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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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Durham
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Madonna with Child and Saint Joseph
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $359.00Marguerite-Juliette Pierret 1827
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $279.00The Black Sea, 1900
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Grenoble Bridge 1824
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Mlle. Alexandrine-Julie De La Boutraye
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $279.00St. Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent 1788
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $339.00Storm clouds over Hampstead
By John ConstableSizes starting at $329.00The capture of the steamer “Russia” Turkish military vehicles “Messina” on the Black sea
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $369.00Cloud Study 1822
By John ConstableSizes starting at $339.00Juliet and her Nurse 1836
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Morning at Sea 1849
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $339.00Penitent Magdalene 1792
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $269.00Sunset 1850
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $279.00Clouds 1822
By John ConstableSizes starting at $309.00Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, with Nelson’s Column
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Landscape With Rocks, Augerville 1854
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $269.00Ship by the Shore
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00The Sermon of Saint Bernadino of Siena 1784
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $519.00Cloud Study 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Great Yarmouth Harbour, Norfolk 1840
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Seascape
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00The Edge of a Wood at Nohant
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $289.00The taking of Christ 1798
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $339.00Cloud Study 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Death of St. Albert of Jerusalem
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $489.00Going to the Ball (San Martino)
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Landscape Near Champrosay, 1850
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $289.00On the shore
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Cloud Study 1821-6
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00El Sueño (The dream) 1800
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00High Street, Edinburgh 1818
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Landscape at Champrosay 1849
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $339.00Shore of Yalta 1885
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $369.00Cloud Study
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Folkestone Harbour and Coast to Dover 1829
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $329.00King Roderick 1833
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $389.00Shipping along the crimean coast
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Students from the Pestalozzian Academy (fragment)
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $449.00Cloud Study, Hampstead, Tree at Right 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00East View of Fonthill Abbey, Noon 1800
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $329.00Mathurin Régnier
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $299.00SHIP OFF THE COAST, 1874
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00The Marriage of the Virgin 1774
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $589.00A Persian Horseman With a Lance
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $299.00Italian Landscape, probably Civita di Bagnoregio 1828
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Ships on the Stormy Sea. Sunrise 1871
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Study of Clouds Over a Landscape
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00The Meadow of San Isidro on his Feast Day 1788
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $379.00Cloud Study 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Grenoble Seen from the River Drac with Mont Blanc in the Distance 1802
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $359.00Shipping off the Ayu Dag
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Sidi Abdallah, Provincial Ruler of the Regency of Algiers, Rue Amour
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $349.00The School Scene
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $359.00A Moroccan Couple on their Terrace
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $319.00Cloud Study
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00Lake Albano, Italy
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Morning in Yalta, 1880
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Popular party under a bridge
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $279.00Attack on a Woman 1810
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $279.00Episode From “The Corsair” by Lord Byron 1831
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $279.00Leeds 1816
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Sailing Ship on a Stormy Day
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Study of clouds and trees
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Act of Violence against Two Women 1810
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $269.00Linlithgow Palace 1806
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Reval (Tallinn) 1845
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Study of Sky and Trees 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00The Turkish Rider 1834
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $299.00Coast Scene at Brighton – Evening
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Hannibal Crossing the Alps 1771
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $399.00Llanthony Abbey, Monmouthshire 1792
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Off the coast near Yalta by moonlight
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Three Arab Horsemen at an Encampment
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $259.00Cloud Study 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Hannibal the Conqueror viewing Italy for the first time from the Alps 1771
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $439.00London from Greenwich Park 1809
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Morning on the Shoreline. Sudak 1856
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $399.00Strolling Players 1833
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $269.00Cloud Study
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Long Ship’s Lighthouse, Land’s End
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Rocky Island 1855
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00The Death of Lara 1824
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $299.00The rape of Europa 1772
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $379.00A manola – Leocadia Zorrilla
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $259.00Margate 1822
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Pair-New Moon and a View of the Bay of Pozzuoli on a Moonlit Night, with the Islands of Nisida and Ischia in the Background
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00Portrait of a Young Man Wearing a Blue Beret
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $279.00Study of clouds over a landscape
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00Allegory of the City of Madrid – 1810
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00Extensive Landscape with Grey Clouds 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Half Figure of a Moroccan Woman
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $259.00Men with Horses Crossing a River
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Pair-View of the Gulf of Naples from Posilippo with the Palazzo Donn’Anna
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00A Cloud Study, Sunset 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00Appearance of Saint Isidore to King Ferdinand the Holy before the walls of Seville
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $399.00Mer de Glace, in the Valley of Chamouni, Switzerland 1803
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Ship in Calm Water at Dusk
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00Still Life With Flowers 1834
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $279.00Allegory of Love, Cupid and Psyche
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $339.00