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The Romantics
1782-1830
Romanticism originated in Germany and quickly moved to England in the early 1780s. In the beginning the romantic movement was advanced mainly by a number of German writers and poets. Their influence on painters was inspiring and lasting. According to French art historian W. C. Brownell, "The romantic painters were, however, by no means merely emotional. They were mainly imaginative. And in painting, as in literature, the great change wrought by romanticism consisted in stimulating the imagination instead of merely satisfying the sense and the intellect. The main idea ceased to be as obviously accentuated, and its natural surroundings were given their natural place; there was less direct statement and more suggestion; the artist's effort was expended rather upon perfecting the ensemble, noting relations, taking in a larger circle; a suggested complexity of moral elements took the place of the old simplicity, whose multifariousness was almost wholly pictorial. Instead of a landscape as a tapestry background to a Holy Family, and having no pertinence but an artistic one, we have Corot's "Orpheus."
Masters of
Romanticism Painting
William Bouguereau
(1825 - 1905)
French
The Romantics exalted courtly love and sought only poetry and truth.
They refused to be restricted by the traditional approach to still-lifes,
seascapes, and landscapes. They explored a classical and increasingly
decorative painting style in which structure, forms and luminescent
colors were seen as having the power to evoke an emotional, and even
spiritual, response in the viewer. Music, literature and art acquired
profound or idealistic meaning. Legends, folklore, mythology and
fairytales were rich sources of inspiration.
Eugène
Delacroix wrote the following entry into his journal in 1824
"I confess that I have worked logically, I, who have no love for logical
painting. I see now that my turbulent mind needs activity, that it must
break out and try a hundred different ways before reaching the goal
towards which I am always straining. There is an old leaven working in
me, some black depth that must be appeased." The Romantics dreamed of a
world made better through art that would articulate ideal beauty and the
nobleness of the true love.
John Constable (1776-1837) English,
Eugène Delacroix (1798 - 1863) French,
William Blake (1757 - 1827) English,
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References - French Art Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture by W. C. Brownell