23. ALBERT BIERSTADT Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), Sunrise, Yosemite Valley , ca. 1870. Oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 52 3/8”. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
27. CHRONOS DEVOURING ONE OF HIS CHILDREN Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) . Chronos Devouring One of His Children , c. 1820-1822. Wall painting in oil on plaster (since detached and transferred to canvas), 57 7/8" x 32 5/8". Museo del Prado, Madrid. Scala/Art Resource, NY.
28. FRANCISCO DE GOYA (1746-1828) Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Family of Charles IV , 1800. Oil on canvas, 9 ' 2" x 11'. Prado, Madrid. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
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30. Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa , diagram showing eye movement toward focal point
31. EUGENE DELACROIX (1798-1863) THE DEATH OF SARDANAPALUS OIL ON CANVAS, 1827, 496 X 392 CM
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33. COMPARE LIBERTY Auguste Bartholdi and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffe.Statue of Liberty, New York, 1875 – 84. National Park Service/Richard Frear Eugène Delacroix (1798–-1863), Liberty Leading the People , 1830 A hallmark of Delacroix’s style is pictorial license .
38. THE SYMPHONY: BEETHOVEN Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller, Ludwig van Beethoven , 1823. Oil on canvas, approx. 28 1/3"" x 22 5/6"". Archiv Breitkopf and Hartel, Leipzig, Germany. Original destroyed in World War II. In his landmark symphonies, Beethoven made use of strong contrasts, of loud and soft sound, the scherzo, and dramatic motifs.
39. PROGRAM MUSIC: BERLIOZ Andrew Geiger, A Concert of Hector Berlioz in 1846 , 1846. Engraving. Musee de l'Opera, Paris, France/ The Bridgeman Art Library. Of nineteenth-century music, it is true to say that the orchestra grew to grand proportions.
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47. BEYOND THE WEST: AFRICA Kente cloth, from Ghana. Asante culture, mid-20th century. Cotton, 79 1/4" x 45“.. Yoruba-style beaded crown, nineteenth century. Beads and mixed media,
The term “romanticism” describes three related developments: first, in the history of Western culture it was a movement that spanned the late 18 th century well into the 20 th century, but dominated the early nineteenth century. As a movement, romanticism reacted against the impersonality and social ills of the industrial Revolution, and more generally against academic convention and authority. Second, as an attitude of mind, romanticism involved a search for free, imaginative expression in personal ,political , and artistic life. Opposed to the rationalism of the Enlightenment , romantics prized intuition and the emotions as vital to creative experience. Romantics glorified the self as hero and looked to nature as a source of divine inspiration. Finally as a style romanticism embraced spontaneity as a source of divine inspiration and imagination in place of neoclassical formality and intellectual discipline. The rebels of their age, romantic artist freed themselves from exclusive dependence on the patronage of the church and the aristocratic court; they indulged a passionate individualism that often alienated them from society. Romantic authors generally exalted nature and made it a prominent subject of their writing. For poets such as Wordsworth, contemplating nature was a means of approaching the sublime, a transcendent quality that they tried to capture in their work. Analyze the excerpt from Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads in the textbook (p. 330). What metaphors does Wordsworth make use of in this fragment? Are his metaphors in this piece direct, indirect, implied, or personified? Have any of his metaphors grown so timeworn as to become clichés? Compare the language in this poem with that of the American romantics Emerson (p. 334), Thoreau (p. 335), and Whitman (p. 335). How do the views of nature expressed by these American authors compare with that expressed by Wordsworth? Which of the authors most successfully employs metaphors to express meaning? Did any of the nineteenth-century authors succeed in capturing the essence of the sublime in their writings?
For 10 years he pursued a policy of conquest. He abolished serfdom, expropriate Church possessions, curtailed feudal privileges, and introduce French laws, institutions and influence. Paintings as propaganda. Napoleon, the first of the modern European dictators, became the 19 th century's first romantic hero, glorified in numerous European poems and paintings, and especially in the majestic portraits of Jacques-Louis David, his favorite artist.
The first emblematic image of the Napoleonic myth, this painting exalts the virtues of the military leader, as embodied by the young General Bonaparte at the head of the Armée d'Italie. In reality, Arcole bridge was not crossed. But that is not important. Here the artist glorifies the episode and makes it part of the legend. Drive, courage, overpowering will pour out of this edgy yet passionate picture. Gros had in fact been present at the Battle of Arcole, and thanks to the intervention of Josephine, he managed to get Bonaparte in Milan to sit for him several times. What Gros highlights is the image of Bonaparte as the providential saviour, the conquering hero who leads his troops, sabre in hand, seizing victory through his bravery alone.
An ambitious composition representing the coronation, which took place on 2 December, 1804, in Notre-Dame cathedral, this canvas took three years of detailed work to complete. David, who had in 1804 received the title of «Premier Peintre de l'Empereur», created a monumental group portrait in which everything conspires to push the viewer's attention towards the central scene. It is in fact the coronation of Josephine, not that of Napoleon, which is the subject of the painting. The harmony of the composition is remarkable, with the figures set either side of the large central gold cross. The huge size of the work (six metres tall by ten metres wide) made it possible to indulge in the remarkable luxury of painting identifying features for each character – even for Madame Mère, who though absent from the ceremony nevertheless dominates the foreground of tribune! In expressing his satisfaction for the painting, Napoleon is said to have remarked: "This is not painting; you walk in this work".
His ambitions were heroic, his military campaigns, were stunning. Having conquered Italy, Egypt, Austria, Prussia, Portugal, and Spain, he pressed on to Russia where , in 1982, bitter weather and lack of food forced his armies to retreat, Only 100,000 of his army of 600,000 survived, In 1813, a coalition of European posers forced his defeat and exile to the island of Elba off the coast of Italy. A second and final defeat occurred after he escaped in 1814, raided a new army, and met the combined European forces led by the English duke of Wellington at the Battle of waterloo in 1815. The fallen hero spent the last years of his life in exile on the barren island of Saint Helena off the west coast of Africa.
The theory of evolution did not originate with Darwin, the French biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) had shown that fossils give evidence of perpetual change in all species. His theory of evolution by natural selection did not deny the idea of a divine Creator – But his theory implied that natural selection not divine will, governed the lineages of living things. (Not supported by the bible) Industrial Revolution T he scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century brought with it advances in methods and technology that would feed directly into the Industrial Revolution.
A traveling physician and a practitioner of black magic, Johann or Georg Faust was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for infinite knowledge and personal experience.
As with the other poets he shared the romantic disdain for convention and authority. He embraced a more mystical view of nature, God ,and humankind. Deeply spiritual , he claimed “to see nature in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower”. this divine vision he brought to his poetry and his paintings.
19 th century was the first great age for female writers. Bronte – 19 th century family life and romantic love. Austen – wittily attacks sentimental love and romantic rapture. First realist in the English novel-writing tradition. Shelley was the daughter of feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft
Stowe – stirred up public sentiment against the brutality and injustice of the system. Originally printed in an antislavery newspaper, her book sold over one million copies within a year. Douglass – taught himself how to read and write at an early age, he escaped bondage in Baltimore in 1838 and eventually found his way to New England, where he joined the Massachusetts antislavery Society.
It was not until the 19 th century that landscape became a primary vehicle for expressing artists’ personal feelings and shifting moods. Constable landscapes celebrate the physical beauty of the rivers, trees, and cottages of his native Suffolk countryside, even as they describe the mundane labors of its inhabitants. He found inspiraton in ordinary subjects.
While Constable’s paintings describe nature as intimate and humble, the landscapes of his English contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner render nature as vast and powerful. He began his career making topographic drawings of picturesque and architectural subjects; these he sold to engravers, who in turn mass produced and marketed them in great numbers. One of these early drawings, like this watercolor calls attention to the transience of worldly beauty and reflects the romantic artist’s nostalgia for the Gothic past.
Corot shared the preference for working outdoors, but he brought to his landscapes a breathtaking sense of harmony and tranquility . He created luminescent landscapes that are intimate and contemplative. He called them souvenirs, that is , “remembrances,” to indicate that they were recollections of previous visual experiences, rather than on –the–spot accounts.
Panorama and painstaking precision are features found in the topographic landscapes of the Hudson River school- a group of artists who worked chiefly in the region of upstate NY during the 1830’s and 1840’s. One of the leading figures of the Hudson River school was the British born Cole. He achieved a dramatic mood by framing the brightly lit hills and river of the distant vista with the darker thunderstorm and tree.
Intrigued by America’s drive to settle the West, 19 th century artists such as the German-born Bierstadt made panoramic depictions of that virginal territory. His landscape of the rocky Mountains, which includes a Native American encampment in the foreground, reflects his fascination with the temple like purity of America’s vast, rugged spaces along the western frontier. The isolated settlement, dwarfed and enshrined by snowcapped mountains , a magnificent waterfall, and a liking glass lake – all batted in golden light- is an American Garden of Eden, inhabited by tribes of unspoiled “noble savages.”
He popularized the image of Native Americans as people who deeply respected nature and the natural worlds. He recorded their lives and customs in literature, as well as in hundreds of drawings and paintings. He popularized the image of Native Americans as people who deeply respected nature and the natural world. Beginning in the 1830’s under pressure from the United States government tribes were forced to cede their homelands and their hunting grounds to white settlers and to move into unoccupied lands in teh American West.
Horrified by the guerrilla violence of the French occupation, he became a bitter social critic, producing some of the most memorable records of human warfare and savagery in the history of western art. This painting was Goya’s nationalistic response to the events ensuing from an uprising of Spanish suspects in the streets Madrid and brutally executed them in the city outskirts . Goya recorded the episode against a dark sky and an ominous urban skyline. In the foreground, an off-center lantern emits a triangular beam of light that illuminates the fate of the Spanish rebels: Some lie dead in pools of blood, while others cover their faces in fear an d horror. Goya invested the composition with imaginative force. His emphatic contrasts of light and dark, theatrical use of color, and graphic details heighten the intensity of a contemporary political event.
“ The disasters of War,” a series of etchings that Goya produced in the years of the French occupation of Spain. The gruesome prints have their source in historical fact as well as in Goya’s imagination. This print is a shocking record of the inhuman cruelty of Napoleon’s troops, as well as a reminder that the heroes of modern war are often its innocent victims.
Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya . It depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn ), who, fearing that his children would overthrow him, ate each one upon their birth. It is one of the series of Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. The work was transferred to canvas after Goya's death and now resides in the Museo del Prado in Madrid . In 1819, Goya purchased a house on the banks of Manzanares near Madrid called Quinta del Sordo ( Villa of the Deaf Man ). It was a small two-story house which was named after a previous occupant who had been deaf, although the name was fitting for Goya too, who had been left deaf after contracting a fever in 1792. Between 1819 and 1823, when he left the house to move to Bordeaux , Goya produced a series of 14 works, which he painted with oils directly onto the walls of the house. At the age of 73, and having survived two life-threatening illnesses, Goya was likely to have been concerned with his own mortality, and was increasingly embittered by the civil strife occurring in Spain. Although he initially decorated the rooms of the house with more inspiring images, in time he overpainted them all with the intense haunting pictures known today as the Black Paintings . Uncommissioned and never meant for public display, these pictures reflect his darkening mood with some intense scenes of malevolence and conflict. [1]
Originally he was a court painter for Charles IV of Spain.
The painting that brought Gericault instant fame, The Raft of the “Medusa,” immortalized a dramatic event that made headlines in his own time: the wreck of a government frigate called the “Medusa” and the ghastly fate of its survivors. When the ship his a reef 50 miles off the coast of West Africa, the inexperienced captain. A political appointee, tried ignobly to save himself and his crew, who filled the few available lifeboats. Over a hundred passengers piled on to a makeshift raft. Which was to be towed by the lifeboats. Cruelly, the crew set the raft adrift, With almost no food and supplies, chances of survival were scant; after almost two weeks, in which most died and several resorted to cannibalism, the raft was sighted and fifteen survivors were rescued.
Gericault ( a staunch opponent of the regime that appointed the captain of the “Medusa”) was so fired by newspaper reports of the tragedy that he resolved to immortalize it in paint. He interviewed the few survivors, made drawing of the mutilated corpses in the Paris morgue, and even had a model of the raft constructed in his studio. The result was enormous, both in size (the canvas measures 16 ‘ 1” x 23’6”) and in dramatic impact, This landmark painting elevated ordinary men to the position of heroic combatants in the eternal struggle against the forces of nature and celebrated their collective heroism in confronting deadly danger.
A melancholic and an intellectual, Delacroix prized the imagination as “paramount” in the life of the artist, “ Strange as it may seem,” he observed in his journal, “the great majority of people are devoid of imagination. Not only do they lack the keen, penetrating imagination which would show them to see objects in a vivid way- that could lead them, as it were, to the very root of things-but they are equally incapable of any clear understanding of works in which imagination predominates.” Arab influence. Delacroix loved dramatic narrative; he favored sensuous and violent subjects drawn from contemporary life, popular literature, and ancient and medieval history. A six-month visit to Morocco, neighbor of France’s newly conquered colony of Algeria, was to have a lifelong impact on his interest in exotic subjects and his love of light and color, He depicted the harem women Islamic Africa recorded the poignant and shocking results of the Turkish massacres in Greece. His paintings of human and animal combat are filled with fierce vitality. Such works are faithful to his declaration, “I have no love for reasonable painting.”
When King Charles X (1757-1836) dissolved the French legislature and took measures to repress voting rights and freedom of the press, liberal leaders, radicals, and journalists rose in rebellion. Delacroix envisioned this rebellion as a monumental drama with a handsome, bare-breasted female-the personification of liberty- leading a group of French rebels through the narrow streets of Paris and over barricades strewn with corpses. A bayonet in one had and the tricolor flag of France in the other, Liberty presses forward to challenge the forces of tyranny She is champion of “the people” : the middle class, as represented by the gentleman in a frock coat; the lower class, as symbolized by the scruffy youth carrying pistols: and racial minorities, as conceived in the black saber-bearer at the left. She is, moreover, France itself, the banner-bearer of the spirit of nationalism that infused 19 th century European history.
A hallmark of his style, and romantic painting in general, was pictorial license- the artist’s freedom to romanticize form and content, In Here for instance, the nudity of the rebel in the left foreground had no basis in reality- it is uncommon to lose one’s trousers in combat – however, the detail serves to emphasize human vulnerability and the imminence of death in battle, “ The most sublime effects of every master,” argued Delacroix, “ are often the result of pictorial license… Mediocre painters never have sufficient daring, they never get beyond themselves.” Delacroix’s Liberty instantly became a symbol of democratic aspirations. In 1884 France sent as a gift of friendship to the young American national monumental copper and cast-iron statue of an idealized female bearing a tablet and a flaming torch. Designed by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi the Statue of Liberty is the “sister” of Delacroix's painted heroine; it has become a landmark of freedom for oppressed people everywhere.
In sculpture as in painting, heroic subjects served the cause of nationalism
Romantic Architecture: the taste for medieval and other remote or exotic styles, Neomedievalism – the revival of medieval culture- served the ideals of nationalism, exalting the state by patriotic identification with the past.
Scherzo - a lively and often playful or humorous movement in a musical composition, usually the third of four
Tchaikovsky – Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and sleeping Beauty
Romantic ballets such as La sylphide derived their plot lines from fairy tales and folk legends.
Wagner wrote his own librettos (the words in a opera) and composed scores that brought to life the fabulous events and personalities featured in German folk tales and legends.
Goya - Horrified by the guerrilla violence of the French occupation, he became a bitter social critic, producing some of the most memorable records of human warfare and savagery in the history of western art. Wagner - He wrote his own librettos (the words in a opera) and composed scores that brought to life the fabulous events and personalities featured in German folk tales and legends.
Wordsworth- this work marked the romantic movement in England . Shelley- he appeals to the wind – a symbol of restless creativity- to drive his visions throughout the universe. Keats – wrote about the fleeting nature of life’s pleasures. He lost both his mother and brother to tuberculosis, and he died from it at 25. the threat of imminent death seems to have produced in Keats a heightened awareness of the virtues of beauty, love, and friendship. Byron – was one of the most flamboyant personalities of the age. Dedicated to pleasures of the senses, he was equally impassioned by the ideals of liberty and brotherhood.