Romanticism

Question 1

Romanticism

Answer 1

• both Romanticism and Neoclassicism are occupied with the look of daily reality
• 19th century Neoclassical style becomes overblown

started as a protest against the Rococo tastes if the 18th century aristocrats

turned into an official ‘heroic’ art that glorified first Napoleon, then a succession of lesser aristocrats throughout Europe

France: Académie des Beaux virtually dictated the tastes that artists could employ

England: Royal Academy of Fine Arts hew to traditions by copying plaster busts of ancient Roman emperors and scaled-down versions of the Lacoön

As Neoclassicism had been a reaction against the florid, overdramatic Baroque style and the vapid Rococo, Romanticism was a revolt against the rational qualities of the Neoclassical

Question 2

Neoclassicism vs Romanticism

Answer 2

Question 3

Inspirations for Romanticism

Answer 3

-As gathering forces of dissent in France, Germany, and England; Romanticism set in

Literary interest in Medieval tales, known as romances, inspired this new art

Inspirations:

heroic literature of Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Victor Hugo

vigor of the new industrial age

high drama of nature at its most elemental—storms at sea, Alpine landslides

allure of foreign lands and locales

-architecture: first found fulfillment in use of ‘Gothic elements

lordly estates sprouted crenelated towers and thick walls pierced by narrow windows

Horace Walpole’s home near London

Reconstruction of the Houses of Parliament, London, after the fire

Question 4

Answer 4

France:

-Eugene Delacroix

Master colorist with notable flare for exotic

Romantic credo: belief in the nobility of ancient peoples

Detected in Arabs of North Africa during his own time, versus the inhabitants of classical Greece

Concerned less with literal rendition than with conveying drama and emotion

Filled his works with bright color and energetic movement

The Abduction of Rebecca, 1846

depicts a key moment in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, in which the heroine is carried off by the villain

Question 5

Answer 5

England:

-Joseph Mallord William Turner

Landscapist

Centered paintings on beauties and terrors of nature

Snowstorm

Study of the raw fury of the sea as it threatens to overwhelm a steamship in the center which is dimly perceived

Painted after personally experiencing it

Strikingly abstract

Demonstrates his obsession with color and light and dynamic movement, often at the expense of form and realistic rendering

Question 6

Answer 6

-John Constable

Landscapist

Nature’s serene side

Scrutiny of his components—the green of vegetation, shimmer of placid water, puffy insubstantiality of clouds

Clarity of his colors, derived from his close observation of nature, impacted painters in France

Delacroix retouched one of his own canvases after seeing Constable’s landscapes in Paris

The Lock, Dedham, 1824

“Painting is with me but another word for feeling”

calm vistas and glowing tones

Question 7

End of Romanticism

Answer 7

Romanticism lost its sway toward mid-century

• political and social unrest in Europe inspired a revolutionary new view of the function of art
• Charles Baudelaire

French poet and art critic

Painting should express “the heroism of modern life”

Most Neoclassical and Romantic painters focused on the past—few focused on the look of daily reality