ROMANTICISM

Romanticism in France and Spain



Romanticism in France and Spain

Introduction

Romanticism

Romanticism came about as a reaction to the Enlightenment, which was based on the principles of rationalism. The romantic poets and artists wanted to escape from the oppression of rationalism into an exotic and personal form of art and literature, called the Romanticism. In the intervening time, the Industrial Revolution brought about a transformation of the society and people's point of views.

Romanticism in art was a movement that lasted from 1800 to 1850. The paintings are characterized by an extremely inspired and individual approach, blended with emotional passion, and an illusory and imaginative quality. The Romantic art strives to express intense feelings and is too vague and mystical and for that reason is indefinable. The essence of Romanticism was an infinite desire to be individualistic and free. The romantics had an affinity for nature. They went after the wild and exotic aspects of nature, and their work was characterized by melodrama and melancholia that had the power to stir wonder and fervor.

French Romanticism

The Romanticism in France concurred with the Napoleonic Wars of 1799-1815. Therefore, the initial French romantic painters found were inspired by the contemporary events. The artists shifted from neoclassicism to romanticism by changing their style of expression from somber to a more multihued and emotional one. The French Romantics' paintings were characterized by coloristic and vivid tendencies and portrayed suffering and endurance. The brushstrokes were powerful and employed a contradiction of dark and light tones to heighten the sense of essential human condition.

Spanish Romanticism

The Romanticism in art spanned almost until the first half of the 19th century, in Spain. It was profoundly under the influence of the political and social revolutions that started in the 18th century as an outcome of the Age of Enlightenment. The Spanish Romanticism was stylistically more liberalized and expressive than its forerunners. The subjects of the paintings were mostly everyday things but they were portrayed in a powerful and unrestrained manner. The Romantic art was characterized by the representation of human psyche in an artistic style. Fearsome, dark, and frightening figures were often found in the paintings. This depicted the popular negative conceptions prevalent in the era in a sardonic manner. All this art was a reflection of psychological attitudes, illustrating the worst of human fears and betrayal.

Discussion

Virgin Adoring the Host by Jean-August-Dominique Ingres

Ingres received a commission while serving as director of the French Academy in Rome. The Russian czarevitch, who became Alexander II asked Ingres to paint a devotional illustration of the Virgin and the Host with the two patron saints of Russia, Nicholas Alexander Nevsky. The painting was finished in 1842, and was put to critical acclaim in Paris in the same year prior to its shipment to Saint Petersburg.

Later the painter lamented the loss of his painting to France, and for that reason went on to make four variants of the rigorously Raphaelesque composition. In the reproduction he replaced the Russian saints with the French Helena and ...