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Romanticism
Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature.
The movement stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror and awe-especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and custom to something noble, and argued for a “natural” epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language, custom and usage.
Our modern sense of a romantic character is sometimes based on Byronic or Romantic ideals. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval, in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar and distant in modes more authentic than chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape.
Although the movement is rooted in German Pietism, which prized intuition and emotion over Enlightenment rationalism, the ideologies and events of the French Revolution laid the background from which Romanticism emerged. The confines of the Industrial Revolution also had their influence on Romanticism, which was in part an escape from modern realities, indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, “Realism” was offered as a polarized opposite to Romanticism. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society. It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from Classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas.
In a basic sense, the term “Romanticism” has been used to refer to certain artists, poets, writers, musicians, as well as political, philosophical and social thinkers of the late 18th and early to mid 19th centuries. It has equally been used to refer to various artistic, intellectual, and social trends of that era. Despite this general usage of the term, a precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism have been the subject of debate in the fields of intellectual history and literary history throughout the twentieth century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. Arthur Lovejoy attempted to demonstrate the difficulty of this problem in his seminal article “On The Discrimination of Romanticisms” in his Essays in the History of Ideas (1948), some scholars see romanticism as essentially continuous with the present, some see in it the inaugural moment of modernity, some see it as the beginning of a tradition of resistance to the Enlightenment-a Counter-Enlightenment-and still others place it firmly in the direct aftermath of the French Revolution. An earlier definition comes from Charles Baudelaire: “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.”
Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that has led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism.
In visual art and literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of “sensibility” with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and “pure” nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, based their writings on the supernatural/occult and human psychology.
The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott.
An early German influence came from Johann Wolfgang Goethe whose 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther had young men throughout Europe emulating its protagonist, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament. At that time Germany was a multitude of small separate states, and Goethe’s works would have a seminal influence in developing a unifying sense of nationalism. Another philosophic influence came from the German idealism of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling, making Jena (where Fichte lived, as well as Schelling,Hegel, Schiller and the brothers Schlegel) a center for early German romanticism (“Jenaer Romantik”). Important writers were Ludwig Tieck, Novalis (Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1799), Heinrich von Kleist and Friedrich Hoelderlin. Heidelberg later became a center of German romanticism, where writers and poets such as Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim, and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff met regularly in literary circles. Important motifs in German Romanticism are travelling, nature, and ancient myths. The later German Romanticism of, for example, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (The Sandman), 1817, and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff’s Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue), 1819, was darker in its motifs and has gothic elements.
In predominantly Roman Catholic countries Romanticism was less pronounced than in Germany and Britain, and tended to develop later, after the rise of Napoleon. Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand is often called the “Father of French Romanticism”. In France, the movement is associated with the nineteenth century, particularly in the paintings of Theodore Gericault and Eugene Delacroix, the plays, poems and novels of Victor Hugo (such as Les Miserables and Ninety-Three), and the novels of Stendhal.
In Russia, the principal exponent of Romanticism is Alexander Pushkin. Mikhail Lermontov attempted to analyse and bring to light the deepest reasons for the Romantic idea of metaphysical discontent with society and self, and was much influenced by Lord Byron. The poet Fyodor Tyutchev was also an important figure of the movement in Russia, and was heavily influenced by the German Romantics.
In the United States, romantic gothic literature made an early appearance with Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) and Rip Van Winkle (1819), followed from 1823 onwards by the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper, with their emphasis on heroic simplicity and their fervent landscape descriptions of an already-exotic mythicized frontier peopled by “noble savages”, similar to the philosophical theory of Rousseau, exemplified by Uncas, from The Last of the Mohicans. There are picturesque “local color” elements in Washington Irving’s essays and especially his travel books. Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of the macabre and his balladic poetry were more influential in France than at home, but the romantic American novel developed fully in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s atmosphere and melodrama. Later Transcendentalist writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson still show elements of its influence and imagination, as does the romantic Realism of Walt Whitman.
But by the 1880s, psychological and social Realism was competing with romanticism in the novel. The poetry of Emily Dickinson-nearly unread in her own time-and Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick can be taken as epitomes of American Romantic literature. As in England, Germany, and France, literary Romanticism had its counterpart in American visual arts, most especially in the exaltation of untamed America found in the paintings of the Hudson River School. Painters like Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church and others often combined a sense of the sublime with underlying religious and philosophical themes. Thomas Cole’s paintings feature strong narratives as in The Voyage of Life series painted in the early 1840s that depict man trying to survive amidst an awesome and immense nature, from the cradle to the grave.
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The Kronstadt Roadstead 1836
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Among the waves 1898 1
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00Bardon Hill, Coleorton Hall 1823
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, Front View 1841
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Flat country shank at Bay of Greifswald
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Friar Pedro offers shoes to el Maragato and Prepares to Push Aside his gun 1806
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $379.00The Bride of Abydos
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $319.00A Moonlit Night at Sea 1885
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $419.00A winter landscape with figures on a path, a footbridge and windmills beyond
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00After the Storm 1817
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Count Demetrius De Palatiano in Suliot Costume 1800
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $309.00Falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, Moonlight 1841
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $279.00Friar Pedro wrests the gun from El Maragato 1806
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00A View on Hampstead Heath, Early Morning 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00Falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, Side View 1841
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Friar Pedro Clubs El Maragato with the Butt of the Gun 1806
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00Greifswald in Moonlight 1817
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Juive De Tanger En Costume D’apparat
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $319.00Marina
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00A Country Road with Trees and Figures
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00A view in the Domleschg Valley, Switzerland
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Aiva 1846
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $399.00Evening on the Baltic Sea 1831
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $319.00Friar Pedro shoots El Maragato as his horse runs off 1806
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00Seated Figure in Turkish Costume
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $319.00A Moonlit Night on the Bosphorus
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $399.00A mountain scene, Val d’Aosta 1845
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00A View from Hampstead Heath 1825
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00Fishing boat between two rocks on the beach of the Baltic Sea
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Friar Pedro Binds El Maragato with a Rope 1806
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00Smoking Turk Sitting on a Couch
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $319.00A Swiss Lake, Lungernzee
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00A view of Salisbury
By John ConstableSizes starting at $309.00Ships at Anchor
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Solar Eclipse in Feodosia
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00The Caid, Moroccan Chief
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $399.00The fight at the Mesón del Gallo 1777
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $449.00A Lane near Flatford
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00A Russian Squadron on the Sevastopole Roadstead 1846
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00Castle on Height near Geneva 1836
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Comedians
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $419.00Seashore in the fog 1807
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $319.00The fight at the New Sale 1777
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $459.00A ship in peril 1894
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00An Autumnal Landscape at East Bergholt
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00From Chambave looking down the Val D’ Aosta towards Ussel 1836
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Marshy beach 1832
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $279.00The Sultan of Morocco
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $349.00The washerwomen 1780
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $439.00A View of the Bosporus with the Hagia Sophia and the Maiden’s Tower in the Moonlight 1884
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $419.00Barge on the Canal
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Interior of a Harem in Oran
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $309.00Le pont du chateau, Luxembourg 1839
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Sea Shore in Moonlight
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00The walk of Andalusia 1777
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $409.00American Ship at Sea, 1873
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Boat Passing a Lock
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Chatel Argent, in the Val d’Aosta, near Villeneuve 1836
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Jewish Musicians in Mogador
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $359.00Seascape by Moonlight
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00The swing 1779
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $449.00An Ottoman coffee-house in the moonlight
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Arabs of Oran
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $379.00Buildings on rising ground near Hampstead 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Knaresborough, Yorkshire
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Sea coast at moonlight 1830
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00The tobacco shelter 1780
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $519.00Branch Hill Pond 1819
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Fort of L’Essillon, Val de la Maurienne, France 1836
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Hercules and Alcestis 1862
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $439.00Sunset (Brothers)
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $279.00The Game of Pelota 1779
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $529.00The shipwreck
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00An Ox-Drawn Cart on the Shore and a Swimmer in the Shallows, 1868
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Barges on the Stour, with Dedham Church in the Distance
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Falls near the Source of the Jumna in the Himalayas 1836
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Lycurgus Consulting the Pythia
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $399.00Swans in the reeds at the first dawn 1832
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $289.00The Seesaw
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $499.00Barge at Sea Shore
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Fluelen- Morning (looking towards the lake) 1845
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $329.00Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius 1844
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $389.00Seaside moonlight 1818
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Stratford Mill
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00The Threshing Floor
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $629.00Archimède Tué Par Le Soldat De Marcellus
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $309.00Battle of Sinop
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00Branch Hill Pond, Hampstead Heath, with a Boy Sitting on a Bank 1825
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00Flüelen, from the Lake of Lucerne 1840
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $339.00Gossiping women
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $459.00Woman on the beach of Ruegen 1818
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Calm early evening sea 1884
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $439.00Majo with a guitar 1779
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $269.00On a Sailing Ship
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $289.00Shipwreck on the Coast 1862
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $269.00Sion, Rhone (or Splugen) 1836
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $279.00Willy Lott’s House
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00Capri, 1899
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Flatford Mill from the Lock 1810
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00Ships in the Harbor of Greifswald
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $279.00