TIME PERIOD: 1789-1848

AP ART HISTORY

ROMANTICISM

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KEY IDEAS• Romanticism is heavily influenced by a spirit of individuality and a freedom

of expression unique up until this time.

• Romantics enjoy the sublime in nature and the revolutionary in politics.

• Romantic painters explore the unconscious world of dreams and fantasies.

• A new art form called photography is invented; its immediacy makes it an overnight sensation.

• Architecture revives historical forms, especially from the Middle Ages.

• The romantic artist was a troubled genius, deeply affected by all around him or her; temperamental, critical, and always exhausted.

• Seeking pleasure in things of greatest refinement or adventures of audacious daring, the Romantic was a product of extremes of human endeavor.

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ARCHITECTURE• CHARLES BARRY AND AUGUSTUS PUGIN, THE HOUSES OF

PARLIAMENT, 1836-1860

• CHARLES GARNIER, THE OPERA, 1861-1874, PARIS

• HENRI LABROUSTE, BIBLIOTEQUE SAINT GENEVIEVE, 1843-1850, PARIS

• SIR JOSEPH PAXTON, THE CRYSTAL PALACE, 1850-1851, LONDON

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PAINTINGS• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, THE SLEEP OF REASON PRODUCES MONSTERS, 1799.

ETCHING AND AQUATINT

• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, FAMILY OF CHARLES IV, 1800,

• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, THIRD OF MAY, 1808, OIL ON CANVAS

• FRANCISCO DE GOYA, SATURN DEVOURING ONE OF HIS CHILDREN, 1819-1823

• ANTOINE JEAN GROS, NAPOLEON IN THE PESTHOUSE OF JAFFA, 1804, OIL ON CANVAS

• THEODORE GERICAULT, THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA, 1818-1819

• JEAN AUGUSTE INGRES, THE GRAND ODALISQUE, 1814, OIL ON CANVAS

• EUGENE DELACROIX, LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE, 1830

• WILLIAM BLAKE, ANCIENT OF DAYS, 1794

• HENRY FUSELI, THE NIGHTMARE, 1790, OIL ON CANVAS,

• JOHN CONSTABLE, THE HAY WAIN, 1821, OIL ON CANVAS,

• JOSEPH M.W TURNER, THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE, 1838

• THOMAS COLE, THE OXBOW, 1836, OIN ON CANVAS

• CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH, TWO MEN GAZING AT THE MOON, 1819,

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SCULPTURE• Francouise Rude, Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, or La

Marseillaise, 1833-1836, Arc de Trimphe, Paris

• Antoine Louis Barye, Jaguar Devouring a Hare, 1850, bronze,

• DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY

• CAMERA OBSCURA . PHOTOGRAMS.

• LOIS DAGUERRE, ARTISTS STUDIO, 1837,

• NADAR, NADAR IN A BALLOON AND PORTRAIT OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER, 1856

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ROMANTICISM• Romanticism was a movement that began as a reaction to the

constraints of Neoclassicism. It swept across Europe and helped to inspire many nationalist movement.

• The artwork of this movement is not linked by common artistic style but rather by the following characteristics:

• A desire to express personal emotions

• A link to the ideas of Rousseau who rejected reason in favor of intuition

• A renewed link to the mysteries of religion and faith

• Inspiration taken from medieval art, literature and the beauty of nature, including:

• Heroes and miraculous events of the Middle ages, especially of the Gothic period.

• Natural phenomena such as raging rivers, storms and misty mountains

• Literary masters such as William Shakespeare and Dante.

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CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMAN PAINTING• Artists, were caught up in European and American revolutions. The

fight for Greek independence was particularly galvanizing for European intellectuals. Political paintings became important, expressing the artists solidarity with social movement or political position. Gros, Delacroix and Goya are among many who create a memorable political compositions.

• Even in landscape painting had a political agenda. No longer content to paint scenes for their beauty or artistic engagement, landscape painters needed to make a contemporary statement.

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ROMANTICISM VIDEO EXPLANATION• http://youtu.be/NivbEErzN6o

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Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, oil on canvas, 1781

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Henry Fuseli, The nightmare, 1781• Fuseli was one of the first artists to depict the world of dreams and

nightmares

• He was Swiss yet spent most of his artistic career in England.

• This enigmatic piece may have been inspired by jealousy after a failed loved affair. He did four paintings on this theme.

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Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, oil on canvas, 1818-1819

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Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa, oil on canvas, 1818-1819• Gericault was interested in the Neoclassical style but did not like the

rigidity of it.

• The style of this work is based on Classical and Renaissance conventions but the subject matter aligns with the Romantic movement.

• This piece was based on the true story of a ship that ran aground leaving 150 people stranded on a makeshift lifeboat. Only 10 of them survived. He researched the contemporary event heavily, even the interviewing 2 of the survivors.

• For him, the story represented all that was wrong with society, including the fact that the captain of the ship was a political appointee who had not sailed in 10 years and the fact the officers and captain took the few lifeboats leaving the lower class people to fend for themselves.

• The immense size of the work as well as the angle of the raft invites the viewer to join the last survivors and the dead. It was inspired by Caravaggio's The Entombment.

• He placed an African soldier at the top of the pyramid deliberately. He was a member of an abolitionist group in France, at the time slavery still existed in the French owned African colonies.

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FRANCISCO GOYA, THE SLEEP OF REASON PRODUCES MONSTERS, 1799,• Reason falls asleep while at work,

haunted by dreams of bats and owls, nocturnal creatures.

• Monsters haunt even the most rational mind.

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FRANCISCO DE GOYA, FAMILY OF CHARLES IV, 1800, OIL ON CANVAS

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FRANCISCO DE GOYA, FAMILY OF CHARLES IV, 1800, OIL ON CANVAS• Accentuated dazzling customs and royal trappings.

• Some scholars feel Goya was mocking Spanish royalty, however he used a mirror to have sitters compare their likeness to his painted images.

• Influenced by Las Meninas, Velázquez

• Triptych like arrangement of figures

• Goya in shadow in background – not to be confused with royalty

• Queen in center with youngest children

• Two great canvases hanging in rear draw a parallel with Las Meninas.

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FRANCISCO GOYA, THIRD OF MAY, 1808, OIL ON CANVAS

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FRANCISCO DE GOYA, THIRD OF MAY, 1808

• Execution of Spanish rebels after failed uprising against occupying French of 2 May 1808

• Robotic repetitive movements of the faceless French

• Central Spanish figure is in Christ like sacrificial pose with hand marks of the nailed crucifixion

• Church is silent, powerless in the background

• Brutal inhumanity displayed in blood soaked foreground

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FRANCISCO DE GOYA, SATURN DEVOURING ONE OF HIS CHILDREN, 1819-1823, OIL ON CANVAS

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FRANCISCO DE GOYA, SATURN DEVOURING ONE OF HIS CHILDREN, 1819-1823, • One of his black paintings

• Illustrates the myth of Saturn eating each of his children because prophecy that one of them would grow up to be greater than he; nothing in the painting suggests the myth stated in the title.

• Sinister blackness, panic stricken eyes, ragged edges of ripped sacrificial child's body

• Voracious mouth

• Symbolism:

• Human self destruction

• Time destroys all its creations

• A country of eating its young in pointless wars

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ANTOINE JEAN GROS, NAPOLEAON IN THE PESTHOUSE OF JAFFA, 1804 OIL ON CANVAS

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ANTOINE JEAN GROS, NAPOLEON IN THE PESTHOUSE OF JAFFA, 1804 • Plague broke out among Napoleons troops during a campaign in

Jaffa, Israel, the sick were housed in a converted mosque.

• Napoleon touches the open sore of a soldier without his glove to prove that the disease is not contagious, comforts them, unafraid, enters the pesthouse to calm their fears.

• Like Christ healing the sick

• Many doctors died, including the prominently placed one in lower right.

• Not shown is the fact that Napoleon ordered the sick to be poisoned so that he would not have to take them back to France.

• Composition influenced by Oath of the Horatti, but columns do not frame the space, figures overlap the arches

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JEAN AUGUSTE INGRES, THE GRAND ODALISQUE, 1814, OIL ON CANVAS

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JEAN AUGUSTE INGRES, THE GRAND ODALISQUE, 1814, OIL ON CANVAS, LOUVRE,• Raphael like face

• Turkish elements, incense burner, peacock fan, tapestrylike turban, hashish pipe

• Inconsistent arrangement of limbs, rubbery arm, elongated back, placement of led one arm is longer than the other.

• Heavily influenced by Italian Mannerism

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EUGENE DELACROIX, LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE, 1830, OIL ON CANVAS, LOUVRE PARIS

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EUGENE DELACROIX, LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE, 1830, • July Revolution of 1830, Liberty with French tricolor marches over

the barricades to overthrow government soldiers

• Red/White/Blue echo throughout the painting

• Strong pyramidal structure

• Child with pistols symbolizes the role of students in the revolt, middle class by man in top hat and carrying rifle; lower class represented by man at extreme left with sword in hand and pistol in belt.

• Acquired by the French state in 1831, but not exhibited publicly for 25 years because of its subversive message.

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WILLIAM BLAKE, ANCIENT OF DAYS, 1794, ETCHING,

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WILLIAM BLAKE, ANCIENT OF DAYS, 1794• Wrote and illustrated by his own work, and illustrated works by

Dante, among others

• Rejected rationalism of the Enlightenment

• Acknowledgement of the beastliness of humans

• From a book of Blake's poems

• Figure covers the sun with his body, opens his fingers in an impossible way to measure the earth with calipers

• Strong lateral wind

• Figure is Urizen, a pun on “your reason” – an evil Enlightenment figure of rational thinking.

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Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1790, oil on canvas

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Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1790• Erotic theme, horse as male symbol coming through parted red

theatrical curtains, woman lying on bed in a tortured sexual sleep

• Incubus sits on her chest suffocating her

• Mara is a spirit in Norse mythology who suffocates sleepers

• Woman is thrown off the back of the bed in a submissive pose

• Not an illustration of nightmare, but the sensation of terror it produces

• Painting may have been done as a reaction to a jilted romance during which Fuseli claimed to have had sex with a woman in his dreams

• Figural style from Italian Mannerism

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John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas

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John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas• Vibrant, shimmering paint application with a careful rendering of

atmospheric effects

• Painted English countryside as a reaction against Industrial Revolution, which was removing most of the well appointed hedge rows of landscape.

• Oneness with nature, man is an active participant but does not disturb

• Clouds fill the sky sense of momentary

• Cottage is one with the countryside, grows among the trees

• Boat easily fords the river

• Dappled reflections on water surface

• Everything and everyone in harmony with nature, an ideal state.

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Joseph M.W. Turner, The Fighting Témeraire, 1838, oil on canvas

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Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1838, National Gallery London• Turner liked extremes in nature, avalanches, sea storms, whirlwinds

• Color is the dominant motif

• Concept of vortex in his work, play on Turners name

• Admiral Nelson flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 being brought to a berth to be dismantled

• Contrasts: warm and cool colors, tall, white, glowing, pale, past contrasted with small, black, modern tugboat of the future

• Symbolic sunset, elegy of the last days of sailboats, historical changes.

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Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas

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Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas• Founder of the Hudson River School

• Actual view in Massachusetts

• Coles division of landscape into two clearly contrasting areas, the Romantic on the left and the Claude like landscape on the right.

• Coles self portrait in the foreground amid a dense forest that is impenetrably thick with broken trees, and a wild landscape with storms, the sublime

• On the right mans touch is seen in light cultivated fields boats drifting down the river

• Painted as reply to a British book that alleged that Americans had destroyed a wilderness with industry

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Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Gazing at the Moon, 1819, oil on canvas

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Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Gazing at the Moon• The sublime: any cathartic experience from the catastrophic to the

intellectual that causes the viewer to marvel in wonder and passion

• Moon held a special symbolism in the Romantic age, the nocturnal, the ghostly, the unknowable, romance

• For Friedrich, landscapes and panoramas were windows through which one could experience God

• Sentimental longing, melancholic mood

• Friedrich appears in cap and cloak walking with a cane, admiring the sunset

• Friendrich is accompanied by August Heinrich, his student, who prematurely dies, this painting is a memorial to their friendship

• Old oak tree with moss symbolizes Heinrich

• Ruckenfigur, in romantic painting a figure seen from the back often in the contemplation of nature.

• Ruckenfigur: In Romantic painting a figure seen from the back often in the contemplation of nature.

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DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Camera Obscura: Dark Room, a box with a lens which captures light and casts an image on the opposite side

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LOUIS DAGUERRE, ARTISTS STUDIO, 1837

Photogram: Image made by placing objects on photosensitive paper and exposing them to light

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LOUIS DAGUERRE, ARTIST´S STUDIO, FRENCH

PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, PARIS• Still life inspired by painted still lives

• Variety of textures, fabric, wicker, plaster, framed print, and so on

• New art form inspired by older art forms

• Daguerreotypes have a shiny surface with great detail

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NADAR, NADAR IN A BALLOON, 1856 & PORTRAIT OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER

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NADAR, NADAR IN A BALLOON, 1856 & PORTRAIT OF THEOPHILE GAUTIER• Nadar floated over Paris in a hot air balloon to take the first aerial

photographs in history

• Controlled camera angles

• Eyes often left in shadow: deep penetration, more piercing and mysterious

• Forehead usually highlighted

• Concentration on figure without props or settings

• Sitters determined their pose

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