Romanticism

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism and nationalism.in the realm of ethics, politics, aesthetics it was the authenticity and sincerity of the pursuit of inner goals that mattered; this applied equally to individuals and groups—states, nations, movements. This is most evident in the aesthetics of romanticism, where the notion of eternal models, a Platonic vision of ideal beauty, which the artist seeks to convey, however imperfectly, on canvas or in sound, is replaced by a passionate belief in spiritual freedom, individual creativity. The painter, the poet, the composer do not hold up a mirror to nature, however ideal, but invent; they do not imitate (the doctrine of mimesis), but create not merely the means but the goals that they pursue; these goals represent the self-expression of the artist's own unique, inner vision, to set aside which in response to the demands of some 'external' voice—church, state, public opinion, family friends, arbiters of taste—is an act of betrayal of what alone justifies their existence for those who are in any sense creative.Hameau de la Reine, Palace of Versailles (1783–1785)Royal Pavilion in Brighton by John Nash (1815–1823)Cologne Cathedral(1840–80)Grand Staircase of the Paris Opera by Charles Garnier (1861–75)Basilica of Sacré-Cœur by Paul Abadie (1875–1914)Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808, 1814Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People 1830J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up, 1839Thomas Cole, Childhood, one of the four scenes in The Voyage of Life, 1842William Blake, Albion Rose, 1794–95Louis Janmot, from his series The Poem of the Soul, before 1854Thomas Cole, 1842, The Voyage of LifeOld AgeFelix Mendelssohn, 1839Robert Schumann, 1839Franz Liszt, 1847Daniel Auber, c. 1868Hector Berlioz, 1850Giovanni Boldini, Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi, 1886Richard Wagner, c. 1870sGiacomo Meyerbeer, 1847Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself, long before any human art begins; they understand each other and have the power of continuing to make themselves understood more and more clearly; they belong together and are by nature one and an inseparable whole. ...Only when each people, left to itself, develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality, and only when in every people each individual develops himself in accordance with that common quality, as well as in accordance with his own peculiar quality—then, and then only, does the manifestation of divinity appear in its true mirror as it ought to be.Joseph Vernet, 1759, Shipwreck; the 18th century 'sublime'Joseph Wright, 1774, Cave at evening, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MassachusettsHenry Fuseli, 1781, The Nightmare, a classical artist whose themes often anticipate the RomanticPhilip James de Loutherbourg, Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801, a key location of the English Industrial RevolutionThéodore Géricault, The Charging Chasseur, c. 1812Ingres, The Death of Leonardo da Vinci, 1818, one of his Troubadour style worksEugène Delacroix, Collision of Moorish Horsemen, 1843–44Eugène Delacroix, The Bride of Abydos, 1857, after the poem by ByronJoseph Anton Koch, Waterfalls at Subiaco 1812–1813, a 'classical' landscape to art historiansJames Ward, 1814–1815, Gordale ScarJohn Constable, 1821, The Hay Wain, one of Constable's large 'six footers'J. C. Dahl, 1826, Eruption of Vesuvius, by Friedrich's closest followerWilliam Blake, c. 1824–27, The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides, TateKarl Bryullov, The Last Day of Pompeii, 1833, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, RussiaIsaac Levitan, Pacific, 1898, State Russian Museum, St.PetersburgJ. M. W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835), Philadelphia Museum of ArtHans Gude, Winter Afternoon, 1847, National Gallery of Norway, OsloIvan Aivazovsky, 1850, The Ninth Wave, Russian Museum, St. PetersburgJohn Martin, 1852, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Laing Art GalleryFrederic Edwin Church, 1860, Twilight in the Wilderness, Cleveland Museum of ArtAlbert Bierstadt, 1863, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism and nationalism. The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, but also spontaneity as a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu). In contrast to the Rationalism and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, and industrialism. Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which preferred intuition and emotion to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the events and ideologies of the French Revolution were also proximate factors. Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of 'heroic' individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism. The decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich, 'the artist's feeling is his law'. For William Wordsworth, poetry should begin as 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings', which the poet then 'recollect in tranquility', evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can then mold into art. To express these feelings, it was considered the content of art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from 'artificial' rules dictating what a work should consist of. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were natural laws the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creator's own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin. This idea is often called 'romantic originality'. Translator and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most phenomenal power of human nature is its capacity to divide and diverge into opposite directions. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature. This particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. In contrast to the usually very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to believe a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. So, in literature, 'much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves'. According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied 'a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals'. The group of words with the root 'Roman' in the various European languages, such as 'romance' and 'Romanesque', has a complicated history, but by the middle of the 18th century 'romantic' in English and romantique in French were both in common use as adjectives of praise for natural phenomena such as views and sunsets, in a sense close to modern English usage but without the amorous connotation. The application of the term to literature first became common in Germany, where the circle around the Schlegel brothers, critics August and Friedrich, began to speak of romantische Poesie ('romantic poetry') in the 1790s, contrasting it with 'classic' but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his Dialogue on Poetry (1800), 'I seek and find the romantic among the older moderns, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes, in Italian poetry, in that age of chivalry, love and fable, from which the phenomenon and the word itself are derived.' In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the fairly new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. The use of the word, invented by Friedrich Schlegel, did not become general very quickly, and was probably spread more widely in France by its persistent use by Germaine de Staël in her De l'Allemagne (1813), recounting her travels in Germany. In England Wordsworth wrote in a preface to his poems of 1815 of the 'romantic harp' and 'classic lyre', but in 1820 Byron could still write, perhaps slightly disingenuously, 'I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call 'Classical' and 'Romantic', terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago'. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, and in 1824 the Académie française took the wholly ineffective step of issuing a decree condemning it in literature.