06 / 10 · 1790–1850
Feeling over reason: the sublime in nature and the passions of the heart.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog · Read more →The ideals of the French Revolution had turned into the Terror and decades of war, and the Industrial Revolution was transforming town and country. A generation of artists began to doubt Enlightenment reason and turned instead to personal feeling, imagination and intuition.
Romanticism was never a single style. In Germany, Friedrich sought the in seas of fog and ruined abbeys; in England, Turner and Constable made light and weather the true subject; in France, Géricault and Delacroix painted current events and exotic lands with bold brushwork and rich ; in Spain, Goya stared into the darkness of war and human nature.
It is one of the periods most fully represented on this site: rooted in tradition, it led directly to Realism and Impressionism.
