The Romantic Era (pt. 19)

Romanticism brought out the heroism of Modern life.  As the middle class had entered into the limelight of artistic interest, the problem of otherwise boring subjects were met with passionately exaggerated imagery of chivalry, valor, and courage.  In an increasingly industrial age, when most of the English middle class's daily routine consisted of the highly regimented monotony of unskilled labor, the Romantic artist sought to instill a spirit of grandeur and adventure into the otherwise ordinary mundaneness of life.  And although there are some elements of Realism in these paintings (graphic imagery or more honest subject matter), it's setting a precedent of greater weight than what it depicts.  Everyday events brought out the dignity of the common man and the honor in basic human behavior.

So we see Thomas Eakins The Gross Clinic as a Romantic exemplar.  Here we see the dramatic lighting of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa translated into the very ordinary setting of a clinical auditorium.  The figures (probably medical students) sitting in the stands fall back into the darkness, and all light rains down on the doctor after whom the painting is named (no, it's not called "Gross" because he has blood on his fingers; the doctor's name was Gross).  He is the stateliest figure, a picture of stalwart authority and wisdom, unflinching, and wholly professional in demeanor.  One viewer sitting to the side, an older lady, shrinks back in alarm at the profuse amount of blood involved in the operation, but the brave doctor carries on with the procedure with unwavering fortitude.  His fellow staff members work diligently on the body being dissected, handling their responsibilities very seriously so as not to injure the patient—but also so as not to injure their professional standing with the doctor.  He is their boss; he is the future generation's instructor and model; and he is perhaps the savior of this patient's life.  Risen to such a level, we can but admire the dignity of this most honorable doctor who is lit from above with a most dramatic lighting, as from heaven itself.  Perhaps a saint, definitely a hero, and most clearly a man, this otherwise common Pennsylvanian doctor here becomes immortalized under the artistic style of Romantic painting.  Painted in 1875, this late Romantic painting is considered Thomas Eakins' masterpiece as well as a masterpiece of late Romantic and Realist art.

The Romantic Era (pt. 18)

Turner became an oil landscape painter after practicing first as a watercolor painter.  We can see the influence it had on his oil paintings, which largely appear, well, watercolory (for lack of a better term).  He did not pay attention to nature in realistic detail—as in, focusing on all of the minutiae to create a more photorealistic-looking image—but rather focused on the effects that light and atmosphere have on the subject matter.  He used blurred forms and intense colors to create the effect of a scene, rather than the scene itself.  (In other words, according to his philosophy, a night scene would be painted almost completely black, even though that doesn't make for a very exciting painting to look at, because it is how one would see it in real life).  Understanding this, we can see why Turner would approach, say, a snowstorm in such a stylistic manner.

This is Turner's painting of a Steamboat off a Harbor's Mouth during a snowstorm.  In the style of the Dark Romantics tackling the darker side of Romantic life, this painting is Turner's view of nature at its most violent.  His brushstrokes are harsh and disarrayed to demonstrate the wildness of nature.  There is not much color, and yet have you ever seen a more dramatic painting?  The fierceness of Tuner's subject seems to scream out at us—but no doubt in muffled cries overwhelmed by the almighty gusts of this tempestuous wind here pictured.  In fact, we hardly do see a subject at all; I can't discern too much of the steamboat in the painting, can you?  We can kind of see the flagpole and the flag in the center there, but not much else.  All we see is wind, icy and hostile, overpowering…something: it's too distorted by the awesome power of the storm to tell exactly what.  Nature in this painting is anything but tame and tranquil; this is nature at its most precarious, threatening, and utterly inhospitable.  Therefore different ideologically from its Romantic counterparts, the painting nevertheless falls into the same Romantic category of classification for reasons of historicity and subject matter continuity.  Even so, we can see how this is unlike any other Romantic work of art that we have looked at.  The style in which it was painted, too, proves wholly unique upon inspection.

At first wholly unintelligible, this work presents a dizzying image of the effect a snowstorm would have on an environment and one's vision of it.  Instead of detail, the artist has used bold, sweeping color and light.  Even though we can see the flagpole of the steamboat in the center, this work does not look very real, does it?  That is because Turner was painting abstract things like speed, wind, and atmosphere instead of tangible things like rocks, trees, and animals.  In this way, these kinds of paintings by J. M. W. Turner were remarkably ahead of their time, before Impressionism and Abstract Art would adopt the same approach to art—to create a feeling of an environment, instead of a literal, snapshot image; and to try to paint abstract concepts onto the canvas alongside the real objects.  This is a critical shift in art.  Just look at the splashing paint on this canvas.  If I hadn't told you it was a snowstorm, would you have known what this was an image of?

Although I connected some of Turner's subject matter here with the literary movement of the Dark Romantics merely by marking similarities on their treatment of nature as a darker entity than typical Romantic artists would have, there is still little explicit material to inextricably link J. M. W. Turner with the Dark Romantic movement.  He lived his whole life as a student of Romanticism, and even today his artwork still continues to be read as Romantic in style.  He died on December 19, 1851, and is noted to have said, as his final words, "The sun is God."

The Romantic Era (pt. 17)

Nature has been idealized for a long time, hasn't it?  We've seen the near-apotheosis of it in Thomas Cole's Course of the Empire, and artists like John Constable painted landscapes that became instantly popular for their beauty and serenity.  Nature, as we discussed, was held in high regard during the Romantic Period (one has only to read Wordsworth, Blake, or Keats to understand that most clearly), but another characterization of nature sprouted around the same time; and this alternate approach was the work of a separate sect of rebellious writers and artists called the Dark Romantics.  The Dark Romantics (as their name suggests) approached the same Romantic subjects as their contemporaries—i.e., nature, the noble savage, and the dual concepts of both pastoral and ideological utopian perfection—but approached them in a darker manner.  Mary Shelley's Frankenstein perfectly exemplifies the style, for in the novel the "noble savage" concept is flipped into the genre of Gothic horror; it gets pushed to unsettling extremes.  Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville are among the most prolific writers of this movement.  Contrary to the beautiful paradise which the Romantics had made of nature, the Dark Romantics took a decidedly negative, but no less reverent view, of the natural world.  In Dark Romantic literature, nature is a scary and dangerous place, and mankind, whether bred in tranquil pastures or industrial mills, is a dark being, naturally corrupt, not to be trusted, and often evil to the core.  The subjects range from the immediately didactic to the tacitly creepy.  Poe's poem "The Raven" subtly disquiets readers with eerie portrayals of nature's cold-heartedness in the form of the mysterious, black raven, and Herman Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick depicts anything but the friendly side of nature.  Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter takes a dark view of humanity's moral state in an otherwise pure, natural setting (the Puritan colonies of the New World, in which the story is set), and Robert Browning's poem "Porphyria's Lover" goes quite a step further in characterizing the heart of man in only the most horrific and disturbing light.  Some of this stuff is pretty creepy!  (Goya's later art would fit well here, I suppose).

All this to say, whether or not you would call this darker interpretation of nature and the human condition a more "realistic" worldview does not enter into the classification of these literary works as Romantic—they are Dark Romantic.  Likewise, art of this time period which produced a negative view of nature was perhaps in opposition to the ideological tenets of Romantic philosophy but was no less Romantic in subject matter.  Therefore, at least traditionally, it falls under the label of Romantic artwork.  However, I must stress again the reality that art forms blended heavily together during the mid-19^th century.  Romantic art is sometimes more Realist in execution, and vice-versa.  So, I learned Joseph M. W. Turner's work as being a part of Romanticism, even though he painted nature in quite a different light; but be aware that his work draws heavily from the soon-to-be-established Realists, which we will see in the next section.

The Romantic Era (pt. 16)

As we get closer and closer to Modernism in art, a new wave of artistic style is developed called Realism.  The initial stages of Realist development in Western art history was concerned with exactly what you might think: depicting things realistically.  This is not the same as painting in the style of photorealism, which was simply a device for making images look three-dimensional and life-like.  The realistic elements of this type of art form dealt with a different worldview—not so much how one paints but what one paints.  The early Realists asserted themselves by choosing not to exclude a scene's more racy or ugly elements so that they might paint an accurate picture of the world as it truly is.  We will see this in a little while more as a shift in focus, from aristocratic to middle-class subject matter, from majestic Greco-Roman themes to images of everyday life.  One way to see it is to remember Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, in which the artist did not hold back from displaying the haggard and naked bodies of suffering men—not necessarily an image we want to see, but nonetheless an image that we can see is real.  (Of course, Géricault painted his scenes in a quintessentially Romantic way, as we saw; but the concepts for future Realist painters were set down in artworks such as that).  For now, however, the early forms of Realism combined with Romantic techniques in highly stylized images of Romantic subject matter, such as nature.

The Romantic Era (pt. 15)

Millet's masterpiece, entitled The Angelus, is another, much more highly Romanticized version of the same idea.  Here is a scene neither of revolution nor of war.  We're on a simple farm, looking at two humble peasants standing in prayer, alone in the fields at dusk.  In this landscape we actually do see a church steeple far off in the background, and I think you know why.  The Angelus depicts these two farm workers ideally, as humble and reverent saints, the man taking his hat off, the woman with her hands clasped as if in prayer, and both with their heads bowed.  This shows them to be devout people regardless of their poor economic status—maybe even more devout for being "poor in spirit."  The light also (as always) represents God's presence; and here it is dramatically painted with exaggerated tenebrism to stress the notion that His compassion descends even toward the lower class.  After all, the center focus of this painting is on their piety, not the church way off in the background.  This natural faith of the common man is idealized as the perfect form of Christianity.  Jean-François Millet is artistically associating nature, the lower class, and a simple farmer's faith with spiritual perfection.  We've come a long way from grandiose artwork of Greek gods and biblical heroes.  These two, simple, faceless workers are nothing less than the heroes of the Modern age, and their plain, agrarian landscape, the new stage for the great drama of life.

It's hard to look at this painting without feeling a sense of profundity for the scene taking place, despite (or probably because of) its humble setting and characters.  In some ways, a deeply spiritual lesson or moral from this "story" is almost inevitable, and it was for this reason that future generations would lash against such a work.  Artist Salvador Dalí satirized it with a mock-recreation of the scene in his own painting with the same title as Millet's work.  (When we get to Dalí—still a ways off—we will look at his painting).  The original painting, it can be argued, does not lend any praise to the lower class at all but instead undermines its supposedly favorable characterization of the poor through prescribing aristocratic traits onto otherwise ignoble figures.  This is very Anti-imperialist.  The feeling is that only by showing these two peasants as subservient to the doctrines of Western evangelicalism are they held to amount to any importance in society, in government, and in the world as a whole.  (In other words, Millet's Angelus has been considered offensive for trying to make the lower-class peasantry seem good only by bestowing aristocratic traits on them—essentially, painting a portrait of the upper-class merely in more ragged and rural settings).  Did it not seem a little ignorant and impious for Marie Antoinette to dress up and play in her cottage Le Petit Hameau, pretending to be a member of the lower class when, in reality, the lower class starved under her ineffective reign?  A similar charge is placed here.

This all stems back to the Enlightenment idea of the "noble savage."  Millet's Angelus is a portrait of the lower class made "more likable" (for lack of a better way to put it) by their religious piety.  Just who is such a painting in favor of?  In the late 1600s, British Restoration writer Aphra Behn published a novel which best demonstrates the point here.  In her novel, Oroonoko, the title character, a captive, black slave from Africa, revolts against the British and tries to reclaim the lost princess of his tribe and the love of his life, Imoinda.  Our protagonist slave, nicknamed Caesar in the story, fights barehanded against traitorous Africans, despicable white slave traders, and even a wild tiger.  He is nothing if not heroic; but was this novel really in favor of the black population and opposed to the slave trade?  If you read Oroonoko in its entirety, it is impossible not to notice the glorious way in which Aphra Behn describes her main character—particularly in such a way that makes the black slave seem more like a white aristocrat.  The idea of the "noble savage" gets first introduced just five paragraphs into the text, when the narrator describes her notion of "these people represent[ing] to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin."  Caesar is described as being well educated, highly anglicized, and "more civilized, according to the European mode"—hardly a "savage."  A description of him that presents him as especially white, written in shockingly racist language by today's standards, reads as follows:

He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied.  The most famous statuary could not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot.  His face was not of that brown, rusty black which most of that nation are, but a perfect ebony or polished jet.  His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing, the white of 'em being like snow, as were his teeth.  His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat; his mouth the finest shaped that could be seen, far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes.  The whole proportion and air of his face was so noble and exactly formed that, bating his color, there could be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome.  There was no one grace wanting that bears the standard of true beauty. (Norton Anthology, p. 2317 – see citation at bottom)

So we see that there are some problems with the Enlightenment concept of the noble savage: a major one being that it became easy to simply impart aristocratic characteristics to the otherwise "savage" figure in order to make him noble.  Individual, natural nobility, then, cannot be shown to exist independently of cultural upbringing, as the Enlightenment philosophers purported to argue.  There is a fundamental flaw.  What we think is characterization of the savage is in fact disseminated aristocracy—another kind of Versailles role-playing, dress-up game.  Likewise, Millet's Angelus is disputed for inaccurately portraying the lower class as an altogether civilized, Christian, and humbly subservient class of Western society.  It is aristocrats and kings, after all, who like to see peasants the way Millet paints them: with their heads bowed.

Did I explain that properly?  Probably not.  At any rate, we are quite out on a limb here and need to get back to the art.  I bring this up to reference the rising debate over British imperialism at this time that will peak at the turn of the century and inspire artists and writers to, perhaps for the first time, honestly assess the situation of racism in Western culture.  One of the ultimate literary attacks on imperialism would be published by Joseph Conrad in 1899, the novella Heart of Darkness (another book containing highly controversial language thought today to be too racist for some schools in the US and which has consequently earned a place in the American Library Association's list of top banned books of the 20^th century).

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Comp. M. H. Abrams. 9^th ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.

The Romantic Era (pt. 14)

If it's heroes taking the stage of mid-19^th century Romantic paintings, then the Industrial Revolution saw the entrance of a new kind of hero.  With an increased labor force in England, the rise of the middle class was quickly underway.  As industry grew, so did the number of factory and mill workers; and as their visibility in the public sector grew, so did their socioeconomic influence, culminating in Parliament's passage of the Reform Bill of 1832.  This bill allowed for a wider range of suffrage to more middle-class towns and forever changed British government.  But this was not simply a political movement; the revolution was also an ideological one.  Behind the rise of the middle class we should see the influence of Romantic philosophy, established under the groundwork of earlier Enlightenment thought.  If nature's holiness could be transmuted to the people who freely lived within it, then a higher view of the agrarian farmer, the middle-class worker out in the fields, certainly is in order.  Separate from the corrosive influence of society, common workers like these Gleaners became a more highly regarded emblem of ideological and spiritual perfection.

The tranquility of nature is meant to be communicated here, very much like the landscape paintings of John Constable and Thomas Cole.  And look how artist Jean-François Millet paints this scene: using soft colors and smooth brushstrokes.  Never mind that the work of gleaning in harvesting fields is hard and exhaustive labor, the scene is affectionately painted because of its closeness with nature—that is its theme.  This painting (produced in 1857) crosses the art history timeline also, much as I said David's work could be considered alternately Romantic and Neoclassical.  For its depiction of the middle class, Millet's Gleaners is sometimes categorized under the Realist Period of art, but, again, with these crossovers it's hard to strictly define a work of art coming out of the 19^th century.

The Romantic Era (pt. 13)

Not only were landscape paintings being produced in America, the world's frontier land, but the country's stable political system was realized by many (Americans, mostly) to have risen to such exemplary standards as to become a model for other countries to follow.  During the 1848 revolutions in Europe, German American painter Emanuel Leutze thought to hearken back to the nation's "founding fathers" for inspiration and ideological clarity.  He needed look no further than the nation's first president, George Washington, who had, during his presidency, almost instantly become a public hero and national icon.  This well-known painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware, painted in 1851, demonstrated the epitome of the Romantic art style.

The nationalism of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People is visible here.  (The American flag is placed almost directly in the center of the painting).  And Washington himself is given quite a noble image.  Clad patriotically in red, white, blue, and gold, he looks onward fearlessly to the awaiting battle ahead.  This painting is notoriously inaccurate historically, but what did we say about propaganda?  This is not about the truth; this is about emotional reaction; this is about an idea.  Here Washington is seen as a hero.  There is perhaps much in this painting to compare to Jacques-Louis David's painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps, but I would not necessarily call this propaganda (after Washington's political campaign had already ended half a century ago).  The heroes which are made through propaganda are made as such in order to promote a cause, but Romanticism famously creates heroes merely for the sake of heroism (but I suppose you could argue that that's still a cause).  And paintings like this were meant to inspire and remind us that, no matter under what banner or in what place, land or sea, heroes still exist, modeled after great men like this, who uphold those ideals that are universally and always right.

The Romantic Era (pt. 12)

Nature's beauty was not its only characteristic to receive the praise of the Romantics.  They viewed nature as the ultimate power in the world, a kind of deity or earthly representation of the heavenly throne in might, majesty, and truth.  It's hard to describe a love for nature, but it is something which, I think, most people can easily enough understand.  Nature is a powerful, awesome force that is worthy of humankind's respect; but for the Romantics, reverential views toward nature took on pseudo-spiritual qualities.  Thomas Cole's epic series, called The Course of the Empire, comes across didactically, almost like a sermon.

The series was painted in the 1830s by American painter Thomas Cole.  It is a series of canvases that follow a linear storyline about the progression of time and, through it, man's brevity and nature's constancy.  Each image in the series has a title, explaining the timeline of this "course."  In order, they are: 1. Savage State, 2. Pastoral State, 3. Consummation of the Empire, 4. Destruction, 5. Desolation.

       1. Savage State

       2. Pastoral State

       3. Consummation of the Empire

       4. Destruction

       5. Desolation

The Romantics had a fear that increased industrialism would lead to a modern dystopia; and that machines would replace man.  They feared the opening of steel factories and mills; their polluting influence on nature was viewed as a kind of "rape of the land."  The mechanization of mankind through industrialism, the mindless production of materials for socioeconomic, consumerist ends, was the pervading dread of the Romantics, and paintings like this—of Nature taking back what's hers—are good examples of the deification of nature during this time.  In Thomas Cole's series, nature is incorruptible, unbeatable, and eternal; nature is God.  When the later Victorians came and "killed off" nature, so to speak, questions of the existence of God immediately followed, and what Matthew Arnold described as the withdrawal of faith brought us into the Modern era.

The Romantic Era (pt. 11)

One prominent English landscape painter was John Constable.  He wanted to paint the sky, meadows, hills, and streams as the eye actually sees them.  To produce this realistic recreation of what he saw, he kept a small sketchbook during his walks through the fields.  His paintings of countryside landscapes are colorful, calm, and peacefully inviting.  A popular painter during his time, he was commissioned by several patrons to produce artworks representing their own estates.  One such patron, his father's friend, asked him to paint his estate at Wivenhoe Park, in Essex.  Constable's own vision of the estate was painted like so.

You can hardly even see the estate; it's all about the natural, pastoral landscape around the house.  Half of the entire canvas is just clouds!  This fixation on the beauty and perfection of nature is a very Romantic concept; and while it was readily accepted by many, some on the more traditional side still would have preferred to see the estate.  Which do you like better: looking at the house or the natural setting around it?

The Romantic Era (pt. 10)

Another big part of the Romantic Period in art (and actually, probably the biggest part) was its focus on Nature.  You will recall the ideals of nature's purity and goodness as expressed during the Enlightenment by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (as well as others).  The ideas of the natural sanctity of pastoral landscapes, untainted by the establishment of the rich and industrious landowning class, became especially popular after the French Revolution, when the aristocracy was overthrown and the common man took to power (ha, but not really).  The common man, thought to be closer to nature and, consequently, more innocent of the corruptive influence of society, began to be pictured more—again, in hindsight of the Revolution.  But one of the most common phenomena of Romanticism is an extolment of nature and the beauty of its unpolluted holiness.  Romantic landscape paintings are beautiful and seek to praise the pastoral setting they depict.  These subjects also took inspiration from a period in history when the continent of North America was still being explored, settled, and established.  Explorers like Lewis and Clark and John Muir were discovering beautiful landscapes that, once painted, could inspire more people to move out West.  The "New World," as it had been termed so long ago, was still largely "new" at this point; much of the land was still to be domesticated.  As settlers learned to find a living for themselves in pioneer territory, news spread not just through America but all across the Western world that man was again connecting to nature in a new and fresh way.  The enticing, pastoral beauty of the American frontier certainly sparked the interest and imagination of the world, and when gold was discovered in California in 1848, interest (as you can imagine) only increased.  Nature was seen as an altogether glorious thing; and the idea of tabula rasa, a clean slate, attracted many people to "go West" and start afresh with a new life in nature.  This, too, was held to be a very Romantic ideal.

The Romantic Era (pt. 9)

After travelling through Morocco, Tangier, and Algiers in 1832, Delacroix became newly inspired.  His later works invoked these new, exotic settings which Delacroix loved to paint so much, and combined them with another of the artist's favorite motifs: dramatic action.  He completed The Lion Hunt toward the end of his life, and it marked one of the most artistically important accomplishments of his life.  In it we see the dominant theme of action and the exotic setting and subject matter no doubt inspired by the artist's own travels.  Color was the most important element in the painting for Delacroix.  Emotion, instantly evident, bursts from the chaotic scene, and our eye darts across the canvas, this way and that, as swiftly as we can imagine the figures in the scene must have been moving.  The fierce moment of conflict—the thick of the battle—is marvelously captured on the men's faces, but notice how the painting's wavy lines and incoherent geometrical construction lends to its sense of motion and kinetic action.  We almost can't see the faces of the men and can't judge some of their expressions because things are moving too fast.  This technical concept will be adopted more thoroughly in the years to come.

The Romantic Era (pt. 8)

At the age of 33, our Romantic artist par excellence suddenly died from a fall off of a horse, leaving his friend Eugène Delacroix to take up the Romantic Movement after he died, even though not everyone liked him.  His famous painting of Liberty Leading the People has, even through to today, come to define the Romantic vision of the French Revolution of 1830 (not to be confused with the 1789 Revolution).  This is so much more than a political painting.  A magnificent homage to the overthrow of Charles X, this painting is nothing if not Romantic.

A pile of bloodied corpses lays across the ground on the bottom half of the painting, the beaten bodies of military officials on the right and, on the left, one sacred cadaver stretched out in the sunlight with his pure, white garment and the naked flesh of his humanity both being blessed from heaven above with the lighted splendor of the sun shining down upon his ended life and the cause for which it was given: the glory of death.  One among the pile leans weakly forward and looks up at the spectacle which immediately bursts out of the canvas.  A woman, clothed in majestic, golden, flowing robes and with the full light of radiant truth behind her, stands tall (the tallest in the scene) over the sprawling death underneath her, the slain gendarmes and the one, nobly sacrificed martyr who fought for the right side.  She is Liberty, and she carries a musket rifle in her left hand, as well as holds up a splendid French flag in her right.  Beside her is a poor boy, of all warriors, with patches sewn on to his pants and a poor man's cap, fighting wildly with two pistols, one in each hand.  He even has his mouth open, no doubt shouting fierce war cries to further express his courage and determination in the face of battle.  Recognizing him as not much more than a child, we instantly fall sympathetic to his cause because of the youthful innocence and purity of his age—and how much more are we to join him since he is so passionate!  On the other side, a wealthy man, too, fights for the same cause as the poor boy.  This is the aristocrat in the top hat, pointing his rifle forward to show the enemy no mercy—his image bears striking resemblance to that of Delacroix himself and may in fact serve the role as a cameo self-portrait.  Behind him, another man of the lower-class with a holstered pistol and a drawn scimitar charges forward; behind him: the entire mob of French peasants, farmers, landowners, rebels, and revolutionaries, all with drawn weapons and banners proudly displaying La Tricolore.  Way far back in the distance behind these, we can see the cathedral of Notre Dame being overtaken, with French flags raised along its towers and buttresses.  Even above, notice the three colors with which the artist paints the very sky above: I see bleu, blanc, et rouge.  Leading all of this—the boy, the rich man, the entire French mob, and the overthrow of the whole city of Paris (and, in turn, the entire French nation)—is Liberty, equally as beautiful as she is fearsome and mighty.  She walks barefoot over the strewn corpses like the Messiah, Christ, who stepped barefoot over the Sea of Galilee to save His drowning disciple, Peter.  We see a stunning profile image of her face as she glances back to her loyal followers and ushers them, with the flag of their own beloved country, forward.  The crimson sash across her waist is symbolic of the loss of life which the fight for their cause will entail—revolutions are bloody affairs; but for what cause and what more noble emblem would you not risk all for the victory?  And the cause is: Democracy.  To overthrow the absolute monarch and institute a democratic government alike to that of the Ancient Greeks—that would be freedom, or liberty, indeed.  Liberty herself invokes reference to Ancient Greece in the sculpturesque uncovering of her chest, very much similar to the Nike of Samothrace, whose breasts project outward in a heaving inhale of graceful might and vitality.  But in Delacroix's painting, Liberty's bosom is bared to display her honest-natured, maternal humanity.  She is pictured not just as the leader of her people, but as their mother, who will ever more fiercely watch out for her own: Liberty will guide her followers safely and supply them with all the strength they need.  And all of this is just a brief overview of this iconic painting.  Propaganda—perhaps, yes; romanticized propaganda—yeah, it is.  Nevertheless, what a painting!

I said Romanticism was unconcerned with political propaganda, having adopted their larger focus onto human elements of pathos and emotionalism.  While a painting like Liberty Leading the People deals itself heavily in a political subject (a revolution), its more everlasting and more quintessentially Romantic overtones do rest with a very honest and emotional look at people.  Its propaganda elements are only ankle-deep, for anyone, loyalist or revolutionary, French or British, can look at this work and receive an emotional reaction from it.  The little boy and Liberty's bared breasts are symbolic of these characters' humanness, their childhood or motherhood, etc.  These symbolic images are commonly understood by all humanity, and in that sense the work is not merely a painting of a single historical event or a contextualized political philosophy.  This is a painting of humanity, of people rather than politics and revolutionaries rather than revolutions.  Hypothetically speaking, even if I'm opposed to the French Revolution of 1830, I can still look at this painting and identify with the human spirit depicted herein: the heart of the individual to fight for his cause and the heart of the united masses to stand up against tyranny and oppression in general.  It's universal because the human spirit is universal.  That is the Romantic ideology of it, at least.

The Romantic Era (pt. 7)

Perhaps this ever-changing movement of the times influenced the Romantic style, which often included diagonal design, twisting figures, strong emotion, and dramatic use of light.  We see this best in Théodore Géricault's masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa.  This painting, produced in 1819, signaled the birth of a new art style in France.

The Raft of the Medusa was based on a real event in which a French ship, the Medusa, wrecked and was abandoned by her crew.  Those crewmembers who could not fit into the inadequate lifeboat quickly built a raft of their own and escaped the sinking vessel.  These men (some estimated 149 passengers) drifted at sea for almost two weeks without food or clean drinking water.  When they were finally found, there were only 15 survivors left.  During their two-week voyage, many of the crew had starved to death, drowned, or committed suicide.  These shipwrecked men were brought to the very limits of what human nature can bear: starvation, desolation, dementia.  It is reported that the men even sunk to cannibalism.

Nothing but the most dramatic depiction of this event could do for a painting—or, at least, such was the way the great Romantic painter Géricault saw it.  The Raft of the Medusa displays a theatrically staged scene of epic emotional depth and powerful imagery.  We see naked bodies strewn across the hard wood and tossed against the cold sea, some discolored with sickness, others faceless, maimed, and inhuman-looking.  One man poises against the lifeless corpse of his neighbor, deep in thought, with a hard face that is covered in shadow, no doubt contemplating the deep questions of human suffering which such an occasion would generate.  One can see reference to the solemnest of subjects, the Crucifixion, in the tattered arms that stretch across the raft's wooden boards.  Agony, despair, death—this painting is a gritty tableau of human pain and emotion.  The dramatic lighting sets the mood of our thoughts when we look at it.  A major diagonal (from the lower left to the upper right of the painting) carries our eyes through the scene, ranging in between places of despair and hope.  At the upper right we see men looking ahead and stretching their arms toward something they see on the horizon (probably the rescuing ship).  For those men's faces shadowed from our view, the display of human emotion is expressed in the stormy sea and dramatic sky.  Huge, billowing clouds drift across the sky much as the raft drifts across the surface of the water; and great waves swell up in fury no doubt equaling the passion of the men through this unimaginable circumstance.  The painting reflects the style of Rubens and Michelangelo, but it showcases a contemporary event as it actually happened, rather than a scene from the Classical past.  Of course, this image is no realistic snapshot to be completely trusted.  We can see that Géricault's painting is heavily infused with emotion, but this emotion is different than propaganda, like the works of David.  Romantic emotionalism, unconcerned with political causes, instead speaks to deeper matters of the heart, the broader spectrum of human emotion, the pathos of mankind.  All of this is most archetypally exemplified in Géricault's Raft of the Medusa, making it a staple work of Romantic art.

The Romantic Era (pt. 6)

Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815 and later exiled to the island of Elba.  He died in 1821, and France returned to the monarchy system (with some changes).  Louis XVIII took power and reigned for a whole decade during the Bourbon Restoration, and it would not be until 1830 that the nation would rebel against its current absolute monarch, Charles X, and institute a constitutional monarchy.  In 1848, revolution in France would break out again (and all across Europe), and the nation would elect Bonaparte's nephew and heir, Napoleon III, as president of the French Second Republic.  Three years later, Napoleon III would establish the Second French Empire.

The Romantic Era (pt. 5)

Francisco de Goya was an official court portraitist painter in Spain who had a promising career ahead of him in the late 1780s and early 1790s, but then the unthinkable happened.  The artist went deaf by the year 1793, and his condition left him increasingly meditative and introverted.  After the French invasion of Spain under the leadership of Napoleon in 1808, Goya witnessed the brutality of warfare first-hand.  Shortly after, his wife of almost forty years died, and in his middle age, the artist was left alone, debilitated, and scarred by the wartime atrocities which he could not erase from his mind.  He took to isolation, spending hours by himself in total seclusion, and during the last decade of his life, his art changed.  A new spirit was awakened in him, and his art turned very dark.

When Goya became more bitter and disillusioned in his old age, he focused more on subjects not found in the real world, such subjects as can only be found in the deepest recesses of the tormented human psyche.  He attempted to show these supernatural objects in demonstration of his otherwise inexpressible feelings and thoughts—perhaps the beginning of Expressionism (which comes much later, and which we still live in largely today).  Others did not always understand his dreams and visions, but Goya didn't mind rebelling against all formalities, given his own neurosis, spawned from his tragic life.  His inspiration now came almost purely from himself; and as an old, lonely, deaf man, battered in his mind from the military captivity of his own country, he drew inspiration that was only of the darkest and most macabre nature.  Some of these "Black Paintings" are quite nightmarish to look at, gruesome and horrific, and perhaps they should only be viewed under the context of psychoanalysis.  Some elements of human psychology cannot, and should not, be explained through artistic theory.  (Unfortunately, this distinction is often crossed in Expressionist art philosophy, but we are too early to get into that just yet.)

To look at just one of these late works of the artist, Goya's The Giant is among the most famous.  This apparently simple etching is full of dark meaning.  That it is etched so simplistically, with a very primal hand, almost lends to its eeriness.  A mysterious and unidentified form sits on top of a bare, unmarked bed of land that has been scratched and scraped with harsh strokes of the artist's hand.  Above this earth, the night sky with its glimmering moon and stars shines above.  The blackness at the top caps it all, as if to suggest itself as the highest authority over everything in the print: the Unknown.  The monster sits on top of the world in a position of dominance, looking huge and menacing.  While the rest of the world sleeps under the cover of moonlight, this figure sits quietly alone, musing to itself or peacefully slumbering—what thoughts or reveries cross its mind we shiver to guess.  But something has awoken or startled it.  It turns its head—and our imagination is left to fill in the rest.  The awakening of a monstrous colossus in the night is certainly a motif from the subconscious world of nightmares and dark dreams, but the subject may also be understood to represent much nearer realities, and more terrifying.  The giant could be a symbol of war.  Or it could be simply a frightening incarnation of Goya's own somber forecast of the future.

You can see how this type of artwork is uniquely independent of its contemporary technique, and perhaps, having looked at Goya's personal life, we can understand why that is.  But this is not exactly Romantic art, though emotionalism is involved here.  I have to bring up Goya because he lived during this time period, but we can discuss his artistic style and impact on the art world better as we go along.  For now, we'll get back to the Romantics.

The Romantic Era (pt. 4)

Francisco de Goya is considered a bridge between art of the past and art of the present because he was the first to so uniquely ignore traditions like realism (lowercase "r").  He took his inspiration from his own imagination and set a revolutionary precedent over artists to come.  A man who was way ahead of his time, Goya does not really fit into any stylistic period of art history, one might say; nevertheless, much of his work did take inspiration from Romantic art theory.  To observe his artistic style, however, is to take a look at something that is unique to itself, a kind of exception to the rules, and something only to be understood when understanding the man himself.  Let's take a look.

The Duchess of Alba was one of the wealthiest persons in Spain.  Her eccentric personality led the public to hold in its eye a rather controversial opinion of her.  This general disfavor was not just based upon her manner or her private life but more largely on her scandalous behavior in public.  The story goes that she had invited the queen to a ball but had sent spies to the queen's palace to find out what gown she was going to wear.  She then had all her servants dress identically as the queen.  Naturally, the queen was so insulted by this prank that she rebuked the prankster, and the Duchess of Alba was then promptly exiled from Madrid.

It has been rumored that the duchess and Goya were lovers, but it is not known for sure exactly what the extent of their relationship was like.  Goya's portraits of her (of which there are several) all picture her delicately and beautifully.  Here she is seen looking straight at the viewer with large, black eyes.  She wears two rings bearing the names Goya and Alba, implying a union between the two.  Whether they were or were not lovers, however, it would seem that the duchess eventually left him anyway, and when Goya's painting was cleaned after his death, the word "solo" was found inscribed in the sand before the artist's name at the bottom.  The duchess, you will notice, is pointing to it.

The Romantic Era (pt. 3)

But as time progressed, Napoleon's regime became increasingly less "heroic," and the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya took to exploiting the more atrocious side (and no doubt the more accurate side) to the story, producing a little propaganda of his own.  In a controversial indictment of Napoleon's cruelty, Goya created a painting memorializing the victims of his troops' brutality.  The painting's title, The Third of May, 1808, stands out as a direct reference to the real, contemporary historical event.

After the French invasion of Spain, an insurrectionist group arose to fight back for their homeland.  The rebels were quickly defeated, and the French soldiers took them captive, disarmed them, and executed them.  These were common citizens, not military captains, aristocrats, or people of political authority.

Goya's painting has a black backdrop and is only lit by a lantern placed on the ground.  The Spanish prisoners have all the light shining directly on them, symbolizing God's presence with them and their cause; and each illumined face has a different expression of fear and sadness.  None of the soldiers' faces are seen.  They are stripped of their humanity as they all lean forward, single-file, pointing their bayonets and preparing to fire.  They are not really pictured as human beings but more like heartless robots, all identically lined up to perform the inhumane act.  We see the grossness of their deeds already committed on the far left in the image of the dead bodies piled on the ground.  Next to them, a priest prays for mercy, a sign that he is a devout man not deserving of such cruel treatment.  All of these men are helpless civilians about to be coldheartedly executed; the scene stirs great emotions in us as the viewer.  But the painting's emphasis is on a single rebel in particular, who is seen clothed in pure white with his arms outstretched.  He is completely vulnerable, baring his chest (and his heart, no doubt as spotless as his shirt) to his executors and holding out his arms in a likeness to the crucified Christ.  His hand is even marked with the stigmata of the sacrificial Lamb of God.  The painting passionately commemorates the death of these Spanish patriots, imagining them as martyrs and saints and imagining their executioners as ruthless, tyrannical animals.  Goya viewed war as only destructive.  His painting shows only death and suffering and no heroism or honor.

The Romantic Era (pt. 2)

For one thing, Romanticism took from the Neoclassical attitude of seriousness adopted after the Revolution.  A further backlash against the licentious lewdness of the Rococo Period, Romanticism (as we mean it here) was a style of art that portrayed dramatic and exotic subjects perceived with strong feelings.  This heightened sense of emotion is one of the key differences in Romantic art.  Neoclassical paintings like Ingres' Apotheosis of Homer was painted flatly and linearly, you will recall, with not a whole lot of bursting emotion.  Romantic paintings breathe emotion.  They also shift their focus primarily onto the present, instead of looking back to the Classical past (again, as Ingres' Apotheosis painting did).  These paintings often deal with current events but portray them in the fashion one would portray an ancient, epic event of Classical Greek or Roman mythology—dramatically.  Romanticism sees all of contemporary life through the Classical lens of epic drama and passionate emotionalism.  The changes can be heard in music at this time as easily as the difference between Mozart and Beethoven.

In one sense, then, the court paintings of Jacques-Louis David could be considered Romantic—and they very often are.  I placed them under the Neoclassical Period of art because: (1) that is how I was taught; and (2) it helps one to better see the immediate withdrawal away from the Rococo style after the French Revolution.  But it is true that David's paintings of Napoleon are as much Romantically inspired as they are Neoclassically styled.  His paintings were of contemporary events, like the emperor's coronation; and they were often shown in dramatic fashion, like his painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps.  Romanticism and Neoclassicism share much in common, so I will pick up where we left off and return to another David painting, now under the category of Romantic art.

Just after Napoleon's Syrian Campaign, his troops won a decisive victory over the Ottoman Turks at Jaffa in Israel.  After the conquest, many of Napoleon's men were infected with Bubonic plague and deemed incurable.  Their emperor had them poisoned to prevent further spread of the disease, but in so doing he fell into disfavor with many among the general public (understandably so, I think).  To counter the negative sentiment towards his name, Napoleon turned once more to his favorite painter in order to generate some more promotional propaganda.  This time, we see Napoleon at a "pest house" (or plague colony) of infected Bubonic plague victims.  The highly contagious nature of the disease made it necessary to isolate those suffering from it to prevent further contamination.  It would have been considered absolutely dangerous to enter into a plague house such as we see here, but Napoleon stands upright and calm.  It would have been considered even more dangerous not to have a cloth or handkerchief covering one's mouth while among the colony.  It would have been considered complete suicide to touch one of the sick, but Napoleon, with no glove or cloth to protect him, stretches out his helping hand like the great Healer, Christ Himself.  Meanwhile we can see the city of Jaffa burning in the background with a French flag staked over it, but this is conveniently pushed away from the scene at present.  What artist Jacques-Louis David has painted is an extraordinary image of Napoleon as a fearless general, a compassionate leader, a helper of the weak, and an inspiration to his men, a great emperor, and no less great a man than the Son of Man.  Propaganda makes heroes.

The Romantic Era (pt. 1)

Lest we find ourselves completely out of the historical order of the 19^th century, it is vital that I point out here and now that history is rarely an exact, mathematical study.  Periods of history blend together.  This is easily enough understood, I trust.  It isn't like the world was still living in agrarianism in 1799, and as soon as the calendar turned to 1800, then the Industrial Age began—not at all.  Art is the same way; our periods will increasingly begin to blend and mesh together.  Not to worry: just keep in mind that other things are continually happening during a single period of art.  I think the French Revolution is one of the greatest examples of an absolute and immediate turn-around in the art world.  After 1789, Rococo art met its end almost immediately, given the violent extremity of the situation in France—almost.  The style still was continued on here and there.  American artist Edward Hicks's painting Peaceable Kingdom, painted in 1826, for example, still demonstrates the aristocratic ideology of Rococo-style art.

This Post-Revolutionary painting is also an example of propaganda in that it showcases European supremacy.  On the left, Europeans make peace with the Native Americans; and on the right, little children, pure and clothed in white, make peace with otherwise savage animals.  The two sides are correlative: the Europeans are pictured as innocent babies learning to tame the allegedly uncivilized and savage Native American beasts.  This is a very white supremacist message, and one which honors the upper-class aristocracy over the common man (or Indian)—a Rococo-inspired theme.  I always thought it was kind of a weird painting.  Look at the wildness in the animals' eyes, showing how dangerous and undomesticated they truly are; but the babies are calmly sitting nearby and even petting the beasts.

Paintings like this continue to be produced, but noticeably less after the French Revolution and, eventually, not at all.  So, we see a crossing-over with Rococo into Neoclassical art.  The timeline is not always precisely in sequence.  In fact, one of the chief works credited to the Neoclassical Period of art was painted by David before the Revolution: his Oath of the Horatii.  We furthermore see a combination of Neoclassical art with Romantic art.  We have arrived in our study of art history at the Romantic Period now, but that does not mean that Neoclassical styles have altogether expired.  In fact, Romanticism (capital R) took much of its inspiration from Neoclassical theory, and these qualities can be seen in many of the paintings we are about to look at.