Romanticism

Romanticism. Movement in the arts flourishing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romanticism is so varied in its manifestations that a single definition is impossible, but its keynote was a belief in the value of individual experience. In this it marked a reaction from the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the orderliness of the Neoclassical style. Neoclassical artists typically stressed such ideas as duty and stoicism, whereas Romantic artists often chose subjects that were wild, exotic, or mysterious. They explored the values of intuition and instinct, exchanging the public discourse of Neoclassicism, the forms of which had a common currency, for a more private kind of expression.

Romanticism is commonly seen as the antithesis of classicism, and the two concepts are sometimes used in a very general sense to designate polarities in attitude that may be seen in the art of any age—thus Raphael might be described as a ‘classical’ artist, whereas his contemporary Giorgione is a ‘romantic’ one. However, the exponents of both Romanticism and classicism share a concern with the ideal rather than the real, and there is sometimes no firm dividing line between the two approaches, as is shown by the use of the term ‘Romantic Classicism’ to describe certain works that show a Romantic response to antiquity. Both Romanticism and classicism embrace concepts of nobility, grandeur, virtue, and superiority. But where the classical seems a possible ideal that will adapt man to his society and mould that society into an orderly setting for him, the Romantic envisages the unattainable, beyond the limits of society and human adaptability. The classical hero accepts the fate over which he has no control and triumphs nobly in this acquiescence, otherwise he would not be a hero. The Romantic hero pits himself against a hostile environment and at no time comes to terms with it even if he reaches his goal, otherwise he would not be Romantic.

Romanticism represents an attitude of mind rather than a set of particular stylistic traits and involves the expression of an idea that tends to have a verbal rather than a visual origin. It lends itself more easily to expression through music and literature than through the visual arts, as a sense of the infinite and the transcendental, of forces exceeding the boundaries of reason, must necessarily be vague—suggestive rather than concrete, as it must be in painting and even more so in sculpture. On the other hand, although there is no specific Romantic school in architecture, the Gothic Revival, especially in its early, non-scholarly phase, is an aspect of Romanticism.

Almost by definition, the leading Romantic artists differ widely from one another—Blake and Turner in Britain, Delacroix and Géricault in France, Friedrich and Runge in Germany. The movement of which they were a part died out in the mid-19th century, but in a broader sense the Romantic spirit has lived on, representing a revolt against conservatism, moderation, and insincerity and an insistence on the primacy of the imagination in artistic expression.