 The Death Of Sardanapalus c.1826 Eugene Delacroix |
Eugene Delacroix greatly expanded the expressive possibilities of Romanticism. Ever since David, art and literature, especially in France, were closely associated.
The "Story Picture" will evolve into the motion picture/movie of the week. The staging of exciting and disturbing events, real (the Titanic) or imaginary (Star Wars and the X-files) and a concern for visual reality to electrify the emotions. The Greek revolt against Turkish rule in 1820 (Greece Expiring On The Ruins of Missolonghi), Liberty Leading the People, and after a trip to North Africa in 1832, a series of paintings depicting "Natures Noblemen" (the dessert Arabs) unspoiled by European decadence.
The Romantics believed that man is intrinsically good and that it was society that corrupts man, who would otherwise be eternally happy in his natural state.
 Greece Expiring On The Ruins of Missolonghi. c.1827 Eugene Delacroix |
And what could be more romantic than the Greek revolt againit the Turks in 1823. Artists not only painted pictures about it but went to fight for Greek freedom. Lord Byron, who went to Greece gave his life for Greek independence. For many of the French Romantic artists, war and nationalism became a major theme.
 Liberty Leading The People 1830 Eugene Delacroix |
Unfortunately, the anarchy created by the French Revolution would lead to the Dictatorship of Napoleon Bonapart and his attempted conquest of Europe. And here the Romantic ideal would be turned to the causes of French nationalism under Napoleon Bonapart. For our French Romantics, it would become "for God (Napoleon and God seeming to be on a pretty even footing) and Country" --Vive la France!
 Napoleon On The Battlefield At Eylau c.1808 by Antoine Jean Gros |
|
|
When the French first invaded Spain they were accepted as liberators, but the French army proved to be more brutal and oppressive than the old monarchy. When the people of Madrid revolted on May 2, 1808 it was put down brutily; anyone on the street was rounded up and summarily executed by firing squad.
 What is Worse (Esto es peor) no.37 of Los Desastres de la Guerra 1812-15 Etching |
In paintings and etchings Goya, without national bias (though he was a patriot) and with out mercy for the the viewer's sensitivities, exhibits the atrocities men visited upon one another, no matter the issues, no matter the persons involved.
Here in The Third of May, 1808 Goya portrays the inhuman brutality of Napolean's military machine. The military is portrayed as faceless automatons.. an inhuman killing machine, brutilized by war into mindless robots without human feeling.
While in the background, the Catholic Church stands darkened... callously disregarding the suffering of the Spanish people. Ironically, the first time we encountered this symbolic criticism of the Church was in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's The Parable Of The Blind. There it was a comment on the Church's callous disregard of the suffering of the Flemish people under Spanish domination.
Contrary to your text's interpretation that the Third of May is a protest against tyrannical governments, Goya's Third of May is not so much a protest aganist a form of government as a cry of anguish against the inhuman brutality of War.
 Chronos Devouring One Of His Children c.1820-2 from the walls of Goya's home |
Francisco Goya,
perhaps Spain's Greatest painter in a long line of great painters, easily
transcends any single catagory that you might try to put him into. Artists
from his time forward have felt his influence.
When Goya was in his 70's, he painted a series of "black paintings."
Painted for himself, rather than on commission, they represent his personal
feelings and his struggle to understand a world gone mad, torn apart by
war and savagery.
Chronos (Saturn) Devouring One Of His Children is a disturbing
indictment of man's bestial nature. Here Goya combines several themes
that preoccupied him throughout his life... humanity at its "blackest,"
primitive form of behavior--infanticide and cannibalism.
It would be more than a hundred years (1914 and the outbreak of
World War One) before the rest of Europe would experience Goya's disillusionment
and struggle to understand a "world gone mad."
While Goya struggled with the inhumanity of war and the French
Romantics leaned toward literary and heroic themes, others turned to nature
in there search for a new spirituality, raising landscape to a level of
first importance as a means of emotional and spiritual expression. A view
shared by many of the American and German artists of the day who also
saw nature as a personification of God or at the least as the visible
expression of divine truth.
 The Hay Wain. 1821 by John Constable |
On a quieter
note, we have John
Constable's nostalgic view from his childhood,
The Hay Wain of 1821.
"There is room enough for a natural painter, the great vice of the present
day is 'bravura,' an attempt to do something beyond the truth."
Constable looks back to the "Little Dutch Masters"... observable
facts and the intangible qualities of light and atmosphere. Constable
felt that the sky was the main "organ" for communicating emotion. And
the emotion he dealt with most was a nostalgic view of the English countryside
that was fast disappearing in the wake of the new Industrialization. Open
pit mining, coal burning factories and polluted rivers; and no one had
ever heard of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Romanticism, by focusing on people's longing to return to nature,
a reaction to the industrialization of England and Europe and the rise
of the modern industrial city, raised landscape to a level of first importance.
The supernatural transposed from traditional religious imagery
to nature, as immanent God requiring no personification other than its
organic and inorganic subjects and objects, things visible to the eye
which symbolically express through their forms the truth of nature, which
is to say, divine truth.
Another English painter, Turner,
who specialized in landscape painting was not so much nostalgic for a
lost paradice as fascinated with the power of nature and the potential
of the new machines that let man seemingly triumph over it.
 Steamship in a Snow Storm 1842 by William Turner |
In line with
the idea of the power of Nature is Turner's Steamship in a Snow Storm
that depicts one of the new steam driven side wheelers plunging on through
the blinding storm. Turner was fascinated with the new technology which,
at times, seemed to challenge the power of nature itself.
A view shared by many or his contemporaries that machine technology would
set man free and give him power over nature, for many thought the machine
would release man from menial tasks (computer technology is often thought
of in the same way) and bring a new age of enlightenment to the world.
Turner gave us a concept of the grandeur of nature, releasing color
from its defining outlines in order to express its nature, as well as
the painter's emotions.
The supernatural transposed from traditional religious imagery
to nature as immanent God... things visible to the eye which symbolically
express through their forms the truth of nature, which is to say divine
truth.
This romantic view of nature was shared by other artists... especially
in Germany in the work of Casper
David Friedrich and Thomas Cole, the American landscape painter.
"The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also
what
he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should
also refrain from painting that which he sees before him." Casper David
Friedrich
 Landscape In The Silesian Mountains c.1815 by Casper David Friedrich |
 Cloister Graveyard in the Snow c.1810 by Casper David Friedrich |
 Abbey In An Oak Forest c.1810 by Casper David Friedrich |
A magical realism
steeped in mysticism invaded German Romantic landscape painting and
they excelled in expressing the latent presence of the sacred element
in the slightest piece of rock or dead tree.
The nineteenth century is often viewed as a period obsessed with
the idea of progress and the seemingly endless possibilities afforded
by mechanization (the Industrial Revolution) while at the same time reeling
from the shock of de-Christianization (the "triumph" of materialism).
The art of the later half of the 1800's reflects these dual, often contradictory
characteristics, of enthusiastic acceptance of the new "materialism" and
an increasingly disturbed psyche (Is this all there is?).
Romanticism is ("is" is not a typo-- romanticicsm is still very
much with us) not a style in the formal sense, but rather a state of mind,
or an attitude to life and art. Nor is it a movement, which implies a
degree of organization that does not exist. It is rather a collection
of individual reactions to circumstances at the start of the 19th century.
In the latter decades of the eighteenth century, as the revolutionary
events of that period overturned the established order, political stability
and power of reason had been found wanting (the anarachy that followed
the French Revolution and the European wide conflict that followed are
just two examples).
Lynn University Art Appreciation
Information provided by: http://www.machanley.com