Romanticism
Whereas Neoclassicism’s rationality reinforced Enlightenment thought, particularly Voltaire’s
views, Romanticism owed much to the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau’s exclamation
“Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains!”—the opening line of his Social Contract (1762)—
summarizes a fundamental Romantic premise.
Romanticism emerged from a desire for freedom—not only political freedom but also freedom of
thought, feeling, action, worship, speech, and taste. Romantics asserted that freedom was the right
and property of all. They believed that the path to freedom was through imagination and feeling
rather than reason.
The allure of the Romantic spirit grew dramatically during the late 18th century, when the term
originated among German literary critics. Their aim was to distinguish peculiarly “modern” traits
from the Neoclassical traits that already had displaced Baroque and Rococo design elements.
Consequently, some scholars refer to Romanticism as a phenomenon that began around 1750 and
ended
about 1850, but most use the term more narrowly to denote an art movement that flourished from
about 1800 to 1840, between Neo-classicism and Realism.
The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in art was more than a stylistic shift. It
represented a philosophical change in emphasis from calculation to intuition, from reason to
emotion.
Among the leading manifestations of Romanticism was heightened interest in the medieval period
and in the sublime. For people living in the 18th century, the Middle Ages were the “dark ages,” a time
of barbarism, superstition, mystery, and miracle. The Romantic imagination stretched its
perception of the Middle Ages into all the worlds of fantasy open to it, including the
ghoulish, infernal, terrible, nightmarish, grotesque, and sadistic—the imagery that comes from the
chamber of horrors when reason sleeps.
Related to the imaginative sensibility was the period’s notion of the sublime. Among the individuals
most involved in studying the sublime was the British politician and philosopher Edmund
Burke (1729–1797). In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful (1757), Burke articulated his definition of the sublime: feelings of awe mixed with terror.
Burke observed that pain or fear evoked the most intense human emotions and that these emotions
could also be thrilling. Thus raging rivers and great storms at sea could be sublime to their view-
ers. Accompanying this taste for the sublime was the taste for the fantastic, occult, and macabre.
From its roots in the work of Fuseli, Blake, and other late-18th-century artists, Romanticism
gradually displaced Neoclassicism as the dominant painting style of the first half of the 19th century.
Romantic artists, including Francisco Goya in Spain and Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix in
France, reveled in exploring the exotic, erotic, and fantastic.
Whereas Neoclassicism’s rationality reinforced Enlightenment thought, particularly Voltaire’s
views, Romanticism owed much to the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau’s exclamation
“Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains!”—the opening line of his Social Contract (1762)—
summarizes a fundamental Romantic premise.
Romanticism emerged from a desire for freedom—not only political freedom but also freedom of
thought, feeling, action, worship, speech, and taste. Romantics asserted that freedom was the right
and property of all. They believed that the path to freedom was through imagination and feeling
rather than reason.
The allure of the Romantic spirit grew dramatically during the late 18th century, when the term
originated among German literary critics. Their aim was to distinguish peculiarly “modern” traits
from the Neoclassical traits that already had displaced Baroque and Rococo design elements.
Consequently, some scholars refer to Romanticism as a phenomenon that began around 1750 and
ended
about 1850, but most use the term more narrowly to denote an art movement that flourished from
about 1800 to 1840, between Neo-classicism and Realism.
The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in art was more than a stylistic shift. It
represented a philosophical change in emphasis from calculation to intuition, from reason to
emotion.
Among the leading manifestations of Romanticism was heightened interest in the medieval period
and in the sublime. For people living in the 18th century, the Middle Ages were the “dark ages,” a time
of barbarism, superstition, mystery, and miracle. The Romantic imagination stretched its
perception of the Middle Ages into all the worlds of fantasy open to it, including the
ghoulish, infernal, terrible, nightmarish, grotesque, and sadistic—the imagery that comes from the
chamber of horrors when reason sleeps.
Related to the imaginative sensibility was the period’s notion of the sublime. Among the individuals
most involved in studying the sublime was the British politician and philosopher Edmund
Burke (1729–1797). In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful (1757), Burke articulated his definition of the sublime: feelings of awe mixed with terror.
Burke observed that pain or fear evoked the most intense human emotions and that these emotions
could also be thrilling. Thus raging rivers and great storms at sea could be sublime to their view-
ers. Accompanying this taste for the sublime was the taste for the fantastic, occult, and macabre.
From its roots in the work of Fuseli, Blake, and other late-18th-century artists, Romanticism
gradually displaced Neoclassicism as the dominant painting style of the first half of the 19th century.
Romantic artists, including Francisco Goya in Spain and Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix in
France, reveled in exploring the exotic, erotic, and fantastic.
