Early 19th Century: Romanticism and Realism

Transition to Romanticism

• Shift from the rationalism of the Enlightenment and Neoclassicism to subjective experience and individual emotion.

• Focus: Sublimity of nature, dreams, the exotic world of the Orient, and the supernatural.

• Core Values: Inexactitude, mystery, and the irrational.

• Creative Genius: Move from divine inspiration to genius inspired by individual depths and nature.

• William Blake: Celebrated finding infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour.

Key Romantic Artists and Works

• Caspar David Friedrich: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog ($1818$, $98 \times 75\,cm$) and Two Men Contemplating the Moon ($1830$, $35 \times 44\,cm$).

• John Constable: The Hay Wain ($1821$).

• Thomas Cole: The Garden of Eden ($1828$).

• Francisco Goya: The Third of May, 1808 ($1815$, $267 \times 406\,cm$) and Two Old Ones Eating Soup ($1819$).

• Eugene Delacroix: Fantasia Arabe ($1833$) and Frederic Chopin ($1838$, $46 \times 38\,cm$).

• J.M.W. Turner: Snowstorm: Steam-Boat off a Harbor's Mouth ($1842$) and Venice with the Salute ($1840$).

The Logic of Realism

• Rejection of Enlightenment precision and Romantic focus on nature in favor of harsh, everyday reality.

• Focus: Ordinary people and events are viewed as the primary subjects of history.

• Charles Baudelaire: Coined "modernity" to describe urban life and the artist's duty to capture fleeting experiences.

• French Realist Authors: Honore de Balzac ($1779-1850$), Gustave Flaubert ($1821-1880$), and Emile Zola ($1840-1902$).

• Russian Realist Authors: Fyodor Dostoyevsky ($1821-1881$) and Leo Tolstoy ($1828-1910$).

Realist Representative Works

• Early Photography: Louis Daguerre's studio ($1837$) and William Talbot's Trafalgar Square ($1843$).

• Gustave Courbet: A Burial at Ornans ($1849$, $300 \times 650\,cm$) and Self-portrait (The Desperate Man) ($1845$, $45 \times 54\,cm$).

• Jean-Francois Millet: Woman Baking Bread ($1854$) and The Gleaners ($1857$, $84 \times 112\,cm$).

• Honore Daumier: The Chess Players ($1863$).

• Edouard Manet: Philosopher ($1867$, $187 \times 108\,cm$) and Music in the Tuileries ($1862$, $76 \times 118\,cm$).