Neoclassicism and Romanticism: summary of the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Notes on the main exponents of the two artistic currents.
Neoclassicism and Romanticism in Art
During the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment , reason and knowledge became fundamental tools to promote culture and equality among men. Society was based on reason and knowledge, and it was believed that ignorance should be overcome. During this period, the phenomenon of enlightened absolutism occurred, in which rulers promoted reforms with the intent of limiting the privileges of the nobility and clergy, who oppressed society. This movement was also reflected in art, with Neoclassicism as an example of beauty, harmony and rigor.
The concept of nation was also born during this period, where people shared a common history, language, culture and religion. This patriotic feeling led to the birth of Romanticism, a movement characterized by a strong passion for fighting for one’s nation. Romanticism harked back to the Middle Ages , a period purified from classical models in which rationality had not yet taken a definitive form.
The relationship between man and nature underwent a change during Romanticism: although man appeared small in comparison to nature, it still offered a joyful and dramatic relationship.
David Friedrich
He was a German painter, an exponent of Romantic art . He is one of the most important representatives of the “symbolic landscape”. He based his painting on a careful observation of the landscapes of Germany. He considered the natural landscape as a divine work. The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. In the foreground is depicted a man with a dark figure contemplating the panorama below, covered by a sea of fog. In the background are depicted mountains that disappear into the cloudy sky. The work is faithful to the Romantic style and we can see the traveler as a metaphor for the unknown future. Sea of Ice. The painting represents a shipwreck in a sea of ice broken into an infinite myriad of pieces, which have accumulated to form a jagged mountain. The thick sheets of ice rise monumentally and determine a sort of disturbing spiral movement. The observer’s gaze is therefore focused almost exclusively on the central part of the painting. The shipwreck becomes the incarnation of the fragility of man at the mercy of the elements.
William Turner
William Turner is an English painter, famous for having studied the atmospheric effects, he often approached the most dramatic aspects of nature that caused him feelings of anguish and torment. In his works, in fact, he often depicted landscapes at the mercy of storms. He was fascinated by the dramatic relationship between man and nature and saw machines and industries as monsters that infested the natural environment.
In one of his works, entitled “Rain, Steam and Speed”, the painter depicted a train running along the tracks. The landscape was very vaguely defined and, at first glance, the image appeared blurry and hidden by the fog, with the outline of the train barely visible. The lack of detail and the blurred shapes gave the impression of the great speed at which the train was traveling.
In this work, the landscape played a fundamental role, and the painter devoted meticulous research to the effect of humidity and steam.
John Constable
Constable was an English painter who adhered to the poetics of the picturesque, in fact he loved to represent country landscapes. He painted the famous Leaping Horse , where the horse is depicted in the act of jumping over one of the obstacles placed on the road to prevent the cattle from scattering. The sparkling luminosity that characterizes Constable ‘s landscapesalso comes from small touches of pure white. This effect is obtained by the vibration of the light reflected by the water, by the humid vapor of the grasses and tree trunks.
Johann Fussli
Fussli is considered one of the great English artists even though he was born in Germany. As a young man he visited Italy, especially Rome, where he could admire the works of Michelangelo. His scenes are visionary, in fact he prefers the themes of dreams and fantasy. The erotic and spectral component of color is very important. Characteristics : liberation of the ego during the dream, where the soul takes power over reason. The painting The Nightmare : The girl seems to have almost suffocated her breathing. There is a mare, a young mare that in the Middle Ages was thought to take away nightmares. The image is devoid of any reference to reality, while there is a reference to the erotic. It is a typically romantic painting because there is a process of freedom of the soul.
Theodore Gericault
Theodore Gericault : he traveled to Rome to admire classical art. His poetics is suspended between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, with a greater propensity towards romantic sensitivity . Wounded Cuirassier Abandoning the Battlefield: This painting is linked to the Napoleonic defeat. The distance from the battlefield, the lack of any expression of suffering on the face of the wounded soldier and the attention entirely focused on formal perfection make this work a neoclassical work. The Raft of the Medusa : This work is romantic because it represents the condition of man between desperation and hope. We can notice a compositional pyramid: at the base there are the destroyed men, gradually those who try to get up and at the top the hope. It has a clear historical political reference to Napoleonic France in failure. We can identify neoclassical elements, in fact the figures are classical and the anatomical composition is typically neoclassical.
Eugène Delacroix
Source: ansa
The artist Eugene Delacroix distanced himself very early from neoclassical poetics and became the greatest of the French romantic painters. His art embodies the melancholy of romanticism, the desire for change, the aversion to academicism, the reference to the facts of medieval history. Liberty Leading the People : In 1829 Charles X interrupted the freedom of the press and implemented a series of anti-popular reforms. In 1830 the people rose up, Charles X was dethroned and Louis of Orleans rose to power, giving life to a constitutional monarchy. Delacroix represents this event in Liberty Leading the People. From the background we understand that we are in Paris because we can glimpse the Bastille. The naked woman has an allegorical value, in fact it represents freedom.
The use of the Phrygian cap, which was used in ancient Rome by free slaves, is particular. The images are represented very clearly despite the dark colors.
Francesco Hayez
Francesco Hayez was born in Venice, his master who inspired him was Titian from the point of view of pictorial execution. The neoclassical imprint in Italy was so strong that it would slow down the romantic vein.
The Kiss: It is a highly pre-romantic scene. The setting and the content are pre-romantic and express patriotic criteria in an elevated form. The sweet and furtive kiss was immediately interpreted as the conspirator’s farewell. The figures of the two young people stand out clearly against a wall of squared stones. The girl is completely abandoned in the embrace. Her sinuous figure is embellished by the iridescent and shiny reflections of the silk dress.
Camille Corot
Camille Corot is the spokesperson of a new artistic movement: realism . This contrasts with romanticism by no longer privileging the empathic relationship between man and nature but by setting itself the goal of representing reality exactly as it appears to our eyes without allegorical reference to something else. The artist places himself in front of reality and nature without historical, religious or mythical conditioning; furthermore, realism in the representation of landscapes as in the case of Corot limits itself to proposing nature in a faithful manner without making implicit edifying effects, detaching itself from the characteristics of the picturesque which on the contrary stimulated the imagination through reality in which the effect of the passing of time and the intervention of man was recognizable. The realistic current found fertile ground in the Barbizon school which, contrary to what the name might suggest, was anything but an academy: a group of artists linked by friendship but above all by common inspiration met periodically in the village of Barbizon and went into the forest of Fontainebleau to create their landscapes. Corot himself took up the landscape themes which he personally enriched with architecture as can be seen in the work “The Cathedral of Chartres”, in which the Gothic style of the cathedral is proposed, with the bell towers standing out in the centre of the painting. They are contrasted by the trees on the right, just as the contrast between the mass of the building’s walls and the grassy hills and the pile of stones under construction that stand out in the foreground is visible. The painting originally consisted of the previous characteristics but 42 years later the artist added the small cart in the distance and the figure in the foreground sitting on the stone. The composition is evidently measured and controlled and is the result of a direct observation of reality from which the artist draws two fundamental characteristics: the forms and the chromatic values. The former highlight and build the volumes while the latter put them in relation to each other by matching various shades of color to determine always new and fresh effects of light.
Gustave Coubert
Gustave Coubert fits into the historical context of the French riots of 1848, following which the social conditions of the lower classes were miserable and depraved. The artists of French realism, and in particular Coubert, felt obliged not to “deceive” the observer through false or inconsistent subjects and to document reality in the most detached and analytical way possible. In this sense, Coubert proposed to minutely note the characteristics of the world around him, abstaining as much as possible from any subjective interpretation. In particular, the artist expressed through his works his private battle against the bourgeoisie and consequently against academic art considered an expression of the bourgeoisie itself, setting himself the goal of exalting the heroism of reality.
