Romantic Era Visual Art

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Romantic Era Visual Art
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• Romanticism, by focusing on people's longing to
  return to nature, a reaction to the
  industrialization of England and Europe and the
  rise of the modern industrial city, raised
  landscape to a level of first importance. The
  supernatural transposed from traditional
  religious imagery to nature
• Divine Truth things visible to the eye which
  symbolically express through their forms the
  truth of nature.

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Artists to Know

• Two Romantic Artists to Know
• Francisco Goya Supernatural, tormented artist,
  symbolism
• John Constable Landscapes, natureGod and Good,
  peaceful and tranquil

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Francisco Goya

• Goya paints dark, dramatic, supernatural works.
  For example, his work to the left is about mans
  inhumanity to man.
• Notice the symbolism and the fantastic nature of
  the work.
• Goya was an artists artist. He felt no one knew
  his pain, especially the public.

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The Third Of May, 1808

• Here in The Third of May, 1808 Goya portrays the
  inhuman brutality of Napolean's military machine.
  The military is portrayed as faceless automatons,
  inhuman killing machines brutalized by war into
  mindless robots without human feeling.

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The Black Paintings

• When Goya was in his 70's, he painted a series of
  "black paintings."
• Painted for himself, rather than on commission
• Represent his personal feelings and his struggle
  to understand a world gone mad, torn apart by war
  and savagery.

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Chronos Devouring One Of His Children

• Notice the fantastic subject and supernatural
  nature
• Notice, too, the gore and horror of the work
• Here Goya combines several themes that
  preoccupied him throughout his life
• humanity at its "blackest," primitive form of
  behavior
• Infanticide
• cannibalism.

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John Constable

• On a quieter note, we have John Constable's
  nostalgic view from his childhood, The Hay Wain
  of 1821.

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Constable

• Observable facts and the intangible qualities of
  light and atmosphere.
• Constable felt that the sky was the main "organ"
  for communicating emotion.
• Nostalgic view of the English countryside that
  was fast disappearing in the wake of
  Industrialization