BVA312 Art History 9/4/19 Romanticism
Romanticism
Referred to the romances of the middle ages eg King Arthur
Feeling, emotion and exotic wild nature
Painting, Music, Literature
Beauty and Sublime - a combination - art had to be attractive but more than that, larger than man himself - a reaction against the Neo Classical Period. New conflicting and themes of liberty - passed to the Impressionists.
Romantic Authors
Sir walter Scott
Bronte Family
Mary Shelley
Alexandre Dumas
Victor Hugo
Landmark's of Western Art - Art Documentary
Art has its boundaries - the imagination has none - this idea was challenged.
Jacques Louis David - Neo Classical superstar -
John Jacques Rousseau - French Philosopher - French Revolution - importance of human emotion.
Philosophy of Romanticism - responded to the world around it - each artist produced an individual response in their art work - it is about emotion.
THE NUDE MAJA
Spanish Title: La Maja Desnuda
Artist: Francisco Goya
Year: 1800
Francisco Goya is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of late 18th and early 19th centuries; and one of the great portraitists of modern times. The Nude Maja, one of his masterpieces, is known as the first “totally profane life-size female nude in Western art” and thefirst large Western painting to depict female pubic hair without obvious negative connotations. The painting was most likely commissioned by Prime Minister of Spain, Manuel de Godoy. The identity of the model is not known with certainty. Likely candidates are Godoy’s mistressPepita Tudo and María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba. Known for the straightforward and unashamed view of the model towards the viewer, it is considered a revolutionary work which expanded the horizons of Western art.
THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA
French Title: Le Radeau de La Méduse
Artist: Théodore Géricault
Year: (1819)
Méduse was a French warship which fought in the Napoleonic Wars. Though it survived the battles, it crashed in a sandbank in July 1816 while transporting people to Senegal. The 400 people on board had to evacuate; out of which 151 were put on a raft. These men on the raft had to go through a terrible ordeal. Many were washed into the sea by a storm; others rebelled and were killed by officers; the survivors engaged in cannibalism; and when supplies ran low, injured men were thrown into the sea. After 13 days on sea, the raft was found with only 15 men surviving. The event became an international scandal. Théodore Géricault thoroughly studied the incident before creating this masterpiece. The Raft of the Medusa proved to be hugely influential in French art; is considered an iconic work of French Romanticism; and has immortalized the incident it depicts.
The spectator can feel how the survivors might have felt - you are involved.
reaction to the painting was favorable but the rawness and style of the work meant acceptance was slow.
Gericault painted people from an insane asylum.
Eugene Delacroix -
The Death of Sardanapalus -
Liberty Leading the People - personification of Liberty portrayed as a woman, a central figure. Delacroix painted about modernity and freedom - symbol for liberty and freedom fighting.
In England and Germany landscape artists felt the Romantic urge. Caspar David Frederick.
Francisco Goya - Spain
1792 was ill and left him deaf - he had a darker view of the world. The terrifying images were produced at this time.
THE THIRD OF MAY 1808
Spanish Title: El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid
Artist: Francisco Goya
Year: 1814
On May 2, 1808, the people of Madrid rebelled against the occupation of the city by Napoleon’s French army. Goya has captured this uprising in his painting The Second of May 1808. The Third of May 1808, the most famous painting by the artist, depicts the retaliation by the French the following day, during which hundreds of Spaniards were rounded up and shot. The painting has no distinct precedent as it diverges from the traditional depictions of war. Thus it is considered one of the first paintings of the modern era. Famous British art historian Kenneth Clark called Goya’s masterpiece as “the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention.” The Third of May has inspired several renowned paintings by future artists most prominently Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica.
The man in the white shirt was a victim, not a hero - very raw image and very sinister image. No pity for the captured men - three time frames - present - firing squad, waiting to be shot .
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) – Caspar David Friedrich - Germany
Caspar David Friedrich 1774 - is considered the most important German Romantic artist. He is best known for works which put humans amid night skies, morning mists, barren trees, etc. thus illustrating diminished strength of man in the larger scale of life. In this painting, a man, formally dressed and holding a walking cane, stands on an outcropping of rocks with his back to the viewer. Thus the viewer is enabled to see the landscape covered in a thick sea of fog; at which the man looks contemplatively. Friedrich’s use of space illustrates man’s minuscule place in nature. The painting depicts various landmarks from the beautiful Elbe Sandstone Mountains in Saxony in southeastern Germany. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is the most famous work of Caspar David Friedrich. It has become synonymous with the Romantic era and it is the best known landscape painting of the movement.
Landscapes inspired by nature and man - spiritually sublime - nature is utterly dominant - land,sea and air is separated. Use of symbolic meaning - man versus nature - a reaction to something.
Devotional altarpiece - a revered object not just a painting. Ended up in a church as an altar which was frowned on by patrons as nature did not belong in church.
Constable & Turner - UK
JOHN CONSTABLE
(11 June 1776 - 31 March 1837)
John Constable (11 June 1776 - 31 March 1837) was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home - now known as "Constable Country"- which he invested with an intensity of affection. "I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".
His most famous paintings include Dedham Vale of 1802 and The Hay Wain of 1821. Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art, he was never financially successful and did not become a member of the establishment until he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. He sold more paintings in France than in his native England.
To recreate the greenness of the English countryside - a country boy - understood weather - the sheer sense of feeling.
The White Horse -
OVERVIEW
The White Horse by John Constable (1776–1837) is a full-size oil sketch of one of the artist's first large-scale landscape paintings. The final version, now part of the Frick Collection in New York, was first exhibited in 1819 at the Royal Academy and was the beginning of a series of works that became famously known as the "six-footers" for their grand size. The scene is a view from the south bank of the River Stour in the countryside around Suffolk, England, where the artist was born. The barge in the lower left corner is carrying a horse from the towpath on the near side of the river to the opposite bank.
Hidden beneath this painting is a version of another Constable painting, Dedham Vale from the Coombs. The artist reused the canvas and painted over the scene to create the The White Horse sketch. The painting that is visible today was once obscured by paint added by someone other than Constable over a century ago, perhaps in an effort to make it look more finished. Through microscopic examinations, x-radiography, and painstaking analysis, expert conservators and scholars were able to decipher the multiple layers of paint on the canvas. The work was cleaned over a period of several years, from 1992 to 1997, and the lively and well-preserved Constable sketch was revealed.
More information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/british-paintings-16th-19th-centuries.pdf
J Turner
Turner - Rain, Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway 1844
Meme of the Day
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