With a bit of Comparison to Begin
(Insert Bad Joke Here…)
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Realism
Values
Order, solemnity
Intuition,
Emotion,
Imagination
Hard-edged,
Realistic
Tone
Calm, rational
Subjective,
spontaneous,
nonconformist
Precise, Muted
colors
Subjects
Greek and Roman Legends; exotic;
history;
nature; violence
mythology
Peasants;
Working Class
Technique
Stressed drawing
with lines, not
color; no trace of
brushstrokes
Quick
brushstrokes,
strong light-andshade contrasts
Soft, wispy
strokes, often
monochromatic
Role of Art/
Composition
(Role) Morally
uplifting;
inspirational
(Comp) Use of a
diagonal
(Role) only what
they could see or
touch
Miscellaneous
Founder: David
Narratives of
heroic struggle,
landscapes, wild
animals
Represented
nature with
photographic
accuracy
It’s time for the rebellion against the
Neoclassic’s Age of Reason!
 It’s time for the 50 year “Age of Sensibility”!
 It’s time for emotion and intuition over rational
objectivity!
 It’s time, as landscape painter Caspar David
Friedrich wrote, for the artist to “paint not only
what he sees before him, but also what he sees
in him!”
 But as Billy Joel said, Only the Good Die
Young…(yea, that’s what I said)
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Romantic poets and composers like Byron, Keats,
Shelley, Chopin, and Schubert all died young
 Romantics
lifted the status of landscape
painting by giving natural scenes heroic
overtones
 Both man and nature were seen as touched
by the supernatural and one could tap this
inner divinity
 Therefore, the Romantic gospel went by
relying on instinct
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Gericault (1791-1824)
The Romantic movement started with one painting,
“The Raft of the Medusa” on a huge 16’ by 23 ½’
canvas
The backstory to the painting is that a government
ship (let’s call it the Medusa), was carrying French
colonists to Senegal sank off the west coast of Africa
due to the incompetence of the captain (who
happened to be a political appointee)
The captain and crew were first to evacuate and took
over the lifeboats, towing a makeshift raft piled with
149 passengers
Eventually, they cut the towrope, leaving the
immigrants to drift under the equatorial sun for 12
days without food or water, suffering unspeakable
torments. Only 15 of 149 lived
Gericault investigated the story like a reporter,
interviewing survivors to hear their grisly tales of
starvation, madness, and cannibalism
 He studied putrid bodies in the morgue to
enhance the accuracy of the painting
 He sketched decapitated heads of guillotine
victims and faces of lunatics in an asylum
 Though a realistic event, this painting
exemplifies Romanticism because the straining,
contorted body language of the nude passengers
says everything about the struggle for survival
 Struggling for survival was a theme Gericault
obsessed over
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The painting’s fame broke the stranglehold of the
Classical Academy
The painting also led French art to stress emotion
over intellect moving forward
Personally, Gericault had no concern for his own wellbeing, dedicating himself to a life of passion and
defending the downtrodden
His teacher called him a madman
He was banned from the Louvre for brawling in the
Grande Galerie
He was fascinated by horses—which led to his death
because a series of riding accidents killed him at 32.
He only showed three painting publicly in his decadelong career, yet still was a star, energetically
handling rousing scenes of titanic struggle
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Delacroix (1798-1863)
He became the leader of the Romantic movement after
Gericault’s death
Delacroix believed the artist should feel the agony of
creation (because that’s normal) and was consumed by the
flame of genius
“The real man is the savage” –Delacroix’s journal
He was described as being “passionately in love with
passion” –Romantic poet Baudelaire
His subjects came from stirring topical events
Violence was embedded within his exotic images
“Massacre at Chios” was painted after hearing news of
Turks slaughtering Christians on the island of Chios
Reaction was mixed:
Purists called it a “massacre of painting”
 Spectators wept when they saw the pitiful babe clutching its
dead mother’s breast
 What do you think?
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Delacroix is a weird dude
In 1832, he infiltrated a Moroccan harem and made
hundreds of sketches, fascinated by the colorful
costumes and characters
For the next thirty years he stuck to lush colors,
swirling curves, and animals like lions and tigers and
horses knotted in combat
Dude loved violence though
Just look at “The Death of Sardanapalus”
Delacroix based the painting on Lord Byron’s verses of
the Assyrian emperor Sardanapalus who ordered his
possessions destroyed before burning himself on a
funeral pyre
The only problem is those possessions included his
ladies of the night…
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Delacroix portrays the shocking instant when servants
execute the king’s harem girls and horses
The background in better lighting is flaming red with
intense vivid light/dark contrasts
There are turbulent forms shown in broad brushstrokes,
emblematic of Romanticism
Under Delacroix color became indispensable, especially
when painting human forms
This differed from the Neoclassics before him applied color
as a tint instead of forms of line drawing
Delacroix’s goal was not to reproduce reality precisely, but
rather to capture its essence
He established the right of a painter to defy tradition and
paint as he liked
His arrogance was also fantastic (at least to study)
“If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man falling out
of a window during the time it takes him to get from the
fifth story to the ground, then you will never be able to
produce monumental work.”
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John Constable (1776-1837)
Focused on “boyhood rambles through moors and meadows” for the
subjects of his poetry and art
He looked down on landscape painters who based their work on tradition
rather than what they actually saw
All his paintings were based on nature in his native Suffolk, England
(never traveled abroad)
Scenes are serene, untroubled, and gentle
“The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, willows, old rotten plans,
slimy posts, and brickwork—I love such things. These scenes made me a
painter.”
As a boy, he went “skying” – sketching cloud formations as source
material for paintings, believing the sky was “the key note, … and the
chief organ of sentiment” in a painting
His love of clouds, sun, and shadow led him to make the first oil sketches
ever painted outdoors
He believed landscapes just be based on observation
“Imagination never did, and never can, produce works that are to stand
by comparison with realities”
Tiny dabs of color flecked with white simulated the shimmer of light on
surfaces
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J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)
He painted rural landscapes with a smooth, detailed
technique
Later he experimented with more radical techniques
and evolved an original style that influenced later
generations of artists
He aimed to evoke awe in his viewers and shifted his
subject from calm countrysides to Alpine peaks,
flaming sunsets, and the me of man’s struggle against
the elements
His color was meant to inspire feeling and he was the
first to abandon brown or buff priming for a white
undercoat, making the final painting stand out
He neutralized deep tones by adding white and left
light tones like yellow undiluted for greater
luminosity
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Focus was two subjects: nature and the natural man
Nature: landscapes
Natural man: genre paintings of common people in
ordinary activities
The subjects in each were seen through rose-colored
glasses
Forests were always picture-postcard perfect
 Happy settlers were always cheerful, both at work and at play
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Before 1825, Americans felt nature was menacing; after
1830 the wilderness became a symbol of America’s
unspoiled national character
U.S. writers like Emerson and Thoreau preached that God
inhabited nature
No longer did Europe restrict U.S. painters; now the
grandeur of the American continent was the artist’s
inspiration
 Thomas
Cole (1801-1848)
 He scaled peaks throughout the Hudson River
valleys to make pencil sketches of untouched
natural scenes
 During the winter, he showed the essential
mood of a place in oil paintings
 He shows the foreground in minute detail
and blurs distant vistas to suggest the infinite
American landscape
 Behold, “The Oxbow”
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Okay, this is going to sound as corny as possible but I
have to quote the book here. The adjectives are so
over-the-top. It’s fantastic!
“Cole faithfully reproduced rocks, juicy vegetation, a
gnarled tree, and his folding chair and umbrella. The
blond panorama of the Connecticut River Valley and
receding hills seems to stretch forever. The painting
depicts the moment just after a thunderstorm, when
the foliage, freshened by a cloudburst, glistens in a
theatrical light.”
Somebody towel that author off…
Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been that excited
over anything in my life
And it’s a nice painting and all, but it’s a river, a
tree, and some hills…it’s not like seeing the image of
the Virgin Mary (sorry, Abhishek)
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Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) and Albert
Bierstadt (1830-1902) were the Lewis and Clark of
painting according to The Annotated Mona Lisa
What does that even mean?
Better yet, who are the Lewis and Clark of this class?
Anyway, apparently they were Lew and Clark because
they sketched the savage beauty of nature from the
lush vegetation of the tropics to the icebergs of the
Arctic
Bierstadt’s most famous work, “The Rocky Mountains”
shows them as a Garden of Eden
He used compositional devices such as a highly
detailed foreground (the peaceful encampment of
the Shosone Indians) and distant soaring mountains
pierced by a shaft of sunlight
To close today, here it is…