c33 romanticism

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Romanticism and the Natural World

Romantic artists revolted against classical values oforder, balance, and proportion, rejecting empiricalobservation in favor of subjective experience.

They sought for unifying principles in the naturalworld.

Nature became the primary subject of Romanticpoetry and the landscape the primary genre ofRomantic painting.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Coleridges Rime of the Ancient Mariner isbased in the concept of unity between thehuman and natural worlds.

Supernatural and mystical elements areprominent.

The Romantic imagination, with Coleridge,leads one on a voyage of self-discovery.


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Joseph Mallard William Turner

Turners work focused primarily on the colors of theimagination.

One element dissolves into another. The forces of nature are letloose, and are often in opposition with human presence.

While Constable painted familiar, human-infused scenes, Turnerpainted exotic scenes in which the human element is remote oralien - humans are dwarfed by Turners natural world

Turner presents his subjects as they occur within his mind. Hispainting reflect a raw experience of nature in its most elementalform clearly a Romantic interpretation that is the opposite ofNeoclassical/Enlightenment balance, order and clarity.


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J. M. W. Turner, Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying -Typhoon coming on ("The Slave Ship"), 1840, 35 x 44

1840; Oil on canvas

J.M.W. Turner, The

Slave Ship

1840, oil on canvas

detail


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J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam, and SpeedThe Great Western

Railway, 1844, Oil on canvas, 33 by 48

J.M.W. Turner, Rain,Steam, and Speed TheGreat Western Railway,

1844, Oil on canvas,33 by 48

detail


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The Railroad

The hope and the despair of the Industrial Revolution were

embodied in the innovation of the steam locomotive.

The railroad brought urban renewal, replacing decrepit

buildings with stations and warehouses, but displacing the

poor residents perhaps as many as 100,000 persons.

J. M. W. Turner.

Interior of Tintern

Abbey, watercolor,

1794. 12 5/8" x 9 7/8"


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American Romanticism

The vast American wilderness caught theimagination of Romantics.

One painter of this pristine natural world wasThomas Cole (1801-1848), English-born andEuropean-trained but enamored of theundefiled lands of the United States.

Cole was the most prominent artist in the HudsonRiver School, named for the region of New Yorkstate where he most often painted.

The Hudson River School

The Hudson River School dominated American

landscape painting. The term "School does not refer,

literally, to a school, but to a group of people whose

style and philosophy are similar.

Their paintings depict the Hudson River Valley and

surrounding areas, as well as the Catskill Mountains,Adirondack Mountains, and White Mountains of New

Hampshire.


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Thomas Cole

In Coles Oxbow, both the viewer and the artist have apanoramic view from the top of the mountain, a feature thatbecame typical of the Hudson River School, of which Colebecame the acknowledged leader.

Cole journeyed on foot through the northeastern United States,making sketches of the landscapes. During winter, he turned thesketches into paintings.

Though Cole was primarily a landscape painter, he alwaysaspired to a higher style of landscape, a type of painting that

contained an underlying moral or religious meaning.

Coles student Frederic Edwin Church was also of the HudsonRiver School.

Thomas Cole. The Oxbow,1836


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Thomas Cole. The Oxbow(View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm). 1836, oil on

canvas, 4 3 1/2" x 6 4"

Transcendentalism

Romantic imagination coupled with American

individualism led to an intellectual movement called the

Transcendental Club.

A fundamental concept was that in the direct

experience of nature, the individual is united with God.

The group was centered in Concord, Massachusetts.


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New England Transcendentalists

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) wroteNature in 1836, articulating many of theprinciples of Transcendentalism.

His contemporary Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) not only celebrated the beauty andsimplicity of nature, but withdrew from humanculture to live alone at Walden Pond.

Thoreau was both highly individualistic and acommitted social activist.

The Natural Worlds Challenges

Herman Melville (1819-1891) wrote his great

novel Moby Dick(1851) from his own

experiences with a natural world that

challenged humankind.

The truly wild aspects of nature, for good or

for bad, are always present, but never truly

grasped by the human mind.

c33 romanticism

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