Romantic Art
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.
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1850s Romantic Art
Oil, Canvas
1850s Romantic Art
Oil, Wood Panel
Early 20th Century Romantic Art
Gouache
1880s Romantic Art
Oil, Wood Panel
Early 20th Century Romantic Art
Gouache
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1880s Romantic Art
Oil
Early 20th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Early 20th Century Romantic Art
Bronze
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Engraving, Etching
Early 1900s Romantic Art
Bronze
1950s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1990s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Engraving
Late 18th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil, Board
2010s Romantic Art
Linen, Oil
Early 1900s Romantic Art
Photographic Paper
21st Century and Contemporary Romantic Art
Oil, Canvas, Cotton Canvas
Early 19th Century Romantic Art
Oil, Panel
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1970s Romantic Art
Lithograph
18th Century Romantic Art
Engraving, Etching
1980s Romantic Art
Lithograph
18th Century Romantic Art
Linen, Oil, Fiberboard
Early 20th Century Romantic Art
Watercolor, Gouache
1850s Romantic Art
Oil
2010s Romantic Art
Photographic Film, Emulsion, Watercolor, Photographic Paper, C Print, Co...
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
Late 20th Century Romantic Art
Lithograph
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Panel, Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Paper, Oil
1840s Romantic Art
Gesso, Watercolor
1860s Romantic Art
Carbon Pencil
1880s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Paper, Charcoal
1840s Romantic Art
Paper, Watercolor
1910s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1990s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Oil, Wood Panel
1930s Romantic Art
Crayon, Pencil
Early 1900s Romantic Art
Linen, Oil, Board
1990s Romantic Art
Oil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Etching
20th Century Romantic Art
Bronze
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1990s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1860s Romantic Art
Ink
Early 19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1840s Romantic Art
Watercolor
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
1830s Romantic Art
Oil, Wood Panel
1990s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1830s Romantic Art
Watercolor
1860s Romantic Art
Chalk, Charcoal
1860s Romantic Art
Oil
2010s Romantic Art
Linen, Oil