Neoclassical was derived from the Greek word nèos, which means "new, and Latin word classicus, which means "of highest rank." Neoclassical art is the revival of the classical Greek and Roman antiquity: Neoclassical artists imitated Renaissance artists to improve the kind of arts during the mid-eighteenth century. Its stern and unemotional forms were reactions to Baroque and Rococo styles. It was also characterized by symmetry, simplicity, and clarity of form, sober colors, shallow space, and strong lines. Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David is one of the most influential artists in this era. He was born into a wealthy family in Paris on August 30, 1748. When he was 9 years old, his father was killed and his mother left him with his architect uncles. He was supported by his rich uncles with his education at the College of the Four Nations.
At age 18, he studied at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Even though he had a tumor that impeded his speech, nothing stopped him from becoming an artist. He championed a style of rigorous contours, sculpted forms, polished surfaces, and historical paintings. In 1774, his painting of Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus' Disease won him the Prix de Rome, a scholarship for arts students that ensured well-paid commissions in France. His scholarship also included a trip to Italy, where he studied Italian masterpieces and ancient ruins. David became an active supporter and one of the leading artists of the French Revolution. He was appointed as the "First Painter to the Emperor" by Napoleon Bonaparte. His propaganda art served a critical role in French Revolution to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. One of David's notable paintings from the French Revolutionary period was the Death of Marat.
David's last work was the Mars Disarmed by Venus. This was the last picture he wanted to paint but desired to surpass himself in it.
Propaganda art is used to encourage or influence an emotional rather than a rational response from the people to support a cause or movement. He remained faithful to the tenets of Neoclassicism, which he transmitted to his students, one of which was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. He died on December 29, 1825 and was buried in Belgium, not in France, due to his connection to the killing of King Louis XVI. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was one of the most revered French painters and was noted for his Neoclassical, historical, mythical, and nude paintings and portraitures. Ingres was known to follow his own instincts. He experimented on human form, causing his highly controversial anatomical distortions. Critics described his art as "creatures not found in nature." His quest for idealization was endless.
Though Ingres preferred painting with historical theme, he also enjoyed doing portraits. He captured his figures with an impressive and realistic ingenuity to reveal their personalities. Ingres paid more attention to lines over colors. However, he was criticized for flatness due to lack of colors and conventional modeling. Despite this, he was still the most sought-after portraitist in France.
He was a tenured director of the French Academy. During that time, he was able to complete three major canvases. He left more or less 4,000 artworks, all of which were housed in the Ingres Museum in Montauban, France. He died on January 14, 1867 in Paris. Romantic art was short-lived, yet it reflected philosophical approaches to art. This is the era where art was colorful, emotional, personal, and expressive. Romanticism was characterized by imagination, intuition, idealism, inspiration, and individuality.
The Romantic period was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that started in Europe toward the end of the eighteenth century.
In some areas, it was at its peak between the periods from 1800 to 1850. It was characterized by its focus on emotion and individualism, and glorification of all the past and nature. It prefers the medieval rather than the classical. The Romantic era is partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the upper-class social and political standards of the Age of Enlightenment.
Romanticism was most strongly embodied in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on history, education, and natural sciences.
Romantic era is also associated with liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism.
Francisco Goya
One of the most influential figures in Spanish art was Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. He was born on March 30, 1746 in Aragon, Spain. He began his art studies when he was a teenager and spent time in Rome to advance his skills.
Goya was besieged with orders for portraits, altarpieces, and murals. In 1776, he returned to Spain and became the principal painter to the Spanish Royal Court.
Goya described himself as a student of Velásquez and Rembrandt. From Velásquez, he acquired a feeling for soft shaded colors that were applied in layers. From Rembrandt, he learned prediction for dark and mysterious backgrounds.
Goya also acknowledged nature as his teacher in art. Goya was trained in the classical tradition of eighteenth century, but he remained an individualist and a realist. Romantic qualities appeared in his paintings, which were not glorified by some art critics. He was a liberal-minded man. He then turned his attention to the world of the dispossessed. He produced Los Caprichos (The Whims), a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching from 1797 and 1798, and published as an album in
1799. These involved sorcery and witchcraft, injustices, cruelty, and false morality.
The Black Paintings
(1819+
1823) were 14 paintings of his darkest and most mysterious creations,
disillusionment
with
society, and insanity. His artworks embodied personal imaginative visions that defied traditional academism and conventional subjects.
Romanticism, Impressionism, Expressionism, and Surrealism were the principal movements to be influenced by his work. He died on April 16, 1828 in Bordeaux, France. Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was born on April 26, 1798 in France into an artistic family. He began studying art at the age of 17. He pursued Classical studies and trained under Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, a painter who taught him to paint realistically. At 24, he was already in-charge of architectural decorations. His style was also inspired by the music of his friend Frédéric Chopin, a Romantic composer, He fine-tuned Romanticism by incorporating the art styles of Michelangelo and Rubens. He then developed his own style with affinity of expressing pain and suffering through bright, exploding, and energetic colored canvases.
Delacroix became known as the "Master of Color" for his development of unique and memorable approach to color. Though his style had evolved over the years, he stayed true to his displays of emotions and intense colors. He never hid his fascination for destruction and violence to bring out virtuous colors in his paintings. He was admired for his bold and technical innovations. He is remembered as one of the world's most influential French Romantic painters for his ingenuity and expertise.
He died in Paris on August 13, 1863 was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was born on September 26, 1791 in Normandy, France. At a young age, he already displayed artistic inclinations and had fascinations with horses. He became friends with Eugène Delacroix. Together with the other artists, they formed the Romantic movement. In 1819, he ushered the Romantic movement into French painting with his The Raft of the Medusa, which inspired other artists and became the norm for the Romantic painting.
It also forged new emphasis on raw emotion and sharply swerving art styles from the refined compositional studies of Neoclassicism. Gericault achieved brilliant visual effects using small, adjacent strokes of contrasting colors. He was the most influential to the Romantic painters that his art styles were adopted and extended by the Impressionists. His art styles in painting were less rigid than the Neoclassical works.
In 1822, he produced one of his greatest achievements: his portraits of the mentally disabled or insane people. Originally, there were ten paintings but only five have survived. His untimely death came after months of suffering, following a fall from a horse. He died in Paris on January 26, 1824 at a young age of 32
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