Chapter 16Romanticism, Realism, and

PhotographyCulture and Values, 8th Ed.

Cunningham and Reich and Fichner-Rathus

identify the concerns of Romanticism

What is Romanticism• nostalgia for idealized past • interest in exotic, distant lands • man is inherently good • emphasis on nature, emotion, intuition,

imagination • commitment to political and social freedom

!

[Source: Adams Exploring the Humanities p. 495]

What is Romanticism• Anonymous 13th century story of Jaufré

Rudel: – Jaufré Rudel … , the prince of Blaye … fell in love with the

countess of Tripoli, without ever having seen her, out of the good he heard of her…. Out of his desire to see her, he became a crusader and set off by sea, and on the boat was taken ill, and was taken to Tripoli. … Word of this was sent to the countess and she came to his bedside and took him in her arms. … [He praised] God for having allowed him live long enough to see her; and so he died in her arms.

[Source: Eco History of Beauty p. 167]

!• Several 12th century songs refer to Jaufré

Rudel as well: – My thoughts stray to my distant love. … But I know not when I

shall see her for our lands lie too far apart! – Distant love, for you all my heart aches … [Source: Eco History of Beauty p. 168]

!• This story appears in the works of several

important Romantic period poets

The term Romantic is used to describe a revival of interest in literary works with medieval settings written in the Romance languages. ![Source: Adams Exploring the Humanities p. 500]

Jaufré Rudel legend in the Romantic PeriodHeinrich Heine from Romancero-Last Poems (1851)! [in Eco History of Beauty p. 169]

The walls of castle Blaye are hung with tapestries woven by the expert hand of her who was countess of Tripoli. … The countess bends over him Embracing him with love And kisses the bloodless mouth That had praised her gloriously. But oh! that kiss is transformed into a kiss of farewell. … In castle Blaye, at night The figures on the tapestries Tremble, rustle, whisper As suddenly they return to life. !The Lady and the Troubadour Their spectral limbs arouse And come down from the walls To stroll through the halls.

Giosuè Carducci from “Jaufré Rudel” (1888)!! [in Eco History of Beauty p. 170]

… as out of Cyprus sails The crusader ship. Gasping with fever in the stern Lies the prince of Blaye, Rudel Seeking to glimpse The castle high in Tripoli. !With the Asian shore in sight The song rings out “Love from a distant land For you my heart aches.” !… the ship Moors in the peaceful harbor … Bertrand … hastens to the castle to seek Melisenda The countess of Tripoli. …

the intellectual background and the impact of the Industrial

Revolution on Romanticism

16.2 A panoramic view of London, ca. 1858

• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) • Transcendental idealism • Critique of Judgment (1790) • disinterested interest (disinterested satisfaction) • Art reconciles opposites !

• Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) • Synthesis of thesis, antithesis • Optimistic “World Spirit”

The Intellectual Background

• Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) • Dominating world power is evil • The World as Will and Idea (1819) • Despondency, pessimism, gloom !

• Karl Marx (1818-1883) • Communist Manifesto (1848) • Universal proletariat, revolution • Artistic realism: social and political • Anti-capitalism

The Intellectual Background

• Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) • Theory of evolution, natural selection • “Social Darwinism”

• Physics, chemistry • Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

• Railroads, factories • “a wilderness of human beings”

Other Industrial Developments

explain Romanticism in 19th-century art

• Romanticism is more a set of characteristics than an era (see p. 578)

• Expression of personal feelings • Emotionality, subjectivity • Individual creative imagination • Mystical attachment to nature • Love of the fantastic and the exotic

The Concerns of Romanticism

16.12 Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1797-1798

• Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) • The Third of May (Execution of the Madrileños)

(1814) • No idealization • Persuasive emotionality • Personal commitment, vision

Romantic Art in Spain and France

Francois Goya’s Romanticism: Nationalism and Dream Worlds

Third of May 1808 (1814) shows his concern with justice and liberty

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (ca. 1798)

• Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa (1818) • Intended as a direct indictment of the government !

• Romantic art of Delacroix (1798-1863) • Use of color to create form • Violent, emotional scenes • The Death of Sardanapalus (1826)

Romantic Art in Spain and France

16.16 Jean Louis André-Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818

16.18 Eugène Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus, 1826

• William Blake (1757-1827) • Landscape as Romantic device

• Constable’s Hay Wain (1821) • Turner’s Slave Ship (1840) • Friedrich’s Wanderer Above a Sea of Mist

(1817-1818)

Romantic Art in the United Kingdom and

Germany

16.20 John Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821

16.21 Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840

16.22 Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above a Sea of Mist, 1817-1818

illustrate the role of poetry and the novel in the

Romantic era

Love of the Fantastic and Exotic The Beauty of the Medusa: grotesque, gloomy, melancholy, formless

Head of Medusa at the Uffizi Gallery Flemish School (formerly attributed to Leonardo da Vinci)

P.B. Shelley poem “On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery”1.

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;Its horror and its beauty are divine. Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,The agonies of anguish and of death.

2.Yet it is less the horror than the graceWhich turns the gazer's spirit into stone, Whereon the lineaments of that dead face Are graven, till the characters be grown Into itself, and thought no more can trace;'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanize and harmonize the strain.

Nature and Romanticism

J.M.W. Turner (1794) Wordsworth “Lines Written a few Miles above Tintern Abbey …” (1798)Five years have passed; five summers, with the

length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a sweet inland murmur. —Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, Which on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits, Among the woods and copses lose themselves, Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb The wild green landscape. …

•William Blake (1757-1827)!•Accomplished in both literature and the visual

arts; “The Tyger” (1794)!•William Wordsworth (1770-1850)!

•Founded Romantic movement!•“Emotion recollected in tranquility”!

•Samuel Taylor Coleridge!•The Rime of the Ancient Mariner!

• Illustrates humankind’s powerlessness in the face of the majesty of nature

Romantic Poetry

•Lord Byron (1788-1824)!•Tormented Romantic hero, Byronic!•Commitment to struggles for liberty!

•Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)!•Atheism, anarchy!•Perfectability of humanity!•Unification of extreme emotions!

•John Keats (1795-1821)!•Tragedy of existence, peace of death

Romantic Poetry

• Jane Austen• Superficially about manners and dress• More deeply, they satirize the British evolution of mating

strategies• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

• Argued in favor of free love• Ghost story competition resulted in Frankenstein or The

Modern Prometheus• Victor Hugo

• Les Miserables • Combined the Romantic style with a social conscience

The Romantic Novel

detail the music of the Romantic era and its most

important composers

•Pioneer of musical Romanticism!•Pathétique!

•Rooted in classical principles!•Autobiographical emotionality!

•Eroica!•“… the memory of a great man”!•Classical structure + Romantic elements

Romantic Music Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

•Fidelio!•Love of liberty, hatred of oppression!•Triumph over fate!

•Pastoral!•“Ode to Joy”!•Universality of individual emotion!•Emotional intensity: No. 5 in C

Romantic Music Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

•Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)!•Symphonie fantastique !

•Franz Schubert!•Personal emotion!•More than six hundred Lieder (songs)!•Unfinished Symphony

Romantic Music

Fantastic and Exotic in Music(but also expressive and self-analytical)

• Berlioz Symphonie fantastique – 5th movement titled “Dream of a Witches’

Sabbath” – Shows expression of personal feelings and self-

analysis – the story:

• a young musician, obsessed with a woman, tries to kill himself with an overdose of opium. The drug does not kill him, rather plunges him into dream.

– see p. 601 for more details

•Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)!•Conservative Romanticism!•Symphony No. 1, intermezzo!

•Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)!•Catholicism, mystical vision!•Symphony No. 8, adagio

Romantic Music

•Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)!•Mazurkas, polonaises!•“the soul of the piano”!

•Franz Liszt (1811-1886)!•Hungarian folk tunes!•Faust, Dante!

•Nicolò Paganini!•Violin virtuoso, Romantic exaggeration

Romantic Music Instrumental Virtuosos

16.25 Eugène Delacroix, Frédéric Chopin, 1838

•Emphasis on native musical traditions!•Modest Moussorgsky (1839-1881)!

•Boris Godunov (1874)!•Russian folksongs, religious music!

•Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)!•Antonin Dvorák (1841-1904)

Romantic Music Music and Nationalism

describe the development of opera in

Italy and Germany

•Bel canto!•Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)!•Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)!

•Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)!•Dramatic, psychological truth!•Contemporary life issues!

•Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata!•Otello

Romantic Music Opera

• Gesamtkunstwerk!• Wagnerian characteristics!

• Musical flow!• Elimination of virtuosity!• Emphasis on orchestra!• Leitmotiv!

• Universal drama, universal emotion!• The Ring of the Nibelung (1851-1874)!• Tristan and Isolde (1865)

Romantic Music Opera in Germany: Wagner (1813-1883)

explain Realism in 19th-century art

•Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)!•Champion of the working class!•“Pavilion of Realism”!

•Honore Daumier (1808-1879)!•Used everyday events to express views

RealismRealist Art

16.27 Gustave Courbet, The Artist’s Studio: A Real Allegory of the Last Seven Years of My Life, 1855

•A more naturalistic style; describe characters’ lives in realistic terms!

•Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)!•Madam Bovary (1856)!

•Honore de Balzac (1779-1850)!•`The Human Comedy

Realist Literature

•George Sand (1804-1876)!•Issues of gender, moral equality!

•Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1863-9)!•“Natural person” vs. civilization!

•Charles Dickens (1812-1870)!•Social justice, evil institutions

Realist Literature: The Novel

explain the major trends in 19th-century American

literature and art

• European influences+individuality!• Transcendentalists!

• Unity of humans with nature!• Emerson, Thoreau!

• Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)!• The death of a beautiful woman is “unquestionably

the most poetic topic in the world”!• Walt Whitman (1819-1892)!

• Importance of the individual, freedom!• Humanity united with the universe

The Humanities in the United States United States Literature

The Humanities in the United States United States Literature

•Emily Dickinson (1830-1881)!•Balance of passion, reason!•Psychology, faith, skepticism!

•Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850)!•Evil in society!

•Melville’s Moby Dick (1851)!•Profound moral issues!•Search for truth, self-discovery

•Significance of landscape painting!•Natural beauty=moral beauty!•Hudson River School, Luminists!

•Thomas Cole (1801-1848)!•Asher B. Durand!•United States Genre Painting!

•Featured narrative scenes and portraits of ordinary people at work and play!

•George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879)

United States Art and Architecture

16.29 Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoake, Northhampton, Massachusetts--after a Thunderstorm, The Oxbow, 1836

16.30 Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849

16.31 George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatman, 1846

•United States architecture spanned Neo-Classicism and Gothic Revival!•United States Capitol (1793)!•Saint Patrick’s Cathedral (1858-1878)

United States Art and Architecture

16.32 United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.

16.33 Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City, New York, 1858-1878

United States Art and Architecture

•Photography!•Principles of photography!

•Camera obscura!•Heliography!•Daguerrotype!

•Photography became the democratic equalizer!•Photography revolutionized the news media

16.35 Nadar, Sarah Bernhardt, 1869

16.36 Alexander Gardner, Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg, July 1863

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