Art Movements in Art History - Romanticism
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Romanticism in England
Romanticism in England
In England, as in Germany, the first Romantic stirrings were to be witnessed in nature poetry among
other genres, such as that of James Thomson, or in the nocturnal songs of Edward Young. This return to
nature, this emphasis on the power of the individual, must be seen as a reaction to the mechanisation
and depersonalisation brought about by the Industrial Revolution in England. This had brought with it
a rift between capital and labour, between employer and employee, thus establishing a new hierarchical
social order. Commercialism and urbanisation had led to unfree ways of life; and these in turn
provoked the artist and the writer to express their subjective, emotive life and make the spectator or
reader partake in their own existential struggle. Individualism became a means to retain mental and
emotional independence. In literature and art the conflict between the "I" and the world,
between the individual and the state, was explored. The aim everywhere was to express inner rather
than outer realities.
In painting this is perhaps most directly expressed in portraiture. Social rank and status were no
longer important. Where the artist had previously been commissioned to portray patrons in official
costume or emphasise the importance of the sitter, the accent now fell on the uniqueness of' the
individual. The self-portraits of artists, such as Palmer (c 1826) in England, and Friedrich in
Germany, confront the spectators with a gravity and intimacy that were largely lacking in 18th century
portraits. In Palmer's Self-portrait of 1826 an emotional sincerity comes across in a direct and
spontaneous manner. A sense of mystery and spirituality characterises the portrait. Palmer used the
features of Christ to express personal suffering. Portraits of children, especially those by Runge in
Germany, are characteristic of the period because they reflect the innocence, sincerity and
spontaneity which the Romantics considered to be essential to reassessment of the self. To the
Romantic artist the child also symbolised an unspoiled primeval mystery; and for Runge children became
a symbolic reflection of raw, pure energy in nature, as seen in his Portrait of his Parents
(1806).
English Romanticism developed out of a new awareness of nature, seen as a reflection of the human
spirit. Natural phenomena such as storms, disasters, the mysterious rhythms of growth, life and death
were used to give expression to the dreams, fears and aspirations of man. Nature also became an escape
from the restrictive conventional world and drew attention to the diverse and dynamic energies of the
cosmos. Accurate studies of birds, animals and insects reflected man's interest in the mysterious and
hidden secrets of nature. This renewed interest in nature was further stimulated by archaeological and
scientific discoveries, expeditions and narratives in which the romantic aspect of strange and distant
places was described or dramatised, as may be seen in the works of Wordsworth or Byron.
The philosophical writings of Rousseau and Burke were further encouragement to man to seek hidden
meaning behind the surface of physical reality.
The work of William Hodges (1744-1797) illustrates this interest in the picturesque and exotic.
Accompanying Captain Cook on his voyages to the South Sea Islands in the years 1772 to 1775, Hodges
recorded such dramatic new scenery as he experienced in New Zealand and Tahiti. This escapism was
encouraged by the political and industrial revolutions at the end of the 18th century as well as by
revolutionary ideas that were leading to great social change. Man was trying to escape the burdens of
his own time. And such an escape was found in nature, particularly in desolate, uninhabited landscapes
far removed from a city environment.
Important to an understanding of the beginnings of Romanticism in England is the work of late 18th
century watercolourists such as Alexander and Robert Cozens. Their work is remarkably innovative and
demonstrates a sensitive and imaginative awareness of nature. Alexander Cozens (c 1717-1786) declared
that "too much time [was] spent in copying the work of others, which tends to weaken the powers
of invention," and that he "scruple[d] not to affirm that too much time may be spent in
copying the landscapes of nature herself". Transforming random ink marks into atmospheric
impressions of
mountains and cascades, Cozens broke entirely new ground. He created a poetic mood and evoked a sense
of mystery in the brooding and dramatic shapes traced in his landscapes.
John Robert Cozens (1752-1797), Alexander's son, further developed the notion of raising landscape
painting above the merely topographical. He was, above all, sensitive to changes in nature and
recorded his impressions in sensitive, largely monochrome tonal gradations which Constable later
described as "all poetry".
In the pre-Romantic period, landscape painting in England was characterised by two distinctive
approaches. On the one hand there was the more classical approach which echoed Winckelmann's theory
that art must strive towards a noble simplicity and calm grandeur. On the other hand there was the
approach in which poetic imagination played a superior role, as in the work of PJ de Loutherbourg
(1749-1812). In this artist's renderings of shipwrecks, mountain streams and avalanches, we can
discern these distinctive qualities which were destined to become characteristic of English
Romanticism.
The wars and revolutions at the turn of the century created an atmosphere of doubt which resulted in
a spirit of pessimism. Man realised his insignificance and transience and became increasingly aware of
nature's destructive aspects. Artists such as Stanfield and Martin, among others, portrayed the
unbridled powers of nature with pathos and wild imagination.
After 1815 the British market was flooded with works of art belonging to Continental collectors. In
England there was a preference for 17th century Dutch landscape paintings, such as those of Van
Ruysdael which, with their nostalgic charm, were especially popular through their association with
undefiled nature. Both Turner and Constable learnt a great deal from Dutch landscape painting.
Through the collections of British aristocratic landowners, and of the nouveaux riches who owed their
wealth to the Industrial Revolution, British artists at this time became acquainted with a great
variety of styles and subject matter in the work of the Old Masters. It is understandable therefore
that Romantic paintings were, at times, eclectic in character. Works of the Old Masters having a
Romantic flavour often appeared in a new guise in which expression and subject matter were adapted to
a new artistic vision. Turner, for instance, was familiar with the works of Claude Lorrain and
Poussin, and during his visit to the Louvre made a particular study of Titian.
Other sources of inspiration to the Romantics were the Bible and works of Chaucer, Milton, Spencer
and Shakespeare. These stimulated the imagination of the new generation of artists, attracted as they
were by dramatic events from the past, by emotional experiences, and by the mystical, the irrational
and the supernatural.
More than any other British artist, Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) found himself in accord with the taste
and fashion of his time, especially through the attraction exerted on him by the supernatural,
witches, violence and dream fantasies. Influenced by Michelangelo, Fuseli combined elements of
exaggerated heroism with his Nordic sense of the demonic, the fantastic and alarming. He was also
inspired by dramatic episodes from Shakespeare's literary works and represented them in a diluted 16th
century mannerist style - distilled, however, with a strong personal quality. Although he was more of
an illustrator than a painter, he nevertheless infused his accounts of the surreal with a
psychological dimension. The preponderant use of linear qualities at the expense of colour, and the
way in which he
depicted only the essential illustrative details in light tones against a predominantly dark
background, showed a marked similarity with Blake, whose work was strongly derivative of Gothic art.
William Blake (1757-1827) shared Fuseli's disregard for natural appearances, and often used the
Bible, in particular the Book of Revelation, and also Romantic poetry as a source of inspiration. With
an imaginative sense of design he transformed natural phenomena into the supernatural. Like a medieval
illustrator he created symbols for mystic concepts. His own philosophy was spiritually and
theologically founded, and physical reality existed for him on a lower plane than did the sublime
world of art and
fantasy. To Blake the world of the imagination was the world of eternity; he created in his
illustrations an intensely private symbolism.
Blake was convinced that the images he used were clearer and livelier in his vision than in the
retinal apprehension of the world around him. His preference for Gothic art, which he declared to be
superior to Classical art, stemmed from his disapproval of the restrictions that conventional
representation, and the formulas and rules associated with it, would have imposed on him.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) had a strongly pantheistic approach to nature. He represented nature as the
Garden of Eden, in which flocks of sheep, chapels, sheaves of wheat and fruit-laden trees were
transformed into images of his imagination. He described natural appearances in detail, so stressing
their symbolic significance; and he heightened the mystery of his scenes by setting them at dusk or at
night, for instance Harvest Moon (1835) and Coming from Evening Church (1830). Like
Blake, he had a special affinity for Gothic art; yet his intense perception of the manifestations of
nature separated him from this artist. He recorded natural details faithfully. But his scenery is
pervaded by a supernatural mystery. Indeed he seeks sacred symbols in secular disguise. Thus the trees
and cottages in Coming from Evening Church take on the pattern of Gothic arches, so that the
scene becomes a vision of a vanished world of believers, unspoilt by the harsh reality of early 19th
century urbanisation. Religious rituals were depicted without reference to any specific Christian
rite. The pantheistic visions of Palmer can be compared to those in the work of Caspar David
Friedrich.
Like Wordsworth, Constable represents in his work the Romantic veneration of nature. Constable and
Wordsworth's interest in the intimate aspects of the surroundings of their youth finds expression in
their works. To them the passions of man were to be discovered incorporated within the beautiful and
permanent forms of nature. Windmills, cottages and sheds were places which had strong personal
associations for Constable. His renderings of them, although descriptions of natural phenomena in the
landscape, reflect a spiritual essence. His art becomes the medium through which his emotional
experience is revealed.
Initially Constable was satisfied with portraying passive nature, but around 1811 a change in his
approach became noticeable. He was then becoming increasingly aware of the expressive effects of light
and atmospheric changes on landscape. He could now distinguish between the permanent physical
qualities of nature and such intangible and inconstant elements as light and moving air which affected
local colour and tone values, form and textures. Aiming to render this element of endless change in
the landscape, Constable created a subtle balance between light and form. His attempt to represent
landscape in terms of chiaroscuro differed from the way in which 17th century and 18th century artists
had used this painterly device. To Constable the physical and climatic changes he observed in nature
became representative of a sequence of human emotions; light and dark became
metaphors of joy and despair.
With works like The Hay Wain (1821), Constable hoped to elevate the depiction of a modest
rural landscape to the same level as the historical and classical landscapes of Poussin and Claude.
Yet he never devised or contrived a painting, nor was the landscape merely a background or stage for
heroic or tragic events. He painted what existed in the field of his experience, based on his
observation of physical and climatic changes in nature.
It was particularly in his preparatory oil sketches that Constable recorded directly, swiftly and
spontaneously every change and movement in nature. A great deal of the original impulse and energy of
the first emotion is lost in his completed works. In these "finished" works Constable strove
to create landscapes within the conventions of the academic tradition to which he was, in a sense,
still bound. However the loose and aggressive technique in his later works, like The Leaping
Horse (1824-1825), proved no longer acceptable to his contemporaries, because such works
revealed an intensely subjective approach emphasising personal expression rather than topographical
facts. In works like the full-scale sketch of Hadleigh Castle (1829), and Salisbury
Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), Constable's technique becomes even broader, his impasto
thicker, his brush strokes more rhythmical and emphatic, his style more individual. Less descriptive,
the landscape becomes an integrated world of vibrating and moving light. Nature is no longer a
structure of stable forms, evenly illuminated from a single source; flecks of white light flow over
objects, dissolving them - but at the same time unifying all pictorial elements in the composition.
In Hadleigh Castle light dispels darkness and illuminates a shadowy world. Constable's
increasing use of unconcealed symbolism begins to reflect the darker side of his experience. We see
this in Stonehenge (1836). Threatening storm clouds and turbulent winds heighten the feeling
of melancholy and loneliness.
Constable introduced new pictorial solutions that contrasted sharply with academic principles. His
work displays a new tension between art and nature, and between nature and his own emotions and
reactions.
Like Constable, JMW Turner (1775-1851) was also attracted to the inconstancy of nature and the
effects of light. Initially he made accurate sketches of delicate Gothic ruins, reflecting his
Romantic temperament. Although he studied landscape, plants and rocks in detail, it was the spiritual
content rather than the natural appearance that fascinated him. But instead of creating an Arcadian
fantasy of harmony and discipline, Turner saw the elements of nature as forces that threatened to
destroy man. Like his Northern contemporaries, especially Friedrich, he saw human passions as
increasingly subjugated to the natural elements. Man he saw as an intruder faced with violent storms,
devastating
avalanches, icy glaciers and turbulent seas: for instance Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army
Crossing the Alps (1812). Here, Turner's vision of nature differs from French Romantic
painting, in which man remains the pivot and dominates the scene.
Turner's work contains a pessimism that found expression in scenes of catastrophes - as represented,
for instance, in the watercolour Messieurs les Voyageurs on their Return from Italy in a Snow
Drift upon Mount Tarrar (1802). In his work Turner illustrates his respect for nature, and
man's impotence when faced with the violence of cosmic forces.
Turner made increasing use of watercolour because he found it a light and translucent medium in which
he could divest forms of their physical reality and transform them to transcendental, atmospheric
visions. Initially he attempted to elevate the poetic landscape to the level of great classical works,
for instance his Fifth Plague of Egypt (1802) and Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen
Cleaning and Selling Fish (1807). In his later works such as the Burning of the Houses of
Parliament (1834), colour and light became his primary consideration. It was no longer tangible
or concrete reality that stimulated his interest, but rather the intangible, expressed in light,
colour and paint.
Turner's works cannot be described as pure landscapes. In his Fighting Temeraire (1838) and
in his Petworth Series (1836-1837) he transcends the natural by dissolving objects in light
and, through innovating spatial manipulations and imaginative colour, creates an entirely new order of
reality. No contour is defined clearly; light and atmosphere surround and dissolve forms, so that only
the most essential structure makes them identifiable. Kenneth Clark holds that Turner's Petworth
Interiors are some of his earliest attempts to make light and colour the only basis of design.
The pictorial innovations in Turner's late works (especially his watercolours of the 1840s), and the
lack of a clearly recognisable subject, caused dismay among contemporary critics. In his suppression
of the object for the sake of an idea, and in his use of colour and paint, Turner was well in advance
of his times. The emphasis that he, like Constable, placed on the inconstancy of life and nature, was
nevertheless appreciated by younger contemporary artists, who also attempted to recreate nature
according to a personal vision.
Towards the end of the Romantic period artists such as Hunt, Rossetti and Millais established the
Pre-Raphaelite group. These artists were also peripherally associated with Romanticism in the sense
that they fervently wished to escape mediocrity and the everyday. They found their inspiration in the
allure of foreign countries, as well as in antiquity, Shakespearean literature and spiritual sources.
Like the German Nazarenes, the Pre-Raphaelites launched their own reconnaissance of early Italian art
because they were dissatisfied with the decadence, triviality and frivolity of contemporary art and
called for a
return of truth to nature and the visible world. Like Blake they strove towards the
transcendental-ethical. But they did not command, the formal attributes of Blake's work. They formed
an artistic brotherhood, and artists (Millais and Hunt for example) vowed to combat the
"falsehoods" of contemporary art by returning to a kind of naive medieval style of painting.
They worked directly from nature and depicted what they perceived in painstaking detail and in bright
colours. In this they deviated from the traditional earthy colours and atmospheric browns which still
characterised the work of some contemporary
art. Their subject matter was largely in accordance with that of the previous Romantic generation, but
they differed substantially in their approach and technique in the representation of objects. Hunt and
Millais initiated a method of working with fine brushes and thin, flowing colours on a damp white
priming layer. In their efforts to retain fidelity to nature they, paradoxically, often clothed their
models in the costumes of imaginary characters. These personages were then placed in natural
surroundings, and the scene was conscientiously delineated. In this way an almost "magical"
naturalism was achieved.
