Romanticism was an artistic movement that began in the late 18th century and affected many art forms. Unlike Neoclassicists who valued order and reason, Romantics believed in imagination, emotion, and individualism. They often portrayed nature as wild rather than orderly and showed individuals as small within vast landscapes. Romantic artists also explored themes of horror, madness, and the supernatural.
2. Romanticism was a multi-layered movement that took many
forms and affected most branches of the arts. It began in the late 18 th
century and flowered most fully in the early 19 th.
Unlike the Neoclassicists who promoted order and reason, the
Romantics believed in the power of the imagination, emotion and
individualism. These qualities could be evoked in very different ways.
Much of their work was focused on the past but was typically set in the
Middle Ages rather than classical antiquity. While classical artists
reshaped nature to suit their ordered compositions, the Romantics
portrayed it as wild and ungovernable. In their landscapes, some
Romantic painters liked to show the individual as being dwarfed by the
forces of nature, which were portrayed as an expression of human
emotions and often given a mystical or visionary role.
At the same time, a sense of individualism can also be linked to
the spirit of rebellion that epitomizes the Romantic era. Its anti-rationalist
overtones led artists to explore themes that were linked with horror,
madness, violence and the supernatural. There was also a taste for the
exotic.
73. The Romantic movement in Germany was led by a
group of artists known as the Nazarenes (c.1809-30), who
sought to revive honesty and spirituality in Christian art. This
was most obvious from their attempts to mimic the lifestyle of
the painter-monks from the early Renaissance. The term
“Nazarene” stemmed from their communal, semi-monastic
lifestyle and their affectation of wearing biblical clothing and
hair styles.
Contemporary critics believed that the Nazarenes were
responsible for the rebirth of German art, although they
conceded that much of their work was focused on the past. The
Nazarenes were also closely linked with the upsurge of
nationalist sentiments in Germany, which led some of their
members to portray patriotic themes from German history and
legend. The Nazarenes also attempted to revive the art of
medieval fresco painting.