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.
19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
19th Century Romantic Art
Paper
1860s Romantic Art
Photographic Paper
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
1890s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1890s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Lithograph
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
1840s Romantic Art
Oil
1810s Romantic Art
Oil
19th Century Romantic Art
Gold
1840s Romantic Art
Oil
1840s Romantic Art
Oil
1830s Romantic Art
Lithograph
1880s Romantic Art
Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
19th Century Romantic Art
Oil, Wood Panel
1850s Romantic Art
Pencil
19th Century Romantic Art
Charcoal
1890s Romantic Art
Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Paper, Watercolor
1860s Romantic Art
Oil
1890s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Wood Panel, Oil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Paper, Charcoal
19th Century Romantic Art
Oil, Canvas
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
Early 19th Century Romantic Art
Pencil, Paper
1830s Romantic Art
Paper, Watercolor
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Oil, Canvas
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Illustration Board, Watercolor
1830s Romantic Art
Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Watercolor, Pencil, Paper
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Watercolor, Paper
19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
1860s Romantic Art
Oil
1830s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Pencil, Watercolor, Paper
19th Century Romantic Art
Lithograph
1860s Romantic Art
Gouache, Pencil
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Oil, Canvas
19th Century Romantic Art
Watercolor
19th Century Romantic Art
Watercolor
1840s Romantic Art
Oil
1840s Romantic Art
Graphite
Late 19th Century Romantic Art
Photogravure
1830s Romantic Art
Pencil, Chalk
19th Century Romantic Art
Oil
1840s Romantic Art
Charcoal
19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil
19th Century Romantic Art
Canvas
1880s Romantic Art
Oil, Canvas
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Wood Panel, Oil
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Ink, Watercolor, Paper
1860s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil, Board
Mid-19th Century Romantic Art
Stainless Steel
1830s Romantic Art
Canvas, Oil