Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe at the end of the 18th century. It reached its peak between 1800 and 1850, during which time individualism and emotion were strongly emphasized. Moreover, medieval literature is preferred over classical literature, and nature is viewed with fascination and with a distrust of technology. Partly, it arose as a response to the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature. A major influence was on historiography, education, chess, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, as well as in the visual arts, music, and literature. The romantic movement influenced conservatives, libertarians, radicals, and nationalists in a significant and complex way, influencing conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism.

The Romantic movement challenged the rational ideals so dear to artists of the Enlightenment. Romantic artists believed that emotion and the senses were equally critical to understanding the world as order and reason. The Romantic movement encompassed a variety of styles because it valued imagination, inspiration, and originality, and rejected the sombre Neoclassical style. Music, literature, architecture, and visual art were used as mediums by artists reacting to the sombre Neoclassical style. In attempts to hold back industrialization, Romantic artists often emphasized their connection to nature and idealised their pasts. (Artincontext, 2022)

During the Romantic period, emphasis on the importance of spirituality returned strongly to Western culture. A sensitive artist replaced the seer as an interpreter of an invisible reality. A deep spirituality characterized the artist. Having been exposed to things that had been obscured by destructive cultural development, they were able to experience and depict things that had never been available to others. An emotional, animated, open, and creative individual emerged instead of the learned image maker and distanced nature observer of Renaissance art. In nature, the artist was part of the world, with its mysterious features, which he could not comprehend. The artist was like a tool in nature’s hands, condensing its tunes into a work of art like an instrument.

A heightened interest in religious myths, customs, rituals, and songs characterized the Romantic era. However, the mystical and spiritual side of the world was not apparent in these, but rather in art, which reflected the deepest feelings, dreams, and daydreams of an individual. Science observed the external world objectively during the Romantic period; art, on the other hand, expressed subjective emotional experiences. There still seems to be a strong division between cold, rational scientists and emotional and creative artists in Western culture. (Alhonen, 2020)

The Sea of Ice – Caspar David Friedrich, 1823

How to define ‘Romantic? Despite endless debates over the meaning of the word, there is no doubt that its significance has existed for centuries. In Dresden, at the end of the eighteenth century, the German critics August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, together with other writers and artists, were known as ‘Romantics’. It was Friedrich Schlegel himself who defined Romantic poetry for the first time – he referred to it as progressive universal poetry in their magazine Athenaeum in 1798. Almost all those in Germany who believe that the modern world is spiritually incompatible with that of classical antiquity, like the Schlegels, soon adopted this name, which spread throughout the country. De L’Allmagne, published in 1813, exported this meaning of the word to the world a decade later. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge observed a year later in Quarterly Review, it was she who “made the British public familiar with the habit of disguising the productions of antiquity by the appellation classic, those modern times by that of romantic”.

Due to the emphasis on interpretation, Romanticism is often considered just a way of thinking, since such ideas are primarily concerned with interpretation. It’s difficult to catalogue the sense of heightened reality that you get from Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People as well as from Caspar David Friedrich’s Arctic Shipwreck. This is because it’s as much in the dramatic beauty of the picture as in the features. It’s critical to remember, though, that romantic art isn’t just illustrations of ideas (a tendency that caused Romanticism to be called “unpictorial” in literature, but it could cause confusion in the visual arts if you take it too seriously). In the same way that a poem can indissolubly link a feeling, a rhythm, and a sound to a picture, a picture can also encompass a sense of form and imagery in parallel.

The word has a meaning that is still relevant to us today when we consider the term ‘romantic’ in this stylistic context: the opposite of ‘classical’. In contrast to the romantic, which emphasizes the associative side of picture-making, the classical can be described as a work that emphasizes formal values. (Vaughan, 1978)

 ‘If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in its most perfect state, you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortion and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces.’

Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1772

The term ‘romantic’ had already gained a lot of meaning among academic theorists and classical art admirers when Schlegels used it to defend freedom of imagination and association in art. Even though words had more descriptive potential than poetry, there were still limits. As a way of describing emotions that weren’t within the artist’s reach; imagination must not intrude on narrative clarity or form.

At its simplest, this assertion poses a direct challenge to the conventional classical landscape’s subordination of nature to man. For the first time, nature and man coexist in harmony, with each giving meaning and interest to the other. Their journey isn’t the subject of the picture; it’s the journey that complements it. (Vaughan, 1978)

In Images of Romanticism, 1978, by Karl Kroeber and William Walling, the writers discuss romanticism in paintings in a poetic way. In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing is defined into absolute independent singleness. ‘Everything’ includes colour, and colours are at once a means of individuation and a source of interaction, modifying the painting.

Liberty Leading the People – Eugène Delacroix, 1830

They suggest that when picturing the elements of air, earth, and water, the artist relishes the return to the chaotic beginnings of time. In other words, we want to return to the time when water separated from land and light separated from darkness. Nevertheless, the earth has not yet been filled with living creatures or trees that bear fruit. There is nothing to be seen on its surface. Apparently, the artist’s landscapes are pictures of nothingness, according to someone.

We perceive historical situations like landscapes or paintings – a comparison that helps us understand how dynamic relations work within spatial arrangements. Paintings are dominated by dynamic forces that hold together the overall composition. The whole display of pictorial material is animated by a system of variously directed vectors. All of these forces exist simultaneously and in spatial simultaneity, so the viewer’s exploration glance has nothing to do with the painting’s structure. (Kroeber & Walling, 1978)

Caspar David friedrich

Woman in the Morning Sun – Caspar David Friedrich, 1811

With his boundless enthusiasm, fragmentary achievement, and early death – even in the compulsive self-exposure that he gave his writings – Caspar David Friedrich was the perfect Romantic artist. There is something special about Friedrich’s paintings. They are single moments. Like the woman in Woman in the Morning Sun, 1811, who stands before the rising sun and opens her hands to the light. We see the woman’s gesture of ecstasy, even the way she becomes a ghostly silhouette when the light hits her. We are drawn to the vastness of the scenery in front of her, almost as if sharing the moment with her. We wonder how she must’ve felt as the first warm rays of the sun hit her face and how fresh the air around her smelled.

Monk by the Sea – Caspar David Friedrich, 1809

In the Monk by the Sea, 1809, the horizon is unbroken. The monk, who’s standing on a headland in the foreground, literally sinks under its weight. Whatever the land, sea, or air, they’re all empty and without any comfort. There’s no escaping the starkness of it. Because of its monotony and boundlessness, with only a frame for a foreground, it makes you feel like you are sinking with it. In a way, the picture is positively eerie, suggesting existential loneliness. However, when you learn that the pendant represents the monk’s burial and reunification with the infinite, it takes on a less modern feeling. (Vaughan, 1978)

References

Alhonen, A. (2020) Perinnetietoa, Taivaannaula. Available at: https://www.taivaannaula.org/perinne/tietoa/ (Accessed: November 9, 2022). PDF Esivanhempien puu – Kirjoituksia itämerensuomalaisesta uskomusperinteestä

Artincontext (2022) Romanticism art – the art, literature, and music of the romantic period, artincontext.org. Art In Context. Available at: https://artincontext.org/romanticism-art/ (Accessed: October 20, 2022).

Kroeber, K. and Walling, W. (1978) Images of romanticism: Verbal and visual affinities. New Haven, Conn. etc.: Yale University Press.

Vaughan, W. (1978) Romantic Art. London: Thames and Hudson.