Isn’t it Romantic?

…and isn’t it emotional?

Ingre’s Bather

Moving on to the

1800s...

Blake’s Monster

As you explore art of the Romantic Era (1820-80) examine the pieces in relation to:

Romantic ideals•Subjective/”Inner”•Emotional/passionate•Individual is key•Freedom•Macabre/mystical•Visionary•SUBLIME•Orientalism/Exoticism

Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, 1827the last king of BabylonHow does this Romantic artwork by Delacroix

differ from a Classical composition, such as

one by David?

Neo-Classical vs Romanticcompare and contrast:

HEADS

Houdon, Bust of Franklin, 1779

Gericault, Severed Heads, 1818

vs

William Blake (1757-1827)British visionary, poet, artist, bookmaker

“All men are alike, tho’ infinitely various.”-Wm Blake

Tyger, tyger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?”

“To see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild FlowerHold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hour.”

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

The Third of May, 1808Goya was horrified by the senselessness of the Napoleonic War---Christlike Spaniard helpless in front of a faceless firing squad

He depicted the troubled psyche--- Sleep of Reason Creates Monsters, 1798as concepts of the Enlightenment fly out the window...

Goya….sex, sin and the macabre

The Duchess of Alba, 1797love written in the sand (“only Goya”)And a wicked beauty mark

Saturn Devouring his Children, 1819made for his dining room wall

Gericault’s “Severed Heads”…..

...and “Portrait of a Child Killer

Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)

An artist growing up in the turbulent years after the French Revolution,Gericault studied with the Classicist painter, David, yet represented the newsentiments of the Romantic Period.

Gericault’s works shock and intentionally horrify the viewer

Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa

1818--taken from a news story about a shipwreck where only 15 were found aliveanti-French royalist---

Delacroix, like many Romantic artists and composers, was influenced by great literature….Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe

Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)

Liberty Leading the People, 1830, Delacroixliberty, equality, fraternity…another French Revolution—mob trying to get rid of Charles X How does this piece compare with Gericault’s Raft? Can you tell that Delacroix was a student of Gericault?

Some Romantic artists, however, put less emphasis on emotional and psychic content...

Academic precision and exquisite rendering, instead, were prized...

Jean-Auguste Ingres (1780-1867)

A painstaking draftsman,often taking years to finish a picture…Who do you think was Ingres’teacher and inspiration?

Napoleon on the Imperial Throne

Nudes and Bathers of the Romantic Era…Ingres shows his Romantic obsession for beautiful bathers…

The Valpincon Bather, 1808need for 2 more vertebrae to have such a long back“paint should be as smooth as the skin of an onion.”

Gustave Courbet (1819-77) has an obsession for nudes, as well….

Woman with a Parrot, 1866

The Woman in the Waves, 1868

The Stonebreakers,

1849

Courbet’s Realism paintings were often shunned by

French academia…

Self-portrait of a Desperate Man, 1843-45

The Exotic is Exploited in the Romantic Period….

Bonheur’s Lion...

Whistler’s Princess in the Land of Porcelain

and Delacroix’s Tigers

Delacroix’s Moroccan sultans and…

One landscape artist profoundly ahead of his time wasJoseph Mallord William Turner

(1775-1851)

What other artists painted in his impressionistic, atmospheric way?

Snowstorm, 1842

Light, energy and the forces of nature“The Sun is God.”

Rain, Steam, and Speed, 1844

SUBLIMEEdmund Burke, British (1729-97)

“Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable for feeling. I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure.”

On beauty vs sublime: “Sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small.Beauty should be light and delicate; the great (sublime) ought to be solid and even massive.”

Church, Niagara

Caspar David FriedrichGerman, 1774-1840What music might be a good

accompaniment for these paintings?

How does this reflect both Sturm und Drang and the Sublime / Romantic ?

The Wanderer Observing the Fog, 1818

Teutonic views of the sublime

American Transcendentalismthe sublime of unlimited space

• 1830s-1840s in Massachusetts• Religion found through individual rather than established religious orders• Utopian social change• Literary figures--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman

Albert Bierstadt: Rocky Mountains, 1863

“The scenery…has a wild sort of beauty…quietness--solitude--the world untamed…an aspect which the scene has worn thousands of years…I do not remember to have seen in Italy a composition of mountains so beautiful or pictorial as this.”An American landscape painter, most known for his series, “River of Life.” Four paintings depict a hero traveling through childhood to old age. “Youth” shows glory and endless opportunity, while “Old Age” is dark and threatening.

Some think that Cole is giving a message about the “adolescent” United States, warning that unbridled growth and industrialization may create tragic consequences.

Thomas Cole, 1808-48

“Childhood” ( You can see these at the National Gallery) “Old Age”

Cole---more voyages

Voyage of Youth

Voyage of Manhood

The Hudson River SchoolAmerican Romantic movement

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite. “

William Blake

ARTISTS: Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Asher B, Durand, Laura Woodward and Edith Wilkinson Cook

Church

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and givestrength to body and soul alike."

-----John Muir American naturalist

James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903)

Whistler, a painter from America,starts opening new doors in art with his loose, impressionistic style and fascination with Oriental motifs.

Nocturne in blue and silverVariations in Blue and Green

He also was quite obsessed with color...The Golden Screen

is downtown at the Freer Gallery

The End