Romanticism was an art movement that originated in the late 18th century. It relates to the glorification of emotion in art. It was a reaction to the age of enlightenment and modernity.
Romanticism in landscape photography deals more with emphasising this emotion in the sublime and drawing out and exaggerating natural elements.
Adam Williams
Adam Williams
Adam Williams
Adam Williams
Adam Williams
Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Below is an example of romanticism in one of Thomas Doughty’s paintings from around 1830. It portrays the landscape in a way the human eye couldn’t see it. Thomas exaggerates the colours and the textures of the landscape.
Romanticism was a cultural movement that emerged in England and Germany at the end of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe during the 19th century, until the 1850s. It expresses itself trough literature, painting, sculpture, music and politics.
Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer 1818; Germany
The Man Contemplating a Sea of Mist is a painting by the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. It is preserved and exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. It was composed from 1818 and is, along with La Mer de glace, one of the painter’s most famous works. In the foreground, a man stands on a rock high, his back turned to the viewer. He’s wearing a green frock coat
Romanticism was a movement that ’emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental’. Romantic works were a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment and the advancing Industrial Age, a time in which science and rationalization began to take firmer hold in the public consciousness. It was an international movement that swept Western Europe and Russia at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. It expanded to North America in the beginning of the 1830’s. Romantic literature challenged this new wave of ideas by glorifying stories rooted in emotion, nature, idealism, and the subjective experiences of common men and women. “Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.” – Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). Romantic artists were apt to make statements about anything (or nothing), dependent on how an individual artist felt about any given topic on any given day. Francisco de Goya’s work explored madness and oppression, while Caspar David Friedrich found endless inspiration in moonlight and fog. In the movement’s early years, these artists predominantly focused on landscape paintings, the will of the Romantic artist had the final say on the subject matter.
Romanticism in Art
Francisco de Goya
John Constable
Théodore Chassériau
Caspar David Friedrich
Horace Vernet
Thomas Cole
When looking at Romanticism in photography it is clear that artists are aiming to capture the dramatic emotions and atmosphere they feel when taking in their surroundings. For example, photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Fay Godwin capture awe inspiring images of tall mountains and winding paths to entrance the viewer into their romanticised setting. I aim to take influence from these photographer’s images and conduct a series of romanticised landscape photoshoots in specific areas around Jersey.
I decided to further experiment with photoshop in this photoshoot so I decided to edit the images in a similar way to the classic romanticism in art. To do this I used colour filters and adjusted the hue and colour saturation to exaggerate the colours in the photo. I think the black and white edits add a more vintage and classic, intense look to the photographs. On the other hand I think that the coloured edits relate closer to the theme of romanticism in art.
I believe the images highlighted in green are my most successful images in terms of Ansel Adams style of photography. I feel like these images have a better sense of romanticism because of the colours, tones or the interesting shape of the clouds. Putting these images in black and white through photoshop would further develop the same style that Adams is widely known for.
In general, these photos would be better quality if they were taken with a camera rather than a phone, however I did not have access to a camera for this photoshoot.
Photoshop development
Original Image
Edited Image
Original Image
Edited Image
Original Image
Edited Image
To edit these images, I used photoshop to give the photographs the same monochromatic theme that is iconically known within Ansel Adams work. I also adjusted the brightness and contrast curves to create more intense shadows and highlights, similar to the ones in the work of Adams.
Comparison between mine and Ansel Adams work
My Work
Ansel Adams work
I believe my work and the work of Ansel Adams have both similarities and differences. In terms of similarities, the use of the black and white filter allows for the tones in both images to be accentuated and there is a sense of the sublime in both images. On the other hand the images are different because Adams photograph is taken on a much larger scale, he also practiced the use of using the tonal values of an image to it’s full capacity, whereas I had to alter the contrast and brightness levels in order to achieve the level of contrast that Adams is known for.
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. The movement focused on intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe.
In the visual arts, Romanticism first showed itself in landscape painting, where from as early as the 1760s British artists began to turn to wilder landscapes and storms and Gothic architecture. A number of British artists at home and in Rome, including James Barry, Henry Fuseli and John Flaxman began to paint subjects that were at odds with the strict decorum and classical historical and mythological subject matter of conventional figurative art. These artists favoured themes that were bizarre, pathetic, or extravagantly heroic, and they defined their images with tensely linear drawing and bold contrasts of light and shade. William Blake, the other principal early Romantic painter in England, evolved his own powerful and unique visionary images.
