Romanticism is a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century and ended in the late 19th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.

The Industrial Revolution also influenced Romanticism, which was about escaping from modern realities. Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and also a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

John Constable was an English artist born on June 11, 1776. Constable contributed to the Romantic movement and died on March 31, 1837.

Constable was one of the first artists of the Romantic movement to create landscape paintings drawn directly from nature rather than the idealised and dramatic depictions favored by other artists of the period and in taking this stance he pioneered Naturalism in Britain.

5 most focused elements in romanticism

Interest in the common man and childhood.

Strong senses, emotions, and feelings.

Awe of nature.

Celebration of the individual

Importance of imagination.

THE SUBLIME

What is it?

The sublime of art was originally defined as an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling. meaning how there is a ‘greatness beyond all possibility of calculation.’

in romanticism, the sublime is a meeting of emotions and the natural world. we allow our emotions to overwhelm and take over our rationality by looking at art.

Edmund Burke

The theory of sublime art was put forward by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful published in 1757. He defined the sublime as an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling. He wrote ‘whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime’.

sublime photography

What is romanticism in photography?

According to the article titled “Romanticism and Its Relation to Landscape Photography & Painting”, romanticism was an art form that rejected classicalism and focused on nature, imagination and emotion. Therefore, this started a new way of thinking and created a new type of art.

History of Romanticism

Romanticism started in Western Europe, around the middle of the 18th century. At this time, the dominant artistic and cultural movement is Neoclassicism, which finds its inspiration in the aesthetics of ancient civilizations. Neoclassicism values order, self-control, and the promotion of ideal values.

Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.

The five elements of romanticism

1. Interest in the common man and childhood.
2. Strong senses, emotions, and feelings.
3. Awe of nature.
4. Celebration of the individual.
5. Importance of imagination.

Artist references for Romanticism

Roger Fenton was a British photographer, noted as one of the first war photographers. Fenton was born into a Lancashire merchant family. Roger Fenton is a towering figure in the history of photography, the most celebrated and influential photographer in England during the medium’s “golden age” of the 1850s. Before taking up the camera, he studied law in London and painting in Paris. Fenton remained consistent in his love of the British landscape and the history it enfolded. Each summer he photographed in locations revered for their ruined abbeys, cathedrals, castles, romantic associations and literary connotations. 

JMW Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA, known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. He dominated British landscape painting in a thoroughly Romantic style which was driven by the immediacy of personal experience, emotion, and the boundless power of imagination.

What is Sublime in photography?

The Sublime is a western aesthetic concept of ‘the exalted’ of ‘beauty that is grand and dangerous’. The Sublime refers to the wild, unbounded grandeur of nature. The Sublime is related to threat and agony, to spaces where calamities happen or things run beyond human control.

The sublime has long been understood to mean a quality of greatness or grandeur that inspires awe and wonder. From the seventeenth century onwards the concept and the emotions it inspires have been a source of inspiration for artists and writers, particularly in relation to the natural landscape.

Romantic artists would often use their experiences of nature or natural events to convey the experience of the sublime. Kant’s countryman, Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings of mist, fog, and darkness sought to capture an experience of the infinite, creating an overwhelming sense of emptiness.

The Romantic sublime

Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1757) connected the sublime with experiences of awe, terror and danger. Burke saw nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders. This Romantic conception of the sublime proved influential for several generations of artists.

Romanticism occurred in the mid 18th century and was used to go against the new industrial revolution as a way to focus on the beauty in nature and idealistic world.

Paintings were created to capture the romanticized world in the 18th century. Using warm and romantic colours, artists used this new technique to create a better world, separate to the new man-made industry taking over the world.

William Wordsworth, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were known as ‘founders’ of romanticism. They were caught up by the idea that he world could be seen as a place of peace, beauty and wisdom. It could be used as a way to escape the fast pace of the word and its evolution. The idea that there was no need to be in a rush, and you could take in the atmosphere and narratives around you, caused people to enjoy their surroundings.

The Romantic Sublime

Edmund Burke

He published ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful’ in 1757

Sublime is an experience that’s good but that can possibly make us feel insignificant. E.g. the thought of being stuck in a storm, makes the simple human life seem simple and mindless.

Burke saw nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders.

The sublime and religion

The sublime can be connected with many things, and religion is one. Many beliefs follow a God, and the idea that humans are small and insignificant compared to a God-like being connects with Burke’s idea of the sublime.

John Constable

The Haywain 1821

Constable was known for his rural landscape paintings of Suffolk, in the 1820s. The Haywain creates an idealistic idea of England at the time, showing farm workers cooling down their horse on a warm day. This creates an idea for the viewer that England in the 1800s was pastoral and natural, however it hides the new movement of factory building and other man-made things starting to be introduced at the time.