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Europe 1800 - 1900
Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 2
Lesson 1: Romanticism—an introductionA beginner's guide to Romanticism
By Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
19th century stylistic developments
As is fairly common with stylistic rubrics, the word "Romanticism" was not developed to describe the visual arts but was first used in relation to new literary and musical schools in the beginning of the 19th century. Art came under this heading only later. Think of the Romantic literature and musical compositions of the early 19th century: the poetry of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and William Wordsworth and the scores of Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and Frédéric Chopin—these Romantic poets and musicians associated with visual artists. A good example of this is the friendship between composer and pianist Chopin and painter Eugène Delacroix. Romantic artists were concerned with the spectrum and intensity of human emotion.
Even if you do not regularly listen to classical music, you've heard plenty of music by these composers. In his epic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the late director Stanley Kubrick used Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (written in 1896, Strauss based his composition on Friedrich Nietzsche's book of the same name). Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange similarly uses the sweeping ecstasy and drama of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in this case to intensify the cinematic violence of the film.
Romantic music expressed the powerful drama of human emotion: anger and passion, but also quiet passages of pleasure and joy. So too, the French painter Eugène Delacroix and the Spanish artist Francisco Goya broke with the cool, cerebral idealism of Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' neoclassicism. They sought instead to respond to the cataclysmic upheavals that characterized their era with line, color, and brushwork that was more physically direct and emotionally expressive.
Additional resources
Read a chapter in our textbook, Reframing Art History, about "Global romanticism and landscape convention."
Essay by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
Want to join the conversation?
- Why is there an ugly looking "thing" eating a person in the 3rd picture? To me that's just wrong.(1 vote)
- In Roman mythology, Saturn was a god who ate his children because he was afraid that one of them would overthrow him and become the new king of the gods.(11 votes)
- Is Romantic art a style or an attitude?(1 vote)
- both. as a style it stimulates our emotions, and as an attitude, it seeks such stimulation(3 votes)
- so if we all have heard a 19th century composer then why don't we speak of them more and i want to lear n more about them and we need more articles about the music back then. plz and thank u(0 votes)
- As in Delacroix's "Liberty leading the people", it seems to me that every time the focal point of a painting is a female form one or both of her breasts are exposed. Is there some symbolism in this?(1 vote)
- It may be a way to demonstrate a woman's taking power over the way she presents herself, OR it may be a way that shows the prurient interest of the painter.(1 vote)
- is romantic art a form of style?(1 vote)
- Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism(1 vote)
- Where are these paintings located?(1 vote)
- The Abbey in the Oakwood, 1809-10, oil on canvas, 110 x 171 cm is at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Eugeme Delacroix, Liberty leading the People, 1830, oil on canvas, 260 x 325 cm is at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Saturn Devouring One Of His Sons, 1821-1823, 143.5 x 81.4 cm is at the Prado in Madrid.(1 vote)
- Anyon else think this is gothic, abstract, and spooky in a cool way?(1 vote)
- To which of the pieces shown would you apply these adjectives? Just askin'.(0 votes)
- i like the piece but would anyone put it up in their homes?(0 votes)
- I'm not sure to which of the pieces you refer, but homes are not the only places where art is hung. One or more of them may have been originally intended for museum display.(2 votes)
- 20th Century notes? Where can I find x thanks(0 votes)