Romantic Period
Romanticism was an attitude or intellectual orientation that pervaded many works of Western civilization from the late 18th to the mid-19th century, including literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography. The principles of order, tranquility, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that characterized Classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular can be seen as being rejected by Romanticism. In some ways, it was also a reaction against the Enlightenment, as well as against the general rationalism and physical materialism of the 18th century. The individual, the subjective, the irrational, the creative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental were all highlighted by romanticism.
Famous Artworks
The Great He-Goat
(1820)
Order and Disorder
(1792)
Portrait of the Actress Antonia Zarate
(1810)
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, was a Spanish painter and printmaker who is considered one of the leading artists associated with Romanticism. Goya's paintings, drawings, and prints often respond to his contemporary experience, depicting the brutalities of war and satirizing human frailties and follies. Goya is sometimes referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. His works influenced artists in the 19th and 20th centuries. Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Aragon, in 1746 to a middle-class family. He moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs after beginning his painting studies at the age of 14 under José Luzán y Martinez. In 1773, he wed Josefa Bayeu. Only one child—a son—lived to adulthood. In 1786, Goya was hired by the Spanish Crown as a court painter. During this early period of his career, he painted portraits of the Spanish aristocracy and royalty as well as cartoon tapestries in the Rococo style for the royal palace. Even though Goya left behind letters and writings, little is known about his ideas.
After suffering from a serious illness that went undiagnosed and left him deaf in 1793, his writing became steadily more gloomier and pessimistic. In contrast to his ascent through social circles, his later easel and mural paintings, prints, and drawings seem to reflect a pessimistic outlook on the political, social, and personal spheres. In 1795, the year Manuel Godoy signed an unfavorable treaty with France, he was named Director of the Royal Academy. Goya attained the title of Primer Pintor de Cámara (Prime Court Painter), the highest one a Spanish court painter could hold, in 1799. He finished his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and obviously inspired by Diego, on a Godoy commission in the late 1790s.
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker who lived from 28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827. Blake, who was largely unknown during his lifetime, is now regarded as a key figure in the development of Romantic-era poetry and visual art. Northrop Frye, a critic from the 20th century, claimed that the body of poetry he referred to as his "prophetic works" is the least read in the English language in proportion to its merits. Jonathan Jones, a critic from the twenty-first century, called him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced" due to his visual artistry. In a poll of the 100 Greatest Britons conducted by the BBC in 2002, Blake came in at number 38. With the exception of three years spent in Felpham, he spent his entire life in London.
Blake was regarded as insane by his contemporaries because of his eccentric viewpoints, but later critics and readers came to admire him for his expressiveness and creativity as well as the philosophical and mystical undercurrents in his writing. His works of art and poetry have been labeled "Pre-Romantic" and as belonging to the Romantic movement. In fact, he has been referred to as "a key early proponent of both Romanticism and Nationalism". The ideals and aspirations of the French and American revolutions had an impact on Blake, a devout Christian who opposed the Church of England and almost all other forms of organized religion. Blake was influenced by thinkers like Emanuel Swedenborg, though he later rejected many of these political ideals; he also had a cordial relationship with political activist Thomas Paine. Despite these well-known influences, it is challenging to categorize Blake's work due to its singularity. He was referred to as a "glorious luminary" and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors" by the 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti.
Famous Artworks
The Ancient of the Days
(1794)
The Great Red Dragon
(1805)
Agony in the Garden
(1799)
Famous Artworks
The White Horse
(1819)
The Hay Wain
(1821)
Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
(1831)
John Constable
John Constable RA was an English landscape painter in the Romantic style. He lived from 11 June 1776 to 31 March 1837. Born in Suffolk, he is best known for his paintings of Dedham Vale, the neighborhood around his home that is now referred to as "Constable Country," which he painted with an intense affection. These paintings revolutionized the genre of landscape painting. In an 1821 letter to his friend John Fisher, he said, "I should paint my own places best; painting is but another word for feeling." Constable's most well-known works include Wivenhoe Park (1816), Dedham Vale (1821), and The Hay Wain (1821). Despite his works being among the most well-known and expensive in British art today, Constable never achieved financial success. When he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts at the age of 52, he joined the establishment. His art was well received in France, where it inspired the Barbizon school and he sold more than in his native England.
​
​
The White Horse, which Charles Robert Leslie called "on many accounts the most important picture Constable ever painted," was Constable's first significant canvas, and it wasn't until 1819 that he sold it. The painting (without the frame) went for a hefty price of 100 guineas to his friend John Fisher, giving Constable a level of financial freedom, he had never known before. The White Horse also served as a turning point in Constable's career. As 'the knottiest and most forceful landscapes produced in 19th-century Europe, they are widely regarded as the defining works of the artist's career. Their extraordinary size helped Constable garner attention in the competitive space of the Academy's exhibitions. The series also includes The Hay Wain, 1821, Stratford Mill, 1820, View on the Stour near Dedham, 1822, Huntington Library and Art Gallery, Los Angeles County, The Lock, 1824, Private Collection, and The Leaping Horse, 1825, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Eugène Delacroix
Delacroix was inspired by the paintings of Rubens and other Venetian Renaissance artists, with an emphasis on color and movement rather than clarity of outline and meticulously modelled form, in contrast to his chief rival Ingres' Neoclassical perfectionism. He was inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime," of nature in often violent action, and by Théodore Géricault, a friend and spiritual heir. The central themes of his maturity were dramatic and romantic in nature, leading him away from the classical models of Greek and Roman art and toward travel in North Africa in search of the exotic. Delacroix was an individualist in his Romanticism; he was not given to sentimentality or bombast. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible." Along with Ingres,
​
Delacroix is regarded as one of the last Old Masters of painting and is one of the few who was ever photographed. While working as a muralist and painter, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and investigation into the optical effects of color profoundly influenced the Impressionists' art, while his love of the exotic served as an inspiration for members of the Symbolist movement. William Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were among the authors whose works Delacroix beautifully lithographed.
Famous Artworks
The Battle of Taillebourg
(1837)
Liberty Leading The People
(1830)
The Massacre of Chios
(1824)
