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Joseph Turner, Dogana, San Giorgio,
Citella, Venice, from the Steps of
the Europa, 1842
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The Romantic Movement was emotionally wrought, with emphasis on feeling, passions,
inner-struggles, imagination and nature. Emotion and the senses took priority
over rationality and intellect. Romanticism called for the revival of unlimited
styles, with the main purpose being to evoke emotion and incite a revival of
the senses.
Romanticism was reactionary to the desensitizing Neo-Classical style. It rebelled
against the classical perfection of Neo-Classical art and it’s conventions.
The movement was associated politically with the Counter-Revolution, directly
opposed to culmination of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s despotic
rule over France and other parts of Europe. Both styles, Neo-Classicism and
Romanticism, although philosophically opposed, dominated the art of Europe
for generations.
The main focus of Romantic painting in England, the United States and Germany
was on nature, whereas well known artists from Spain and France took on socio-political
subjects as well.
In England, artists associated with the Romantic Movement are widely considered
to be some of the finest ever produced by that country, and include J.M.W.
Turner, John Constable, and William Blake. In the United States, the leading
Romantic Movement was the Hudson River School of dramatic landscape painting.
In Germany, the most renowned artist is Caspar David Friedrich. Francisco Goya
(1748 – 1846) is a well-known Spanish Romantic artist.
Turner’s painting The Dogana, San Giorgio, Citella, Venice, from the
Steps of the Europa is a prime example of emotion-evoking nature from the Romatic
period. Caspar David Friedrich’s, Abbey in the Oak Forest, depicts the
haunting mystey of Gothic ruins in a German forest. The somber mood of the
image reflects the artist's own melancholy.
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Francisco Goya,
The Third of May, 1808
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Unlike Turner, Goya takes a more courageous and political approach to his work.
In The Third of May, Goya depicts a very emotional and heart wrenching scene
of slaughter. Napoleon’s faceless soldiers are painted on the brink of
killing citizens in the occupied territories of Spain. Goya focuses on one
unarmed man begging for mercy. The bloody bodies in the foreground make the
viewer aware of his fate.
Romanticism was a long-lived movement, characterized by several styles, full
of evocative subject matter that had great influence on the Pre-Raphaelite
movement and the Symbolists.
