Romanticism
Romanticism is a term loosely applied to literary and artistic movements of the 18th and 19th century, that emphasised a revulsion against established values. Instead Romanticism exalted, subjectivism, irrationalism, imagination, emotions and nature; and it valued emotion over reason and senses over intellect. At the same time it was not so closely coupled with any political movement or ideology that it supported the cult of the individual (individualism) over all ideas of society, and the 19th century saw a rise in forces of patriotism and nationalism against the bastions of existing social order and religion. The historical painter Eugène Delacroix glorified revolution, as a patriotic citizen of France. The movement's relationship with the past was uncertain to the extent that neo-classical architecture was commissioned at the same time as a Gothic Revival was fashionable in the British Isles.
Explorations of emotional states extended into the animal kingdom, marking the Romantic fascination with animals as both forces of nature and metaphor. Delacroix depicted the lion as unpredicable and elemental as its natural environment; although in reality the preparatory sketches, he made, were of lions in a zoo collection.
Artists closely associated with Romanticism include:
- William Blake,
- Thomas Cole,
- John Constable,
- Eugène Delacroix,
- Caspar David Friedrich,
- Henry Fuseli,
- Théodore Géricault,
- Francisco de Goya,
- John Martin,
- Friedrich Overbeck,
- J.M.W. Turner,
- Horace Vernet.
