Most important painters of Romanticism

Romanticism is an artistic style of the first half of the 19th century, contemporary with neoclassicism, with the difference that it will react against everything that was considered an academic art. Romanticism is also a vital attitude that is accompanied by a need to explore new fields: war conflicts, customs popular, religious and national exaltations, amorous passions, adventures, exotic landscapes, madness... always valuing color and nature. Next, in this lesson from a TEACHER we go on to look at the most important painters of Romanticism, who believed that art should arouse emotions.

Index

1. Most important painters of French romanticism
2. Most important painters of English romanticism
3. Most important painters of German romanticism

Inside of the French romanticism highlights two important figures, Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix.

Gericault

He is a very interesting artist because he is considered a bridge figure despite his short life since his training at first was totally neoclassical in the workshop of Pierre Narcisse Guérin and I ended up painting with romantic approaches and we could even say that it was a predecessor of the realism.

He is a painter closely linked to the Napoleonic saga, hence many of his works show this affinity, as in the Officer on horseback. However, his most important work is the Medusa Raft, the flagship painting of the French romantic movement.

The story behind this painting caused it to be censored by the French government and it was not was known in the press, when finally exposing this achievement in public caused a tremendous social scandal. In his preference for realism, he made a series of portraits of insane people in a psychiatric hospital, among them we highlight the Portrait of a madman, where the interest in mental disorders and the neurosis of romantic artists is revealed.

Delacroix

He was another of the most famous romantic artists of the time. In his works you can see the occasional reminiscence of classicism, as he met Gericault in Guerin's studio, and both had a great influence on his paintings.

He specialized in painting large-format paintings and studying the great masters of the Baroque. at the Louvre Museum, the paintings of Rubens, Rembrandt and the Venetian painters attracting him a lot.

For a time Delacroix traveled to Morocco, where he will capture light, sensuality and colorism (es passionate about color) of North African painting, this being one of his themes visible in works such as Women of Algiers.

Another issue to be discussed is that he is going to be a very politically committed painter and this is going to be captured in works, being the Freedom leading the people his most romantic work and perhaps the most influential, since in it he will reveal his ideology. It is an allegory of freedom, represented through a female figure. This painting is a symbol of the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century.

We continue with this analysis of the most important painters of Romanticism to speak, now, of the English. In romantic England we have to highlight two great landscapers as they are John Constable and William Turner, who perceived the importance and value of having direct contact with nature, since until now the landscapes were reconstructed in the painter's workshop.

Both one and the other tried to capture the effects of color, light and atmosphere, and although each one of a totally different style, they were the true precedents of the Impressionists.

Constable

He was the great landscape artist of the Romantic style, his works drawn directly from nature were full of truth and authenticity and greatly influenced the Impressionist painters as well as the French painters of the School of Barbizon.

His paintings are very poetic and the English countryside is usually present in them, his main work being the Salisbury cathedral, for which he conducted numerous studies on cloud formations and weather and light conditions.

Turner

On the other hand, he sought the sublimity of nature, painting disastrous snow storms or capturing the elements of earth, air, fire and water in a hazy, practically blurred, abstract way We could say. The way in which it was able to dissolve objects and elements in light and colored glazes also had great relevance in the later development of Impressionist painting.

Among the most important works of him we highlight Rain, Steam and Speed, where the true protagonist in the composition is the light filtered through the water from the rain, it is together with the speed and the steam they manage to form a perfect mix, showing their so famous atmospheric effects with which they even manage to blur the contours even of the same locomotive.

In Germany where painting was being dominated by neoclassical principles, the figure of Caspar David Friedrich, the greatest exponent of German romanticism contemporary to Constable.

He also dedicates himself to painting landscapes, which is also a landscape painter, but in his canvases those landscapes have a religious, mystical character... Among his most important works we highlight the Hiker on a sea of ​​clouds and the Monk in front of the sea where we see man fulfilling the invaluable role of a mere spectator in front of the grandeur and magnitude of nature.

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