Romanticism

Lecture by Ivy C. Dally

South Suburban College

South Holland, IL

What Romanticism is NOT:

Romanticism: • Romanticism develops alongside the

Neoclassic style, and rises to prominence following the atrocities of the French Revolution. More of an attitude than a style.

• Attitude is characterized by: ▫ A preference for painting and

sketching over other media. Powerful emotional content.

▫ Subjects showing the violence of the era, exotic lands and people, and the awesome power of nature.

▫ Creative freedom for artists. Looking to art of the past for inspiration was seen as “false”.

▫ The abandonment of logic and reason.

Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830.

Romanticism: • Romanticism develops alongside the

Neoclassic style, and rises to prominence following the atrocities of the French Revolution. More of an attitude than a style.

• Attitude is characterized by: ▫ A preference for painting and

sketching over other media. Powerful emotional content.

▫ Subjects showing the violence of the era, exotic lands and people, and the awesome power of nature.

▫ Creative freedom for artists. Looking to art of the past for inspiration was seen as “false”.

▫ The abandonment of logic and reason.

Delacroix, Massacre at Chios, Figure 23.9

Romanticism: • Romanticism develops alongside the

Neoclassic style, and rises to prominence following the atrocities of the French Revolution. More of an attitude than a style.

• Attitude is characterized by: ▫ A preference for painting and

sketching over other media. Powerful emotional content.

▫ Subjects showing the violence of the era, exotic lands and people, and the awesome power of nature.

▫ Creative freedom for artists. Looking to art of the past for inspiration was seen as “false”.

▫ The abandonment of logic and reason.

Goya, Saturn (Kronos) devouring his Son, 1819-1823. Oil on the walls of Goya’s House outside of Madrid, Spain.

Romantic Tendencies in the Neoclassic Era

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View (Vedute) of the Arch of Constantine and the Colossuem, from Views of Rome. See also 22.2

Sublime: an aesthetic quality of nature distinct from beauty. It is powerful, vast, infinite, overwhelming, even frightening.

George Stubbs, Lion Attacking a Horse, 1770. Figure 22.8

Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon in the Plaguehouse at Jaffa, 11 March 1799. Painted 1804. Figure 23.7

What do these works have in common although one is Neoclassic and one is a Neoclassic-Romantic hybrid?

What is different between the two works?

Current Events, the Exotic, and Landscapes

Detail from The Haywain

Francisco Goya, The Third of May, 1808; painted 1814. Figure 23.1

Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819. Figure 23.8

Eugene Delacroix. The Women of Algiers in their Apartments, 1834.

John Constable, The Haywain (Landscape: Noon), 1821. Figure 23.2

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Lake of Zug, 1843. Watercolor over graphite (pencil).

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840. Figure 23.3

Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in an Oak Forest, 1809-1810. Figure 23.4

Thomas Cole, The Oxbow (View from Holyoke, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm), 1836. Figure 23.5

Louise de Broglie, Countess d’Haussonville, 1845 by Ingres.

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grand Odalisque, 1814. Figure 23.6

Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche (version in the Louvre), Marble. Figure 23.11

After this lecture you should be able

to…. • Discuss how the three revolutions influenced the

Romantic era.

• Identify the formal and iconographical features of the Romantic style.

• Explain how images at this time were used as propaganda.

• Compare and contrast the Neoclassical style with the Romantic.

• Define vedute and sublime.