the age of revolution: from neoclassicism to romanticism

Discovering the HumanitiesDiscovering the Humanities

CHAPTER

THIRD EDITION

Discovering the Humanities, Third EditionHenry M. Sayre

Copyright © 2016, 2013, 2010by Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliates

All Rights Reserved

The Age of Revolution: From Neoclassicism to Romanticism

12

Learning Objectives

1. Compare and contrast the French and American revolutions.

2. Describe the Neoclassical style.3. Define Romanticism as it manifests

itself in both literature and painting.4. Differentiate between Classical and

Romantic music.

Paul Revere, after Henry Pelham. The Bloody Massacre. 1770.Hand-colored engraving. 8-15⁄16" × 10-3⁄16".

© Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA/Bridgeman Images. [Fig. 12.1]

Document: American Declaration of Independence

Document: Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen by Olympe de Gouges

The American and French Revolutions

• The American Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen on August 26, 1789.

• Both documents reflect Enlightenment thinking, and both were influenced by the writings of John Locke.

The Declaration of Independence

• The American Declaration of Independence is one of the Enlightenment's boldest assertions of freedom.

• The chairman of the committee that prepared the document and its chief drafter was Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826).


• Jefferson argued for "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

• His basic rights aimed at achieving human fulfillment, a fulfillment possible only if the people control their own destiny.

John Trumbull. The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776. 1786–97.Oil on canvas. 21-1/8" × 31-1/8".

Yale University Art Gallery, Trumbull Collection. 1832.3. [Fig. 12.2]


• The British lost the war against their American colonies in 1781, and the Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

• In France, the cost of maintaining Louis XVI's court was so enormous that the desperate king attempted to charge a uniform tax on all landed property in 1788.


• The subsequent riots across all levels of society led to the formation of the National Assembly by the Third Estate in 1789. The three traditional French estates

included the First Estate (composed of clergy), the Second Estate (composed of Nobility), and the Third Estate (composed of the bourgeoisie).


• In 1791, a radical minority of the National Assembly led by the Jacobin extremist Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) lobbied for the elimination of the monarchy.

• The Revolutionary Tribunal was formed, which over the course of the next three years executed as many as 25,000 citizens of France.


• The Reign of Terror ended in the summer 1794 with Robespierre's execution.

• The French constitution was passed on August 17, 1795.

• It established France's first bicameral (two-body) legislature consisting of the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Elders.

Jacques-Louis David. The Tennis Court Oath. 1789–91.Pen and brown ink and brown wash on paper. 26" × 42".

Musee National du Chateau, Versailles. MV 8409: INV Dessins. © RMN-Grand Palais/Agence Bulloz. [Fig. 12.3]

Document: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen by National Assembly (France)

Document: Cahiers de Doléances by French Peasants

To Versailles, to Versailles, October 5, 1789. 1789.Engraving, colored.

Musee de la Ville de Paris, Musee Carnavalet, Paris/Giraudon/Bridgeman Images.[Fig. 12.4]


• Over the next four years, the Directory improved the lot of the French citizens, but was perceived as relatively unstable.

• This paved the way for Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) to assume power in 1799.

The Neoclassical Spirit

• The rise of the Neoclassical in France, with its regularity, balance, and proportion, can be attributed to the same ideals that would lead to the overthrow of the aristocracy in the French Revolution.

• It was in the painting of Jacques-Louis David that the Neoclassical found its first full expression.

Jacques-Louis David and the Neoclassical Style in France

• No artist more fully exemplifies the values of Neoclassicism in France than the painter Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825).

• David abandoned the traditional complexities of composition that had defined French academic history painting.

Jacques-Louis David. The Oath of the Horatii. 1784–85.Oil on canvas. 10'10" × 13'11-1/2".

Musee du Louvre, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais/Gerard Blot/Christian Jean. [Fig. 12.5]

Closer Look: Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii

Jacques-Louis David and the Neoclassical Style in France

• He introduced a formal balance and simplicity that is fully Neoclassical.

• David's work has a frozen quality to emphasize rationality, and the brushstrokes are invisible, to create a clear focus and to highlight the details.

• David's Oath of the Horatii champions heroism and personal sacrifice for the state.

Jacques-Louis David. The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons. 1789.

Oil on canvas. 10'7-1/4" × 13'10-1/4".Musee du Louvre, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais (Musee du

Louvre)/Gerard Blot/Christian Jean. [Fig. 12.6]

Closer Look: Jacques-Louis David, The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons

Pierre-Alexandre Vignon. La Madeleine, Paris. 1806–42.Length: 350' Width: 147' Podium Height: 23' Column height: 63'.

© Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy. [Fig. 12.7]

Napoleon's Neoclassical Tastes

• Napoleon's coup d'état (violent overthrow of government) in 1799 was intended to remove the existing constitution that the Directory had approved.


• By 1802, Napoleon had convinced the legislators to declare him First Consul of the French Republic for life, with the power to amend the constitution as he saw fit.

Jacques-Louis David. Napoleon Crossing the Saint-Bernard. 1800–01.Oil on canvas. 8'11" × 7'7".

Musee National du Chateau de la Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, France. © RMN-Grand Palais/Gerard Blot. [Fig. 12.8]


• Over the subsequent years, Napoleon increased his power and control over French political life.

• In 1813, a series of military defeats led to his abdication and exile and then final defeat in 1815.

Neoclassicism in America

• The Neoclassical style that dominated the architecture of the new American republic became known as the Federal style.

• Its foremost champion was Thomas Jefferson.

Benjamin Henry Latrobe. View of Richmond showing Jefferson's Capitol from Washington Island. 1796.

Watercolor on paper, with ink and wash. 7" × 10-3/8".Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. [Fig. 12.9]

Pierre-Charles L'Enfant. Plan for Washington, D. C. (detail), published in the Gazette of the United States, Philadelphia, January 4, 1792. 1791.

Engraving after original drawing.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. [Fig. 12.10]

Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Tobacco-leaf capital for the U. S. Capitol, Washington, D. C., Senate wing. ca. 1815.

Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol, Washington, D.C. [Fig. 12.11]

Neoclassicism in America

• Jefferson designed the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, which was, first of all, a "capitol," the very name derived from Rome's Capitoline Hill.

The Issue of Slavery

• Autobiographical and fictional accounts of slavery intensified abolitionists sentiments in both Europe and North America.

• Olaudah Equiano exposed the conditions on board slave ships in his autobiography (1789).

William Blake. Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows, from John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Slaves of Surinam. 1796.

Engraved book illustration.Library of Congress, Catalog no. 1835. Private Collection, Archives Charmet/The

Bridgeman Art Library. [Fig. 12.12]


• John Gabriel Stedman (1747–1797) revealed the shocking treatment of slaves in Guiana.

• Abolitionist opposition to slavery in both England and the American colonies began to gain strength in 1771.


• Laissez-faire, "let it happen as it will," was declared by free-trade economist Adam Smith to be the best policy.

• Leading the fight against slavery were the Quakers as well as the members of the Lunar Society.


• In 1787, Josiah Wedgewood made hundreds of ceramic cameos of a slave in chains, on bent knee, pleading, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?"

William Hackwood, for Josiah Wedgwood. "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" 1787.Black and white jasperware. 1-3/8" × 1-3/8".

The Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Staffordshire, UK. [Fig. 12.13]

The Romantic Imagination

• Dedicated to the discovery of beauty in nature, the Romantics rejected the truth of empirical observation, which John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers had championed.

• Most of the major writers and artists used their emotions as a primary way of expressing imagination and creativity.

The Romantic Imagination

• For Romantics, the mind was a feeling thing—not distinct from the body as in Descartes' declaration, "I think, therefore I am," but instead connected to it.

The Romantic Poem

• The Romantic imagination found its first and most articulate expression in poetry, which is inherently intuitive and personal. In the beauty of poetry's expression, it

might capture, even mirror, the beauty of nature itself.

The Idea of the Romantic: William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"• William Wordsworth's (1770–1850)

poem "Tintern Abbey" embodies the growing belief in the natural world as the source of inspiration and creativity that marks the early Romantic imagination.

J.M.W. Turner. Interior of Tintern Abbey. 1794.Watercolor. 12-5/8" × 9-7/8".

Victoria and Albert Museum, London/Art Resource, NY.[Fig. 12.14]

Document: "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth

The Romantic Landscape

• Landscape painters in the nineteenth century saw the natural world around them as the emotional focal point or center of their own artistic imaginations.

John Constable: Painter of the English Countryside

• John Constable (1776–1837) mainly painted the area around the valley of the Stour River in his native East Bergholt, Suffolk.

• He felt his talents depended on "faithful adherence to the truth of nature."

John Constable: Painter of the English Countryside

• The power of Constable's painting lies in the fact that it contains more than one state of mind.

• The human figure in Constable's paintings is an essential and elemental presence, uniting man and nature.

John Constable. The Hay Wain. 1821.Oil on canvas 51-3/8" × 73".

© The National Gallery London/Scala, Florence. [Fig. 12.15]

Document: John Constable, from a letter to John Fisher

J. M. W. Turner. The Upper Falls of the Reichenbach. ca. 1810–15.Watercolor. 10-7/8" × 15-7/16".

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. B1977.14.4702. [Fig. 12.16]

Joseph Mallord William Turner: Colorist of the Imagination

• Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) specialized in capturing light.

• His interest did not focus on the objects of nature, but on the medium through which they are seen.

Joseph Mallord William Turner: Colorist of the Imagination

• Turner draws the viewer's attention not to the rock, cliff, or mountain, but to the mist and light through which we see them.

• The human figure in Turner's paintings is minuscule, almost irrelevant to the painting, except insofar as its minuteness underscores nature's indifference.

J. M. W. Turner. Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth. 1842.Oil on canvas. 36" × 48".

© Tate, London 2014. [Fig. 12.17]

The Romantic in Germany:Friedrich and Kant

• The German painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) represents the imaginative capacities of the Romantic mind by placing figures, usually solitary ones, before sublime landscapes.

Caspar David Friedrich. Monk by the Sea. 1810.Oil on canvas. 47-1/2" × 67".

Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. © Photo Scala, Florence/BPK, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin. [Fig. 12.18]


• The lonely figures are raising the theme of doubt: How do I know God? How, in the face of this empty vastness, do I come to believe?

• These sentiments echo the philosopher Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781).


• For Kant, the mind was an active agent in the creation of knowledge.

• Kant believed that the way we understand concepts such as space and time is a quality innate from birth.

Closer Look

• The sublime is the prospect of anything beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend it fully.

• Occupying a middle ground between the sublime and the beautiful is the picturesque. Price defines this as "roughness and

sudden variation joined to irregularity."

Tintern Abbey. Wye Valley, Monmouthshire, Wales.Robert Harding Picture Library. Roy Rainford/Robert Harding. [Fig. 12-CL.1]

Hubert Robert. Pyramids. ca. 1750.Oil on canvas. 24" × 28-1/2".

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA.[Fig. 12-CL.2]

Closer Look: The Sublime, the Beautiful, and the Picturesque

The Romantic Hero

• Napoleon was the very personification of the Romantic hero—a man of common origin who had risen, through sheer wit and tenacity, to dominate the world stage, yet also possessed a darker side.

• To the Romantic imagination, Napoleon resembled the Greek mythological figure of Prometheus.

The Romantic Hero

• On the one hand, the Romantics revered Prometheus as the all-suffering but ever noble champion of human freedom.

Casper David Friedrich. The Wanderer above the Mists. 1817–18.Oil on canvas. 37-1/4" × 29-1/2".

On permanent loan from the Foundation for the Promotion of the Hamburg Art Collections. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. © Photo Scala, Florence/BPK, Bildagentur

für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin. [Fig. 12.19]

The Romantic Hero

• On the other hand, in his reckless ambition to achieve his goals by breaking the laws imposed by supreme authority, they recognized in Prometheus a certain futility and despair.

Baron Antoine-Jean Gros. Napoleon in the Pesthouse at Jaffa. 1804.17' 5" × 23' 7".

Musee du Louvre, Paris. © RMN-Grand Palais/Thierry Le Mage. [Fig. 12.20]

The Promethean Idea in England: Lord Byron

• For poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), Prometheus was the embodiment of his own emphatic spirit of individualism. The ode "Prometheus" recalls Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound.

Goethe's Faust and the Desire for the Infinite Knowledge

• One of the greatest ironies in the development of Romanticism is that two of its greatest heroes, Werther and Faust, were the creation of an imagination that defined itself as Classical.


• The creator of these two heroes was the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) who abhorred Romanticism.


• According to Goethe, great art is ultimately subject to God's grand design and to the natural laws that govern the universe—a point of view similar to that of the Enlightenment philosophes.


• One of the greatest ironies in the development of Romanticism is that two of its greatest heroes, Werther and Faust, were the creation of an imagination that defined itself as Classical.


• The creator of these two heroes was the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) who abhorred Romanticism.

• The main character of Faust is profoundly bored, suffering from an affliction of the Romantic hero ennui, a French term that denotes both listlessness and a profound melancholy.


• According to Goethe, great art is ultimately subject to God's grand design and to the natural laws that govern the universe—a point of view similar to that of the Enlightenment philosophes.

Goya's Tragic Vision

• The Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828) was, at first, enthusiastic about Napoleon's accession to power in France.

• After Napoleon's invasion of Spain, Goya came to hate the French emperor, as most Spaniards did.


• Goya's painting The Third of May, 1808 is one of the greatest testaments to the horrors of war ever painted.

• The artist's final work was dominated by his sense that the world had abandoned reason.

Francisco Goya. The Third of May, 1808. 1814–15.Oil on canvas. 8' 9-1/2" × 13' 4-1/2".

Museo del Prado, Madrid. © 2013. White Images/Scala, Florence. [Fig. 12.21]


• Goya suffered from a profound sense of despair, isolation, and loneliness that led him to the descent into a world of near-madness and fear.

Francisco Goya. Saturn Devouring One of His Children. 1820–23.Oil on plaster transferred to canvas, 57-7/8" × 32-5/8".

© Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. All rights reserved. 2013 White Images/Scala, Florence. [Fig. 12.22]

From Classiscal to Romantic Music

• Fascination with the Promethean hero was not limited to literature.

• It was also reflected in the music of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827).

From Classiscal to Romantic Music

• The tradition of Classical music reflects growing distaste for the Rococo and its associated moral depravity.

• Beethoven was the key figure in the transition from the Classical to the Romantic era. He viewed Napoleon as at once the

enlightened leader and tyrannical despot—as did most of Europe.

The Classical Tradition

• The most important development of the age was the symphonic orchestra, a large orchestra divided into sections according to instrument type.

• In order to organize such a large group, an overall score, which indicated what music was to be played by each instrument, was required.

The Classical Tradition

• The music most often played by the symphonic orchestra was the symphony, a term deriving from the Italian sinfonia—the three-movement, fast–slow–fast, introduction or overture to Italian operas.

Haydn and Mozart

• Joseph Haydn was the musical director at the Esterháza Palace in Eisenstadt for nearly 30 years.

• During this time, he composed an extraordinary amount of music, with emphasis in the classical symphony and the string quartet.

Haydn and Mozart

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the greatest musical genius of the Classical era, composed complex melodies in many genres.

• Mozart's music was generally regarded as overly complicated, too demanding emotionally and intellectually for a popular audience to absorb during his lifetime.

Beethoven: From Classicism to Romanticism

• After coming to the brink of suicide in 1802 due to his increasing deafness, Beethoven entered the so-called "Heroic Decade."

• During this era, Beethoven was guided by an almost pure state of subjective feeling.


• In great symphonies like the Eroica and the Fifth, Beethoven refined the Romantic style in music.

• The Eroica dramatizes the composer's own descent into despair, his inward struggle, and his ultimate triumph through art.


• Like the Eroica, the Fifth Symphony brings musical form to the triumph of art over death, terror, fear, and pain.

Beethoven's First Symphony: opening four-note motif.[Fig. 12-MN.1]

Romantic Music after Beethoven

• Beethoven's musical explorations of individual feelings were immensely influential on the Romantic composers who succeeded him.

Hector Berlioz and Program Music

• The French composer Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)was the most startlingly original of Beethoven's successors.

• He wrote three symphonies, all of which are notable for their inventiveness and novelty, and especially for the size of the orchestras Berlioz enlisted to play them.

Felix Mendelssohn and the Meaning of Music

• Program music was an important part of the work of Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847).

• For Mendelssohn, the meaning of music cannot be expressed in language, but lies in the music itself.

Felix Mendelssohn and the Meaning of Music

• The Hebrides is a concert overture, a single movement setting a scene for a story. Other forms of concert overture are

usually connected with a narrative plot known to the audience.

• The music creates a feeling that all listeners share, even if no two listeners would interpret it in the same terms.

Song: Franz Schubert and the Schumanns

• Since the middle of the eighteenth century, German composers had been intrigued with the idea of setting poetry to music, especially the works of Schiller and Goethe.

Song: Franz Schubert and the Schumanns

• These songs were called lieder (singular lied), and they were generally written for solo voice and piano.

• The lieder of Franz Schubert (1797–1828) and Robert Schumann (1810–1856) were especially popular.

Piano Music: Frederic Chopin

• Performances of character pieces often occurred at salon concerts, in the homes of wealthy music enthusiasts.

• Among the most sought-after composer/performer pianists of the day was the Polish-born Frederic Chopin (1810–1849).

• Chopin composed almost exclusively for the piano.

Piano Music: Frederic Chopin

• Among his most impressive works are his études, or "studies," which address particular technical challenges on the piano; polonaises, stylized versions of the Polish dance; nocturnes, character pieces related to the tradition of the serenade; and ballades, dramatic narrative forms.

Continuity & Change

• After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the battle between Classicism and Romanticism raged within France, fueled by political factionalism.

• Theodore Gericault, in his The Raft of the "Medusa," made a mockery of Neoclassicism with a Romantic-slanted depiction based on real-life events; it was dismissed by royalist critics.

Theodore Gericault. The Raft of the "Medusa." 1818.Oil on canvas. 16'1" × 23'6".

Musee du Louvre, Paris. © RMN/Herve Lewandowski.[Fig. 12.23]

Closer Look: Theodore Gericault, Raft of the Medusa

the age of revolution: from neoclassicism to romanticism

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