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Joseph-Marie Vien
Young Greek Maidens Decking the Sleeping Cupid with Flowers
1773
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Neoclassical painters attached great importance to depicting the
costumes, settings, and details of their classical subject matter
with as much historical accuracy as possible. This worked well
enough when illustrating an incident found in the pages of Homer,
but it raised the question of whether a modern hero or famous person
should be portrayed in classical or contemporary dress. This issue
was never satisfactorily resolved, except perhaps in David's
brilliantly evocative portraits of sitters wearing the
then-fashionable antique garb, as in his “Portrait of Madame
Récamier” (1800; Louvre).
Classical history and mythology provided a large part of the subject
matter of Neoclassical works. The poetry of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid,
the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and history
recorded by Pliny, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Livy provided the bulk of
classical sources, but the most important single source was Homer.
To this general literary emphasis was added a growing interest in
medieval sources, such as the pseudo-Celtic poetry of Ossian, as well
as incidents from medieval history, the works of Dante, and an
admiration for medieval art itself in the persons of Giotto, Fra
Angelico, and others. Indeed, the Neoclassicists differed strikingly
from their academic predecessors in their admiration of Gothic and
Quattrocento art in general, and they contributed notably to the
positive reevaluation of suchart.
Finally, it should be noted that Neoclassicism coexisted throughout
much of its later development with the seemingly obverse and
opposite tendency of Romanticism. But far from being distinct and
separate, these two styles intermingled with each other in complex
ways; many ostensibly Neoclassical paintings show Romantic
tendencies, and vice versa. This contradictory situation is
strikingly evident in the works of the last great Neoclassical
painter, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who painted sensuous
Romantic female nudes while also turning out precisely linear and
rather lifeless historical paintings in the approved Neoclassical
mode.
Britain
Hamilton—Scottish painter, archaeologist, and dealer—spentmost of
his working life in Rome, and his paintings include two series of
large and influential canvases of Homeric subjects. West and the
Swiss-born Kauffmann were the most consistent exhibitors of history
pieces in London during the 1760s. James Barry and Fuseli also were
important. Blake, poet and painter, was a Neoclassicist to some
extent.
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Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Liberty or Death
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France
As well as being a painter, Vien was a friend of the archaeologist
Caylus and a director of the French Academy in Rome. This generation
also included Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who painted a few classical
history subjects as well as the scenes from contemporary life for
which he is best known; Jean-Jacque Lagrenée the Elder, like Vien a
director of the French Academy in Rome; and Nicolas-Guy Brenet.
The outstanding and most influential of all French Neoclassicists
and one of the major artists in Europe was Vien's pupil
Jacques-Louis David. David's early works are essentially Rococo, and
his late works also revert to early 18th-century types; his fame as
a Neoclassicist rests on paintings of the 1780s and '90s. After
winning the Prix de Rome of the French Academy in 1774 (important in
the history of French painting because it awarded a stay in Rome,
where winners studied Italian paintings firsthand), he was in that
city in 1775–81, returning there in 1784 to paint “Oath of the
Horatii”. David's contemporaries, or near-contemporaries,
included Jean-Germain Drouais, whosehistory paintings almost equaled
David's own in severity andintensity.
The slightly younger generation of painters included Jean-Baptiste
Regnault, Louis-Léopold Boilly, and Louis Gauffier. They were
followed by a more important group that included Pierre-Paul
Prud'hon. Prud'hon blended in his paintings a mild classicism and
the lyrical mood and soft lights of Correggio; he was patronized by
the empresses Josephine and Marie-Louise. Baron Pierre-Narcisse
Guérin painted in a style close to the Neoclassicism of David,
although he was not one of his pupils.
Of David's pupils, three became well-known and one became very
famous. Baron François-Pascal-Simon Gérard had a high reputation as a
portraitist under both Napoleon and Louis XVIII. Antoine-Jean Gros
executed many large Napoleonic canvases and after David's death was
the leading Neoclassicist in France. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy,
known as Girodet-Trioson, won a Prix de Rome but stopped painting
after 1812 when he inherited a fortune and turned to writing. The
famous pupil was Ingres, who was important as a Neoclassicist in his
subject paintings but not in his portraits.
Germany and Austria
Mengs was born in Aussig in Bohemia (modern Ústí nad Labem, Czech
Republic) in 1728, the son of the court painter there. He was
himself appointed Dresden court painter in 1745. In 1755 he met
Winckelmann, and subsequently he became a prominent figure in Roman
Neoclassical circles. Mengs is important both as a painter and as a
theorist. Apart from him, Germany's and Austria's main contribution
to Neoclassicism was theoretical, not practical, however. Theearly
Neoclassicists included Cristoph Unterberger; Anton von Maron, who
married Mengs's sister; and Friedrich Heinrich Füger. After
Unterberger, the most interesting painter was Johann Heinrich
Wilhelm Tischbein, who executed both portraits and subject pieces.
He was a director of the art academy in Naples and supervised the
publication of engravings of the Greek vases in the collection of
Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples, who was a
notable connoisseur.
The German painter Asmus Jacob Carstens worked in Berlin and was a
professor at the Berlin Academy. Members of his artistic circle
included the painters Karl Ludwig Fernow, Eberhard Wächter, Joseph
Anton Koch (who was the most outstanding of this German group), and
Gottlieb Schick.
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Antonio Canova
Nymph
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Italy
One of the earliest Neoclassicists and one of the foremost painters
of his generation in Italy was Batoni. His style blends Rococo with
Neoclassical elements, and his work includes classical subject
pieces as well as portraits in contemporary dress, the sitter posing
with antique statues and urns and sometimes amid ruins. The painter
Domenico Corvi was influenced by both Batoni and Mengs and was
important as the teacher of three of the leading Neoclassicists of
the next generation: Giuseppe Cades, Gaspare Landi, and Vincenzo
Camuccini. These artists worked mostly in Rome, the first two making
reputations as portraitists, Landi especially being noted for good
contemporary groups.
Rome was indeed the city where the principal Italian painters of this
period were most active. One such was Felice Giani, whose many
decorations include Napoleonic palaces there and elsewhere in Italy
(especially Faenza) and in France.
Important painters outside Rome include Andrea Appiani the Elder in
Milan, who became Napoleon's official painter and executed some of
the best frescoes in northern Italy. He was also a fine portraitist.
One of his pupils was Giuseppe Bossi. Another leading Lombard
painter was Giovanni Battista dell'Era, whose encaustic paintings
were bought by Catherine the Great and others. Other good examples
of Neoclassical decorative schemes outside Rome are in Florence (Pitti
Palace) by the Florentine Luigi Sabatelli and by Pietro Benvenuti,
who was born at Arezzo, and in Venice (Palazzo Reale) by Giuseppe
Borsato, who was born in that city and was both painter and
architect. Another painter of the time, though only given to a
mildly Neoclassical style, was Domenico Pellegrini, born near
Bassano, who traveled widely. The principal Neoclassicists in the
south were the Sicilians Giuseppe Velasco, who did important
frescoes in palaces in Palermo, and Giuseppe Errante.
Other countries
The main Danish painter who produced original Neoclassical works was
Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard. Other Danish painters include
Abildgaard's and David's pupil Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. David
was very influential in Brussels, where he retired late in life. The
paintings of his Belgian pupil François-Joseph Navez, for example,
are pure French Neoclassicism. The two main Neoclassical artists in
The Netherlands were Humbert de Superville and Jan Willem Pieneman.
The principal Neoclassicist in Spain was José de Madrazo y Agudo.
David Irwin
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Pierre-Narcisse Guerin
Sappho on the Leucadian Cliff
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Romanticism
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Romanticism is a term loosely used to designate numerous and diverse
changes in the arts during a period of more than 100 years (roughly,
1760–1870), changes that were in reaction against Neoclassicism (but
not necessarily the classicism of Greece and Rome) or against what
is variously called the Age of Reason, the Augustan Age, the
Enlightenment, or 18th-century materialism. In the sense of
a personal temperament Romanticism had always existed, but in the
sense of an aesthetic period it signified works of art whose prime
impulse and effect derived from individual rather than collective
reactions. Romanticism can generally be said to have emphasized the
personal, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the
spontaneous, the emotional, and even the visionary and
transcendental in works of art. The Romantic movement first
developed in northern Europe with a rejection of technical standards
based on the classical ideal that perfection should be attained in
art.
It was writers and poets who gave initial expression to Romantic
ideas; painters, while subject to similar feelings, acquired
fundamental inspiration from the literature of the period. There was
an increasing awareness generally of the way the various arts
interacted. The Frenchman Eugène Delacroix and the German Philipp
Otto Runge explored the implications of musical analogies for
painting, and everywhere writers, artists, and composers could be
found in close association.
Romantic critics agreed that experience of profound inner emotion
was the mainspring of creation and appreciation of art. Received
ideas, and especially aesthetic values sanctioned by the authority
of official institutions, were distrusted, and the individual was
pitted against society. The artist asserted the right to evolve his
own criteria of beauty and in so doing encouraged a new concept of
artistic genius. The genius whom the Romantics celebrated was one
who refused to conform, who remained defiantly independent of
society, and whose chief virtues were novelty and sincerity. This
sometimes led to bizarre and extravagant projects in which the
intention to shock, excite, and involve struck a melodramatic,
almost hysterical note that failed to convince by its very lack of
restraint.
As in the literature of the period, tragic themes predominated in
Romantic painting, and interest turned sharply from classical
history and mythology to medieval subjects, although an interest in
the primitive was sometimes common to both. The fascination with the
Middle Ages combined with strong nationalist tendencies,
disposing artists to a concern with the history and folklore of their
own countries. At the same time they often sought themes or styles
that were distant in place as well as time. Accounts of foreign
travel and the literary works of Dante, Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe,
Sir Walter Scott, and the supposed Celtic bard Ossian greatly
influenced painters. Study of medieval culture imbued some painters
with a Christian ideal of simplicity and moral integrity.
A salient feature of Romantic sensibility was awareness of the
beauties of the natural world. Artists identified their personal
feelings with nature's changing aspects. An almost reverential
affection, animated by the belief that the divine mind was immanent
in nature, engendered at times a Christian or theistic naturalism.
The artist was seen as the interpreter of hidden mysteries, to which
end imaginative insight must combine with absolute fidelity and
sincerity. In Britain and Germany especially, the moral implications
inherent in the appreciation of natural or artistic beauty tended to
outweigh aesthetic considerations. Interest in transitory phenomena
led painters to devote themselves to an accurate study of light and
atmosphere and their effects on the landscape. Concern to preserve
the spontaneity of the immediate impression brought about a
revolution in painterly technique, with the rapid notation of the
sketch carried into the final conception. Whether emphasizing
expressive or purely visual considerations, the landscape paintings
of the period display dazzling colour.
Curiosity about the external world and a spirit of what might be
called scientific inquiry led many painters to explore the minutiae
of nature. Technological advance also excited artistic interest,
though painting was affected less than architecture and the
decorative arts; and the humanitarian sympathy and generosity so
vital to the Romantic spirit gradually effected a reconciliation
between art and life. The political and social upheavals of the 19th
century involved many painters in revolutionary movements and
stimulated asolicitude toward the helpless and downtrodden that
found most passionate and powerful expression in the works executed
during and immediately after the Revolutions of 1848.
Britain
In the late 1760s and '70s a circle of British painters in Rome had
already begun to find academic precepts inadequate. James Barry, the
brothers John and Alexander Runciman, John Brown, George Romney, and
the Swiss-born Henry Fuseli favoured themes—whether literary,
historical, or purely imaginary—determined by a taste for the
pathetic, bizarre, and extravagantly heroic. Mutually influential
and highly eclectic, they combined, especially in their drawings,
the linear tensions of Italian Mannerism with bold contrasts of
light and shade. Though never in Rome, John Hamilton Mortimer had
much in common with this group, for all were participants in a move
to found a national school of narrativepainting. Fuseli's
affiliations with the German Romantic Sturm und Drang writers
predisposed him, like Flaxman, toward the “primitive” heroic stories
of Homer and Dante. Flaxman himself, in the two-dimensional linear
abstraction of his drawings, a two-dimensionality implying rejection
of Renaissance perspective and seen for instance in the expressive
purity of “Penelope's Dream” (1792–93), had important repercussions
throughout Europe.
William Blake absorbed and outstripped the Fuseli circle, evolving
new images for a unique private cosmology, rejecting oils in favour
of tempera and watercolour, and depicting, as in “Pity” (1795; Tate
Gallery, London [see ]), a shadowless world of soaring, supernatural
beings. His passionate rejection of rationalism and materialism, his
scorn for both Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Dutch Naturalists,stemmed
from a conviction that “poetic genius” could alone perceive the
infinite, so essential to the artist since “painting, as well as
poetry and music, exists and exults in immortal thoughts.” The
spiritual, symbolical expression of Blake's complex sympathies, his
ability to recognize God in a single blade of grass, inspired Samuel
Palmer, who, with hisfriend Edward Calvert, extracted from nature a
visionary world of exquisite, though short-lived, intensity.
Empiricism and acceptance of the irrational, however, were not
mutually exclusive, and each profoundly affected attitudes toward
nature. Susceptible to the ideas of Blake and other radical
theorists and animated by a growing spirit of inquiry into natural
phenomena, painters slowly abandoned the picturesque desire to
compose and became willing to be moved, awestruck, and terrified by
nature unadorned. Early artists of the sublime, such as Alexander
Cozens or Francis Towne, worked largely in watercolours andsolved
the problem of scale by abstraction—use of broad areas of colour to
suggest the vast scope of natural forces—an approach developed by
Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman.
By the early 19th century, the watercolourist John Varley wasechoing
current practice when he told his pupils John Linnell, William
Mulready, and William Henry Hunt: “Go to nature for everything.” But
already two outstanding British landscape painters, John Constable
and J.M.W. Turner, were going still further. Both men, while
admiring the classical landscapes ofClaude Lorrain and Poussin,
believed that personal feeling was the mainspring of artistic
activity and felt an almost mystical sympathy for the natural world.
They made atmosphere almost palpable and painted everything from
clouds to lichens with astonishing technical diversity. Constable
considered himself before all else a “natural” painter and sought,
in his own words, to capture “light—dews—breezes—bloom—and
freshness” with scientific precision and deepest affection. For
Constable, light clarified and enlivened, and his nostalgia for the
Suffolkcountryside is personal and explicit. With Turner, light
increasingly diffused the objects illuminated, and only a more
literary expression satisfied his concept of the sublime, drawing
him to mountain grandeur, raging seas, storms, and conflagrations.
The technical innovations of these two men were better understood in
France than in Britain; even John Ruskin's passionate defense of
Turner, with its emphasis on absolute fidelity to nature, helped
deflect Turner's and Constable's successors onto a very different
course.
George Stubbs's anatomical studies and accurate delineations of
animals were echoed a generation later by Thomas Bewick's bird
studies, themselves harbingers of the drawings of Edwin Landseer and
Ruskin's closely observed renderings of naturalistic detail.
Stubbs's empathy for the animal world reemerged in the work of James
Ward, together with an exultation in the power of nature, shared by
Philip James de Loutherbourg. Demand for information about distant
places partially superseded the taste for picturesqueEuropean
scenes, and following William Hodges, who accompanied Captain James
Cook's second voyage (1772–75), such painters as Richard Parkes
Bonington, Samuel Prout, John Frederick Lewis, and Edward Lear
traveledwidely, recording scenes of historic or exotic interest.
In portraiture an interest in extremes of mood found most eloquent
expression in the work of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who combined in
portraits such as those of Richard Payne Knight (1794; Whitworth Art
Gallery, Manchester) and Pope Pius VII (1819; Royal Collection,
Windsor Castle) brilliant freedom of handling, at times approaching
exhibitionism, with dramatic expression and setting, at times almost
melodramatic.
History painting, too, was transformed: Bonington's “Henri III and
the English Ambassador” (1827–28; Wallace Collection, London), while
testifying to a sustained delight in the medieval world, already
betrays commensurate interest in period detail and the finer points
of human insight. The authentic, domestic treatment of biblical
themes at the hands of William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelites (see
below) contrasts sharply with the earlier apocalyptic fantasies of
John Martin and Francis Danby. Inspired by David Wilkie's mellow,
unassuming representation of country life subject matter, William
Mulready turned to contemporary scenes of daily life, adopting the
brilliant palette that distinguished British painting for the next
half-century. The high Victorian Age saw much narrative painting, a
genre that was practiced with accurate and sympathetic observation,
from the panoramic activity of William Powell Frith's “Derby Day”
(1858; Tate Gallery) to such intimate glimpses of reality as “The
Travelling Companions” (1862; City Museum and Art Gallery,
Birmingham), by Augustus Egg. Painting as a vehicle for social or
moral comment was provided by Sir Luke Fildes and Frank Holl, in
whose work a tendency to sentimentality isredeemed by a genuine
regard for the sufferings of the poor. In the 1850s the
Pre-Raphaelites gave expression to the painting of contemporary life
with such memorable images as “The Blind Girl” (1856; City Museum
and Art Gallery, Birmingham), by John Everett Millais, or “The
Stonebreaker” (1857–58; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), by John
Brett.
The Pre-Raphaelite movement, echoing that of the Nazarenes (a group
of religiously minded painters who sought to revive medieval
workshop practices; see below), reiterated many earlier Romantic
ideals. Literary inspiration and a passion for the Middle Ages were
tempered for the Pre-Raphaelites by a moral outlook that recoiled
from sophistication and virtuosity and demanded rigorous studiesfrom
natural life. These painters handled literary, historical, biblical,
and contemporary themes with the same sincerity and fidelity that
yielded the sparkling precision of Pre-Raphaelite landscape. Their
earnest pursuit of truth, whether in depicting painful social
realities or concentrating on the foreground blades of grass in a
landscape, entailed a denial of many orthodox artistic pleasures.
Together with Ford Madox Brown, the Pre-Raphaelites sustained the
devotion to colour and light in painting that underlies the finest
endeavours of English Romanticism.
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Gustav Carus
Goethe Monument
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Germany
In Germany also there was a reaction against classicism and the
academies, and, as elsewhere, it involved all aspects of the arts.
Again, as elsewhere, theory preceded practice: Herzensergiessungen
eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (“Effusions of an Art-Loving
Monk”), by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, had an immediate and
widespread influence upon its publication in 1797. Wackenroder
advocated a Christian art closely related to the art of the early
German masters and provided the artist with a new role as
interpreter of divine inspiration through his own feelings.
The painter Philipp Otto Runge had been reared on 17th-century
German mysticism, and he proved susceptible to the ideas of writers
such as Wackenroder when introduced to them in Dresden at the very
end of the 18th century. In Dresden he formed a close association
with the leading German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich.
Like Friedrich he was fascinated by the potential symbolic and
allegorical power of landscape, which he used as a vehicle for
religious expression. His vision of nature was pantheistic (as was
Friedrich's), and in his portraits his aim was to capture the soul
of the individual as part of the universal soul of nature. “The
Artist's Parents and Children” (1806; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg)
reflects not only his constant search for truth but also his
admiration for the early German masters, through whose work he was
made aware of the expressive power of line and colour. His interest
in the German past, including folklore and fairy tales, was
reflectedin a bizarre fairylike quality in much of his work (e.g.,
“Night,”1803), and it was this quality that was taken up and
popularized by his two most important followers, Moritz von Schwind
and Adrian Ludwig Richter, in whose hand the intensity of the first
generation declined into popular genre paintings (usually small
pictures depicting everyday life, as opposed to some idealized
existence) and the comfortable Romanticism of the Biedermeier period
(1815–48).
Friedrich was a deeply religious man whose vision demanded complete
subjection to the spirit of God in nature; in suggesting through
landscape the eternal presence of the Creator, he intended to induce
in the beholder a state of religious awe. Among his pupils was Carl
Gustav Carus, a physician, philosopher, and self-taught painter
whose chief contribution was as a theorist; Neun Briefe über
Landschaftsmalerei (1831; “Nine Letters on Landscape Painting”)
elucidates and expands the ideas of Friedrich, adding Carus' own
more-scientific approach to natural phenomena. Other important
painters influenced by Friedrich were Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, a
landscape painter, and Georg Friedrich Kersting, who captured in his
stark interiors something of the master's atmosphere of silent
worship. However, two other pupils of Friedrich
subsequently abandoned tragic landscapes; one, the Norwegian Johan
Christian Dahl, reverted to naturalism; the other, Karl Blechen,
joined the Romantic realists.
Whereas Runge, Friedrich, and their followers interpreted
Wackenroder in a highly personal way, others were inspired to
communal activity. A number of young painters in Vienna founded in
1809 a group they called the Guild of St. Luke. Thefounding members
were Johann Friedrich Overbeck (their leader), Franz Pforr, Joseph
Wintergerst, Joseph Sutter, and Georg Ludwig Vogel. In 1810 they
moved to Rome, where they were soon joined by Peter von Cornelius,
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Friedrich Olivier, the brothers
Philipp and Johannes Veit, Wilhelm von Schadow, Johann Evangelist
Scheffer von Leonhartshoff, and Josef von Führich. Their
semimonastic existence occasioned the nickname Nazarenes.
In general, their highest aspirations—toward monumental history
painting—produced the least successful results, and they came
closest to realizing their intentions on a small scale in highly
finished watercolours and drawings, as in Overbeck's “The Raising of
Jairus' Daughter” (1814). Only Joseph Anton Koch and Cornelius, who
were both older and more experienced, achieved great vigour in their
history paintings, combining medievalizing tendencies with the
powerful classicism of Carstens (see above Neoclassicism: Germany
and Austria), as seen in Cornelius' “The Recognition of Joseph by
His Brethren” (1815–16; National Gallery, Berlin). Even Overbeck, an
articulate leader and a lucid draftsman, could not escape, in his
“Joseph Being Sold by His Brethren” (1816–17; National Gallery,
Berlin), the self-conscious naïveté common to many of the Nazarenes.
This naïveté is also noticeable in Pforr's “The Entry of the Emperor
Rudolf of Habsburg into Basel in 1273” (c. 1809; Städelsches
Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main) and Schnorr's “The Procession of
the Three Magi” (1819; Museum of Fine Art, Leipzig). Alfred Rethel,
a late arrival, however, manages to avoid such an effect in his
haunting “King David with His Harp” (c. 1831; Museum of
Art,Düsseldorf). Not long afterward there was a move toward themore
dramatic, though no less nostalgic, approach of von Schadow and his
pupil Karl Friedrich Lessing.
Portraiture required less self-consciousness than history painting,
and there are a number of highly sensitive portraits, mainly of
their friends, by Overbeck, Schnorr, Scheffer von Leonardshoff, and
Carl Philipp Fohr (“Portrait of Wilhelm von Schadow” [1818; Museum
of the Palatinate, Heidelberg]). The Nazarenes' greatest
contribution, however,was to landscape painting: inspired by the
heroic landscapes of Koch (e.g., “Bernese Oberland” [1816; Gallery
of Modern Paintings, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden]), by the
German “primitives,” and by their own concept of truth to nature,
they renounced the conventional Italianate solution and turned
instead to the countryside around them and to memories of Germany
and German painting. As the movement gathered momentum, the
possibilities for development expanded, and the Nazarene landscape
was valuable to later painters of the Biedermeier period and to
painters of naturalistic landscape, Romantic realism, and secular
historical subjects.
France
The French Revolution greatly stimulated interest in the depiction
of contemporary events, although richly documented and highly
detailed paintings of topical patriotic events were being painted in
London by West and John Singleton Copley even before the Revolution.
Encouraged by David's example, however, painters in Francesought to
represent authentically the crucial moments of their own time.
Napoleon I enthusiastically endorsed this awareness of modern
heroism and demanded pictorial celebration of the glorious
achievements of the empire. David recorded the ceremonies of the
imperial court with scrupulous precision. Napoleon's potent hold on
the artistic imagination is well illustrated by Gros's “Napoleon
Visiting the Pesthouse at Jaffa” (1804; Louvre), where he is endowed
with godlike authority and the humanitarian sensibility of the true
Romantic hero. At the same time, other artists—suchas Gérard,
Girodet-Trioson, and Ingres—readily responded tothe Emperor's
admiration for the stories of Ossian. After the fall of Napoleon few
were disposed to depict contemporary subjects. Théodore Géricault
was something of an exception,but he was separated from his
immediate predecessors both by temperament and by the sincerity of
his approach. Individual suffering rather than collective drama is
vividly portrayed in “The Raft of the Medusa” (c. 1819; Louvre).
This, Géricault's masterpiece, echoes in its strenuous forms the
school of Caravaggio in the 17th century. His studies of the poor,
aged, and insane are realistically observed and have a sympathetic
intensity unmatched before the generation of Honoré Daumier and
Gustave Courbet.
The paintings of Delacroix frequently disrupted the salons ofthe
1820s and '30s with their tumultuous colour and emotive energy. To
many young men after 1815, France appeared to settle into a
bourgeois respectability that implicitly disparaged the exhilarating
years of the republic and the empire. In consequence, the art of the
period often seems melancholic and introverted, the discontent
expressing itselfin historical and exotic themes or in a passionate
concern with the humble and rejected members of society. Delacroix
has justly been acclaimed the leader of the Romantic school in
France. His fertile imagination, embracing a novel range ofliterary
and historical themes and fastening with a characteristic sense of
the sadness of life on moments of death, defeat, and suffering,
together with his prodigious technical resources exemplify
Romanticism in its most obvious aspects. His vigorous handling of
paint and expert use of colour values for both description and
expression were important for the later development of French
painting. “The Massacre at Chios” (1824; Louvre) transposes
contemporary events into a realm of tragic fiction soon established
unrestrainedly with such melodramatic works as“The Death of
Sardanapalus” (1827; Louvre), a riot of brilliant colour and
ebullient forms.
Delacroix's Moroccan paintings released a flood of North African
subjects, although, in the hands of lesser artists—such as Eugène
Fromentin, Ary Scheffer, and EugèneDevéria—the treatment is less
effective. Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, whose small canvases have a
delicate, jewellike quality, provided the most refreshing variations
on the theme. But Delacroix was not the first to handle Oriental
subjects; Ingres had already done so with a reticence that belies
the sensuous delight in “Valpinçon Bather” (1808; Louvre) and in “La
Grande Odalisque” (1814; Louvre [see ]). Early in his career Ingres
made notable contributions to the historical genre with episodes
from medieval French history painted in a style of linear purity
that parallels the methods of Flaxman and Blake in Britain and the
Nazarenes in Germany. Under the spell of Raphael he returned to the
academic fold, but his portraits always retained that trenchant
simplicity and lucid insight that make him such a memorable exponent
of lyric realism. The career of Ingres and in a converse sense that
of Paul Delaroche well illustratethe imprudence of too readily
distinguishing between academic and Romantic artists. Delaroche,
perhaps the mostpopular representative of the Romantic school,
specialized in highly charged narratives with royal and child
characters, of which “The Children of Edward” (c. 1830; Louvre) is a
typical example, being executed with a flatness that lacks either
linear or colouristic inspiration. In comparison, the work of
Théodore Chassériau is animated by powerful emotional overtones
reminiscent of Delacroix. “The CossackGirl Finding the Body of
Mazeppa” (1851; Museum of Fine Art, Strasbourg) shows a similarly
expressive use of paint, together with poignant imagery, both
characteristic of his regrettably slender oeuvre. At the end of the
century, Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon transformed these features,
along with others in Louis Boulanger's work, into whimsical,
haunting fantasies that delighted the Symbolist poets.
In the 1830s and '40s it was Honoré Daumier, more than any other
artist, who portrayed relatively lowly members of society,
expressing in numerous drawings and paintings their patient
resignation. In contrast, his truly excoriating depiction of the
weaknesses and vices of the privileged classes, particularly
officialdom, often displeased authority, which had long identified
Romanticism with liberalism—and with good reason. A strain of poetic
realism in the 1840s, essentially Romantic in approach, gathered
sudden momentum with the Revolution and short-lived republic of
1848. Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet depicted peasant
life, investing it with a certain timeless quality. Courbet's
“Stone-Breakers” (1849; destroyed during World War II) and Millet's
harrowing “Quarriers” (c. 1847; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio)
powerfully express their creators' concern for the poor. Courbet
created a sombre monument tohis own village in “Burial at Ornans”
(1849; Louvre), and Millet succeeded in conferring an epic grandeur
on scenes ofrural life.
A new approach to the familiar and unsophisticated occurs inthe
landscape painting of the 1830s and '40s; for, although French
Romanticism produced no Turner, it did give rise to the Barbizon
school, a group of naturalist painters who were particularly active
in the forest of Fontainebleau. In this period the charm of the
spontaneous sketch as opposed to the finished study was recognized:
painters readily set up their easels in the open air and scrutinized
the scene before them. A direct approach to nature and an interest
in transitory moments, especially the changing effects of light,
were features common to Romantic landscape painters throughout
Europe and the United States. Paul Huet, a friend of Delacroix and
Bonington and a painter closely associated with the Romantic school,
represented dramatic, stormy scenes of solitude; yet, though
scarcely a naturalist, he was deeply impressed by the works of
Constable, several of which he copied and which inspired him to
adopt a broken style of brushwork with dabs of bright pigment. The
changed attitude to landscape is aptly expressed in the words of
Théodore Rousseau, the most controversial representative of the new
school: “Our art can only attain pathos through sincerity.” Rousseau
attempted to render nature as he foundit, though his melancholic
temperament is inevitably reflected in the desolate panoramas and
gloomy sunsets in which he expressed an almost pantheistic feeling
for the natural world. At the same time, his close attention to
detail and painstaking accuracy in the delineation of plants and
grasses betray the scientific concern shared by many Romantic
artists. A similar penetration informed his studies of light, and
both he and Charles-François Daubigny repeatedvirtually the same
subjects under different weather conditions in order to capture the
ephemeral effects of light and atmosphere. The freedom and freshness
of Constable's handling is echoed in Daubigny's flickering treatment
of sunset and light over water. A particularly poetic insight into
nature was that of Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de La Peña and Constant
Troyon. The work of Camille Corot, despite the restrained classicism
of his style, is similarly enlivened by an instinctive feeling for
naturalistic landscape. For, while they laid the foundation for the
painterly revolution of the Impressionists, the Barbizon painters
always retained the generous appreciation of natural beauty and
emotional involvement with their subject that everywhere distinguish
the Romantic temperament.
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Caspar David Friedrich
Abbey in the Oakwood
1809
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United States
American Romantic painters were largely influenced by trends in late
18th-century Europe, especially Britain, but theabsence of an
indigenous artistic tradition permitted a much more intuitive
development. At the same time, their work, like that of the early
French Romantics, is closely associated with the new spirit fostered
by a national revolution. The American Revolution, by reinforcing
the democratic ideal, inspired a unique brand of Romantic realism
that was a strong force in American painting from the late 18th
century onward and that anticipated the emergence in Europe by a
whole generation. Benjamin West, in addition to his contribution to
Neoclassicism, developed a style of narrative painting with dramatic
subjects taken from contemporary life; while he painted his most
significant workin Britain, it was on American rather than English
artists that it made the most impact. John Trumbull undertook a
series of 12 scenes from the American Revolution, in which careful
studies of the principal participants were incorporated into
colourful, baroque compositions. At their best, these works, for
example “Sortie from Gibraltar” (1789; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston),
carry great conviction, even if they tend to be somewhat theatrical.
In 1784 one of the most candid portraitists of the period, Charles
Willson Peale, completed a similarly ambitious project in his
paintings of the leading figures of the Revolution. A more limited
enthusiasm for precise naturalistic study informs the work of
Alexander Wilson, whose devoted love of birds emerges in the
freshness and simplicity of the plates to his American Ornithology
(9 volumes; 1808–14). His achievement has been overshadowed by his
greater successor, John James Audubon, who combined scientific
precision with a delight in his specimens that transforms his
watercolour drawings of birds into works of rare and delicate
beauty.
At the beginning of the Romantic period, artists were still
influenced by British painting, but this influence grew less and
less perceptible as the 19th century progressed. For instance, the
portrait of “Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins”(1831–32; Boston
Athenaeum), by Thomas Sully, the leading exponent of a new
portraiture supposedly expressive of mood, has touches of Sir Thomas
Lawrence in the delicately brushed surface, strong contrasts of
light and dark, and exquisite elegance of pose. But, though Samuel
F.B. Morse, Samuel Waldo, William Page, and others also practiced an
emotive style, portraits of the 19th century increasingly tended to
endorse the native tradition of solid characterization.
The career of the landscape painter Washington Allston reflects the
development of American painting in his lifetime. Absorbed by German
and English Romantic poetry, he began on a note of high drama,
moving in cosmopolitan artistic circles in Rome and producing a
number of early landscapes that seem to have played a part in
winning the friendship of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. At this point, what was obviously an impetuous and
brooding strain in Allston's temperament found expression by
depicting nature in the darker, more destructive moods dear to
Turner. “The Deluge” (1804; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
City) is a typical macabre invention, with bodies in a raging
tempest swept ashore to where wolves and serpents lurk. On his
return to the United States, however, his work assumed a quieter,
more pensive aspect. “The Flight of Florimell” (1819; Detroit
Institute of Arts) illustrates this later style.
An uncomplicated love for their own natural scenery emerges in the
work of a succession of landscape painters who frequently strike a
contemplative, lyrical note. Thomas Cole reverently recorded scenes
in the valley of the Hudson River that echo the loneliness and
mystery of the North American forests. With his generous
humanitarian sympathies, Asher B. Durand gave a serene and artless
account of nature. His feeling for space and finely diffused light
renders “Kindred Spirits” (1849; New York Public Library) a touching
tribute to the friendship of Cole with the American Romantic poet
William Cullen Bryant. An interest in light and atmosphere was
shared by George Loring Brown, FitzHugh Lane, Frederic Edwin Church,
and George Harvey; all followed Durand and painted in the open.
Simplicity and reticence distinguish the landscapes of Thomas
Doughty, who concentrated on painting the Hudson River valley as he
knew and loved it. The details of country life that fill the stories
of Washington Irving are portrayed with affection by William Sidney
Mount, who in “Eel Spearing at Setanket” (1845; New York State
Historical Association, New York City) transcends the merely
anecdotal. George Caleb Bingham approached the life of the frontier
without the passionate concern that motivated many contemporary
French artists. Solemn and severe in style and glowing with colour,
his “Fur Traders Descending the Missouri” (c. 1845; Metropolitan
Museum of Art) captures the silence and solitary grandeur of
frontier life. The wildness of the frontier caught the imagination
of many 19th-century artists: George Catlin, Seth Eastman, John M.
Stanley, Alfred Jacob Miller, and Karl Bodmer all discovered a
picturesque drama and excitement in Indian life. The Romantic period
witnessed the emergenceof a truly national school of painting in the
United States, where events and scenery provided a constant source
of stimulation for artists content to distill their own poetry
fromthe world around them.
Susan Elizabeth Benenson
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Russia
Napoleon's invasion of Russia (1812) had far-reaching consequences.
It marked the revival of national consciousness and the beginning of
a widespread cult of Russian separateness from Europe, thus
precipitating the long controversy between “Westerners” and
“Slavophiles” that ran through so much of Russian 19th-century
literature and thought. At the same time, Russia shared in the
Romanticism—cultivated by France and Germany—that gripped Europe
during the era of the Napoleonic Wars. This isreflected in the
paintings of Orest Kiprensky and Vasily Tropinin. The most notable
contribution to the Romantic spirit, however, was made by Karl
Pavlovich Bryullov, with his monumental painting “The Last Days of
Pompeii” (1830–33; State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg). A
completely different trend appears in the work of Aleksandr Ivanov,
the first Russian painter to express religious emotions in a western
European manner. Other outstanding artists of that period were
Aleksey Venetsianov and Pavel Fedotov, the forerunners of Realist
painting in Russia.
The second half of the 19th century saw the maturing of Realism in
Russia. A sympathetic attitude toward the hard life of the people is
reflected in the works of most of the painters and sculptors of that
time. The new trend in art had as its basis the populist
revolutionary ferment prevalent toward the end of the 1850s and the
beginning of the 1860s, much of it inspired by the writers Nikolay
Dobrolyubov and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Chernyshevsky's dissertation
Esteticheskiye otnosheniya iskusstva k deystvitelnosti (1855; “The
Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality”), the main thesis of which
was that art must not only reflect reality but also explain and
judge it, provided a starting point for contemporary artists.
From the last third of the 19th century onward, the history of
Russian art is the history of a series of school struggles: the
Slavophiles against the Westerners; the Academy against the
Peredvizhniki (“Wanderers”); and later the joint effort of the last
two against a new movement, born in the 1890s and directed by the
art review Mir Iskusstva (“The World of Art”).
The Peredvizhniki was a society formed in 1870 by a group of
essentially Romantic artists who, however, regarded themselves as
Realists. They seceded from the Academy in 1863 in protest against
alien dogmatic formulas and the constricting programs of the
Academy's annual competitions. Most prominent among the
Peredvizhniki were Ivan Kramskoy, Ilya Repin, Vasily Ivanovich
Surikov (see photograph), Vasily Perov, and Vasily Vereshchagin. The
society attached far more importance to the moraland literary
aspects of art than to aesthetics. Its artistic creed was realism,
national feeling, and social consciousness. Art was to be placed at
the service of humanitarian and social ideals; it was to be brought
to the people. Accordingly the society organized mobile (peredvizheniye)
exhibitions—hence the name. The influence of the Peredvizhniki
spread throughout Russia and was dominant for nearly 30 years, but
by the end of the century it had greatly declined.
Arthur Voyce
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Karl Brullov
Last Days of Pompeii
1830-1833
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