A4A-Romanticism & Realism (1800-1870) Flashcards
Henry Fuseli (Swiss)
The Nightmare, 1781
Oil on canvas, 3’ 3 ¾’’ x 4’ 1 ½”
Romanticism
The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism marked a shift in emphasis from reason to feeling. Fuseli was among the first painters to depict the dark terrain of the human subconscious. (A4A.27-8)
William Blake (English)
Ancient of Days, frontispiece of Europe: A Prophesy, 1794
Metal relief etching, hand colored, 9 ½’’ x 6 ¾”
Romanticism
Although art historians classify Blake as a Romantic artist, he incorporated classical references in his works. Here, ideal classical anatomy merges with the inner dark dreams of Romanticism. (A4A.27-9)
Antonio Canova (Italian)
Cupid and Psyche, 1787-1793
Marble, 5’ 1’’ x 5’ 6”
Neoclassicism toward Romanticism
Antonio Canova’s sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss is a masterpiece of Neoclassical sculpture, but shows the mythological lovers at a moment of great emotion, characteristic of the emerging movement of Romanticism. It represents the god Cupid in the height of love and tenderness, immediately after awakening the lifeless Psyche with a kiss. (A4A.27-4A)
Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson (French)
Jean-Baptiset Belley, 1797
Oil on canvas, 5’ 2 3/5’’ x 3’ 8 ½”
Transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism
Girodet-Trioson occasionally addressed contemporary themes in his work, as he did in his portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley, a French legislator and former slave. (A4A.27-5A)
Francisco Goya (Spanish)
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, from Los Caprichos, ca. 1798
Etching and aquatint, 8 ½’’ x 5 7/8”
Romanticism
In the print, Goya depicted himself asleep while threatening creatures converge on him, revealing his commitment to the Romantic spirit—the unleashing of imagination, emotions, and nightmares. (A4A.27-10)
Francisco Goya (Spanish)
Family of Charles IV, 1800
Oil on canvas, 9’ 2’’ x 11’
Neoclassicism?
Much of Goya’s multifaceted work deals not with Romantic fantasies but with contemporary events. In 1786, he became an official artist in the court of Charles IV and produced portraits of the king and his family. (A4A.27-10A)
Jacques-Louis David (French)
Napoleon Crossing Saint-Bernard, 1800-1801
Oil on canvas, 8’ 6 ⅓’’ x 7’ 3”
Neoclassicism
When Napoleon approached David in 1804 and offered him the position of First Painter of the Empire, David seized the opportunity. The artist, who had earlier painted a series of portraits of the emperor on horseback crossing the Alps, exemplified Neoclassiciam, the artistic style Napoleon favored because he aspired to rule an empire that might one day rival ancient Rome’s. (A4A.27-1A)
Antoine-Jean Gros (French)
Napoleon at the Plague House at Jaffa, 1804
Oil on canvas, 17’ 5’’ x 23’ 7”
Elements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism
Napoleon, fearless among the plague-stricken, reaches out to touch one man’s sores. Gros portrayed the French general as Christlike, implying he possessed miraculous power to heal the sick. Different figures are based on or recall Michelangelo representations of the damned in the Last Judgment and Christ in Pietà. Foreshadowing Romantacism, Gros carefully recorded the exotic people, costumes, and achitecture of Jaffa, including the distinctive Islamic striped horsehsoe arches of the mosque-hospital. (A4A.27-1)
Jacques-Louis David (French)
Coronation of Napoleon, 1805-1808
Oil on canvas, 20’ 4 ½’’ x 32’ 1 ¾”
Neoclassicism
As First Painter of the Empire, David recorded Napoleon at his December 1804 coronation crowning his wife with the pope as his witness, thus underscroing the authority of the state over the church. (A4A.27-2)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French)
Napoleon on His Imperial Throne, 1806
Oil on canvas, 8’ 6” x 5’ 4”
Neoclassicism
Ingres, a student of David, created this portrait of Napoleon in his coronation costume to present Napoleon in the way he wished to be seen. Both the content and the style emulate artists in the employ of ancient roman emporers. (A4A.27-2A)
Antonio Canova (Italian)
Pauline Borghese as Venus, 1808
Marble, 6’ 7’’ long
Neoclassicism
Canova was Napoleon’s favorite sculptor. Here the artist depicted the emperor’s sister–at her request–as the nude Roman goddess of love in a marble statue inspired by classical models. (A4A.27-4)
Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson (French)
Burial of Atala, 1808
Oil on canvas, 6’ 11’’ x 8’ 9”
Elements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism
Based on the novel, The Genius of Christianity, by François René de Chateaubriand. Girodet’s depiction of Native American lovers in the Louisiana wilderness appealed to the French public’s fascination with what it perceived as the passion and primitivism of the New World. (A4A.27-5)
Caspar David Friedrich (German)
Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810
Oil on canvas, 4’ x 5’ 8 ½”
Romanticism (landscape)
Friedrich was a master of the Romanitc transcendental landscape. The reverential mood of this winter scene with a ruined Gothic church and cemetery demands the silence appropriate to sacred places. (A4A.27-19)
Théodore Géricault (French)
The Charging Chasseur (An Officer of the Imperial Horse Guards Charging), 1812
Oil on canvas, 11’ 5” X 8’ 9”
Romanticism
This painting portrays a mounted officer in Napoleon’s cavalry who is ready to attack. It recalls Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps, but non-classical characteristics of the picture include its dramatic diagonal arrangement and vigorous paint handling. In The Charging Chasseur, the horse appears to be rearing away from an unseen attacker. The painting was Géricault’s first exhibited work. He would continue to move away from classicism, as exemplified in his masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa. (A4A.27-13A)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French)
Grande Odalisque, 1814
Oil on canvas, 2’ 11 7/8” x 5’ 4”
Romanticism (with elements of Neoclassicism)
The reclining female nude was a Grego-Roman subject, but Ingres converted his Neoclassical figure into an odalisque in a Turkish harem, consistent with the new Romantic taste for the exotic. (A4A.27-7)
Francisco Goya (Spanish)
Third of May, 1808, 1814-1815
Oil on canvas, 8’ 9’’ x 13’ 4”
Romanticism
Goya encouraged empathy for the massacred Spanish peasants by portraying horrified expressions on their faces, endowing them with a humanity lacking in the French firing squad. (A4A.27-11)
Caspar David Friedrich (German)
Wanderer above a Sea of Mist, 1817-1818
Oil on canvas, 3’ 1 ¾’’ x 2’ 5 3/8”
Romanticism (landscape)
Friedrich’s painting of a solitary man on a rocky promontory gazing at a vast panorama of clouds, mountains, and thick mist perfectly expresses the Romanitc notion of the sublme in nature. (A4A.27-20)
Théodore Géricault (French)
Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819
Oil on canvas, 16’ 1” X 23’ 6”
Romanticism
In this gigantic history painting, Géricault rejected Neoclassical compositional principles and, in the Romantic spirit, presented a jumble of writhing bodies in every attitude of suffering, despair and death. (A4A.27-13)
Francisco Goya (Spanish)
Saturn Devouring One of His Children, 1819-1823
Fresco, later detached and mounted on canvas, 4’ 9 1/8’’ x 2’ 8 5/8”
Romanticism
This disturbing fresco in Goya’s farmhouse uses a mythological tale to express the aging artist’s despair over the passage of time. Saturn’s Greek name Kronos is similar to the Greek word for “time”. (A4A.27-12)
John Constable (British)
The Haywain, 1821
Oil on canvas, 4’ 3 ¼’’ x 6’ 1”
Romanticism (landscape)
The Haywain is a nostalgic view of the disappearing English countryside during the Industrial Revolution. Constable had a special gift for capturing the texture that climate and weather give to landscape. (A4A.27-21)
Théodore Géricault (French)
Insane Woman, 1822-1833
Oil on canvas, 2’ 4” X 1’ 9”
Romanticism
The insane and the influence of aberrant states of mind on the appearance of the human face fascinated Géricault and other Romantic artists, who rebelled against Enlightenment rationality. (A4A.27-14)
Eugène Delacroix (French)
Massacre at Chios, 1822-24
Oil on canvas, 13’ 9’’ x 11’ 7”
Romanticism
Delacroix turned to both historical and current events, particularly tragic or sensational ones, for his subject matter. For example, he produced several images based on the Greek War for Independence (1821-29), including a huge canvas painted while the war was in progress recording the Turkish massacre of the Greeks of Chios. The French perception of the Greeks locked in a brutal struggle for freedom from the cruel and exotic Ottoman Turks generated great interest in Romantic circles. (A4A.27-15A)
Eugène Delacroix (French)
Death of Sardanapalus, 1827
Oil on canvas, 12’ 1 ½’’ x 16’ 2 7/8”
Romanticism
Inspired by Byron’s 1821 poem, Delacroix painted the Romantic spectacle of an Assyrian king on his funeral pyre. The richly colored and emotionally charged canvas is filled with exotic figures. (A4A.27-15)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French)
Apotheosis of Homer, 1827
Oil on canvas, 12’ 8” x 16’ 10 ¾”
Neoclassicism
Inspired by School of Athens by Raphael, Ingres’s favorite painter, this monumental canvas is a Neoclassical celebration of Homer and other ancient worthies, Dante, and select French authors. (A4A.27-6)
Eugène Delacroix (French)
Liberty Leading the People, 1830
Oil on canvas, 8’ 6’’ x 10’ 8”
Romanticism
In a balanced mix of history and poetic allegory, Delacroix captured the passion and energy of the 1830 revolution in this painting of Libery leading the Parisian uprising against Charles X. (A4A.27-16)
François Rude (French)
Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (La Marseillaise), 1833-1836
Arc de Triomphe, Paris, France
Limestone, 41’ 8’ high
Romanticism
This historical-allegorical sculpture features the Roman war goddess Bellona, but the violent motion, jagged contours, and densely paced masses typify Romantic painting compositions. (A4A.27-18)
Honoré Daumier (French)
Rue Transnonain, 1834
Lithograph, 1’ x 1’ 5 ½’’
Realism
Daumier used the recent invention of lithography to reach a wide audience for his social criticism and political protest. This print records the horrific 1834 massacre in a workers’ housing block. (A4A.27-29)
Eugéne Delacroix (French)
Women of Algiers, 1834
Oil on canvas, ~ 5’ 11” x 7’ 6”
Romanticism
An enormously influential event in Delacroix’s life that affected his art in both subject and form was his visit to North Africa in 1832. Things he saw there shocked his imagination with fresh impressions that lasted throughout his life. Among the canvases he completed immediately upon his return is Women of Algiers, which captivated the public when exhibited in the 1834 Salon. (A4A.27-17A)
Thomas Cole (American)
The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm), 1836
Oil on canvas, 4’ 3 ½’’ x 6’ 4”
Romanticism (landscape)
Cole divided his canvas into dark wilderness on the left and sunlit civilization on the right The miniscule painter at the bottom center seems to be asking for advice about America’s future course. (A4A.27-23)
Joseph Mallord William Turner (British)
The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840
Oil on canvas, 2’ 11 ¼’’ x 4’
Romanticism (landscape)
The essence of Turner’s innovative style is the emotive power of color. He released color from any defining outlines to express both the forces of nature and the painter’s emotional response to them. (A4A.27-22)
Gustave Courbet (French)
Burial at Ornans, 1849
Oil on canvas, 10’ 3½’’ x 21’ 9½”
Realism
Although as monumental in scale as a traditional history painting, Burial at Ornans horrified critics because of the ordinary nature of the subject and Courbet’s starkly antiheroic composition. (A4A.27-27)
Gustave Courbet (French)
The Stone Breakers, 1849
Oil on canvas, 5’ 3’’ x 8’ 6”
Realism
Courbet was the leading figure in the Realist movement. Using a palette of dirty browns and grays, he conveyed the dreary and dismal nature of menial labor in mid-19th-century France. (A4A.27-26)
John Everett Millais (English)
Ophelia, 1852
Oil on canvas, 2’ 6’’ x 3’ 8”
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Millais was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whose members refused to be limited to the contemporary scenes that strict Realists portrayed. The drowning of Ophelia is a Shakespearean subject. (A4A.27-40)
Rosa Bonheur (French)
The Horse Fair, 1853-1855
Oil on canvas, 8’ ¼’’ x 16’ 7 ½”
Realism
Bonheur was the most celebrated woman artist of the 19th century. A Realist, she went to great lengths to record accurately the anatomy of living horses, even studying carcasses in slaughterhouses. (A4A.27-31)
Eugéne Delacroix (French)
Tiger Hunt, 1854
Oil on canvas, 2’ 5” x 3’
Romanticism
Delacroix’s 1832 trip to Morocco inspired Tiger Hunt and had a lasting impact on his art. His paintings of men battling ferocious beasts are consistent with the Romantic interest in exotic places. (A4A.27-17)
Jean-François Millet (French)
The Gleaners, 1857
Oil on canvas, 2’ 9’’ x 3’ 8”
Realism
Millet and the Barbizon School painters specialized in depictions of French country life. Here, Millet portrayed three impovershed women gathering the scraps left in the field after a harvest. (A4A.27-28)
Frederic Edwin Church (American)
Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860s
Oil on canvas, 3’ 4’’ x 5’ 4’’
Romanticism (landscape)
Church’s painting eloquently express the Romantic notion of the sublime. Painted during the Civil War, this wilderness landscape presents an idealistic view of America free of conflict. (A4A.27-25)
Honoré Daumier (French)
Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1862
Oil on canvas, 2’ 1 ¾” x 2’ 11 ½’’
Realism
Daumier frequently depicted the plight of the disinherited masses of 19th-century industrialization. Here, he portrayed the anonymous poor cramped together in a grimy third-class railway carriage. (A4A.27-30)
Édouard Manet (French)
Olympia, 1863
Oil on canvas, 4’ 3” x 6’ 2 ¼”
Realism
Manet’s painting of a nude prostitute and her black maid carrying a bouquet from a client scandalized the public. Critics also faulted his rough brushstrokes and abruptly shifting tonalities. (A4A.27-33)
Édouard Manet (French)
Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863
Oil on canvas, 7’ x 8’ 8”
Realism
Manet shocked his contemporaries with both his subject matter and manner of painting. Moving away from illusionism, he used colors to flatten form and to draw attention to the painting surface. (A4A.27-32)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English)
Beata Beatrix, ca. 1863
Oil on canvas, 2’ 10’’ x 2’ 2”
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
This painting of a beautiful and sensuous woman is ostensibly a literary portrait of Dante’s Beatrice, but the work also served as a memorial to Rosetti’s wife, who died of an opium overdose. (A4A.27-41)
Winslow Homer (American)
Veteran in a New Field, 1865
Oil on canvas, 2’ 1/8’’ x 3’ 2 1/8”
Realism
This veteran’s productive work implies a smooth transition to peace after the Civil War, but Homer placed a single-bladed scythe–the Grim Reaper’s tool–in his hands, symbolizing the death of soldiers. (A4A.27-35)
Edmonia Lewis (American)
Forever Free, 1867
Marble, 3’ 5 ¼” high
Neoclassical style, Realist themes
Lewis was a sculptor whose work owes a stylistic debt to Neoclassicism but depicts contemporary Realist themes. She carved Forever Free four years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. (A4A.27-39)
Albert Bierstadt (German-American)
Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868
Oil on canvas, 6’ x 10’
Romanticism (landscape)
Bierstadt’s panoramic landscape presents the breathtaking natural beauty of the American West, reinforcing the 19th-Century doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which justified America’s western expansion. (A4A.27-24)
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French)
Nymphs and a Satyr, 1873
Oil on canvas, 8’ 4’’ x 5’ 11”
Neoclassicism (?)
(A4A.27-33A)
Thomas Eakins (American)
The Gross Clinic, 1875
Oil on canvas, 8’ x 6’ 6”
Realism
The too-brutal realism of Eakin’s depiction of a medical college operating amphitheater caused this painting’s rejection from the Philadelphia exhibition celebrating America’s centennial. (A4A.27-36)
Wilhelm Leibl (German)
Three Women in a Village Church, 1878-1882
Oil on canvas, 2’ 5’’ x 2’ 1”
Realism
French Realism spread quickly to Germany, where Leibl painted this moving depiction of simple peasant women of different generations holding their prayer books in hands roughened by work. (A4A.27-34)
John Singer Sargent (American)
The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882
Oil on canvas, 7’ 3 3/8’’ x 7’ 3 5/8’’
Realism
Sargent’s casual positioning of the Bolt sisters creates a sense of the momentary and spontaneous, consistent with Realist painters’ interest in recording modern people in modern contexts. (A4A.27-37)
Henry Ossawa Tanner (American)
The Thankful Poor, 1894
Oil on canvas, 2’ 11 ½” x 3’ 8 ¼”
Realism
Tanner combined the Realists’ belief in careful study from nature with a a desire to portray with dignity the life of African American families. Expressive lighting reinforces the painting’s reverent spirit. (A4A.27-38)
