Painting of romanticism
In the history of world painting, romanticism constituted a bright and brilliant era. The paintings of E. Delacroix (France), F. Goya (Spain), KD Friedrich (Germany), S. Shchedrin, O. Kiprensky and I. Aivazovsky (Russia) are the best that was created in the era of romanticism. Free from all dogmas, doctrines and schools, the artists obeyed only the call of their own souls, paid special attention to the expressive depiction of human feelings and experiences.
Indeed, the painting of romanticism was characterized by “a terrible thirst to create in all possible ways.” Favorite expressive means of romantic painting were: bright, rich color, contrasting lighting, emotionality of manner, brushstroke, texture. Artists often used the language of hints and symbols, inviting viewers to complete the rest in their imaginations.
Many artists of the era of romanticism believed that the understanding of the essence of being should be done through comprehension of people, the inner world of a person. What is he, a man of the romantic generation, captured on the canvases of outstanding creators?
He often becomes a witness to cruel bloodshed and wars, tragic destinies of entire nations. He performs heroic deeds that can inspire others. This is a person who is acutely aware of his own duality and instability in this world. He is proud of the inner freedom of his own Self and at the same time suffers because of this. It combines protest and powerlessness, naive illusions and pessimism, unspent energy and disappointment. Finding no ideal in the modern world, he turns to the past, elevates the noble knights of the Middle Ages to a pedestal. But, no matter how contradictory the image of the romantic hero may be, it affirms the exceptional value of the human person, its impulse to unlimited freedom and creative self-expression.
Romantics were attracted by modernity, from which they drew plots for many of their works. The Great French Revolution and the aggressive campaigns of Napoleon that followed, brutal political repressions and executions, endless changes of government and the revolutionary outbreak of 1830 raised the question of the role of the people and the individual in history with particular urgency. The painting of the romantics chose as heroes not the great figures of the era, but entire nations, representatives of simple classes, who became active creators of history. In the canvases of Gericault (“The Officer of the Horse Rangers of the Imperial Guard, Going into the Attack” and “The Wounded Cuirassier”), Delacroix (“Liberty Leading the People (28 July 1830)”), Goya (“The Uprising of May 2, 1808 in Madrid” and The Shooting of the Insurgents) proclaimed new ideals and artistic principles.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) became the artist who was able to express the broadest scope of modern history. Impressed by the events of the July Revolution of 1830, he wrote in a letter to his brother: “… If I did not fight for my homeland, then at least let me write for her sake.” He conveyed the patriotic impulse, the grandiose scale of what was happening in the famous painting “Freedom Leading the People (July 28, 1830)”, which combines the almost protocol reality of reporting with the spirit of sublime romantic allegory. It is no coincidence that contemporaries called it “The Marseillaise of French Painting”.
On the ruins of the barricade, just recaptured from the government troops, the rebels are moving menacingly and swiftly right over the bodies of the killed. The July sun, with difficulty making its way through the clouds of powder smoke, highlights individual figures of people. Each image personified the heroic character of the nation and was suggested to the artist by life itself, by the testimony of eyewitnesses and direct participants in the uprising. Here is a student, tightly gripping the gun, cocks the trigger. Nearby, a worker in a blouse swung his saber decisively. The Parisian gameman wildly brandishes his pistols. With the last effort of will, the wounded guardsman lifts himself up in his arms to look into the face of beautiful Freedom.
The semantic center of the picture is the figure of Freedom – a beautiful woman with a three-color banner in her hand. In a single impulse, she carries away the insurgents, giving strength to the wounded soldier, inspiring children and adults for the feat.
… This strong woman …
With a hoarse voice, with fire in her eyes,
Fast, with a wide step,
Enjoying the cries of the people,
Bloody fights, long rumble of drums, The
smell of gunpowder, coming from afar, The
echo of bells and deafening cannons …
/ABOUT. Barbier. “Yambas”. Translated by A.G. Konyus /
The Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746-1828) witnessed the Napoleonic Wars that devastated and ravaged Spain. In 1808, in response to the cruel repression of the Napoleonic occupation, a popular uprising broke out in Madrid. During these difficult years, Goya was with his people. The works of those years were accompanied by the signatures: “I saw it!”, “Cannot be tolerated.”
The painting “Shooting of the rebels on the night of May 3, 1808” was the artist’s indictment of evil and violence. He clearly felt the real scale of the people’s tragedy.
A dark, hopeless night fell on the wasteland of Mancloa Square in Madrid. Here, on May 3, 1808, a faceless, gray crowd of soldiers carried out a terrible order – they shot innocent people without trial or investigation. Contrasts of light and shadow enhance the drama of the scene. The harsh light of the lantern fancifully illuminates the faces of the rebels snatched out of the darkness. In these last minutes before death, their thoughts and feelings are strained to the limit. The fists of the defiant are clenched to blood, the fingers are bitten to pain in a silent and desperate cry. The dead man froze in his last convulsion, the mortally wounded man is feeling the ground. A monk in a gray cassock cries out to God with restraint. Someone staggered back, covering his face with his hands …
In the center of the picture is a man in a dazzling white shirt rushing to meet the executioners. He stands with his arms spread wide with a cross, reminiscent of the crucified Christ. Against the background of what is happening, he looks like a symbolic reminder of the just coming retribution. Goya rises above the reliability of historical fact, affirming the moral superiority of the unconquered people, showing the steadfastness and beauty of its spirit.
In contrast to the neoclassicists, who favored the events of past Greek and Roman history, the Romantics turned to the art of the Middle Ages. The Pre-Raphaelite Brothers (Pre-Raphaelite Brothers) – an association of young painters that emerged in London in 1848 and was a reaction to the work of talentless imitators of Raphael – left a bright mark in the history of world art culture. In their search for new landmarks, free from academic conventions, they took medieval art as a model of sincerity and artistic freedom. They drew inspiration from the knightly novels of the Middle Ages, ancient legends in the arrangement of modern romantic poets, the poetry of Dante, the drama of Shakespeare.
One of the main tenets of the declaration they proclaimed was the appeal: “To love everything in the art of the past that is serious, direct and sincere.” The Bible gave rise to a response in their hearts, in which they found many subjects that were consonant with their time. The Pre-Raphaelites did not strive for a historically accurate transmission of the Gospel episodes, they were much more interested in the “truth of nature”, the cult of natural and sincere human feelings. They filled the interpretation of biblical stories with an inner philosophical meaning, a religious and mystical mood, betraying it with the help of numerous signs and symbols.
The brightest representative of the Pre-Raphaelites was Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), who saw in Christianity a special spiritual principle capable of elevating a person. Referring to biblical stories from the life of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, he created his own special and unique style, full of mysticism, sincerity and simplicity. The reading of the canonical theme of the Annunciation in the painting of the same name “The Annunciation” was truly innovative and very daring. Based on the Gospel of Luke, he told in his own way about how the fiery angel was sent to the Virgin Mary. Contrary to the generally accepted tradition of the Renaissance, which depicted the Madonna as a saint praying during the Annunciation, Rossetti shows her in the guise of an ordinary girl, frightened by the sudden appearance of the Archangel Gabriel. The Good News brought by him clearly catches her by surprise: she pressed against the wall and obediently listens to his words.There is no joy in the embarrassed and depressed look, chained to the lily flower in the hands of the heavenly messenger, on the contrary, alertness and fear are guessed in it. The appearance of the Archangel Gabriel, who appeared without wings and in clothes that barely covered his naked body, was also unusual. Only a halo above his head, a dove hovering above his hand, tongues of flame under his feet indicated his divine origin.
The painting contains a lot of symbolism, dating back to medieval mystical literature and art. If in traditional Christian art the white lily was perceived as a symbol of the spiritual purity and innocence of the Virgin Mary, then in Rossetti’s painting it is simultaneously associated with the flower of mourning, marking the crucifixion of Christ. Almost every thing captured by the artist acquired a deep symbolic sound here.
The most important means of conveying feelings and moods is the color scheme of the picture. Despite the obvious monochrome (the dominant cold white color) with small splashes of blue (the canonical color of the Mother of God) and red (the symbol of the sacrifice of Christ), the colors created the feeling of a mysterious miracle taking place right before the eyes of the viewer.
The violation of the usual canons of Christian painting, of course, could not please the zealous ministers of the church, and the large public did not like it either. Critics unanimously noted the break with the classical tradition and considered such an interpretation of the Gospel story clearly indecent.
Since the religious paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites were subjected to especially harsh criticism, in the end, the painters-innovators turned to literary subjects. Among their famous programmatic works is the painting by John Everett Milles (1826-1896) “Ophelia”, the plot of which was inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet”. Despite the fierce controversy caused by their works, the Pre-Raphaelites managed to create “a new and bolder English art that made people think” (W. H. Hunt). They brought to painting all the fullness of the romantic attitude and filled it with poetry.
The Brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites, which existed for less than 10 years, became one of the brightest events in the artistic life of the mid-19th century. It had a huge impact on the visual arts until the middle of the 20th century.
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The Russian portraitist Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (1782-1836) made a significant contribution to the creation of images of the romantic hero. The romantic portrait has become the artist’s real vocation. What especially attracted contemporaries in his portraits, because there were many leading figures of portrait painting in the Russian school? How did the talented master conquer the audience?
Most of the works created by Kiprensky bears the stamp of unusualness, sometimes mysteriousness. The artist does not set himself the goal of giving a reliable, accurate characterization of the characters. The main thing for him is to convey the hero’s longing for a distant, sometimes unrealizable ideal, to embody the inner discord of the soul, dissatisfaction, tragic brokenness, hidden sadness and a spirit of doubt. That is why in the gallery of portrait images a significant place is occupied by dreamers, people of lofty and noble aspirations, who are alien to routine and everyday life.
One of the brightest and deepest romantic portraits of O. A. Kiprensky is the portrait of E. V. Davydov, a cousin of the poet and hussar Denis Davydov. This is the image of a man of a stormy and heroic era, demanding “beautiful impulses to devote souls to the fatherland.” Before us is a contradictory personality, in whose character external bravado and military prowess of dashing hussars, a sense of duty and spiritual nobility, the spirit of a merry fellow and the concentration of a deeply thinking person are combined. This is a natural, lively person who especially values personal freedom and independence.
Original coloristic and compositional solution of the picture. The artist successfully found a harmony of colors: a yellowish tone of the face, a bright red uniform, white leggings, gold braids, silver cords of a harness and black patent leather boots. The romantic landscape adds dynamism to the image: Davydov stands near a tree broken by the wind or struck by lightning. Above him, clouds of white clouds gather, rushing across the blue stormy sky. The emotionally colored atmosphere of the landscape clearly contrasts with the casually calm pose of the hero.
Kiprensky owns a series of pencil portraits of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812. The artist’s light and virtuoso pencil marks in the appearance of these people the features of high intelligence, readiness for heroism and nobility of soul. With enthusiasm, he paints a generation of victors, heroic “children of 1812” in military uniforms, militia caps and marching raincoats.
Being a contemporary of A.S. Pushkin, Kiprensky created a whole gallery of images included in the close circle of the poet: P.A.Vyazemsky, N.I.Gnedich, I.A.Krylov, K.N.Batyushkov, K.F.Ryleev. He owns the famous portrait of Alexander Pushkin – “a pet of pure muses”, full of creative impulse and inspiration. Female portraits of the artist are also remarkable. Young ladies, captured on them, are charming, old women are majestically calm and noble. The portraits of E. Rostopchina and E. Avdulina belong to the true masterpieces of Kiprensky.
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The artists of romanticism brought a different view of nature, in which they saw not just the environment of human habitation, but the Universe, of which man is a small particle. At the same time, nature often opposes a person with his vanity of being and vain desires.
A favorite type of romantic landscape is a sky covered with dark clouds through which moonlight breaks through, or a gloomy raging sea, where everything reminds of the instability of human life. A tragic understanding of the fragility of life is conveyed in numerous scenes of shipwrecks and natural disasters that threaten a person with inevitable catastrophes.
The perception of nature by romantics is deeply emotional; it lives and breathes with a person. For such a reflection of the life of nature, romantics had their own favorite techniques. The feeling of the boundlessness and boundlessness of nature is conveyed by landscapes stretching to the horizon.
A striking example of Western European landscape painting of romanticism is the work of the German artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). He painted mountain, sea and forest landscapes, making the viewer feel the boundlessness and infinity of heights and distant. The immense spaces with the silence reigning in them fascinate the viewer, set him up for silent communication with nature. If he introduces a person into his landscapes, then the impression is created that the person is thrown here by some accidents or vicissitudes of fate. We almost never see his face, more often he is shown from the back, sitting on the seashore or going into the distance along a forest path. Being inside nature and at the same time being constrained by it, it is perceived as an element alien to it. The tiny dimensions of human figures are incomparable with the grandiose scale of mountains and forests, the vastness of the sea surface or the sky.Without signing or dating his paintings in principle, the artist once again reminded that he is only a co-author of eternal Nature.
The main expression of the emotional load is color, which has a symbolic meaning. It does not create illusions of light, but makes objects and figures cast bizarre and mysterious shadows. Combined with romantic symbols (sea, ship, ruins of medieval castles, owl, moonlit night, sunset, quiet morning), Friedrich’s paintings create a special emotional mood.
The painting “The Monk on the Seashore” is surprisingly simple and at the same time grandiose. Almost all of her composition is made up of multi-colored horizontal stripes. Below is a narrow strip of almost white coastal sand, then – a black-blue, lead-gray sea and then – a gloomy sky brightening in the height. The horizon line takes the viewer’s gaze into the distance, into the very depths of the picture, revealing the infinity of the universe. Against this unusual background, the artist depicts a small figurine of a monk, who finds himself alone with the majestic Nature. The lonely wandering monk embodies the artist’s romantic ideal, reveals the theme of the tragic loss of man in infinite space.
Russian landscape painting of the first half of the 19th century. also developed in the mainstream of romanticism. The free element of nature in it acted as the personification of the spirit of freedom and independence.
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (1817-1900) went down in the history of world painting as a “fiery poet of the sea”. He devoted his whole life to this topic and never cheated on it. In the created marinas (there were about three thousand of them, according to the artist’s own admission), he remained faithful to the romantic ideal of a beautiful and spiritualized nature. If in his youth he was more interested in the serene silence of the sea, flooded with gold sunlight or silvery light of the moon, then later he turns to the image of a mighty, raging element, foreshadowing grandiose catastrophes.
Aivazovsky’s painting “The Ninth Wave” caused a real pilgrimage of admiring spectators. A huge wave of the raging sea is ready to hit the people, convulsively clinging to the wreckage of the masts of the lost ship. All night, the crew fearlessly fought the sea element. But now the first rays of the sun pierced the water, illuminating it with thousands of bright glare and the finest shades of colors. The water seems transparent, it seems to glow from the inside, absorbing the bubbling fury of the waves, and therefore, giving a fragile hope of salvation. According to sailors’ beliefs, the ninth wave heralds the last gust of the storm. Will people be able to resist? Will they emerge victorious from the mortal battle with the raging elements? It is difficult to answer this question, but the coloristic structure of the picture, full of optimism, instills such confidence.
