artwork from 1750 to 1850

Artwork from 1750 to 1850

Romanticism, Realism & Impressionism &

Post-Impressionism

Romanticism

• Emphasis on the imagination and emotion. Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.

• Romantic art looked to capture the beauty and power of nature. Bold brush strokes and colors.

• Romanticism stressed irrationalism, imagination, emotions and nature - emotion over reason and senses over intellect.

• Romantic artists were fascinated by the nature, the genius, their passions and inner struggles, their moods, mental potentials, the heroes.

Qualities of Romanticism

• Romantic artists, writers and composers rebelled against the Enlightenment emphasis on reason.

• Romantics painted many subjects, from simple peasant life to medieval knights to current events.

• Bright colors conveyed violent energy and emotion.

Eugene Delacroix - Liberty Leading the People, 28th July, 1830

Death of Sardanapalus, ca. 1846Eugène Delacroix

The White Horse, 1819John Constable

Stormy Coast Scene after a ShipwreckÉmile-Jean-Horace Vernet

•Théodore Gericault's•Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct

Romanticism

"Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling."

Realism

The Realist movement in French art flourished from about 1840 until the late nineteenth century, and sought to convey a truthful and objective vision of contemporary life.

• Realism sets as a goal not imitating past artistic achievements but the truthful and accurate depiction of the models that nature and contemporary life offer to the artist.

• Realists attempted to portray the lives, appearances, problems, customs, and mores of the middle and lower classes, of the unexceptional, the ordinary, the humble, and the unadorned.

Qualities of Realism

• Realists recorded in often gritty detail the present-day existence of humble people.

Young Women from the Village, 1852Jean-Désiré-Gustave Courbet

Woman with a Rake, probably 1856–57Jean-François Millet

The Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1863–65Honoré-Victorin Daumier

The Stone Breakersby Gustave Courbet

The Sower, by:Jean François Millet

The Gleaners, Jean François Millet

Winslow Homer (1836–1910)

The Gulf Stream, 1899

Impressionism

• By the 1870’s a group of painters took art in a new direction, seeking to capture the first fleeting impression made by a scene or object on the viewer’s eye.

Claude MonetImpression, Sunrise

Qualities of Impressionist Paintings

• Short, broken brushstrokes that barely convey forms, pure unblended colors, and an emphasis on the effects of light.

• Shadows and highlights in color.

• Effects of spontaneity and effortlessness

The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil, 1874 by Édouard Manet

Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883)

Boating

Allée of Chestnut TreesAlfred Sisley

La Grenouillère, 1869Claude Monet

The End of Impressionism…

• Its many facets and varied participants make the Impressionist movement difficult to define.

• Indeed, its life seems as fleeting as the light effects it sought to capture.

• Even so, Impressionism was a movement of enduring consequence, as its embrace of modernity made it the springboard for later avant-garde art in Europe.

Post Impressionism• A group of young painters sought independent

artistic styles for expressing emotions rather than simply optical impressions, concentrating on themes of deeper symbolism.

Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace, 1885Vincent van Gogh

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (verso: The Potato Peeler), 1885Vincent van Gogh

Cypresses, 1889Vincent van Gogh

Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889Vincent van Gogh

The Starry Night