Romanticism
Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789. Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism, early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques-Louis David's studio, including Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres' Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus (both Museé du Louvre, Paris), which polarized the public at the Salon of 1827 in Paris. While Ingres' work seemingly embodied the ordered classicism of the David in contrast to the disorder and tumult of the Delacroix, in fact both works draw from the Davidian tradition but each ultimately subverts that model, asserting the originality of the artist—a central notion of Romanticism.
Primary Sources:
Freidrich SchlegelL Extracts http://web.archive.org/web/19991013053233/http://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem10/schlegel.html
J.W. GoetheL "Einleitung in die Propylaen": http://web.archive.org/web/20000621124111/www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem10/goethe.html
Lord Byron: The Isles of GreeceL http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/byron-greece.asp
Johann Goethe: Faust http://web.archive.org/web/19980116133219/http://pluto.clinch.edu/history/wciv2/civ2ref/faust.html
Mary Shelley: The Last Man http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1822shelley.asp
J.W. GoetheL "Einleitung in die Propylaen": http://web.archive.org/web/20000621124111/www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem10/goethe.html
Lord Byron: The Isles of GreeceL http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/byron-greece.asp
Johann Goethe: Faust http://web.archive.org/web/19980116133219/http://pluto.clinch.edu/history/wciv2/civ2ref/faust.html
Mary Shelley: The Last Man http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1822shelley.asp
Images of Romantic Art
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/art/111rom.html
Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm#slideshow14
Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm#slideshow14
From William Wordsworth
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
. . . I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, - both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
. . . I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, - both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
|
Visual Artists Associated with Romanticism:
|