A visual exploration of Romantic paintings and the history of Romanticism.

1. Romanticism
Painting
A visual exploration of the sublime, awesome, and naturalistic elements
of Romantic art.

2. What was Romanticism?
• Romanticism is a bit difficult to pin
down, but generally it was an artistic,
literary, and intellectual movement
that originated in Europe toward the
end of the 18th century and reached
its peak from around 1800 to 1850.
• The term refers to an idealization of
reality.
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer
Above the Sea of Fog, 1818

3. Romantism came to mean Anti Classical
and is somewhat easier to think of as a feeling more than a definition.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF
ROMANTICISM ARE:
• It represented a movement towards the sublime and the picturesque.
• Nature (Awe of nature).
• A political shift from the norm and Aristocratic power.
• The individual as a unique spirit and creative force (genius).
• Opposition to the industrialization of Europe.
• An interest in the exotic and primitive.
• Melancholy.
• A desire for a new means of artistic expression.

4. The Nightmare
Henry Fuseli
1781
One of the first
Romantic paintings and
also one of the first to
depict the dark terrain
of the human
subconscious
Why might Fuseli
have titled this
painting “The
Nightmare”?
Why would he want
to make such a
painting?

5. Romanticism in Literature:
FRANKENSTEIN!
Shelley’s novel Frankenstein takes on the Romantic spirit as
man becomes a monster wrought by human hands through the
advance of science.
Other writers include:
Keats, Byron, Blake, and Wordsworth sought to express beauty, glory,
adventure, rebellion, and love of nature
To William Wordsworth, poetry should be "the spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings”. From the Preface to the 2nd edition of Lyrical Ballads, quoted Day, 2

6. William Turner - Hannibal and
His Army Crossing the Alps - 1812
Turner’s paintings captured the Romantic feeling with their portrayal of landscapes as emotional beings.

7. J.M.W. Turner, The Slave
Ship (1840). Oil on canvas. 90.8 ×
122.6 cm,Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston.
Turner’s painting, “Slave Ship” is an
excellent example of a Romantic view
of nature as being both beautiful and
awesome.
Romantic artists wanted to depict
nature, not as a predictable natural
phenomenon, but rather as
something wonderful and
mysterious.

8. J.M.W. Turner
Dutch Boats in a Gale
1801
Oil on canvas, 163 x 221 cm
National Gallery, London
Note the massive black
storm clouds rolling in
and literally pushing the
ship over. They can be
seen as the awesome
power of nature or even
as the dark
subconscious blowing
against reason.

9. W.M. Turner The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834
1834-35
Oil on canvas, 92 x 123 cm
Museum of Art, Philadelphia
The Burning of the Houses of Lords
and Commons is the title of two oil
paintings by J. M. W. Turner,
depicting the fire that broke out at
the Houses of Parliament on the
evening of 16 October 1834. Turner
himself witnessed the Burning of
Parliament from the south bank of
the River Thames. He made sketches
using both pencil and watercolor in
two sketchbooks from different
vantage points, including one from a
rented boat.

10. Turner: The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons

11. Francisco Goya - The Colossus - 1808-1812
Edmund Burke’s Philosophical
Enquiry (1757) connected the sublime with
experiences of awe, terror and danger.
Burke saw nature as the most sublime
object, capable of generating the strongest
sensations in its beholders. This Romantic
conception of the sublime proved
influential for several generations of artists.

12. Theodore Gericault: “Charging Chasseur”
1812
Louvre, Paris
Why would this painting be considered Romantic?

13. Thomas Eakins
The Gross Clinic , 1875
Romantic art was meant to
touch the audience directly with
intense feeling.

14. Tiger and Snake
Eugene Delacroix
1862

15. Eugene Delacroix - Greece on the Ruins
of Missolonghi - 1827
EUGENE DELACROIX
- In the midst of the activities that distract me (shooting
partridges in the woods..), when I remember a few lines of
poetry, when I recall some sublime painting, my spirit is
roused to indignation and spurns the vain sustenance of the
common herd. And in the same way, when I think of those I
love, my soul clings eagerly to the elusive trace of these
cherished ideas. Yes, I am sure of it, great friendship is like
great genius, and the remembrance of a great and enduring
friendship is like that of great works of genius. … …What a
life would be that of two great poets who loved each other
as we do! (his friend J. B. Pierret, ed.) That would be too
great for human kind.
-
* Eugene Delacroix, source of artist quote on daily life in the woods as young
Romantic artist, in: a letter to his friend J. B. Pierret 18 September 1818, from
the Forest of Boixe; as quoted in ”Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 –
1863”, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum
of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 41

16. Casper David Friedrich
Monastery Graveyard in the Snow (Cloister Cemetery in the Snow) 1819.
Unfortunatley, this painting by
Friedrich was destroyed in WWII
by the bombing. All that remains
is this black and white photo.

17. The course of empire: Destruction | Thomas Cole | 1836

18. Combat de chevaliers dans la
campagne (Confrontation of
knights in the countryside),
by Eugène Delacroix, 1834.

19. Delacroix,
(1830) A young tiger playing with its mother

20. Delacroix,
The Battle of
Giaour and
Hassan, after
Byron's Poem, "Le
Giaour," 1835

21. The Gleaners, Jean François Millet, the Louvre, 1857
The Gleaners is considered to be
part of the Realism movement
that developed after Romanticism.
Here Millet paints peasant women
with the dignity and structure of
noble or mythic heroes.
How might the Romantic
movement have influenced this
work?

22. John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888, after a poem by Tennyson.
This painting is more
correctly classified as
Victorian, but one can also
see the influence of
Romanticism in it.
Do you think Romanticism
is still alive today? Can you
think of any recent works
of art that might be seen
as Romantic?

23. Andrew Wyeth –Wind from the Sea, 1947
Note how the birds stitched into the curtains seem to fly in the wind. Where does
the road lead to?
This is a contemporary
painting by American
Realist, Andrew
Wyeth. Discuss how
this painting could (or
could not) be
associated with
Romantic ideas.

24. END SLIDE SHOW
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