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.
Find a collection of romantic paintings, sculptures, prints and multiples and more art on 1stDibs.
1790s Romantic Art
Etching, Laid Paper, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Etching, Laid Paper, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Etching, Laid Paper, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Etching, Laid Paper, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Etching, Laid Paper, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Etching, Laid Paper, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Laid Paper, Etching, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Laid Paper, Etching, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Laid Paper, Etching, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Etching, Laid Paper, Aquatint
1790s Romantic Art
Laid Paper, Etching, Aquatint
1750s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
18th Century Romantic Art
Gouache, Paper
18th Century Romantic Art
Paper, Pastel
18th Century Romantic Art
Gouache, Paper
18th Century Romantic Art
Paper, Cardboard
18th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
18th Century Romantic Art
Crayon, Handmade Paper
1790s Romantic Art
Engraving
17th Century Romantic Art
Oil
Late 18th Century Romantic Art
Engraving, Etching
18th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 18th Century Romantic Art
Oil
1780s Romantic Art
Aquatint
18th Century Romantic Art
Oil
18th Century Romantic Art
Oil
1740s Romantic Art
Ink
18th Century Romantic Art
Handmade Paper
1790s Romantic Art
Etching
Late 18th Century Romantic Art
Aquatint
18th Century Romantic Art
Engraving, Etching
Mid-18th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 18th Century Romantic Art
Etching
18th Century Romantic Art
Linen, Oil, Fiberboard
Late 18th Century Romantic Art
Oil
Early 18th Century Romantic Art
Etching
1790s Romantic Art
Watercolor