Romanticism (European Art History)

Romance vs Romanticisim
• There is a distinction between what is
Romance and what is Romanticism
• Romance is a feeling of love and affection,
usually shown between two people in love.
• Romanticisim is a movement that was started
by philosophers, artists and thinkers. It is a
new way of feeling and analyzing the world.

• The influence of Romanticism started in Europe and
spread around the world by 1900’s.
• It changed the way people thought about everything
in their lives – money, children, marriage, sex, love,
death and everything in between.
• It was a new age of thinking and reflecting on how
we live and was triggered by political events in
European history.
• It was a reaction to the changes and emergence of
the modern world - Urbanization, Industrialization,
Secularization and Consumerism.

Key Events That Established Romanticism
• 1762 – Jean Jacque Rousseau, a Swiss philosopher
published a book. It was concerned with the rearing
of children.

• a view of children as very different to adults – as
innocent, vulnerable, slow to mature – and
entitled to freedom and happiness. In other
words, children are naturally good
• an appreciation that individuals vary within
stages – and that education must as a result be
individualized. ‘Every mind has its own form’
• the power of the environment in determining the
success of educational encounters. It was crucial
– as Dewey also recognized – that educators
attend to the environment. The more they were
able to control it – the more effective would be
the education.

Childlike and Curious
• Rousseua argued that out of all the human
beings, the child was the original rebel.
• Children are by nature curious and uncaring
about what is happening around them. This
makes them brave and open-minded.
• Romanticism embodies these qualities – as it
is a world with growing logic, rationality and
thought.

1770 – London
17 year old poet Thomas Chatterton commits suicide

• There is little to no appreciation for Chatterton’s works.
His family pressurizes him to become a lawyer.
• The young poet was far wiser than his years
• His struggle led him to take some arsenic and end his
life.
• Thomas Chatterton’s death became a major event that
rallied artists and thinkers into developing a cult
• The tortured artist, shunted by society is born in the
wake of Romanticism. Many notable people soon
become part of this lineup – Byron, Keats, Van Gogh
and then modern artists like Jim Morrison and Kurt
Cobain.

1774 – Goethe publishes the first Romantic novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther

• The story follows the love affair between two people.
The Hero Werther is a young poet and Heroine is
Charlotte
• Werther falls in love with Charlotte but she is already
married
• He still remains in pursuit of her and conveys his
passion for her
• Werther is expected to make his career and establish
his status
• But he can only think about his love and what he needs
to do to get the woman he wants
• The passionate and tortured young man is a reflection
of Thomas Chatterton. The young poet who kills
himself. The character is repeated many time in
Romantic literature and is known as the “Tragic Hero”

• Poets and writers are creating stories that are
focused around the natural world.
• The reaction of industrialization and
consumerism drives them to imagine and
reemphasis a world of nature and beauty.
• Famous romantic poets who wrote about the
opposite of the modern world –
• William Wordsworth
John Keats
Percey B Shelley

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
William Wordsworth –
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Caspar-David Friedrich
1774-1840

Moonlight By the Sea

Ruins of Eldena Among Giant
Mountains

Morning Fog

Sea Fog on the Beach

Bohemian Landscape

Wreckage on Sea Ice

Chalk Cliffs of Rugen

The Monk by the Sea

The Cross Beside the
Baltic

Two Men Contemplating

The Woman by the Window

The Dreamer on the Ruins of A
Monastery

Wanderer By The Sea

Appreciation of the Sublime
• One of the key features of Romanticism is the
emphasis on serenity.
• The contrast of man’s tiny being against the
vastness of nature.
• The hyper-focus on nature however is also
shown as SUBLIME.
• CALM, PEACEFUL, GENTLE AND STILL

• The same way that the church made paintings
to reassure people of the existence of god -
Romantics reassured humanity of the
existence of Nature as the calming force in life.
• Philosophers, artists and writers greatly
focused on ridding themselves of the effects
of the machines. Their solution – hyper-
advertising the natural.

• Art schools promoting romantic school of
thought began training painters and artists
• Their inherent feature was reimagining the life
that was devoid of evil inventions
• Nature was the biggest savior to the decay of the
human condition
• Thomas Cole – American painter established the
Hudson River Art School in 1825. His style of
painting vast landscapes became a way of story
telling – how human beings lost themselves
within the grandeur of the universe.

Thomas Cole
Expulsion Moon and Firelight
1829

Flaneur by
Charles Baudelaire
1863

• The irrational, untrained, unadulterated and
the influx of experiences
• Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was a historic
Spanish Painter who adopted the Romantic
sensibility
• The need to feel and feel deeply was one
followed by all romantics. Goya has a strange
way of showing it. He was a gifted printmaker
and in his life he created more than 300 prints
and paintings depicting his inner process

Three Periods of Goya’s Career
• The Court Paintings
• The Dark Paintings
• The Destruction of War

Court Paintings
• The court paintings depicted the lavish
lifestyle of the Spanish government
• The lords and ladies of the Spanish monarchy
officially paid Goya to paint them and portray
their life
• These paintings have a sense of light, play,
leisure and sensitivity

The Destruction of War and Los Capricos
• Goya was an imaginative man who infused his
thoughts and beliefs into his work
• Most of his drawings and paintings created in
this period are political, driven by social
change and or the strength of Spanish folklore
• 1799-onwards

Revolutionary and Revolting
• Francisco Goya went through two very significant
events in his life – a life threatening illness and a war
• Goya fell really sick twice for long periods of time that
left him deaf in both ears
• He witnessed the Spanish Inquisition, the taking of
Spain during the Peninsula War led by Napoleon
Bonaparte
• The images Goya produced during this time reflected a
deep disturbance in his state of mind
• What he made later came to be known as some of the
earliest revolutionary work of arts ever made that
inspired artists like Picasso and Manet

The Children and the
Boogeyman
Goya

“As far back as his
grandfather”

“The Sleep of Reason Produces
Monsters”

Sad forebodings of what is to come

“Be quick they are waking up”

The Dark Paintings
• Goya lost his sanity due to two back to back
illnesses that left him deaf as well
• Due to this advancement there was a brief
moment from approx 1820-1830 in which he
created 12 works on the wall of his house
• They were disturbing images of war, crime,
revolution, mystery, gore and extreme violence.
• It is unclear what made him make those images
but the Spanish war and his illness are two causes

The Artist Becomes The Hero
• The artist is no longer just the maker.
Increased sense of individuality.
• The artist is making what is inspiring them,
shift in subject matter
• The art itself is focused on a variety of moods
and temperaments
• Boldness and unique expression is becoming
more meainstream

The range of images were changing rapidly. You
will notice a constant paradox. Two unlikely
things mixing with each other
Each artist exploring the internal sublime. The
images have a sense of fantasy yet have jarring
emotions
Romantic thought emphasizes the combination
of emotions and self.
The heart was the source of all knowledge, what
was felt was the epitome of truth and reason
Blindly following the world as it was seen was
criticized

• “Men forgot that All deities reside in the
human breast”
William Blake – Marriage of Heaven and Hell

William Blake
Front piece to the Song of Los

William Blake
The Great Red Dragon

Dante’s Lover’s Whirlwind
William Blake

God Blessing the 7th Day
William Blake

Europe Supported By
America ad Africa
William Blake

Front Cover of “Narrative of Five
Years”
William Blake

• Politics of Europe will continue to impact the
work of many artists.
• Some chose to relieve their pain through
embracing nature as their solace
• Some decided to explode on the canvas and
relay what they felt. The agony of war and the
violence resulted in a freely expressive
narrative of the horrors of war
• Depiction of class differences, racial injustice,
slavery, the exploitation of the poor by the
rich, all became important factors of
representation
• Socialist ideas began to resurface

Dante and Virgil at the River of Styx
Eugene Delacroix

Hamlet and Horatio
in the Cemetery
Eugene Delacroix

Susanna and the Elders
Eugene Delacroix

The Shipwreck of Don Juan
Eugene Delacroix

The Massacre at Chios
Eugene Delacroix

Orphan Girl at Cemetery
Eugene Delacroix

Death of Sardanapalus
Eugene Delacroix

Liberty Leading the People
Eugene Delacroix

• Artists were beginning to see the beauty in
individual thought. Imagination was the center of
all narratives
• The focus on titles and stories of paintings
became important because artists were making
new and bold images
• Romantics essentially understood that the key to
utilizing art as a tool, their personal agendas,
opinions and politics HAD to be represented

Three Lovers
Theodore Gericault

The Tempest
Theodore Gericault

Shipwreck on The Beach (The Tempest)
Theodore Gericault

Race of the Rider less Horses
Theodore Gericault

Portrait of a Kleptomaniac
Theodore Gericault

Portrait of A Child Snatcher
Theodore Gericault

Insane Woman
Theodore Gericault

• Not since the Renaissance has art illustrated
so beautifully the concerns of the scientific
domain; in Géricault’s case teaching those
early psychiatrists, we might be tempted to
think, to look on their patients with a more
human gaze.” - Ben Pollit

The Horseman
Theodore Gericault
There is that great
proverb — that until the
lions have their own
historians, the history of
the hunt will always
glorify the hunter”
Chinua Achebe
Nigerian Novelist

Head of A Shipwrecked Man
Study for Raft of Medusa
Theodore Gericault

Head of A Drowned Man
Theodore Gericault

Head of A Guillotined Man
Theodore Gericault

The Severed Heads
Theodore Gericault

Anatomical pieces
Theodore Gericault

The Raft of Medusa
Theodore Gericault

Romanticism As A Movement
• Out of all the art periods that passed in Europe,
Romanticism buried its roots very deep in global
culture.
• You can see the effects and impact of the
movement in art today all around the world
• As the politics of the world become more
entangled than ever, there is a rush to express,
revolt, protest and speak out
• Romantics at their deepest of hearts were rebels
– and that sensibility was transferred through a
generation of artists to us

Artists will continue to take inspiration from the
spirit of Romanticism even years later

Trump Effigy in a Guillotine Outside the Whitehouse
2020

Romanticism (European Art History)

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