Dawn of Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual campaign that emerged in late 18th century Western Europe. Romanticism was the result of the French Revolution which in turn was a reaction by the romantic painters to the scientific rationalism and classicism of the Age of enlightenment intensified strong passion, imagination, sovereignty within or directly from polished notions of aspect in art, and change of earlier comprehensive conventions, remarkably the importance of the nobility.
There was a powerful aspect of ancient and natural unfailing in its notions, capitalizing the significance of “nature” in art and dialect. Romanticism is furthermore distinguished for its advancement in the accomplishments of what is recognized as adventurous adroit people and romantic painters.
The vision of affection and love has been one of the most outstanding and stressed topics portrayed in art throughout history whether it may be painting, statue, or literature. Portrayals of lovers deliver an intriguing understanding of the societies of distinct nations and reveal how viewpoints on love keep on refining and changing over the centuries.
Rise of romantic painters
Romanticism was spread mainly through paintings as very fewer people could read at that time. Stimulated by the German Sturm und Drang movement (Storm and Stress), which valued wisdom and feeling over Enlightenment ideas. This proto-romantic trend was focused on literature and music, but also influenced the visual arts and romantic painters.
Let’s take a look at 10 Romantic Painters from Art History.
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1. Francesco Hayez
Francesco Hayez
Nationality: Italian
Lifetime: February 10, 1791 – December 21, 1882
Francesco Hayez was a very creative romantic painter who relished a prolonged and thriving profession. He started up as a neoclassical painter, then swiveled to Romanticism and halted as an emotional painter. The subjects of his paintings were mainly young women. Neoclassicism was the name bestowed to Western movements in the ornamental and optical arts, literature, theatre and painting that drew idea from the “classical” skill and civilization of Ancient Greece.
He grew up in a relatively underprivileged household, Hayez displayed an inclination for drawing and he started as an art restorer. Later on, he became a pupil of the romantic painter Francesco Maggiotto before shifting to Milan. In the mid-19th-century, he was saught as a distinguished emissary of Romanticism. One oh his master arts, 1859 painting Il Bacio (The Kiss), is regarded as a reminder of Italian Romanticism, Francesco Hayez is famous for his great historical paintings, parables towards and exceptionally fine portraits. He is vastly famous Italian Romantic painter and he had a significant influence on future artists in the
Masterpiece- “The kiss”
2. John Constable
Nationality: English
Lifespan: June 11, 1776 – March 31, 1837
Romantic English painters were more inclined landscape and an excellent romantic painter was John Constable. Constable was a true patriot. He loved his countryside, the Essex-Suffolk border in east England. His most distinguished masterpieces illustrate the terrain and topography of this area, and now it’s known in the world as “Constable Country”. Constable revolted against the Neoclassical attitude towards art. This approach towards art used common methods when doing landscape painting and primarily used it to show historical and gothic events. He believed we should focus on what’s around us. He was a nature admirer. To arouse its elegance and energy. Constable never accomplished financial happiness. He could only sell 20 paintings in England throughout his life. He was a famous icon in France but he declined all proposals to travel abroad to stimulate his work. John Constable earned a worthwhile tribute to the genre of landscape painting and he elicited some of the most alluring portraits of England that no romantic painter ever could.
Masterpiece: The Hay Wain (1821)
CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH
Lifespan: September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840
Nationality: German
Caspar David Friedrich made a substantial stature from the starting of his career. Nonetheless, his stature decreased in the following years as critics, nitpicked his art and neglected his work and simultaneously harshly assaulted it. Despite his adroitness, he perished was as poor and in inscrutability. In the middle of the 20th century, he found some support among the new age of reviewers and art historiographers. In today’s art community, Friedric his idolised not only in Germany but he is globally famous and is deemed the most valuable German Romantic artist. He is regarded as a symbol of enormous psychological sophistication. Friedrich is mostly recognized for paintings which put human figures in evening skies, morning hazes, and other natural sceneries. Therefore his main focus was to exemplify the timid strength of a man in the bigger order of life. He was captivated by nature and could detect the presence of the god in it. Freidrich seized landscape art and instilled it with intense spiritual and moral importance. He is hailed as one of the gifted artists in the genre.
Masterpiece: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818)
FRANCISCO GOYA
Nationality: Spanish
Lifespan: March 30, 1746 – April 16, 1828
Francisco Goya saw growth in career due to superiority in the artistic stage when his sequel of tapestry cartoons and served as the court painter in Spain. After some time he had a tendency to paint portraits of dark nature for which he is vastly recognized today. Labelled as his Black Paintings, they depict severely, vexing issues, which was a symbol of both his fear of madness and his depressing opinion on humanity. Goya is also famous for highly creative components in his art and aggressive use of colours. He was the one who epitomized the Romantic importance of the mood of the artist’s emotions and his private ingenious realm. His art has ample of Romanticism’s priority on subjectivity, ingenuity, and sentiment. Goya is considered as both the last of the Old Masters as well as the first of the Moderns. He has also been called “the last great painter in whose art thought and observation were balanced and combined to form a faultless unity”. Francisco Goya is the most famous Romantic artist; and among other things, one of the great portraitists of modern times.
Masterpiece: The Third of May 1808 (1814)
5. J.M.W. TURNER
Lifespan: April 23, 1775 – December 19, 1851
Nationality: English
In the art community, Joseph Mallord William Turner is considered as one of the greatest landscape artists to ever exist and possibly the most well-known British artist ever. During his time, landscape painting was deemed a depressing form of painting. Turner incorporated his application of lyrical and creative attitude to landscape art. He improved the genre to match history masterpieces. His commitment to making raised states of consciousness and life enabled the Romanticism movement. Turner is recognized for his proficiency in grasping the impacts of colour and glares which got him the name of “the painter of light”. He specifically caught architectural and realistic details in his initial paintings but when he was adroit enough; his textures became smoother with a sheer indication of activity. These conceptions are contemplated forward of his period and prevailed a harbinger to the cultural movement. A deeply empirical and advanced painter, J.M.W. Turner played a pivotal role in Romanticism in turn immensely impacted on the forthcoming era of artists.
Masterpiece: The Fighting Temeraire (1839)
EUGENE DELACROIX
Nationality: French
Lifespan: April 26, 1798 – August 13, 1863
Eugene Delacroix is the one who led the Romantic Movement in France. He made it possible by focusing on color and action in place of the translucence of sketch and carefully designed structure. His most paintings and a violent expression; the stunning postures of his sketches; his emphasis on capturing facial expressions and sentiments; his research of natural light in outside landscapes; and most dominant was his definitive brushwork and habit of the stunning use of pains; all influenced him to be a key name for Romanticism the dominant movement in not only France but throughout the western world. Liberty Leading the People, the masterpiece of Delacroix, is possibly the most extensively eminent work during the entire Romanticism movement. Eugene Delacroix is the most famous French Romantic painter and he greatly influenced later art movements like Impressionism and Symbolism.
Masterpiece: Liberty Leading the People (1830)
WILLIAM BLAKE
Nationality: English
Lifespan: November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827
William Blake apart from a great romantic painter was deemed as an extraordinary poet in the English dialect. He is among the most unique pictorial artists of the Romantic era. Blake affirmed that he has visions throughout his life. He honored the Bible but was contentious and against the Church of England and established religion in public. Blake established various graphics of biblical scripts. He was also affected by the texts of novelists like Dante, Shakespeare and Milton.
Working mainly on engravings, Blake produced graphics of mythological realms full of gods and superiority as well as sharply condemned the consequences of the industrial upheaval and the abrogation of uniqueness. The clever and inventive art of Blake, and his practice of adding picture and literature content to communicate a solitary theory, wiggled a key role in not only Romanticism but several future art movements well into the 20th century. William Blake was not so much famous during his lifetime. Still, he was indexed at 38 in the BBC’s list of the “100 Greatest Britons” and was described as “far and from away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced”.
Masterpiece: Newton (1795)
8. THEODORE GERICAULT
Lifespan
September 26, 1791 – January 26, 1824
Nationality
French
He had a very short lifetime of just 32 years. Although Theodore Gericault left an enormous influence he had procured in the history of French painting. Later on, France came to have dominance in the world of western art in the 19th century. Gericault’s tendency for modern subjects; his inducement to the shady side of human psychology; his revolutionary technique; and his kindness for the oppressed sections of his country, all paved the way for Romanticism’s intensity on sentiments. His 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa; which depicted the fallout of a contemporary French shipwreck, came out as an idol of the arising Romantic movement in French painting and established the footings of an enchanting revolution that would finally overthrow the predominant Neoclassical attitude. Theodore Gericault is respected as one of the missionaries of Romanticism and he gave birth to a huge significance on the following era of French artists.
Masterpiece-
The Raft of the Medusa (1819)
9. Thomas Cole
Lifespan: February 1, 1801 – February 11, 1848
Nationality: American
Romanticism originated majorly in the United States in the paintings of a group of artisans of an institution known as the Hudson River School. Their compositions evaluate three essences of America focused in the 19th century: “discovery, exploration, and settlement”. Thomas Cole was the originator and astonishingly the most distinguished artist of the Hudson River School. He is vastly recognized for his terrain paintings of forest areas in America.
These romantic portrayals convey a sense of amazement at the greatness of nature. The most outstanding among them is said to be The Oxbow, which portrays a scenery of the Connecticut River Valley barely moments after a thunderstorm. Cole also elicited figurative works like his five-part series The Course of Empire, which portray the growth and fall of an imaginary city; and The Voyage of Life, an apology of the four phases of human life: childhood, youth, manhood and old age.
Masterpiece: The Oxbow (1836)
10. Ivan Aivazovsky
Ivan Aivazovsky
Lifespan: July 29, 1817 – May 2, 1900
Nationality: Russian
Ivan Aivazovsky was as influential Russian artist of his time who furthermore worked as the primary painter of the Russian Navy. He was a productive artist whose years of dominance in his field spanned for almost 60 years. Between this period he created a huge number of six thousand paintings. Aivazovsky was rewarded with the Order of St. Vladimir in 1865 and the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky in 1897 by the Russian crown.
He was also one of the few Russian artists to accomplish international distinction during his lifetime. In 1857, he became the first non-French recipient of the Legion of Honour for his art. The next year, he was bestowed the Order of the Medjidie by the Ottoman Empire. Ivan Aivazovsky is revered as the greatest Russian Romantic painter. He is also respected as one of the biggest ocean artists of all time. Well known Russian writer Anton Chekhov invented the saying “worthy of Aivazovsky’s brush”. It came to be the common way of characterizing something overwhelmingly beautiful in 19th century Russia.
Masterpiece: The Ninth Wave (1850)
Wrap Up
When you are in love with anyone or even your country you have to show it in some way or another. The romantic moment all these romantic painters have captured in their arts is proof of that. Love is celebrated across nationality, between different languages and dialects. The artist may die physically but he lives on in the art he makes. That’s what makes these artists immortal.
