Romantic Art

Romanticism:

Beginning with the late 18th to the mid-19th century, a new Romantic attitude began to characterize culture and many art works in Western civilization. It started as an artistic and intellectual movement that emphasized a revulsion against established values (social order and religion). Romanticism exalted individualism, subjectivism, irrationalism, imagination, emotions and nature - emotion over reason and senses over intellect. Since they were in revolt against the orders, they favored the revival of potentially unlimited number of styles (anything that aroused them).

Romantic artists investigated human nature and personality, the folk culture, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the occult, the diseased, and even satanic. The Romantic artist had a role of an ultimate egoistic creator, with the spirit above strict formal rules and traditional procedures. The Romantic artist had imagination as a gateway to transcendent experience and spiritual truth.

Henry Fuseli, Nightmare, 1781,oil on canvas, 39”x49”

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, 1785 ,oil on canvas, 10’8”x14’0”

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat, 1793 ,oil on canvas, 5’5”x4’2”

Jacques-Louis David, 1800 ,oil on canvas, 8’6”x7’3”

Eugene Delacroix, Liberty leading the People, oil on canvas, 8’6”x10’10”

Francisco Goya, Third of May, 1814, oil on canvas, 8’ 9”x13’4”

Theodore Geracult, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, oil on canvas, 16’x23’

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, La Odalisque, 1814, 36”x63”

Eugene Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus, 1828, 12’10”x16’3” Its dominant feature is the bed on which a nude prostrates herself and beseeches the apathetic Sardanapalus, who watches as his worldly possessions are destroyed. Sardanapalus ordered his possessions destroyed and

concubines murdered before he sets himself on fire, once he learns that he is faced with military defeat.Death of Sardanapalus is based on a play, Sardanapalus, written by Lord Byron, and is a work of the era of

Romanticism. This painting uses rich, vivid and warm colors, and broad brushstrokes.

Delacroix, Lion Hunt, 1861, oil on canvas, 30”x38”

Casper David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oakwood, 1808-10, oil on canvas, 43”x67”

Casper David Friedrich, Contemplating the Moon, 1830-35, oil on canvas, 13”x17”

Joseph M. W. Turner, Snowstorm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, 1812, oil on canvas, 4’9”x7’9”

Joseph M. W. Turner, The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, 16th October 1834, 1834, oil on canvas, 36”x48”

John Constable, Haywain,, 1821, oil on canvas, 51”x73”

Thomas Cole,The Oxbow,, 1836, oil on canvas, 51”x76”

Frederic Church, Niagara Falls, 1857, oil on canvas, 3’6”x7’6”

Frederic Church, Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860, oil on canvas, 40”x60”

Martin Johnson Heade, Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes, 1871, oil on canvas, 12”x26”