Romanticism was an art form that rejected classicalism and focused on nature, imagination and emotion. Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe. It began in 1800 and was very popular until around 1850.

Henry Fuseli

Fuseli’s was born in zurich in 1741 and died in London in 1825. His oil painting, The Nightmare, was one of the first Romanticism art pieces ever done. The painting shows a woman in deep sleep with her arms thrown below her, and with a demonic creature on top of her chest.

J.M.W Turner

J.M.W Turner, was an English romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist, born in 1775 and died in 1851. He was and is still known for his expressive colouring and imaginative landscapes. His painting, Hannibal crossing the Alpes depicts the challenging efforts of Hannibal’s soldiers to cross the Alpes in 218BC. Turner created a dynamic balance of light and dark that recurred in his later works.

The sublime

The sublime is a western aesthetic concept of ‘the exalted’ of ‘beauty that is grand and dangerous’. It refers to the wild, unbounded grandeur of nature. The origin of the sublime could be related back to the publication of ‘A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful’, by Edmund Burk. This book provided the English romantic movement with an analysis of what constitutes the sublime, and all the qualities it possesses.

Burk was born in 1729 and died in 1797. He had various political achievements including a whig MP and also the founder of modern conservatism.