cannibalism and only fifteen survived over
thirteen gruesome days.
Gericault put a lot of research into this painting. He interviewed the
survivors, he had carpenters recreate the raft in his studio, he modelled clay
figures to organize his composition (which captures the same feel as Ruben’s
works), and even brought in body parts from a morgue to study dead and decaying
flesh. The people on the raft show a level of detail reminiscent of the
renaissance and Greek statues, but it’s still more painterly and gestural than
Neoclassical works, and gone is any sense of moral lesson or virtue. This
painting shows humanity in its worst, most desperate state. It shows the
struggle between man and nature to survive. It also shows the failure of the
recently restored monarchy, since the ship’s captain was appointed by the new
King Louis XVIII. Politically, the painting served as a metaphor for France,
and many Frenchmen felt they were all on the raft of the Medusa, having
witnessed the failure of their revolution and empire.
Saturn
Devouring One of His Sons, by Francisco de Goya, 1822-3
This
painting tells the story of Saturn, god of time, eating one of his sons to try
to avoid a prophecy – that one of his sons would one day kill him and take over
as king of the Gods. Goya painted this to decorate his own home, and it makes a
political statement – the ruler abusing and destroying his own children to
remain in power. Goya saw this happen countless time in Spain, from the King to
Napoleon, and so on. If you look at Saturn’s face, you’ll see the desperation
and pain in his eyes – he knows what he’s doing is wrong, he knows it’s a
terrible situation and he hates it too, it’s the fear that makes him do it.
Goya saw many parallels to this in politics, the question being, how long can
we let this continue?
The
Death of Sardanapalus, by Eugène Delacroix, 1827
This
painting is based on a play written by Lord Byron, in which Sardanapalus was an
Assyrian king. He devoted his life to a decadent lifestyle of parties and
orgies, and he had a large harem. This angered his people and they rebelled, joining
forces with rival city states, and laying siege to him, at his city of Ninevah.
Rather than let his enemies take his women, he had them all killed and burned
with him in a large funeral pyre, filled with all his most precious treasure.
As with most Romantic takes on history, there’s no evidence Sardanapalus really
existed.
Liberty
Leading the People, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830.
This
painting celebrates the second revolution that took place in 1830, and the
“three glorious days” when rebels barricaded streets in Paris, and overthrew
the Bourbon king Charles X. The bare-chested woman waving the flag represents
the spirit of France. This celebration was premature. Charles X was deposed,
but a new “citizen king” named Louis-Philippe took power until he was also
deposed in 1848, leading to yet another coup and empire under Napoleon III. All
this goes to show how frustrating politics was in France. So much fighting and
death and revolution to put down an old order and create a democratic republic,
only to have it ruined again and again.
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