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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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Parham Mill, Gillingham 1826
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Sailing Ship on the Sea at Moonlight
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $339.00The Morning after the Deluge 1843
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $249.00The Rock Gates in Neurathen
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $259.00The Shipwreck of Don Juan 1840
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By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $279.00Lane near Dedham 1802
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Shipwreck
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By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $249.00The kite
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By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $389.00Sandbanks and a Cart and Horses On Hampstead Heath
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00The Oaktree in the Snow 1829
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00The Picnic 1776
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $359.00The Storm
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By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $249.00Cairn in Snow 1807
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $309.00Ship on high seas
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Somerset House Terrace from Waterloo Bridge 1819
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00The hermitage of San Isidro on the day of the festival 1788
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $339.00Vesuvius in Eruption
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Wounded Brigand 1825
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $329.00Collision of the Moorish Horsemen
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $339.00Gledhow Hall, Yorkshire
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Landscape with a Red-Tiled Cottage, a Windmill and a Rainbow
By John ConstableSizes starting at $269.00Snow Covered Hill with Ravens
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00Stormy seas
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $339.00Women carrying Pitchers
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $409.00A Russian two-master on the open sea., 1885
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $339.00Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat in the Evening 1826
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00Stratford Saint Mary from the Coombs 1800
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00The Quail Shoot 1775
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $349.00View of Tangier From the Seashore
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $259.00Winter Landscape
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $319.00In Full Sail
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $329.00Sun Rising through Vapour 1807
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00The traveling comedians 1793
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $359.00View of Tangier
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $359.00View of the Elbe Valley 1807
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $289.00Weymouth Bay – Bowleaze Cove and Jordon Hill
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00Greek Cavalry Men Resting in Forest 1858
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $339.00Hunter beside a fountain
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $259.00Limekiln at Coalbrookdale 1797
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $309.00The Bay of Naples with Mount Vesuvius
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Wafts of fog 1820
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $289.00Windmills in landscape
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Moroccan Horseman Crossing a Ford 1850
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $329.00Shepherd playing the dulzaina
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $259.00Ship in the Polar Sea
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $289.00Study of Tree Trunks 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00The storm at Cape Aya 1899
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00View of Ehrenbreitstein
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00A Sandbank at Hampstead Heath 1821
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Arab Rider 1854
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $349.00Choppy seas near a rocky coast, 1899
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00Northern Sea in the Moonlight
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00The blind guitarist 1778
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $389.00The Golden Bough
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00A View at Hampstead with Stormy Weather 1830
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Arab Saddling His Horse 1855
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $339.00Lake of Geneva from Montreux 1810
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $299.00Rocky Reef on the Seashore 1825
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $299.00The country party
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $389.00View from the coast towards the sea with two-master
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $329.00A Bank on Hampstead Heath
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Brig at Dawn, 1890
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $379.00Caligula’s Palace and Bridge 1831
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $359.00Circassian Holding a Horse by Its Bridle 1858
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $339.00Northern Landscape, Spring 1825
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $319.00The drinker 1777
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $339.00A View at Salisbury from Archdeacon Fisher’s House 1829
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable, 1860
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $369.00Brussels, A Distant View
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $349.00Evening 1817
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $319.00Shipping on the Bosphorus, Constantinople, 1900
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00Wedding
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $429.00Dedham from Langham
By John ConstableSizes starting at $279.00La cita 1780
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $399.00Meadows near Greifswald
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $309.00The Bay of Yalta
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $419.00The Fifth Plague of Egypt 1800
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $329.00Young Turk Stroking His Horse 1825
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $349.00Capri
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $359.00Dogs and hunting gear 1776
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Landscape with two horses and a brook
By John ConstableSizes starting at $289.00Le Combat
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $389.00Rügen landscape with bay 1802
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $329.00St. Mawes, Cornwall 1823
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $319.00Harbor by moonlight 1811
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $319.00Harlech Castle, from Twgwyn Ferry, Summer’s Evening Twilight
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $289.00Hunting with a decoy 1775
By Francisco GoyaSizes starting at $299.00Old Sarum
By John ConstableSizes starting at $299.00Passing Ship on a Moonlit Night
By Ivan AivazovskySizes starting at $349.00Two Horses Fighting in a Stormy Landscape, Ca. 1828 Copy.png
By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $339.00A River Seen from a Hill
By J.M.W. TurnerSizes starting at $249.00A Windmill near Brighton 1824
By John ConstableSizes starting at $259.00Boats in the Harbour at Evening 1828
By Caspar David FriedrichSizes starting at $289.00El Maragato Threatens Friar Pedro de Zaldivia with his gun 1806
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By Eugene DelacroixSizes starting at $359.00