Romanticism and Revolution

Late 18th to Mid-19th Century

HENRY FUSELI (1741-1825, Swiss-British) The Nightmare, 1781. Oil on canvas, 3’ 4” x 4’ 2”. The Detroit Institute of the Arts. Fuseli is considered one of the major figures of the Romantic movement. Horror, fantasy, imagination, the subconscious – elements of the irrational or non-rational – fascinated him.

THE ‘MARA’ (detail from The Nightmare) from European mythology but also alludes to late 18th century ideas about ‘savages’ and half human simians. His features have been taken as resembling Fuseli’s. ‘Mara’ are spirits who visit in the night, causing bad dreams – or who assault women sexually in their sleep.

WILLIAM BLAKE (English, 1757-1827), The Ghost of a Flea, circa 1819-20, tempera heightened with gold on mahogany support: c. 8.5 X 6.4 inches. One of Blake’s “Visionary Heads”

“A monstrous creature whose bloodthirsty instinct was imprinted on every detail of its appearance, with 'burning eyes which long for moisture', and a 'face worthy of a murderer.‘”

William Blake's America: A Prophecy, (plate 9 of 18), 1793, connecting recent American history with current events in France and Europe – the spread of revolution.

Apocalyptic expectations of the Revolutionary epoch

“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's.”

- William Blake

WILLIAM BLAKE, Ancient of Days, frontispiece of Europe: A Prophecy, 1794. Metal relief etching, hand colored, approx. 9 1/2” x 6 3/4”

Neoclassical and Romantic

“When he set a compassUpon the face of the deep”

Proverbs 8:27 Old Testament

William Blake, Illustration from 'The Book of Job,’ Behemoth and Leviathan, 8 x 6 inches,  1825

Line engraving, hand painted watercolor on paper

FRANCISCO GOYA (Spanish, 1746-1828), The Sleep [or Dream] of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razón produce monstruos), plate 43 of 80 plates of series, Los Caprichos (The Caprices), 1798, etching and aquatint, 8 1/2” x 6”Ambiguous animal symbolism: owls (folly), bats (ignorance)

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels." (Caption from the ‘Prado’ version)

FRANCISCO GOYA, The Third of May 1808, 1814 (for Ferdinand VII), oil on canvas, approx. 8’ 8” x 11’ 3”. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Note the Franciscan priest about to be executed.

The Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain - 2008 Goya exhibition with The Second of May, 1808 (left) and The Third of May, 1808 (right), both painted in 1814.

FRANCISCO GOYA, (left) This is Worse, # 37; (right) Ravages of War, #40, from The Disasters of War series of 82 prints, etching, aquatint, and drypoint, 1810-20,French atrocities: (left) mutilated Spanish man impaled on a tree; (right) women raped and murdered. Spanish guerrillas practiced atrocities against the French occupiers as well. Other prints in the series address the absolutism of the restored Spanish monarchy after 1814. Published 35 years after the artist’s death.

Spanish War of Independence against French occupation, 1808-1814 // “Guerrilla” (little war)

Francisco GOYA, Disasters of War: Scarred for Life, 1810-20To see all 80 prints in the series:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Los_desastres_de_la_guerra

FRANCISCO GOYA, Saturn Devouring One of His Children, 1819–1823. Detail of a detached oil wall painting now on canvas, 5 x 3 ft. Museo del Prado, Madrid. The horrors of both “reason” and “unreason.” Monstrous side of humanity.This painting is one of 14 in a series known as the Black Paintings for Goya’s home outside Madrid, Quinta del Sordo.

Goya painted the so-called Black Paintings in oil directly on the walls of his home, the ‘La Quinta del Sordo,’ the house of the deaf man, near Madrid, before he went into self-imposed exile in Bordeau, France, in 1823.

1900

THÉODORE GÉRICAULT (French, 1791-1824) Raft of the Medusa, 1818–1819. Oil on canvas, approx. 16’ x 23’. Louvre, Paris. French Romanticism - Note Baroque lighting and theatricality

Two of many preparatory studies Gericault made for The Raft of the Medusa

Theodore Gericault, Heads, oil on canvas, study for The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819

Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa at the Louvre museum in Paris

EUGÈNE DELACROIX (French Romantic Painter, 1798-1863). Death of Sardanapalus, 1826. Oil on canvas, approx. 12’ 1” x 16’ 3”. Louvre, Paris. Romanticism, Orientalism. Inspired by the poem of the same name by Lord Byron

EUGÈNE DELACROIX, Liberty Leading the People, 1830. Oil on canvas, approx. 8’ 6” x 10’ 8”. Louvre, Paris.

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (German Romantic painter, 1774-1840), Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810. Oil on canvas, 3' 7 1/2" X 5' 7 1/4". Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Nature as “the living garment of God.” (Goethe)

CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818, Hamburg, Germany

The Romantic Sublime landscape: beauty and fear. The yearning of the human spirit symbolically reflected in the landscape.

JOHN CONSTABLE (English, 1776-1837) The Haywain, 1821. Oil on canvas, 4’ 3” x 6’ 2”. National Gallery, London. Nostalgia for the countryside of the artist’s childhood. Response to the effect of Industrial Revolution on rural England.

One of many cloud studies by Constable

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (English, 1775-1851), The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840. Oil on canvas, 2’ 12” x 4’ 5/16”. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway, oil on canvas, 1844

Turner, detail of the locomotive from Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Northern Railroad

JOHN NASH (English, 1752-1835), Royal Pavilion, Brighton, England, 1815–1818. Romanticism, Imperialism, Orientalism, Eclecticism

“Indian Gothic”

Compare the Taj Mahal (1630-1653) in Agra, India, with The Royal Pavilion (below) 1815-18

British control of India began in 1757, lasted190 years, and ended in 1947.

Royal Pavilion at night

The Banqueting Room at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton from John Nash's Views of the Royal Pavilion (1826). 19th Century British eclectic Orientalism