What is Romanticism?

Romanticism: Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. For most of the Western world, it was at its peak from approximately 1800 to 1850.

Romanticism emphasized inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. Romanticism is linked with landscape and the sense of romance of the landscape features its spirit in full bloom.

What is the meaning of Romanticism Style?

Romanticism is characterized chiefly by a reaction against neoclassicism and has an emphasis on imagination and emotions.

Romantic artists depict their nostalgic sentiment through their work.

Effects that were used in Romanticism:
Small, Close strokes of complementary colours to create brilliance and vivid visual effect.

Subjectivity:

One main significant elements of Romanticism was increased emphasis on the personal and subjective power of the individual artist. Romantic artists began to explore different psychological, emotional, and mood states in their works. The Neoclassical obsession with genius and hero transformed into new ideas about the artist. Artists were able to express themselves fully, free from the tastes and rules.

Romanticism rejected the Age Of Enlightenment and Neoclassicism

What was the Neoclassical Period?

The Neoclassical Period was an art movement that sought to evoke the style of classical antiquity in writing, painting, sculpting, and architecture found in Greek and Roman culture. It was very popular between late 18th century and early 19th century.

Neoclassicism was a movement which involved idealized form. People were perfected not as they necessarily were but rather as an idealized version would. Romanticism hated that idea. Romanticism believed that the obsession with idealization led to a lack of emotion.

The Age of Enlightenment

Also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe, especially Western Europe, in the 17th and 18th centuries, with global influences and effects.

Started in 1685 and ended in 1815.

The main idea for it was that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy. So, it was an emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith.

3 major ideas from the Enlightenment was the values of scepticism, reason and individualism.

Sublime:

Sublime means the high quality of greatness and beautiful through physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual and/or artistic. Also means, extremely good, beautiful or enjoyable.

“It is beautiful but terrifying at the same time due to its own power.”

Sublime in the 18th century was a concept first introduced by the philosopher Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century to describe art that is truly extraordinary, invoking a powerful mix of awe, wonder and terror.

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was known and remembered for his support for Catholic emancipation, the impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and his staunch opposition to the French Revolution.

He had a famous quote which says, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

John Constable

John Constable RA was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition.

Constable is famous for his landscapes, which are mostly of the Suffolk countryside, where he was born and lived. He made many open-air sketches, using these as a basis for his large exhibition paintings, which were worked up in the studio.

The Hay Wain

The title, The Hay Wain, refers to the wooden wagon (wain) used for transporting cut and dried meadow grass (hay). The empty wagon is making its way through the shallow water to cross to the meadow on the other side where haymakers are at work.

The view is of the millpond at Flatford on the River Stour.

Flatford Mill was a watermill for grinding corn, operated by the Constable family for nearly a hundred years. It still survives and is about a mile from Constable’s birthplace at East Bergholt, Suffolk. The house on the left also survives; in Constable’s time it was occupied by tenant farmer Willy Lott.

It was created in the artist’s studio in London. Working from a number of open-air sketches made over several years, Constable then made a full-size preparatory oil sketch to establish the composition before painting the final picture.

The painting by John Constable depicts a tranquil countryside life. There is no sign of the Industrial Revolution going on at the time. People turned to his painting as an appreciation of rural life, away from the cities that were booming at the time.

What is Romanticism ?

Romanticism is a movement in art and literature that organised in the late 18th century emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity and the primacy of an individual.

Romanticism came about as a response to the disillusionment with the enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French revolution. In romance art, nature has been a big part of the movement because of its uncontrollable power, unpredictability and the potential catastrophic extremes.

Romanticism is the attitude, ideals and feelings which are romantic rather than realistic. Romanticism is the celebration of an individual and the glorification of nature.

What is the Romantic Sublime ?

The sublime is both beautiful and terrifying in its power or potential darkness. Artists explored the sublime in depth through art using paintings and drawings of the imagination, however they could often turn into nightmares. Natural landscapes were mighty and nice to look at and people admired the aesthetics but they were always dangerous.

Humans respect nature and admire the natural land that has been made and we also feel connected to nature, which some people think it is through our historic past. But we also destroy nature for example by cutting down trees and polluting the air, we as humans, do not take enough care for the beautiful world we live in and we take it for advantage which therefore ruins what nature gives us. This could be an argument whether humans have enough respect for the nature that it deserves or whether we take it for granted.

Include Edmund Burke was known from the sublime “the strongest passion” he took an extreme liking to romance and belittled the idea of beautiful. Edmund Burke’s theory about romanticism was that he claimed it was merely an instance of prettiness.

John Constable

Who is John Constable ?

John Constable was a very famous English landscape photographer in the early 19th century. He was best known for his paintings of the English countryside, especially paintings of the River Stour which was an area that soon after became known as “Constable Country”.

John Constables art was known for having natural appearances

Landscape is all the visible features of an area of land, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal. Landscape commonly involves daylight photography of natural features. It is a broad genre that includes many different styles and techniques.

16th Century

Landscape emerged as a genre in Western culture during the Renaissance (A period of time in between the medieval and modern times) in the 16th century.

Albrecht altdofer – 16th century

Add details of how Landscape developed as a genre from:

After the fall of the roman empire, the tradition of depicting pure landscapes declined, this meant landscapes changed, and they were only seen as purposeful and meaningful if they were a setting for religious and figural scenes. This continued until the 16th century until photographers began to view landscapes as their own subjects.

– 16th Century during the renaissance,

– through to 17th century when classical landscape evolved

– and through to 18th/19th century when it became more popular. Add images from relevant artists to break it up.

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17th Century

Classical landscape emerged as a genre :

Nicolas poussin – 17th century

Pierre -henri de valenciennes – 18th century

Theodore Rousseau – 19th century

Ansel Adams – 20th century

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. For most of the Western world, it was at its peak from approximately 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of the past and nature, preferring the medieval over the classical.

Romanticism came after the age of enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason). which was an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith. People who where with this art movement believed in science and facts, which likely helped lead to the very quick change in parts of the world caused by the industrial revolution. The romantics directly opposed these views.

The industrial revolution was the biggest influence in sparking the popularity of this art movement. Romanticism revived medievalism and juxtaposed a pastoral conception of a more “authentic” European past with a highly critical view of recent social changes, including urbanisation, brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience. It granted a new importance to experiences of sympathy, awe, wonder, and terror, in part by naturalizing such emotions as responses to the “beautiful” and the “sublime”. Romantics stressed the nobility of folk art and ancient cultural practices.

Many Romantic paintings had colours that tended to be soft and warm, with a focus on pink, red, and pastel shades. Techniques like blending, layering, and brush strokes can create a dreamy, romantic effect, as well as expressive compositions, vivid colours, and dramatic contrasts of light and dark. This created a focus on individualism, an emphasis on nature, emotion over reason, freedom of form, and an exploration of the Gothic and unknown.

John Constable

John Constable (born June 11, 1776, East Bergholt, Suffolk, England—died March 31, 1837, London) one of the first artists of the Romantic movement to create landscape paintings drawn directly from nature rather than the idealised and dramatic depictions favoured by other artists of the period (the age of enlightenment). Constable moved away from the highly idealized landscapes that were the expected norm of the period and instead favoured realistic depictions of the natural world created through close observation. 

In this oil painting Constable has constructed the painting so that the viewer stands on the near bank of the river and the size of the image (it was another six-footer) in conjunction with the carefully rendered fall of light enables the viewer to feel that they could enter the scene. The image highlights the glory of nature without resorting to artifice or exaggeration and reflects Constable’s determination to paint the truth of what he saw.

The image here is really pleasing to the eyes, with its leading lines from the river, the wide open space of green, brown and yellow meadows that run of the frame, the blue sky that reflects a nice tint on the river, and more. The image gives a feeling of safety , making the views want to actually be there, instead of the grimy, melancholy towns and cities.

Niagara USA – Thomas Cole

The American painter Thomas Cole makes his name as a painter of sublime scenes, vast landscape of the American interior showing nature at its most dignified and impressive.

This painting shows the vast Niagara falls with very small native Americans in the foreground. He does this to show a diminished presence in scale and reinforces the false idea of the “vanishing Indian” and is meant to signal impending transformation rather than acknowledge their stolen sovereignty. The people here look almost lost and puny in the vastness of there environment. To be a romantic is to find relief from the pressures of modern industrial life through nature, which this painting displays very well.

The Sublime

The Sublime definition is of very great excellence or beauty. However, in Romantic art it means something slightly different – Sublime Art is Edmund Burke’s 18th-century theory that defines art as that which alludes to an immeasurable greatness beyond comprehension.

In “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” (1757) it noted that there were certain experiences which supply a kind of thrill or shudder of perverse pleasure, mixing fear and delight. He shifted the emphasis in discussions of the sublime towards experiences provoked by aspects of nature which due to their vastness or obscurity could not be considered beautiful, and indeed were likely to fill us with a degree of horror.

We are observing something that is potentially dangerous, but we can gain pleasure knowing that we are observing it from a place of safety – meaning shows the sublime. There is an initial feeling of fear or distress, followed by pleasure, once the subject realises that the object that is posing these feelings is not a real threat. Burke claims that the most powerful passion is that of fear because it comes from an apprehension of pain.

Roger Fenton

 (28 March 1819 – 8 August 1869) was a British photographer, noted as one of the first war photographers.

The most compelling of his views of the English, Welsh, and Scottish countryside call to mind the paintings of Constable and Turner as well as Romantic poems by William Wordsworth that celebrate man’s ties to nature. Fenton possessed a particular sensitivity for the play of light and atmosphere in the natural world, a subject he explored throughout the decade of his career with as much determination and success as he did architecture.

What Is A Landscape?

Classical Landscapes

Landscape Photography

During the 19th century, landscape photography was rising as well as creative photography technology, for example the creation of more portable cameras. In the 20th century photographers like Ansel Adams took landscape photography even more popular and influential, this was done by taking classical landscapes of natural scenery, these photographs still are inspirational in the modern day.

The Hay wain is by far John Constable’s most famous and well loved painting. Originating from one of his summer series of paintings, it is now displayed in the National Gallery in London. Picturing a rural scene in between Essex and Suffolk, on the river Stour which boarders Essex and Suffolk, essentially separating the two. The scene shown could have easily been created from imagination, however it is known that in fact the house on the left is a neighbours house as the Constable’s fathers’ house was just out of the frame, which was on the banks of the River Stour. Willy Lott was the neighbour and was a tenant farmer, more than likely the one pictured in the painting. The horse and cart were used as transport and for farm work, but in the heat of summer it was common for the horse and cart to be led into the river for the horse to drink and for the iron on the cart wheels to cool down after spending all day in the summer heat. Interestingly enough, Willy Lott’s cottage still stands undamaged today but none of the trees in the photo exist in modern day, which links perfectly with what romanticists were trying to ‘warn’ people about in their love and need for nature over urbanisation. This is greatly linked to the romantic movement as it was the beautification of nature and seen as the ideal. However this is not likely true with the farmer likely working dawn till dusk. This brings it back to the point that the entire Romantic movement was predominantly originated by those of a higher class and with easier lives fantasying about the ‘simple, happy country life’ believing people who were poor, were happier even though they had significantly less money, time and freedom. He was revolutionary in many different ways for example, he was one of the first people to paint trees green as previously landscapes were done by people living in the centre of the industrial revolution with smoke and smog instead of green trees they just reflected colours they saw everyday. He did this by not only having his won memories of the landscape but he also got people to send quick sketches of parts of the scenery as he was working from his own sketches and memories. He went against the time period even more by instead of being detail originated which was what was deemed as correct for the time, with some amazing artists painting each individual leaf etc, Constable used expressive brush strokes and close to mark making techniques to create this painting in a very short space of time. The brush marks instead of precise detail show the passion and emotion put into the work, like a flurry of homely colours and patterns appealing on the page rather than a more documentative art style. Constable even put the workers in the background to further how the beautiful the place, again contrasting the time but fitting in the romantic idea with most farm workers being drawn to the bigger cities and being replaced with machines instead. Having originally studied weather and Meteorology clouds were a large part of Constable’s work, in this one particularly with it’s name actually being ‘Noon’ (rather than ‘Hay Wain’ as we have come to know it) links to the romantics movement with the dramatic and important weather changes. However it is also great for the modern day historian’s as with his background and the painting name, Constable was more than likely and reflected throughout his work the clouds and weather gave an accurate idea of what time and season the painting depicted.

Landscape photography is used to show spaces in the world, sometimes vast and unending but other times microscopic. Landscape photos typically capture the presence of nature however they also capture human-made features which have disturbed the natural landscapes. The four things which make a good landscape photo are fantastic lighting, strong composition, appropriate sharpness and optimum exposure. One of the downsides of landscape photography is that you have no control over the weather, for example you may want to take a photo of the sunset however it is rainy and there is no sun visible. Landscape photography is done for many different reasons. One of the most common reasons for landscape photography is to be able to hold on to a memory of what you seen whilst being outdoors, especially when travelling. Others choose to pursue it as an outdoor lifestyle to feel involved with nature often to escape the artificial world. Majority of landscape photography has little no to human activity and are created to show the pure, undisrupted image of nature. Landscape photography commonly involves daylight photography of natural features of land, sky, and waters, usually these photos are taken from a distance. However some landscape photographs may involve subjects in a scenic setting nearby, or even close-up, and sometimes at night. Photographs of unnatural scenery such as farm fields, orchards, gardens and architecture may also be considered as ‘landscape’ photography as well. Even with the presence of man-made structures, such as buildings, or art, for example a sculpture, may also be considered as landscape if presented in an artistic setting or appearing in an artistic style. Landscape is arguably a form of ‘still life’ due to its relatively still subjects. A positive of landscape photography is that it has contributed to tourism and became a large part of local economies throughout the world. Countries such as Scotland and Canada are very popular with the photography tourists and welcome many people from all over the world. Due to this, landscape photography workshops have became a large business technique in these countries.

Examples of landscape photography:

There are many different types of Landscape Photography however these are some of the ones which people mainly focus on:

Cliff path photography:

Cliff path photography tends to consist of leading lines which bring the viewers attention to certain areas of the photo. They also more often than not include greenery, like many other landscape photography.

Beaches:

I particularly like beach photography due to the sunset/ sunrise photos and the way the sky changes to a warm tone. They often also include photos of the ocean making contact with the sand whilst the tide comes in. This will be a good thing to photograph especially in Jersey due to its many beaches.

Sand dunes:

Sand dune photography is full of texture and movement due to the ripples in the sand. They also tend to have warm tones. This will also be good to photograph in Jersey due to the large area with sand dunes.

Fields:

Photography of fields is full of vibrant flowers and greenery as well as some wildlife and animals.

Country lanes and paths:

Country lane photography consists of many leading lines which almost makes the viewer feel as if they are there due to the viewpoint at which the photograph is taken at. Martin Fry is a photographer which is particularly good at this type of photography.

Woods:

Woodland photography often has a dark tone to it as well as different viewpoints such as the tree tops. The interesting shaped trees make interesting photos in woodland photography as they are unique every time.

Valleys:

Valley photography often have rivers or streams along with many different types of greenery such as trees, grass and even flowers. Some are dryer valleys which is shown by the lack of greenery and water.

The origins of Landscape Photography

The first landscape photography was created by a French man named Joseph Nicephore Niepce between the years of 1826 and 1827. This photo was not only the first landscape photograph but also the first ever permanent photographic image. Niepce is now considered as one of the most important figures within the invention of photography. Niepce was born in France in 1765, he was an amateur scientist, inventor and artist.

Since this landscape has evolved into a widely used genre of photography due to its beauty yet simplicity, with many people sharing these photos using social media. The photos have also gotten much clearer and sharper over time and they even have colour.