Romanticism
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What is Romanticism?
What’s going on in the Romantic period?
What is Romantic poetry like?
Who are the Romantic artists?
Who are the Romantic landscapists?
What influences Romantic architecture?
What is Romantic music like?
What are the ideas of the period?
Where do we see them today?
1. What is Romanticism?
1800 - 1850
 Reaction against enlightenment
 Turns away from rational thought
 Turns toward a more subjective side of human experience
Spirit/ spiritual
imagination
Love
madness
Intuition
feeling
Kinship w/ nature
the unknown/ the unusual
Sacrifice
beauty
Memory
2. What’s going on in the Romantic Period?
Individualism – rise of the middle class
Nationalism
Revolutions for independence -- Spain, Greece, Belgium, France (1830), S. America
Religion/ spirituality important again
Science -- seen as too narrow, mathematical, unimaginative
Demeans intuition, faith, emotion as ways of knowing the world
Philosophy
Kant -- “Critique of Pure Reason”
Rousseau -- (still ) Don’t let stuff corrupt human nature
Hegel -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis
3. Let’s read some poems! Ahh!
4. Who are the dark Romantic artists?
A. Francisco Goya ( 1746 - 1828) Executions on the Third of May
Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
Saturn Devouring One of His Children
Witches’ Sabbath
Spanish
Court painter until around 1800 – saw the corruption of royalty
Said of his age: “The lovely enlightenment dimmed by the atrocities of man”
Third of May shows Napoleon's soldiers attacking the Spanish
Saturn hung in his dining room!
B. Eugene Delacroix (1798 - 1863) Massacre at Chios
Liberty Leading the People
Dante and Vergil in Hell
French
Influences: Goya, Rubens, Titian
“Writhing, wild scenes of sensuousness and cruelty”
Liberty shows the revolt to install Louis Phillippe
Dante and Vergil from the Inferno!
Death of Sardanapoulos
C. Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) Raft of the Medusa
Decapitated Heads
French
Paints images of violence and horror
Influences: Goya and Rembrandt (emotional/psychological)
Medusa is of a Bourbon shipwreck where sailors were abandoned but the leadership was
noble. Extensive research on the subject
Portrait of a Child Murderer
D. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780- 1867) Turkish Bath
La Grande Odalisque
Both neoclassic and romantic
David’s best student
Interest in exotic/erotic
“Drawing is of more value than painting”
Salon favorite
5. Who are the Romantic landscapists?
Landscapists concentrated in England and Germany
Goya & etc show Romantic ideals through PEOPLE
Landscapists show Romantic ideals through NATURE
Friedrich: “The Divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand.”
A. John Constable (1776 - 1837)
Haywain
Salisbury Cathedral
England, Royal Academy
Intensive sky and cloud studies/ meteorology
Salisbury Cathedral
Hadley Castle
Wivenhoe Park, Essex
B. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851)
Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway
Prolific artist! 20,000 paintings, drawings, and watercolors!
Constable critiqued Turner: “airy visions painted with tinted steam”
Snowstorm
C. Casper David Friedrich (1774 – 1840) Wanderer Above the Mist
German
Fine detail, landscapes with symbolic details
Inclusion of Gothic objects
Sad life!
Love of nature, deeply spiritual
Abbey in the Oakwood
D. Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848)
Last of the Mohicans
English; moves to US at 17
Founder of the “Hudson River School”, the first American art movement
Trained at PAFA
Distant View of Niagra Falls
6. What is Romantic architecture like?
Tries to recapture the “glamour of the past”
Highly nationalistic
Restoration of monuments and buildings (Cologne Cathedral, Ste. Chapelle, Notre Dame)
Gothic Revival most popular
Other Revivals: Romanesque, Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Egyptian, Baroque
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Fonthill Abbey
House of Parliament
Ste. Clotilde, Paris
St. Patrick’s, NYC
Schloss Neuschwanstein
American Colleges -- and so, let’s tour my alma mater! TU!!!!!
Now on to Germany to Schloss Neuschwanstein
7. What is Romantic music like?
“Passions roar, imaginations soar, and legends loom larger than life!”
Emotion vs. reason/ intellect
Pieces deriving from heroes, legends, folklore, nationalism, literature, Shakespeare
Q: Who are some Romantic composers?
A: Tons of people you’ve heard of!
FELIX MENDELSON -- German, orchestration, the Wedding March from
Midsummer’s Night Dream, “Fake among the masters”
FRANZ LISZT -- Hungarian, Liebestraum
FREDERIC CHOPIN -- Polish, known for piano sonatas
JOHANNES BRAHMS -- German, Cradle Song
PIOTR TCHAIKOVSKY -- Russian, tons of ballet music – Nutcracker, Swan Lake,
Sleeping Beauty
IGOR MUSSORGSKY -- Russian, Night on Bald Mountain
RICHARD WAGNER -- German, operas based on “eternal truths” found in legends!
Ring of the Niebelung based on the Niebelungenlied suited the nationalism of the time
Leitmotifs
Here Comes the Bride
8. What are the ideas of the period?
Individualism
Nationalism
Exoticism
Nature and man’s place in nature
9. Where do we see them today?