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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.
Read moreShowing 1201–1300 of 1752 results
A ship in distress
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Don Antonio Noriega 1801
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $279.00Saint Augustine’s Gate, Canterbury 1793
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Water-meadows near Salisbury
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00An English Cathedral
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Don Antonio Raimundo Ibáñez 1808
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00View of Lower Terrace, Hampstead 1822
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00View of Venice from the Lido 1855
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Don José Queraltó as a Spanish army docto 1802
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $289.00The Vale of Dedham, a plein-air study
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00View of Ely Cathedral 1796
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $359.00View of Vesuvius
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $399.00Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Summer Evening
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00The Angler 1794
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Yalta 1899
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $449.00Don Valentín Bellvís de Moncada y Pizarro, 1795
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Landscape with Trees and Figures 1796
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00View of the Caucasus with Mount Kazbek in the Distance, 1868
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $399.00View of the City of London from Sir Richard Steele’s Cottage, Hampstead
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Ferdinand VII in Court Dress 1815
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $309.00Ingleborough from Chapel-Le-Dale
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00The Quarters behind Alresford Hall 1816
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00View Of The Shore
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00American Shipping off the Rock of Gibraltar 1873
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00Fernando VII in camp 1815
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00The Opening of Waterloo Bridge
By John ConstableSizes starting at $309.00Villa Salviati on the Arno
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00Broad landscape with settlers 1856
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00Dedham Vale from the Road to East Bergholt, Sunset 1810
By John ConstableSizes starting at $329.00Francesco Sabatini
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Watermill near a Flowing Brook
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Autumn Sowing of the Grain 1794
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Chapel by the sea 1847
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Flatford Mill
By John ConstableSizes starting at $349.00Francisco Bayeu 1795
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $289.00Embankment of the eastern city 1851
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos 1798
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $319.00On the edge of a wood 1825
By John ConstableSizes starting at $359.00Panoramic View of the Thames 1796
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Entrance to the Sevastopol Bay 1852
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00General Antonio Ricardos 1793
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $289.00On the Mosel- Bernkastel, Kues and The Landshut, Germany
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00The Gleaners, Brighton 1824
By John ConstableSizes starting at $349.00Foul by God- River Landscape with Anglers Fishing From a Weir 1830
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00General Don José de Urrutia 1798
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $309.00Grafskaya wharf, Sebastopol
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Harnham Ridge, Salisbury
By John ConstableSizes starting at $369.00Flatford Mill
By John ConstableSizes starting at $349.00General Nicolas Philippe Guye 1810
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $279.00Gulf of Naples 1841
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00The Scarlet Sunset
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $279.00Hip at Sea at Sunset, 1846
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00Ignacio Garcini y Queralt, Brigadier of Engineers 1804
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $279.00Landscape, with Trees and Cottages under a Lowering Sky 1812
By John ConstableSizes starting at $419.00Sun Setting over a Lake
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $279.00East Bergholt House 1809
By John ConstableSizes starting at $479.00José Álvarez de Toledo, XI Marquis of Villafranca 1795
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $339.00Pushkin looking out to Ayu-Dag, Crimea, 1818
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00Sunrise with Sea Monsters 1845
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00Dedham Lock
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00José Moñino y Redondo, Count of Floridablanca 1783
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $339.00Ship at Sea
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Sunset From the Top of the Rigi 1844
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $279.00A Cottage and Lane at Langham
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Godoy como general 1801
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00Petersburg Stock Exchange 1847
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $399.00Sunset Over Water
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $279.00A Cart on a lane at Flatford
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00In the roads. Evening 1867
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Sunset
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $259.00A Church in the Trees 1800
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Corsica
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00Juan Bautista de Muguiro 1827
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $269.00Shepherds’ Camp
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $409.00A Country Lane with an Avenue of Trees
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Luxembourg 1825
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $279.00Manuel Silvela and García Aragón 1809
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Promenade at sunset, 1869
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $449.00A Country Road and Sandbank
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Pope Saint Gregory the Great
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $359.00Rye, Sussex
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00Ship at Sunset
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00A Cottage among Trees, with a Sandbank
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Fishing upon the Blythe-Sand, Tide Setting In 1809
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of a Man
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $309.00Sunset at Sea 1864
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Harbour View 1826
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of a Young Man in Brown
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Stormy Sea at sunset 1896
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $399.00The Dell at Helmingham Park 1830
By John ConstableSizes starting at $249.00Portrait of Ascencio Julià 1800
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $279.00Shoreline 1851
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Teignmouth, Devonshire 1813
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00Waterloo Bridge 1820
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00Portrait of Asensio Julià 1798
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $289.00Ship at Sunset off Cap Martin
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $389.00Waterloo Bridge from Whitehall Stairs
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00Weymouth 1811
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $329.00