A little bit of a reviewA little bit about Rococo

•Very ornate

•Lots of flourishes

•Over the top. Even more so than Baroque

Fragonard

The Swing

TheEnlightenmen

t

TheEnlightenmen

tSociety is good.

Society curbs violent impulses!

Society is good.

Society curbs violent impulses!

Civilization corrupts;institutions have rippling effects!

Civilization corrupts;institutions have rippling effects!

Romanticism

Romanticism

Early19c

The Spirit of the Age (1790-1850)

The Spirit of the Age (1790-1850)

A sense of a shared vision among the Romantics.

Early support of the French Revolution

Rise of the individual.

Affinity with nature.

Radical poetics / politics – an obsession with violent change.

A sense of a shared vision among the Romantics.

Early support of the French Revolution

Rise of the individual.

Affinity with nature.

Radical poetics / politics – an obsession with violent change.

Romantic Themes• Values: A Frenzy of Emotion:Emotions!!!! Passion!!!!

Irrationality!!! Science can be dangerous!!!! LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!

• Nationalism/Patriotism:• Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang)

• Nature/Intuition: esp. power and fury of nature. “Romanticizing country life”

• The Past: esp. Middle Ages

•Macabre and occult•Heroes• Exotic Places: Middle East / Far East

By the 1830s, there were two schools of painting (especially in France):

• The Neoclassical School (Jean-Louis David)• The Romantics (Delacroix)

Painters often swapped elements of each school (a neoclassical idea painted in a romantic way or vice versa).

Background of the Romantic Art Movement

The French Neoclassicists: a

bit of background

The French Neoclassicists: a

bit of backgroundJacques-Louis David

Antoine-Jean Gros

• Virtual dictator of European painting from 1800-1820.• No matter how revolutionary the subject, used traditional, neoclassical techniques.• Stressed line, form, perspective.

Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748-1825)

David

Napoleon Crossing Saint Bernard

David - Coronation of Napoleon

David

Death of Marat

David; Death of Socrates

• Moved away from the ideas of his teacher, Jacques-Louis David.• Followed the more emotional style of Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens.• Still Neoclassical at heart.• Series of battle paintings glorifying Napoleon.

Antoine-Jean Gros (French, 1791-1824)

Gros

Napoleon at Arcole Bridge, Nov. 17, 1796

Gros - Napoleon on the Battlefield

Two portraits: which is which?

• "First of the moderns” “Man without an -ism”• Transitional figure between Neo-classicism and Romanticism?• Warm and passionate.• Court painter to Spanish king Charles III.• Sense of outrage and rebellion, social conscience.

Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828)

Goya - The Third of May

It is said that he made the preliminary sketches of this painting in the blood of executed Spanish patriots.

“Family of Charles IV” 1800 Goya

• Shifted the emphasis of battle paintings from heroism to suffering and endurance.•Transitional from neo-class to Romanticism• Isolation and vulnerability were the essential human condition.• French Michelangelo (painting and sculpture).• Bold, vigorous figures with lots of movement.

Théodore Géricault (French, 1791-1824)

Géricault - The Raft of the Medusa

• Took painting out of the studio and into the country.• Studied and painted from nature.• Landscapes that stressed color and light more than purity of line.• Influence on Delacroix and Impressionism.

John Constable (English, 1776-1837)

Constable – Flatford Mill, 1817

Constable

Lock at Deadham

• Melancholy and symbolic landscapes.

• Used light to unify the mood of his landscapes and other works.

• Mystical attitude toward nature (God found in nature).

•“The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees in him.”

Caspar David Friedrich

(German, 1774-1840)

Frederick

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Friedrich - Polar Sea

Cloister Cemetery in the SnowFriedrich, 1817-1819

• Dreamy landscapes.• Played with light and color rather than sticking to form.• Mixed cloud, fog, and the land until anything definite was indistinguishable.• Conflict between nature and technology.• Precursor of the Impressionists.

J. M. W. Turner (English, 1775-1851)

Turner - Rain, Steam, Speed

• Color and light emphasized over line.• Urged young painters to study Rubens.• Purpose of art is "not to imitate nature but to strike the imagination."• Literary themes.• Used color to create energy, which he compared to music.•

Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863)

Delacroix - Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix

Massacre at Chios

Romantic Literature

Goethe

“Feeling is all!”

Goethe "Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of

time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will - it's only action that can make a man.” (“Faust”)

Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley “It was already one in the

morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open…”

Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) Science fiction—first Science gone horribly wrong Lots of natural themes Modern Prometheus

Titan—created man and gave man fire from heaven—Zeus punished him. Fire seduced man. Seduction of other gifts-IR and FR—promise, but unknown horrors

Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art. Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. …………………………………………The waves beside them danced, but theyOut-did the sparkling leaves in glee;A poet could not be but gay,In such a jocund company!I gazed—and gazed—but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.

P. B. ShelleyMusic, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory—

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

ColeridgeIn Xanadu did Kubla Khan             

A stately pleasure-dome decree:             

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran             

Through caverns measureless to man             

Down to a sunless sea.             

So twice five miles of fertile ground             

With walls and towers were girdled round:             

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,             

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;           

And here were forests ancient as the hills,           

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Nature Samuel Johnson: A Romantic?

“A blade of grass is always a blade or grass; men and women are the subjects of my inquiry.”

Romantic?

“Nature is Spirit visible”

John Constable

Expressed ideas of the Romantics through music Strained against rules and restraints of Classicism Music addressed to the masses Expanded orchestra. Brass now have valves Piano most important instrument Opera & ballet popular Used ballads, folk music, poetry, national history for inspiration (Nationalism).

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

• Born In Bonn, Germany

• Moved to Vienna, Austria in 1792

• Composed piano and violin sonatas, string quartets, and a total of 9 symphonies

• Deaf at age 16

• Fur Elise, Ode to Joy, Moonlight Sonata

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

• Hungarian

• Europe’s greatest concert pianist

• Also composed folk music for the piano

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

• Italian opera composer

• Rigoletto (1851)

•Aida (1871)

Piotor Iilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

• Best known for ballet music Swan Lake (1876) The Nutcracker (1891-92):Hated it! Sleeping Beauty

• Richly melodic passages

• Gifted orchestrator

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

• Italian

• La Bohème (1896)

• Madame Butterfly

• Emotion and theatricality

• Lyricism, color orchestration, rich vocals

Some music Tchaikovsky—2 selections

1812 overture Nutcracker suite

Les Chinois

Dukas Sorcerer’s apprentice

More Music Ludwig von Beethoven

Pastoral Ponchielli

La Gioconda Mussorgsky

Night on Bald Mountain