romanticism

Germaine de Staël

introduced the new Romantic movement to France in 1810

Germaine de Staël claimed that while Italian art is routed in the rational, orderly Classical - ancient Greek and Roman, the northern European countries were quite different

She held that her native culture of Germany - and perhaps France - was not Classical but Gothic and therefore privileged emotion, spirituality, and naturalness over Classical reason

Romanticism was a pan-European movement that had its roots in England in the mid-18^th century

initially associated with literature and music, it was in part a response to the rationality of the Enlightenment and the transformation of everyday life brought about by the Industrial Revolution

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

• born 1780; dad was jack-of-all-trades, mother was nearly illiterate

• traveled to Paris to study in studio of Jacques-Louis David (neoclassical style)

• followed his master’s neoclassical style, but gradually moved away from Roman models of rigorous realism to the ideals of purity, virtue and simplicity in Greek art

• competed for Prix de Rome twice: (1. 2^nd, 2. 1^st)

• style → purity of contour

• La Grande Odalisque, 1814

• The Turkish Bath, 1563

• died of pneumonia in 1867

The Valpinçon Bather

Jean August Dominique Ingres

LaFormarina

Raphael

The Vow of Louis XIII

Jean August Dominique Ingres

The Apotheosis of Homer

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

The Turkish bath

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

La Grande Odalisque

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Oath of the Horatii

Jacques-Louis David

orientalism

the imitation/depiction by Western writers/artists of aspects in the Eastern world.

Orientalist painting, specifically the Middle East, was one of the

specialisms of 19^th-century academic art, and the literature of Western countries took a similar interest in Oriental themes

Orientalism: Edward Saïd

a dominant European political ideology created the notion of the Orient in order to subjugate and control it.

→ the West could control and authorize views of the East; enabled the West to generalize & misrepresent North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia

Théodore Géricault

• born in Rouen, France in 1791

• educated in tradition of classical figure composition by Carle Vernet and by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin

• discovered vitality

• first big success = The Charging Chasseur

• grew fascinated with Michelangelo

• most significant work = The Raft of the Medusa

• ten Portraits of the Insane

• died at 32 (tuberculosis)

The Raft of the Medusa

Géricault

• depicted the aftermath of a contemporary French shipwreck, Meduse, in which the captain had left the crew and passengers to die

• ignited political controversy when first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1819

The Charging Chasseur

Gericault

Gericault’s first big success

Portraits of the insane

Gericault

• Gericault was inspired to paint a series of 10 portraits

• subjects were the patients of a friend, Dr. Georget, a pioneer in psychiatric medicine

• each subject exhibited a different affliction

Eurgène Delacroix

• born in France, 1798

• trained in neoclassical style of Jacques-Louis David

• first major painting = The Barque of Dante

• Massacre at Chios

• The Death of Sardanapalus

• most influential work = Liberty Leading the People

The Barque of Dante

Eugene Delacroix

• Delacroix’s first major painting

• inspired by Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa

Massacre at Chios

Eugene Delacroix

• got Delacroix recognized by authorities as a leading painter in the Romantic style

• sick, dying Greek civilians about to be slaughtered by the Turks

• expressed the official policy for the Greek cause in their war of independence against the Turks

The Death of Sardanapalus

Eugene Delacroix

• death of the Assyrian king Sardanapalus

• Assyrian king orders his army to kill his lovers

• emotional scene - beautiful colors, exotic costumes, tragic events

Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix

• highlights the differences between the romantic approach and the neoclassical style

• Notre Dame

• class & age differences → democratic revolution

• Liberty half naked & in profile → Greek tradition

romanticism

• concerned with human emotion / experience

• fluid brushworks & energized compositions

• diagonals & movement

• power of nature & the sublime experience in encountering its forces

• contemporary subject matter

Joseph Mallord William Turner

• 1775; lower/middle-class family

• Fishermen at Sea

• Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps

• grew eccentric as he got older; experienced depression after his father’s death

• in that period, Turner used oils transparently & evoked pure light by use of shimmering color

  • The Slave Ship

  • Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth

  • Rain, Steam and Speed - the Great Western Railway

• Heidelberg

• died in London

Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps

JMW turner

• sublime

• Turner’s mature style

The Slave Ship

Turner

• sublime

• use of shimmering colors for light

Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth

Turner

Heidelberg

Turner

Rain, Steam and Speed - the Great Western Railway

Turner

• train v. boat

• old bridge v. new bridge

• peasant w two animals

• train without roof

Caspar David Friedrich

• 1774, German; raised Lutheran

• 3 siblings died in childhood → traumatic

• studied under Johann Quistorp; influenced by theologian Ludwig Kosegarten → nature = revelation of God

• began education by making copies of casts form antique sculptures before drawing from life

• experimented in print making

• Landscape with Temple in Ruins

• won Weimar competition

• Tetschen Altar (Cross in the mountains)

• The Monk by the Sea

• Abbey in the Oakwood

• Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

• Moonrise over the Sea

• Woman at a Window

• Main and Woman contemplating the Moon

• suffered stroke in 1835

Cross in the Mountains Tetschen Altar

Turner

altarpiece panel commissioned for a family chapel in Bohemia

The Monk by the Sea

Friedrich

Abbey in the Oakwood

Friedrich

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

Friedrich

the most famous Rückenfigur in art; the person is seen from behind, contemplating the view before him → the viewer can identify with the image’s figure & then recreate the space to be conveyed

Rügenfigur

rear-facing figure.

Moonrise Over the Sea

Friedrich

Woman at a Window

Friedrich

Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon

Friedrich

sublime

the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic; especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation

according to Burke

1. The Beautiful is that which is well-formed & aesthetically pleasing

2. the Sublime = has the power to compel & destroy us

3. Sublime > Beautiful; marks the transition from the Neoclassical era to Romantic era

3 aspects of sublime

1. fear

2. ungraspable

3. human r

sublime: ungraspable

subli

Prometheus

→ challenging authority

Frankenstein

Gothic novel; human condition → challenging authority

Frankenstein = young scientist obsessed with creating life