Romanticism emerged as a reaction against Neoclassicism, emphasizing individual expression and emotion. Romantic artists found inspiration in nature, the Middle Ages, and dreams/nightmares. They explored political and social themes. Major works include Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, Goya's Third of May 1808, and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. Architecture revived Gothic styles. Turner and Friedrich captured the sublime in nature. Photography was invented during this period.

1. TIME PERIOD: 1789-1848
AP ART HISTORY
ROMANTICISM
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2. KEY IDEAS
• Romanticism is heavily influenced by a spirit of individuality and a freedom
of expression unique up until this time.
• Romantics enjoy the sublime in nature and the revolutionary in politics.
• Romantic painters explore the unconscious world of dreams and
fantasies.
• A new art form called photography is invented; its immediacy makes it an
overnight sensation.
• Architecture revives historical forms, especially from the Middle Ages.
• The romantic artist was a troubled genius, deeply affected by all around
him or her; temperamental, critical, and always exhausted.
• Seeking pleasure in things of greatest refinement or adventures of
audacious daring, the Romantic was a product of extremes of human
endeavor.
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3. ARCHITECTURE
• CHARLES BARRY AND AUGUSTUS PUGIN, THE HOUSES OF
PARLIAMENT, 1836-1860
• CHARLES GARNIER, THE OPERA, 1861-1874, PARIS
• HENRI LABROUSTE, BIBLIOTEQUE SAINT GENEVIEVE, 1843-1850,
PARIS
• SIR JOSEPH PAXTON, THE CRYSTAL PALACE, 1850-1851, LONDON
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4. PAINTINGS
• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, THE SLEEP OF REASON PRODUCES MONSTERS, 1799.
ETCHING AND AQUATINT
• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, FAMILY OF CHARLES IV, 1800,
• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, THIRD OF MAY, 1808, OIL ON CANVAS
• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, SATURN DEVOURING ONE OF HIS CHILDREN, 1819-1823
• ANTOINE JEAN GROS, NAPOLEON IN THE PESTHOUSE OF JAFFA, 1804, OIL ON
CANVAS
• THEODORE GERICAULT, THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA, 1818-1819
• JEAN AUGUSTE INGRES, THE GRAND ODALISQUE, 1814, OIL ON CANVAS
• EUGENE DELACROIX, LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE, 1830
• WILLIAM BLAKE, ANCIENT OF DAYS, 1794
• HENRY FUSELI, THE NIGHTMARE, 1790, OIL ON CANVAS,
• JOHN CONSTABLE, THE HAY WAIN, 1821, OIL ON CANVAS,
• JOSEPH M.W TURNER, THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE, 1838
• THOMAS COLE, THE OXBOW, 1836, OIN ON CANVAS
• CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, TWO MEN GAZING AT THE MOON, 1819,
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5. SCULPTURE
• Francouise Rude, Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, or La
Marseillaise, 1833-1836, Arc de Trimphe, Paris
• Antoine Louis Barye, Jaguar Devouring a Hare, 1850, bronze,
• DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY
• CAMERA OBSCURA . PHOTOGRAMS.
• LOIS DAGUERRE, ARTISTS STUDIO, 1837,
• NADAR, NADAR IN A BALLOON AND PORTRAIT OF THEOPHILE
GAUTIER, 1856
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6. ROMANTICISM
• Romanticism was a movement that began as a reaction to the
constraints of Neoclassicism. It swept across Europe and helped to
inspire many nationalist movement.
• The artwork of this movement is not linked by common artistic style
but rather by the following characteristics:
• A desire to express personal emotions
• A link to the ideas of Rousseau who rejected reason in favor of intuition
• A renewed link to the mysteries of religion and faith
• Inspiration taken from medieval art, literature and the beauty of nature, including:
• Heroes and miraculous events of the Middle ages, especially of the Gothic period.
• Natural phenomena such as raging rivers, storms and misty mountains
• Literary masters such as William Shakespeare and Dante.
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7. CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMAN PAINTING
• Artists, were caught up in European and American revolutions. The
fight for Greek independence was particularly galvanizing for
European intellectuals. Political paintings became important,
expressing the artists solidarity with social movement or political
position. Gros, Delacroix and Goya are among many who create a
memorable political compositions.
• Even in landscape painting had a political agenda. No longer
content to paint scenes for their beauty or artistic engagement,
landscape painters needed to make a contemporary statement.
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8. ROMANTICISM VIDEO EXPLANATION
• http://youtu.be/NivbEErzN6o
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9. Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, oil on canvas, 1781
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10. Henry Fuseli, The nightmare, 1781
• Fuseli was one of the first artists to depict the world of dreams and
nightmares
• He was Swiss yet spent most of his artistic career in England.
• This enigmatic piece may have been inspired by jealousy after a
failed loved affair. He did four paintings on this theme.
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11. Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, oil on
canvas, 1818-1819
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12. Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, oil on
canvas, 1818-1819
• Gericault was interested in the Neoclassical style but did not like the
rigidity of it.
• The style of this work is based on Classical and Renaissance
conventions but the subject matter aligns with the Romantic
movement.
• This piece was based on the true story of a ship that ran aground
leaving 150 people stranded on a makeshift lifeboat. Only 10 of them
survived. He researched the contemporary event heavily, even the
interviewing 2 of the survivors.
• For him, the story represented all that was wrong with society,
including the fact that the captain of the ship was a political
appointee who had not sailed in 10 years and the fact the officers
and captain took the few lifeboats leaving the lower class people to
fend for themselves.
• The immense size of the work as well as the angle of the raft invites
the viewer to join the last survivors and the dead. It was inspired by
Caravaggio's The Entombment.
• He placed an African soldier at the top of the pyramid deliberately.
He was a member of an abolitionist group in France, at the time
slavery still existed in the French owned African colonies.
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13. FRANCISCO GOYA, THE SLEEP OF REASON
PRODUCES MONSTERS, 1799,
• Reason falls asleep while at work,
haunted by dreams of bats and owls,
nocturnal creatures.
• Monsters haunt even the most
rational mind.
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14. FRANCISCO DE GOYA, FAMILY OF CHARLES IV,
1800, OIL ON CANVAS
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15. FRANCISCO DE GOYA, FAMILY OF CHARLES IV,
1800, OIL ON CANVAS
• Accentuated dazzling customs and royal trappings.
• Some scholars feel Goya was mocking Spanish royalty, however he
used a mirror to have sitters compare their likeness to his painted
images.
• Influenced by Las Meninas, Velázquez
• Triptych like arrangement of figures
• Goya in shadow in background – not to be confused with royalty
• Queen in center with youngest children
• Two great canvases hanging in rear draw a parallel with Las
Meninas.
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16. FRANCISCO GOYA, THIRD OF MAY, 1808, OIL ON
CANVAS
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17. FRANCISCO DE GOYA, THIRD OF MAY, 1808
• Execution of Spanish rebels after failed uprising against occupying
French of 2 May 1808
• Robotic repetitive movements of the faceless French
• Central Spanish figure is in Christ like sacrificial pose with hand
marks of the nailed crucifixion
• Church is silent, powerless in the background
• Brutal inhumanity displayed in blood soaked foreground
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18. FRANCISCO DE GOYA, SATURN DEVOURING
ONE OF HIS CHILDREN, 1819-1823, OIL ON
CANVAS
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19. FRANCISCO DE GOYA, SATURN DEVOURING
ONE OF HIS CHILDREN, 1819-1823,
• One of his black paintings
• Illustrates the myth of Saturn eating each of his children because
prophecy that one of them would grow up to be greater than he;
nothing in the painting suggests the myth stated in the title.
• Sinister blackness, panic stricken eyes, ragged edges of ripped
sacrificial child's body
• Voracious mouth
• Symbolism:
• Human self destruction
• Time destroys all its creations
• A country of eating its young in pointless wars
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20. ANTOINE JEAN GROS, NAPOLEAON IN THE
PESTHOUSE OF JAFFA, 1804 OIL ON CANVAS
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21. ANTOINE JEAN GROS, NAPOLEON IN THE
PESTHOUSE OF JAFFA, 1804
• Plague broke out among Napoleons troops during a campaign in
Jaffa, Israel, the sick were housed in a converted mosque.
• Napoleon touches the open sore of a soldier without his glove to
prove that the disease is not contagious, comforts them, unafraid,
enters the pesthouse to calm their fears.
• Like Christ healing the sick
• Many doctors died, including the prominently placed one in lower
right.
• Not shown is the fact that Napoleon ordered the sick to be
poisoned so that he would not have to take them back to France.
• Composition influenced by Oath of the Horatti, but columns do not
frame the space, figures overlap the arches
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22. JEAN AUGUSTE INGRES, THE GRAND
ODALISQUE, 1814, OIL ON CANVAS
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23. JEAN AUGUSTE INGRES, THE GRAND
ODALISQUE, 1814, OIL ON CANVAS, LOUVRE,
• Raphael like face
• Turkish elements, incense burner, peacock fan, tapestrylike turban,
hashish pipe
• Inconsistent arrangement of limbs, rubbery arm, elongated back,
placement of led one arm is longer than the other.
• Heavily influenced by Italian Mannerism
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24. EUGENE DELACROIX, LIBERTY LEADING THE
PEOPLE, 1830, OIL ON CANVAS, LOUVRE PARIS
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25. EUGENE DELACROIX, LIBERTY LEADING THE
PEOPLE, 1830,
• July Revolution of 1830, Liberty with French tricolor marches over
the barricades to overthrow government soldiers
• Red/White/Blue echo throughout the painting
• Strong pyramidal structure
• Child with pistols symbolizes the role of students in the revolt,
middle class by man in top hat and carrying rifle; lower class
represented by man at extreme left with sword in hand and pistol in
belt.
• Acquired by the French state in 1831, but not exhibited publicly for
25 years because of its subversive message.
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26. WILLIAM BLAKE, ANCIENT OF DAYS, 1794,
ETCHING,
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27. WILLIAM BLAKE, ANCIENT OF DAYS, 1794
• Wrote and illustrated by his own work, and illustrated works by
Dante, among others
• Rejected rationalism of the Enlightenment
• Acknowledgement of the beastliness of humans
• From a book of Blake's poems
• Figure covers the sun with his body, opens his fingers in an
impossible way to measure the earth with calipers
• Strong lateral wind
• Figure is Urizen, a pun on “your reason” – an evil Enlightenment
figure of rational thinking.
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28. Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1790, oil on canvas
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29. Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1790
• Erotic theme, horse as male symbol coming through parted red
theatrical curtains, woman lying on bed in a tortured sexual sleep
• Incubus sits on her chest suffocating her
• Mara is a spirit in Norse mythology who suffocates sleepers
• Woman is thrown off the back of the bed in a submissive pose
• Not an illustration of nightmare, but the sensation of terror it
produces
• Painting may have been done as a reaction to a jilted romance
during which Fuseli claimed to have had sex with a woman in his
dreams
• Figural style from Italian Mannerism
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30. John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on
canvas
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31. John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on
canvas
• Vibrant, shimmering paint application with a careful rendering of
atmospheric effects
• Painted English countryside as a reaction against Industrial
Revolution, which was removing most of the well appointed hedge
rows of landscape.
• Oneness with nature, man is an active participant but does not
disturb
• Clouds fill the sky sense of momentary
• Cottage is one with the countryside, grows among the trees
• Boat easily fords the river
• Dappled reflections on water surface
• Everything and everyone in harmony with nature, an ideal state.
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32. Joseph M.W. Turner, The Fighting Témeraire,
1838, oil on canvas
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33. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1838, National
Gallery London
• Turner liked extremes in nature, avalanches, sea storms, whirlwinds
• Color is the dominant motif
• Concept of vortex in his work, play on Turners name
• Admiral Nelson flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 being
brought to a berth to be dismantled
• Contrasts: warm and cool colors, tall, white, glowing, pale, past
contrasted with small, black, modern tugboat of the future
• Symbolic sunset, elegy of the last days of sailboats, historical
changes.
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34. Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas
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35. Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas
• Founder of the Hudson River School
• Actual view in Massachusetts
• Coles division of landscape into two clearly contrasting areas, the
Romantic on the left and the Claude like landscape on the right.
• Coles self portrait in the foreground amid a dense forest that is
impenetrably thick with broken trees, and a wild landscape with
storms, the sublime
• On the right mans touch is seen in light cultivated fields boats
drifting down the river
• Painted as reply to a British book that alleged that Americans had
destroyed a wilderness with industry
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36. Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Gazing at the
Moon, 1819, oil on canvas
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37. Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Gazing at the
Moon
• The sublime: any cathartic experience from the catastrophic to the
intellectual that causes the viewer to marvel in wonder and passion
• Moon held a special symbolism in the Romantic age, the nocturnal, the
ghostly, the unknowable, romance
• For Friedrich, landscapes and panoramas were windows through which
one could experience God
• Sentimental longing, melancholic mood
• Friedrich appears in cap and cloak walking with a cane, admiring the
sunset
• Friendrich is accompanied by August Heinrich, his student, who
prematurely dies, this painting is a memorial to their friendship
• Old oak tree with moss symbolizes Heinrich
• Ruckenfigur, in romantic painting a figure seen from the back often in the
contemplation of nature.
• Ruckenfigur: In Romantic painting a figure seen from the back often in the
contemplation of nature.
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38. DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Camera Obscura:
Dark Room, a box
with a lens which
captures light and
casts an image on
the opposite side
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39. LOUIS DAGUERRE, ARTISTS STUDIO, 1837
Photogram: Image made by placing objects on photosensitive paper and exposing
them to light
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40. LOUIS DAGUERRE, ARTIST´S STUDIO, FRENCH
PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, PARIS
• Still life inspired by painted still lives
• Variety of textures, fabric, wicker, plaster, framed print, and so on
• New art form inspired by older art forms
• Daguerreotypes have a shiny surface with great detail
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41. NADAR, NADAR IN A BALLOON, 1856 &
PORTRAIT OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER
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42. NADAR, NADAR IN A BALLOON, 1856 &
PORTRAIT OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER
• Nadar floated over Paris in a hot air balloon to take the first aerial
photographs in history
• Controlled camera angles
• Eyes often left in shadow: deep penetration, more piercing and
mysterious
• Forehead usually highlighted
• Concentration on figure without props or settings
• Sitters determined their pose
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