ROMANTIC ART
July 14, 1789 – The capture of the Bastille came to symbolize French freedom, the end of monarchy and the end of the feudal system.  1789 can be considered the beginning of a new era of the western world.

 

The early period of the Romantic Era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (1789–1799) followed by the Napoleonic Wars and the end of the Holy Roman Empire (1806). The wars and the political and social turmoil that went along with them served as the background for Romanticism. The key generation of French Romantics were born between 1795–1805.

The Romantic period was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and the scientific rationalization of nature.  Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to believe that a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy. Romantic art addressed its audiences directly and personally with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. Romanticism placed an emphasis on nature, especially when aiming to portray the power and beauty of the natural world, and emotions, and sought a highly personal approach to art. Romantic art was about individual feelings.

Exotic wild nature began to appeal to many in an age dominated by the belief in science and order.  Edmund Burke’s writings are among the first to elucidate this appeal (1787).  Many Romantic ideas came from Jean-Jacques Rousseau who championed the rights of the individual.


JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID
David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style and Romantic movements.  David lived in the final years of the Ancien Regime and became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of political radical Robespierre.

“Socrates at the Moment of Grasping the Hemlock”  (1787)
Oil on Canvas  (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Scene depicting the story of the execution of Socrates, as told by
 Plato in his Phaedo.  Socrates has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing strange gods, and has been sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock.  Rejecting the opportunity to flee, Socrates uses his death as a final lesson for his pupils, and faces it calmly.

 

“Napoleon Crossing the Alps”  (1801)
Oil on Canvas  (Chateau de Maimaison, Rueil-Malmaison)

 

ANTOINE-JEAN GROS (1771-1835)
French history and neoclassical painter.  Pupil of David.

“Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa”  (1804)
Oil on Canvas  (Louvre, Paris)

 

THEODORE GERICAULT (1791-
French artist and one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement.  Unconventional lifestyle; self-taught artist.

“The Raft of the Madusa”  (1819)
Oil on Canvas  (Louvre, Paris)
Gericault’s masterpiece.  Completed at the age of 27.  Painting is considered an icon of French Romanticism.  Painting depicts the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate ‘Meduse’ which ran aground.

 

EUGENE DELACROIX  (1798-1863)
Regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school.  Characteristics:  expressive brushstrokes, study of the optical effects of color, passion for the exotic.

“The Barque of Dante”  (1822)
Oil on Canvas  (Louvre, Paris)
Sometimes known as “Dante and Virgil in Hell”.  First major painting of Delacroix.  Signals a shift in the character of narrative painting from Neo-Classicism towards the Romantic movement.

 

“The Massacre of Chios” (1824)
Oil on Canvas  (Louvre, Paris)
Scene depicts the Ottoman military attack on the inhabitants of the Greek island of Chios (1822).

 

“The Death of Sardnapolis”  (1827)
Oil on Canvas  (Louvre, Paris)
Faced with military defeat, Sardanapalus, the alleged last king of Assyria, ordered his possessions destroyed and concubines murdered before immolating himself.

 
 
“Liberty Leading the People”  (1830)
Oil on Canvas  (Louvre, Paris)
Delacroix’s painting commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 which toppled King Charles X of France.  A woman (“Marianne”) personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution (still France’s flag today).

 

FRANCISCO DE GOYA  (1746-1828)
Spanish portrait artist and court painter to the Spanish Crown.  Regarded both as the last of the Old Masters (roughly before 1800) and the first of the moderns – “the last great painter in whose art thought and observation were balanced and combined to form a faultless unity".

“Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”  (c. 1799)
Etching, Aquatint
The artist’s nightmare reflected his view of Spanish society, which he portrayed in the Los Caprichos as demented, corrupt, and ripe for ridicule.

 

“Charles IV of Spain and His Family”  (1800)
Oil on Canvas  (Museo del Prado, Madrid)

 

“The Third of May 1808”  (1814)
Oil on Canvas  (Museo del Prado, Madrid)
Painting depicts the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War.

 


Landscape Paintings
England was largely devoid of the civil strife and political upheavals as seen in France and Spain. The period known as Pax Britannica - "British Peace" – flourished from around 1815 to 1914 (WWI).  Significant paintings were largely landscapes rather than history paintings.

JOHN CONSTABLE  (1776-1837)
English Romantic painter.  Principally known for landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home.

“Boat-Building near Flatford Mill”  (1815)
Oil on Canvas

 

“The Hay Wain”  (1821)
Oil on Canvas  (National Gallery, London)
Depicts a rural scene on the River Stour.  Regarded as “Constable’s most famous image.

 

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER  (1775-1851)
Known as J.M.W. Turner. English Romantic landscape painter and water-colorist.  Began with watercolors then turned to oils.  Subjects: the forces of nature. Painted quickly; sometimes uses his fingers.  Great skill in expressing his experience.  Known as “the painter of light”.  Turner’s work is regarded as the Romantic preface to
 Impressionism and even Abstract Art.

“The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1838”  (1839)
Oil on Canvas  (National Gallery, London)
Scene depicts the Temeraire being towed by a paddle-wheel steam tug to be broken up for scrap.  The Temeraire was the last of the British “ship of the line” sail propulsion warships.  She played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

 

“The Slave Ship”  (1840)
Oil on Canvas  (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Turner was inspired to paint “The Slave Ship” after reading The History and Abolition of the Slave Trade (Thomas Clarkson).  In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered 133 slaves to be thrown overboard so that insurance payments could be collected.  It is speculated that Turner’s painting played a part in the passing of an 1843 law in which the British Empire pledged to more effectively suppress slavery and the salve trade.

 

“Snow Storm – Steam Boat off a Harbor’s Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water”  (1842)
Oil on Canvas (Tate, London)

 

“Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway”  (1844)
Oil on Canvas  (National Gallery, London)

 

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH  (1774-1840)
German Romantic landscape artist.  Best known for allegorical landscapes.  Characteristics:  contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins.  Friedrich came of age during a transitory period: disillusionment with a materialistic society to that of a new appreciation of spirituality.  Friedrich saw himself as a mediator between nature and humanity. 
The importance the Romantics placed on untrammelled feeling is summed up in the remark of Friedrich: "the artist's feeling is his law".

“Monk by the Sea”  (1810)
Oil on Canvas  (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin)

 

“Wanderer above the Sea of Fog”  (1818)
Oil on Canvas  (Kunsthalle Hamburg)
Well-known Romantic masterpiece.  An iconic painting that’s often used to instill the spirit of the Romantic movement.

 

“Chalk Cliffs on Rugen”  (1818)
Oil on Canvas  (Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur)

 

“The Sea of Ice”  (1824)
Oil on Canvas  (Kunsthalle Hamburg)
Depiction of the fate of ship that took part in William Edward Parry’s expedition to the North Pole (1819-1824).

 

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