Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
In emphasizing emotion and imagination, romantic art shifted away from the restraint of classicism and neoclassicism that had dominated art in Europe since the Renaissance. Romanticism achieved its greatest popularity in art, literature, music and philosophy between 1780 and 1830, although its expression of individual experiences ranging from awe to passion informed culture in the decades after.
Landscape painting was especially popular during the romantic period, as were nature studies of wild animals and fantasies of exotic lands. Romanticism varied across Europe as it reacted to the rise of industrialization, a more personal relationship with faith that was distanced from the church and the rationalist thinking of the Enlightenment.
British painters such as John Constable and J.M.W. Turner responded dramatically to the light and atmosphere of the natural world, while William Blake conveyed humanity’s connection to the divine in his visionary art. In Germany, the late-18th-century Sturm und Drang, or Storm and Drive, movement, with its probing of the unconscious, inspired a sense of mystery in work by romantic artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge. In France, where the French Revolution had turned tradition upside down, Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix used lush brushwork to paint monumental canvases with tumultuous scenes of nature and history.
The romantic movement and its subject matter were a significant influence on the Pre-Raphaelites, Symbolists and the American painters of the Hudson River School, as well as on other cultural movements in the 19th and 20th centuries that saw artists build on this perspective in which art was guided by emotion rather than reason.
Find a collection of romantic paintings, sculptures, prints and multiples and more art on 1stDibs.
1830s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil
1840s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Watercolor
1830s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Carbon Pencil
Early 1900s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Paper, Ink, Pen
1850s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil
Early 19th Century Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil, Paper
1860s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Gouache, Pencil
1840s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Charcoal
1880s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil
1820s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Watercolor
18th Century Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Paper, Pastel
1930s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Ink, Watercolor, Pencil
Early 19th Century Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Paper, Pencil
1890s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Graphite
20th Century Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Ink, Paper, Pen
1890s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Graphite
1890s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Ink
1780s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Oil Pastel
Late 19th Century Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Carbon Pencil, Cardboard
1840s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Carbon Pencil
1890s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Graphite
1890s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Graphite
Early 19th Century Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil, Paper, Watercolor
1890s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Ink
1880s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Watercolor
1860s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Watercolor
1890s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Ink
1840s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Watercolor
1870s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Carbon Pencil
Early 20th Century Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Crayon, Paper
1820s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Chalk, Pastel
1850s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Ink, Watercolor
1850s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Watercolor, Gouache
1820s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil
1840s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Ink
1830s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil
1840s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Pencil
1940s Romantic Portrait Drawings and Watercolors
Color Pencil, Oil Pastel