Romanticism

Karl Blechen, Gorge at Amalfi

J. Burrell Smith, Waterfall on River Neath,

South Wales

C. D. Friedrich, The Abbey in the Oakwood

Picturesque

• searching for complex relationships between form and colour in landscape and architecture

• as opposed to tame landscapes and Classical proportion in buildings.

J. M. W. Turner, The Lake of Thun, Switzerland

C.D. Friedrich, Morgennebel im Gebirge

J. M. W. Turner, Snow Storm, Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps

C.D. Friedrich, The Wanderer above the

Mists

C. D. Friedrich, Sea of Ice

C. D. Friedrich, The Cross on the

Mountain

J. M. W. Turner, Fishermen upon a lee-shore in squally weather

Admiration of nature• as ample scene for meditation, • vast landscapes expose the transitoriness of man’s control over nature, relate to the

unconscious. • Nature becomes an object of reverence rather than exploitation. • Natural descriptions prompt moral reflections on the human situation. • James Thomson: ‘I know no subject more elevating, more amusing, more ready to

awake the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment, than the works of Nature. Where can we meet with such variety, such beauty, such magnificence? All that enlarges and transports the soul?’

• The emergence of the natural scene is at the same time the discovery of new metaphors for the power of mind. The movement away from a poetry of social reality is a movement toward less conscious aspects of the mind.

• the artfully designed garden landscape with purpose built miniature temples or shrines

• a search for authentic images of nature that are too vast or free to be controlled by man, e.g. an Alpine scenery

• a passion for ancient or medieval ruins. The result: on the one hand what Johnson calls ‘a flattering notion of self-sufficiency’, on the other hand a sense of human limitation.

C.D. Friedrich, Monastery Graveyard in the Snow

C.D. Friedrich, Graveyard under

Snow

Death and mortality

• the graveyard as a typical site for nocturnal meditation on the nature of death and decay

• Graveyard Poets: – Edward Young, The Complaint: or Night

Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-46)

– Thomas Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751).

Henry Fuseli, The Silence

J. H. Fuseli, Lady Macbeth with the Daggers

Henry Fuseli, Nightmare

Mental illness

• William Cowper, ‘Lines Written During a Period of Insanity’ (1763)

• ‘The Castaway’ (1799): ‘Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horrors and rising up in despair.’

J. P. Pettit, Armageddon

W. Blake, Satan, Sin and Death – Satan

Comes to the Gates of Hell

G. Stubbs, A Lion Attacking a Horse

Poetic visions

• prophetic poetry (as opposed to logical arguments)

• Thomas Gray, ‘The Bard’ (1755-57)

• William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)

W. T. Maud, The Ride of the Valkyries

John Martin, The Bard

Medieval revival

• interest in the remains of medieval culture: – Ruins– Gothic architecture– ballads and epic poems– James Macpherson, Ossian (1765)– Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English

Poetry (1765)– Thomas Chatterton’s fake medieval lyrics and

ballads.