Romanticism: Identity and Difference

Romanticism: Identity and Difference

1. Orientalism

   • Accurate observation
     • William Holman Hunt
     • Young Arab, Vernet
       • Civilised
         • Delacroix noticed a nobility which reminded him of the ancient greeks
         • They had retained the order that the western world had lost
         • Dignified
     • Prayer in the mosque at Amir, Gerome,1872
     • Recording the untouched land and culture of the orient, where Jesus lived, because the orient was becoming modernised - a record before everyone started to wear a baseball cap!
       • Biblical
         • The finding of the Saviour in the temple, W H Hunt
         • Judah and Tamar, Vernet
         • Christian Artists
         • Untouched biblical world being modernised - a record before this started to happen
       • Record of architecture and customs
         • Expanding western knowledge
     • Places actually seen by the artist
       • Accuracy and respect
   • Imagined
     • Odalisque with Slave, 1842, Ingres
       • Ingres hadn't been there
         • Instrument a still life of one brought back by someone
         • He makes it different, sensual and exotic
     • Harem Scenes
       • Ingres, Harem Scene, 1863
         • Finished it when he was 83!! Painted young naked ladies
       • Gerome, Grand Bath in Turkey
         • Different sexual morality
       • No christian man could go into a harem - only the sultan could
   • Middle East
     • Opened up to western world with Napoleon's invasion
       • Colonisation
         • Trade opened up
   • Exotic and different

2. Problems with style labels

   • History painting
     • Classical subject, Romantic style
       • Modea, 1838, Delacroix
         • Had children with Jason and he was going to send her away when he got bored
         • She takes her sons to a cave to kill them
           • Strongly lit wriggling children and Modea
         • Looking back over her shoulder to check they aren't following her
         • Emotion, movement
           • Energised
             • Triangular composition
               • Madona and Child
                 • Twisted the serenity into something murderous and nasty
                   • Romantic
                   • They also painted mentally ill patients
         • Shadow over half her face
           • Can't fully see her expression of dispair
       • Marcus Aurelius, Delacroix, 1845
         • Romantic artist
         • Romantic: Softer brushwork, bright colour, death of a man (emotional)
         • Classical subject matter: death of a Roman emperor
           • Handing over the empire to Comodus (baddie)
         • Classical: Frieze-like composition
       • Death of Sardanapalus, 1827
         • Poem by Lord Byron (scottish romantic poet)
           • Sardanapalus' (ancient east) enemies coming to topple empire
             • He has a holocaust and takes everything with him
               • Palace burning behind him
               • His soldiers masacaring the women of his hareem as he relaxes amidst the bloodletting
                 • Energetic movement
                 • Lies on bright red bed
   • Classical composition and sculptural modeling, Romantic colours, sky, landscape and story
     • Raft of Medusa, Géricault, 1819
       • Enormous
       • Louis 16th sent a ship manned by incompitant officers
         • Landed on a sandbank
         • Raft of 120 people
           • Delacroix posed for one of the figures
         • Gericault used it to criticise the monarchy
           • Political scandal when exhibited at the salon that year
             • Important stylistic shift from neoclassicism to something more modern and highly charged in emotion and mood with dramatic contrasts between light and dark
       • Neoclassical: strong lighting, sculptural
       • Baroque diagonal
         • In narative and composition
           • Man of dispair, grieving over his son at lower left, to hope, upper right who waves a flag at a ship spotted on the horizon
       • Pathetic fallacy
         • Weather used to represent mood
           • Storms overhead but light of hope on the horizon - they are going to be rescued
       • Went to the mortuary and painted still lifes of severed heads and arms
         • Toyed with painting the cannibalism that took place
           • Head, arm and torso lower left - cannibalism??
     • Roger and Angelica, Ingres, 1819
       • Neoclassical artist
       • Classical: highly finished, sculptural, frieze-like
       • Angelica tied to the rock: exaggerated pose
         • Drawn with exaggeration - the neck
       • Romantic subject matter
         • Damsel in distress
     • The Dream of Ossian, 1813, Ingres
       • Scottish myth
         • Imagined myth from the north
           • Romantic: Fantasy, imaginary, fiction, dream
       • Monochrome sculptural figures (mythic warriors) - lit in a neoclassical way
       • Another pupil of David
     • Riots in Cairo, 1810, Girodet (David's pupil)
       • Neoclassical: Frieze-like composition
         • Profiles
         • Shallow picture space
       • Romantic in colour, drama, bloodshed and exoticism of the east
         • 1798 invasion by Napoleon
         • Dramatic, energetic
   • Classical style with romantic elements
     • Napoleon Crossing the St Bernard's pass, David
       • Classical: Sculptural, frieze-like composition, cool handling of paint
       • Romantic: dramatic, heroic, larger than life (literally and in importance of the figure)
   • Neoclassicism was adaptable to Romantic characteristics
     • Mood, colour, stylistc, drama, the hero
     • Flexibility of styles
   • Art doesn't move from one style to the next in separate categories - it is one continuous evolution and development
     • Affected by politics, culture etc like David

3. Weather and the sky

4. Landscape

   • Realism
     • The group of oaks at Apremont, Rousseau, 1852
       • Portrait of the trees
         • Carefully observed and detailed
       • Deeply identified with nature
         • Deforrestation painted and called "masacre of the innocence"
           • Romantic
       • Timelessnes of nature and feableness of man
         • The trees have lasted more generations than the farmers beneath them - like Keats' Ode to a Nightingale (atleast 30 years earlier) in which he talks about the never changing song of the bird - how many generations it has seen... heard by ancients and contemporaries alike
   • 1820 shift to national/patriotic landscape painting
     • Nationhood rising in Europe after Napoleon had squashed a lot of nations
       • National folklaw
         • Hans Christian Anderson around this time
       • Constable in England
       • Painting of Chartres cahtedral
         • The medieval styles of the Gothic in France - National
       • France: The picturesque old buildings
         • Pierefonds (tres riche heurs)
         • People want to hold onto what they know in a fast progressing society - industrial revolution

5. Opposite of Classicism

   • Feeling, passion, vibrant, unbalanced
   • Classicism had been hijacked by Napoleon - with the restored monarchy they needed a different style
   • Didn't entirely reject classicism or the past - looked at the changeless orient, medieval too, ancient literature - didn't reject the past
     • But did look at the modern and contemporary literature and politics too

6. Theodore Géricault

   • The Charging Chasseur, 1812
     • Life-size
     • French Cavalry officer turning round, urging his men to fight on with him
       • Heroic
       • Something he had actually witnessed
     • The year Napoleon was at his height, the year he tried to invade Russia
   • The Wounded Cuirassier, 1814
     • Off his horse, vulnerable, looking anxious over his shoulder, thunder clouds
       • Echo's Napoleon's collapse

7. Derived from "roman" the french word for a novel

   • Associations with literature - the idea of a story
     • Delacroix was a very literary artist
     • Hamlet's Ophelia
     • Byron
     • Sir Walter Scott - the abduction of Rebecca
     • Romantic writers floated his boat
       • Extreme and emotive

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