ROMANTICISM- THE ROMANTIC REBELLION

Casper David Friedrich “Ruin at Eldena”

Romanticism

• Romanticism was a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe.

• The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as love, loneliness, trepidation, horror and terror.

William Adolphe

Bougeureaul,

“Dante and Virgil in Hell”

A Reaction Against

• The Industrial Revolution.

• In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and the aftermath of the French Revolution.

• A reaction against the scientific rationalisation of nature.

Industrial Revolution

GrosDetail of dead

soldiers from the

painting,

“Napoleon at

Elyau”.

Gericault- Series on the Insane

“Portrait of a Kleptomaniac” “Envy”

Celebrate the individual

• an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism.

• It also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant in modes more authentic, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape.

• It also legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority, which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.

Theodore Gericault, 1791-1824“Self-Portrait” “Death Mask”

Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault1791-1824

• French painter and lithographer.• Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the

Romantic movement.• His teacher (RouenCarle VernetPierre-Narcisse Guérin) was a

rigorous classicist who disapproved of his student's impulsive temperament yet recognized his talent.

• Géricault soon left the classroom, choosing to study at the Louvre, where from 1810 to 1815 he copied paintings by Rubens, Titian and Rembrandt.

• During this period at the Louvre he discovered a vitality he found lacking in the prevailing school of Neoclassicism. Much of his time was spent in Versailles, where he found the stables of the palace open to him, and where he gained his knowledge of the anatomy and action of horses.

The Charging Chasseur, 1812

Gericault “Frightened Horse”

Gericault“Horses in panic”

Gericault “Raft of the Medusa”

Studies for the Raft of Medusa

Studies for the Raft of Medusa

Studies for the Raft of Medusa

Gericault

“Evening Landscape with

Swimmers”

Gericault

“English Street Scene”

Eugene Delacroix, 1798-1863.“Delacroix” photograph by Nadar. “Self Portrait”

Delacroix “Arab Horses Fighting”

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix1798 -1863

• A French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.

• Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement.

• Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic.

• Solitary, moody, inexhaustibly imaginative and profoundly emotional.

Delacroix “Young Tiger Playing with it’s Mother”

Delacroix “Sultan of Morocco”

Delacroix “Lion Hunt”

Delacroix“Mephistopheles”

Delacroix“Massacre at

Chios”

Delacroix “Liberty Leading The People”

Delacroix on the 100 Franc note- A French National Hero!

Casper David Friedrich, German, 1774 – 1840.“Self-Portrait”, drawing. Von Kugelen, “Portrait of Casper David Friedrich

Friedrich

Friedrich “The Stages of Life”

Friedrich“Chalk Cliffs on

Rugen”