Romanticism
Romanticism Art
Romanticism is an early 19th century European movement.
It is a deeply-felt art style which is individualistic, beautiful, exotic, and emotionally wrought.
In the late 18th century, it came to mean anti-Classical and represented a trend towards the picturesque and a love of nostalgia.
The Romantic movement took on different characteristics throughout Europe.
In England, the poets Shelley and Keats sought beauty, Byron sought glory and adventure, Wordsworth tried to express a love of nature in a new simple language.
Landscape painting was explored by Constable, Palmer and others. The Middle Ages were revived as a source of artistic and architectural interest rather than something to fight against.
John William Maynard Turner found a radical and expressive technique with which to depict his view of the natural world. Sunrise Between Two Headlands (right) painted in 1826 is a fascinating approach to a landscape.
Other great artists associated with Romanticism include, Caspar David Friedrich, Francisco Goya, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Edwin Landseer and William Blake.
In the United States , the Romantic movement was the Hudson River School of dramatic landscape painting.
Obvious successors of Romanticism include the Pre-Raphaelite movement and the Symbolists. But Impressionism, and through it almost all of 20th century art, is also firmly rooted in the Romantic tradition.
