romanticism period and literature discussion thread

[cacian]

please share your views on romanticism period and what would you say is your favourite writer and piece from this important period.

I am studying this period and any personal views and ideas on it is most welcome thank you.

I am considering two paintings at the moments

wanderer above the sea fog - casper david frederick
and
chulk cliff on Rugen -by the same artist.

[stlukesguild]

My favorite artist of the Romantic period... and quite likely the greatest painter (with the possible exception of Goya) was the great British painter, J.M.W. Turner. Turner was one of the single most influential artists in Western art history. At a time in which there was a recognized hierarchy of art... with the "history painting"... the painting of grandiose, multi-figured canvases representing events from mythology, religious narrative, or history... at the pinnacle of all art, Turner focused upon the lowly landscape. His landscapes are the very definition of Romanticism... portraying a wild, unharnessed, turbulent nature... a "nature red in tooth and claw"... against which mankind was but a petty, weak being.

The artist made some attempt at referencing historical narrative in a good number of his paintings... but it is always Nature that reigns supreme. In the painting Regulus, for example...



...the narrative concerns Marcus Atilius Regulus, a Roman general and consul in the ninth year of the First Punic War. He was one of the commanders in the Roman naval expedition that shattered the Carthaginian fleet at Cape Ecnomus, and landed an army on Carthaginian territory. The invaders were so successful that the other consul, Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus, was recalled to Rome, leaving Regulus behind to finish the war. He was taken prisoner by the Spartan mercenary general Xanthippus along with 500 of his men. According to tradition, he remained in captivity until 250 BC, when after the defeat of the Carthaginians at the Battle of Panormus he was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate a peace or an exchange of prisoners. On his arrival, he instead strongly urged the Roman Senate to refuse both proposals and continue fighting, and honored his parole by returning to Carthage where he was executed. He was first tied to a stake facing the West and his eyelids were slit open so that he could not look away from the setting sun which ultimately burned out his eyes.

Turner places us, the viewer, in the role of Regulus, staring into a blinding light which devours all. The light... the setting sun... equally suggests how time devours all... how the sun rises... and sets even upon great Empires like Carthage.

Beyond his audacious use of paint which make Turner a precursor not only of Impressionism... but even Abstract Expressionism... the artist was also a precursor of the performance artists of the 20th century. Yearly exhibitions held at the Royal Academy allowed painters 3 "Varnishing Days" in which to varnish and generally touch up paintings on exhibit. Turner turned this into an opportunity of grandstanding showmanship. In the case of the above painting, Regulus, Turner had entered what initially appeared as a lovely landscape in the manner of Claude Lorraine...



...representing the sun setting as seen from the harbor of some Carthaginian city. The painting was nice enough... but nothing overly special. After allowing others to see his painting on exhibit for some time, Turner returned, dressed as usual, in top hat and tails, with a palette piled high with nothing but chrome yellow and white. He began to work these onto the surface of the canvas until he had created such a sense of blinding light that all the other paintings in the room paled in comparison. Upon completion, he simply walked away... without so much as a word spoken to the massed crowd watching his efforts.

Turner's history is laden with similar anecdotes of outrageous... and/or eccentric behavior. Just such an anecdote concerns this lovely painting of Mortlake Terrace, a view from the estate of his wealthy friend and patron, William Moffatt. Turner again entered the painting in the yearly exhibition of the Royal Academy. During the "Varnishing Days" the work was seen by painter, Edwin Landseer, famous for his portraits of horses, dogs, and other animals. Landseer admired Turner's painting, but declared that it needed an accent. He proceeded to cut out a small silhouette of a dog in black paper and attached it to the surface.



Knowing Turner's infamous temper, everyone awaited his response. The artist duly arrived with his paint, palette, and brushes and to everyone's surprise walked up to the canvas unconcernedly... adjusted the little paper dog slightly... then painted a few details into the paper cut-out, leaving it as a permanent part of the painting.

One of my favorite paintings by Turner is the canvas entitled, Rain, Steam, and Speed. In this painting, Turner was already confronting several of the issues that would be at the core of Modernism: the fleeting moment, modern technology, and the challenge of representing in the static image the speed of modern life...



In many ways Turner's solution to these issues... rendered as an explosive blur... is more successful than the solutions of the Cubists.

I had the occasion to see the stunning retrospective exhibition of Turner's paintings at the National Gallery, Washington, a couple of years back. The show left me absolutely speechless. While my own paintings and my choice of subject matter (the human figure) are far removed from Turner's thus preventing me from drawing much from his work that I might employ myself, he still remains an absolute favorite.

(I turned to Photobucket for posting these thumbnails which link to larger images... which works in a manner in which Flickr does not. Unfortunately the Sunday School Teachers that patrol Photobucket censor even the most innocent nudes... which makes a lot of art history difficult to tackle.)

[cacian]

The Great Western Railway.
Beautiful colours but fog seems to be the running theme in romantic painting which is interesting but not so clear. I will try and post some pictures to compare.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I love Claude Lorrain, but I've never even heard of Turner. I'll have to look him up.

As for literature, I love the Romantic period. I can't really choose a favorite period of literature because I like literature from all of them, but if I was hard pressed, it could easily be my favorite. Frankenstein, Blake, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville (the latter two who wrote more towards the beginning of the Victorian era but were definitely romantic authors) are some of my favorites. I tend to like the dark, depressing romantics rather than the happy, life-loving ones, like Wordsworth.

[WyattGwyon]

Victor Hugo has always been a favorite of mine. Love all of the big novels, while recognizing that L'homme qui rit is way over the top in its garishness and weirdness.

Hugo seems to have had some facility in the visual arts as well . . .

[cacian]

Victor Hugo has always been a favorite of mine. Love all of the big novels, while recognizing that L'homme qui rit is way over the top in its garishness and weirdness.

Hugo seems to have had some facility in the visual arts as well . . .

I have never come across any of Hugo visual arts.

[stlukesguild]

Victor Hugo made endless drawings in ink and watercolor that suggest dark Gothic landscapes of the imagination:

[stlukesguild]

I love Claude Lorrain, but I've never even heard of Turner.

That is seriously hard to believe. Turner is quite likely the greatest painter of the Romantic period. J.L. David and Delacroix may be more known... due to the fact that France dominated the arts and culture of the period... and Goya would be a close rival.

The landscape became the central motif of painters during the Romantic period. This makes sense when one considers the centrality of the theme of "Nature" during Romanticism. It also should be recognized that this was the period of French and English Imperialism... when endless individuals began to seriously explore the world around them... and when Americans began to explore the natural splendour of their own continent as part of the settlement of the West. There are endless painters specializing in landscape during the Romantic period:

Albert Bierstadt documented the great American West... unknown to Europeans... or most Americans at the time.



Thomas Gainsborough... the great English portraitist, known for his famous painting, Blue Boy, preferred to paint the English landscape at a time when landscapes didn't sell:



Fitz Hugh Lane... one of the first great American painters, famous for his views of New England Harbors:



John Frederick Kensett, a peer of Lane who brought a stark New England Puritan Minimalism to his paintings:



Martin Johnson Heade, famous for his views of exotic South America:



Richard Parkes Bonington, a master of freely painted seascapes and precursor of Impressionism:



Frederick Edwin Church, an American painter enamored of the sublime landscape... whether Niagra Falls... a the South American jungle:



John Constable, Turner's closest English rival:



George Inness, another American landscape master who brought the color of Impressionism to the wonder of the American experience of the changing of leaves:



Winslow Homer... probably the greatest American painter of the period. He brought a colloquial American naturalism worthy of Mark Twain to his paintings:



John Atkinson Grimshaw, who brought an English Victorian/Gothic feel to his paintings... clearly inspired by Turner:



Thomas Cole... who sought to employ the "virgin" American landscape as a moral lesson... contra the "decadent" European cityscapes:



Edward Calvert and Samuel Palmer... both members of "The Ancients"... a group of followers of William Blake. Like Blake, their prints and paintings suggest a naive, child-like fantasy... worthy of the illustrations of Victorian children's books:





Casper David Friedrich... the great German painter of the period. Like Turner
he was a master of the "sublime". Yet where the "sublime" in Turner was to be found in the overwhelming and devouring force of nature... in Friedrich it was found in the stillness and quiet that suggested the void beyond:



Albert Pinkham Ryder... another true eccentric... would spend years upon a single painting... refusing offers of astronomical sums of money for works that he alone felt weren't "finished".



Isaac Levitan... one of a slew of great Russian landscape painters:



Turner stood above all these painters bringing to his canvas an audacious use of paint (often utilizing watercolors and oils in the same image) that went beyond Rembrandt in his application of impastos and transparent glazes. Seen up close, his canvases are a dizzying array of paint swirls, blobs, drips, and veils that sent the Impressionists and even Abstract Expressionists drooling. Backing up, these elements all fall into place... creating an atmospheric view of the landscape in which light reigned supreme. Turner's finest paintings verge on the "visionary"... such as in his late painting of the Angel is the Sun in which the avenging Angel of the Apocalypse comes accompanied by a light of such intensity that it all-devouring... showing through the very flesh of human beings like an atomic blast:

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I like almost all of that, StLukes. I've always enjoyed landscapes. I'll definitely be doing some googling with this authors.

[Number7]

I'm a big fan of Romantic Irony in which Art lampoons serious events and other works of art, not just in the way classical satirists like Swift derided his subject [institutions, public figures, politicians, social groups]. Instead in Romantic irony the classical itself is derided, an example being the way in which the epic form itself is inverted in Don Juan. Grandeur and the heroic are not satirised as such, rather an alternative proposition is offered, Don Juan himself is not the seducer but the seduced. Hundreds of years of tradition can be dismissed irreverently and at random and in a trivial way by Romantic Irony, its effects have carried down the ages and can be seen in French Romanticism, Absurdist drama, Existential trains of thought and Postmodernism.

[Kafka's Crow]

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog was my favourite painting when I was a romantic myself! I remember carrying a copy everywhere taped on the back of my college folder. To me he was the ultimate Byronic figure.

Turner is established as the most prestigious British painter ever. The rivalry between Turner and Constable, I spent my youth thinking about these two, is finally settled in Turner's favour while Constable is relegated (yet again) to the status of the painter of chocolate tins although I liked him as a young man. Turner was extremely innovative and had a typical romantic disdain for all that was formerly held sacred.

Now Turner is more famous for the (in)famous 'Turner Prize' than his own paintings. (general public in Britain are quite boorish. I have always admired Americans for calling boorishness by its name and laughing at it. In Britain it is considered 'cool' to be yobbish and any words against this attitude are labelled politically incorrect and snobbish.) Turner Prize is awarded to unconventional art or "conceptual" art. People like Damien Hirst and Tracy Amen won this ward receiving huge boosts to their careers as this prize is discussed by all and sundry including the Great Brutish Unwashed as it receives vast coverage in tabloid rags. I don't think that the Turner Prize is a great service to the great man's name.

[stlukesguild]

I don't think that the Turner Prize is a great service to the great man's name.

Knowing Turner's penchant for violent outbursts, he probably would have shown up, walking stick in hand, and proceeded to pummel both Charles Saatchi and Nicholas Serota... who are largely the power behind the Turner Prize... rigging the the competition toward Saatchi's rather moronic taste... but eye for scandal (good for the press). Of course I wouldn't say that the Whitney has done much better.

[WyattGwyon]

Victor Hugo made endless drawings in ink and watercolor that suggest dark Gothic landscapes of the imagination:

Two of those drawings, at least, seem to be studies for his novels. The last one is an image from L'homme qui rit. It depicts the tarred corpse of a smuggler that the novel's hero encounters at night. The second drawing could be a study for Toilers of the Sea.

[Insane4Twain]

The British Romantics are near and dear to my heart. Coleridge, in particular. I never get tired of reading "The Aeolian Harp."

Art-wise, William-Adolphe Bouguereau is my favorite.