The beginning of the 19th century was a time of cultural and spiritual upsurge in Russia. If in economic and socio-political development Russia lagged behind advanced European states, then in cultural achievements it not only kept pace with them, but was often ahead. The development of Russian culture in the first half of the 19th century was based on the transformations of the previous time. The penetration of elements of capitalist relations into the economy has increased the need for literate and educated people. Cities became major cultural centers.
New social strata were drawn into social processes. Culture developed against the background of the ever-increasing national self-awareness of the Russian people and, in connection with this, had a pronounced national character. She had a significant influence on literature, theater, music, and fine arts. Patriotic War of 1812, which to an unprecedented degree accelerated the growth of the national self-awareness of the Russian people and its consolidation. There was a rapprochement with the Russian people of other peoples of Russia.
Start XIX century is rightly called the golden age of Russian painting. It was then that Russian artists reached a level of skill that put their works on a par with the best examples of European art.
Three names open the Russian painting XIX centuries - Kiprensky , Tropinin , Venetsianov. Everyone has a different origin: an illegitimate landowner, a serf and a descendant of a merchant. Everyone has their own creative aspiration - romantic, realist and “village lyricist”.
Despite his early passion for historical painting, Kiprensky is known primarily as an outstanding portrait painter. We can say that at the beginning of the 19th century. he became the first Russian portrait painter. The old masters, who became famous in the 18th century, could no longer compete with him: Rokotov died in 1808, Levitsky, who survived him by 14 years, no longer painted due to an eye disease, and Borovikovsky, who did not live several months before the uprising Decembrists, worked very little.
Kiprensky was lucky enough to become an artistic chronicler of his time. “History in faces” can be considered his portraits, which depict many participants in the historical events of which he was a contemporary: heroes of the War of 1812, representatives of the Decembrist movement. The technology also came in handy pencil drawing, the training of which was given serious attention at the Academy of Arts. Kiprensky created, in essence, a new genre - a pictorial portrait.
Kiprensky created many portraits of Russian cultural figures, and, of course, the most famous among them is Pushkin. It was written by order Delviga, the poet’s lyceum friend, in 1827. Contemporaries noted the amazing similarity of the portrait to the original. The artist freed the image of the poet from the everyday features that are inherent in the portrait of Pushkin by Tropinin, painted in the same year. Alexander Sergeevich was captured by the artist at a moment of inspiration when he was visited by a poetic muse.
Death overtook the artist during his second trip to Italy. Recent years many things went wrong with the famous painter. A creative slump began. Shortly before his death, his life was overshadowed by a tragic event: according to contemporaries, the artist was falsely accused of murder and was afraid to leave the house. Even marrying his Italian pupil did not brighten up his last days.
Few people mourned the Russian painter who died in a foreign land. Among the few who truly understood what a master she had lost domestic culture, there was the artist Alexander Ivanov, who was in Italy at that time. In those sad days, he wrote: Kiprensky “was the first to make the Russian name known in Europe.”
Tropinin entered the history of Russian art as an outstanding portrait painter. He said: “A portrait of a person is painted for the memory of those close to him, those who love him.” According to contemporaries, Tropinin painted about 3,000 portraits. Whether this is so is difficult to say. One of the books about the artist contains a list of 212 precisely identified persons whom Tropinin portrayed. He also has many works entitled “Portrait of an Unknown Woman”. State dignitaries, nobles, warriors, businessmen, minor officials, serfs, intellectuals, and figures of Russian culture posed for Tropinin. Among them: historian Karamzin, writer Zagoskin, art critic Odoevsky, painters Bryullov and Aivazovsky, sculptor Vitali, architect Gilardi, composer Alyabyev, actors Shchepkin and Mo-chalov, playwright Sukhovo-Kobylin.
One of best works Tropinina - portrait of a son. It must be said that one of the “discoveries” of Russian art of the 19th century. there was a child's portrait. In the Middle Ages, a child was viewed as a small adult who had not yet grown up. Children were even dressed in outfits that were no different from adults: in the middle of the 18th century. girls wore tight corsets and wide skirts with flaps. Only at the beginning of the 19th century. they saw the child in the child. Artists were among the first to do this. There is a lot of simplicity and naturalness in Tropinin’s portrait. The boy is not posing. Interested in something, he turned around for a moment: his mouth was slightly open, his eyes were shining. The child's appearance is surprisingly charming and poetic. Golden disheveled hair, an open, childishly plump face, a lively look from intelligent eyes. You can feel how lovingly the artist painted the portrait of his son.
Tropinin painted self-portraits twice. On the later one, dated 1846, the artist is 70 years old. He depicted himself with a palette and brushes in his hands, leaning on a mashtabel - a special stick used by painters. Behind him is a majestic panorama of the Kremlin. In his younger years, Tropinin possessed heroic strength and good spirits. Judging by the self-portrait, he retained his strength of body even in old age. The round face with glasses radiates good nature. The artist died 10 years later, but his image remained in the memory of descendants - large, kind person, enriched Russian art with your talent.
Venetsianov discovered the peasant theme in Russian painting. He was the first among Russian artists to show the beauty of his native nature in his canvases. The Academy of Arts did not favor the landscape genre. It occupied the penultimate place in importance, leaving behind an even more despicable one - household. Only a few masters painted nature, preferring Italian or imaginary landscapes.
In many of Venetsianov’s works, nature and man are inseparable. They are connected as closely as a peasant is with the land and its gifts. The artist created his most famous works - "Haymaking", "On the arable land. Spring", "At the harvest. Summer" - in the 20s. This was the peak of his creativity. No one in Russian art was able to show peasant life and the work of peasants with such love and as poetically as Venetsianov. In the painting "On the Plowed Field. Spring" a woman is harrowing a field. This hard, exhausting work looks sublime on Venetsianov’s canvas: a peasant woman in an elegant sundress and kokoshnik. With her beautiful face and flexible figure, she resembles an ancient goddess. Leading by the bridles of two obedient horses harnessed to a harrow, she does not walk, but seems to soar over the field. Life around flows calmly, measuredly, peacefully. Rare trees turn green, white clouds float across the sky, the field seems endless, on the edge of which a baby sits, waiting for its mother.
The painting “At the Harvest. Summer” seems to continue the previous one. The harvest is ripe, the fields are full of golden stubble - the time has come for the harvest. In the foreground, putting her sickle aside, a peasant woman is breastfeeding her child. The sky, the field, and the people working on it are inseparable for the artist. But still, the main subject of his attention is always the person.
Venetsianov created a whole gallery of portraits of peasants. This was new for Russian painting. In the 18th century people from the people, and especially serfs, were of little interest to artists. According to art historians, Venetsianov was the first in the history of Russian painting to “accurately capture and recreate the Russian folk type.” “The Reapers”, “Girl with Cornflowers”, “Girl with a Calf”, “Sleeping Shepherd” - beautiful images of peasants, immortalized by Venetsianov. Portraits of peasant children occupied a special place in the artist’s work. How good is “Zakharka” - a big-eyed, snub-nosed, big-lipped boy with an ax on his shoulder! Zakharka seems to personify the energetic peasant nature, accustomed to work from childhood.
Alexey Gavrilovich left a good memory of himself not only as an artist, but also as an outstanding teacher. During one of his visits to St. Petersburg, he took on a beginning artist as a student, then another, a third... Thus a whole art school, which went down in art history under the name Venetsianovskaya. Over a quarter of a century, about 70 talented young men passed through it. Venetsianov tried to redeem serf artists from captivity and was very worried if this failed. The most talented of his students, Grigory Soroka, never received his freedom from his landowner. He lived to see the abolition of serfdom, but, driven to despair by the omnipotence of his former owner, he committed suicide.
Many of Venetsianov's students lived in his house on full content. They learned the secrets of Venetian painting: firm adherence to the laws of perspective, close attention to nature. Among his students were many talented masters who left a noticeable mark on Russian art: Grigory Soroka, Alexey Tyranov, Alexander Alekseev, Nikifor Krylov. “Venetsianovtsy” - they lovingly called his pets.
Thus, it can be argued that in the first third of the 19th century there was a rapid rise in cultural development Russia and this time is called the golden age of Russian painting.
Russian artists have reached a level of skill that puts their works on a par with the best examples of European art.
Glorifying the heroic deeds of the people, the idea of their spiritual awakening, exposing the ills of feudal Russia—these are the main themes of the fine arts of the 19th century.
IN portrait painting features of romanticism - independence human personality, her individuality, freedom of expression of feelings are especially distinct.
Many portraits of Russian cultural figures, including children's portraits, were created. Comes into fashion peasant theme, a landscape that showed the beauty of our native nature.
Examination essay
Subject:"Romanticism as a movement in art."
Completed student of class 11 "B" of school No. 3
Boyright Anna
World Art Teacher
culture Butsu T.N.
Brest 2002
1. Introduction
2. Reasons for the emergence of romanticism
3. Main features of romanticism
4. Romantic hero
5. Romanticism in Russia
a) Literature
b) Painting
c) Music
6. Western European romanticism
a) Painting
b) Music
7. Conclusion
8. References
1. INTRODUCTION
If you look into the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, you can find several meanings of the word “romanticism”: 1. A movement in literature and art of the first quarter of the 19th century, characterized by the idealization of the past, isolation from reality, and the cult of personality and man. 2. A movement in literature and art, imbued with optimism and the desire to show bright images high purpose of a person. 3. A state of mind imbued with an idealization of reality and dreamy contemplation.
As can be seen from the definition, romanticism is a phenomenon that manifests itself not only in art, but also in behavior, clothing, lifestyle, psychology of people and arises in turning points life, so the theme of romanticism is still relevant today. We live at the turn of the century, we are in a transitional stage. In this regard, in society there is a lack of faith in the future, a loss of faith in ideals, a desire arises to escape from the surrounding reality into the world of one’s own experiences and at the same time to comprehend it. It is these features that are characteristic of romantic art. That’s why I chose the topic “Romanticism as a movement in art” for research.
Romanticism is a very large layer various types art. The purpose of my work is to trace the conditions of origin and reasons for the emergence of romanticism in different countries, to explore the development of romanticism in such forms of art as literature, painting and music, and to compare them. The main task for me was to highlight the main features of romanticism, characteristic of all types of art, to determine what influence romanticism had on the development of other movements in art.
When developing the theme I used teaching aids on art, such authors as Filimonova, Vorotnikov and others, encyclopedic publications, monographs dedicated to various authors of the Romantic era, biographical materials such authors as Aminskaya, Atsarkina, Nekrasova and others.
2. REASONS FOR THE ARISE OF ROMANTICISM
The closer we get to modern times, the shorter the periods of dominance of one style or another become. The time period of the end of the 18th-1st third of the 19th centuries. is considered to be the era of romanticism (from the French Romantique; something mysterious, strange, unreal)
What influenced the emergence of the new style?
These are three main events: the Great French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of the national liberation movement in Europe.
The thunder of Paris echoed throughout Europe. The slogan “Freedom, equality, brotherhood!” had enormous attractive power for everyone European peoples. As bourgeois societies formed, the working class began to act against the feudal order as an independent force. The opposing struggle of three classes - the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat formed the basis of the historical development XIX century.
The fate of Napoleon and his role in European history for 2 decades, 1796-1815, occupied the minds of his contemporaries. “The ruler of thoughts,” A.S. said about him. Pushkin.
For France, these were years of greatness and glory, albeit at the cost of the lives of thousands of Frenchmen. Italy saw Napoleon as its liberator. The Poles had great hopes for him.
Napoleon acted as a conqueror acting in the interests of the French bourgeoisie. For European monarchs, he was not only a military opponent, but also a representative of the alien world of the bourgeoisie. They hated him. At the beginning of the Napoleonic wars, his “Great Army” included many direct participants in the revolution.
The personality of Napoleon himself was phenomenal. The young man Lermontov responded to the 10th anniversary of Napoleon’s death:
He is alien to the world. Everything about him was a secret
The day of exaltation - and the hour of fall!
This mystery especially attracted the attention of romantics.
In connection with the Napoleonic wars and the maturation of national self-awareness, this period was characterized by the rise of the national liberation movement. Germany, Austria, Spain fought against the Napoleonic occupation, Italy - against the Austrian yoke, Greece - against Turkey, in Poland they fought against Russian tsarism, Ireland - against the British.
Amazing changes have taken place before the eyes of one generation.
France was seething most of all: the stormy five years of the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Robespierre, Napoleonic campaigns, Napoleon’s first abdication, his return from the island of Elba (“one hundred days”) and the final
the defeat at Waterloo, the gloomy 15th anniversary of the restoration regime, the July Revolution of 1860, the February Revolution of 1848 in Paris, which caused a revolutionary wave in other countries.
In England, as a result of the industrial revolution in the 2nd half of the 19th century. machine production and capitalist relations were established. The parliamentary reform of 1832 cleared the path for the bourgeoisie to state power.
In the lands of Germany and Austria, feudal rulers retained power. After the fall of Napoleon, they dealt harshly with the opposition. But even on German soil, the steam locomotive, brought from England in 1831, became a factor in bourgeois progress.
Industrial revolutions and political revolutions changed the face of Europe. “The bourgeoisie, in less than a hundred years of its class rule, has created more numerous and colossal productive forces than all previous generations combined,” wrote the German scientists Marx and Engels in 1848.
So, the Great French Revolution (1789-1794) marked a special milestone separating the new era from the Age of Enlightenment. Not only the forms of the state changed, social structure society, class arrangement. The entire system of ideas, illuminated for centuries, was shaken. The Enlighteners ideologically prepared the revolution. But they could not foresee all its consequences. The “kingdom of reason” did not take place. The revolution, which proclaimed individual freedom, gave rise to the bourgeois order, the spirit of acquisition and selfishness. Such was the historical basis for the development of artistic culture, which put forward a new direction - romanticism.
3. MAIN FEATURES OF ROMANTICism
Romanticism as a method and direction in artistic culture was a complex and contradictory phenomenon. In every country it had a strong national expression. In literature, music, painting and theater it is not easy to find features that unite Chateaubriand and Delacroix, Mickiewicz and Chopin, Lermontov and Kiprensky.
Romantics occupied various social and political positions in society. They all rebelled against the results of the bourgeois revolution, but they rebelled in different ways, since each had their own ideal. But for all its many faces and diversity, romanticism has stable features.
Disillusionment with modernity gave rise to a special interest in the past: to pre-bourgeois social formations, to patriarchal antiquity. Many romantics had the idea that the picturesque exoticism of the countries of the south and east - Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey - was a poetic contrast to the boring bourgeois everyday life. In these countries, then little touched by civilization, romantics looked for bright, strong characters, original, colorful way of life. Interest in the national past has given rise to a lot of historical works.
Striving to rise above the prose of existence, to liberate the diverse abilities of the individual, to achieve maximum self-realization in creativity, the romantics opposed the formalization of art and the straightforward and reasonable approach to it, characteristic of classicism. They all came from denial of the Enlightenment and the rationalistic canons of classicism, which fettered the artist’s creative initiative. And if classicism divides everything in a straight line, into good and bad, into black and white, then romanticism divides nothing in a straight line. Classicism is a system, but romanticism is not. Romanticism advanced the advancement of modern times from classicism to sentimentalism, which shows the inner life of man in harmony with the wider world. And romanticism contrasts harmony with the inner world. It is with romanticism that real psychologism begins to appear.
The main goal of romanticism was image of the inner world, mental life, and this could be done using the material of stories, mysticism, etc. It was necessary to show the paradox of this inner life, its irrationality.
In their imagination, romantics transformed the unsightly reality or retreated into the world of their experiences. The gap between dream and reality, the opposition of beautiful fiction to objective reality, lay at the heart of the entire romantic movement.
Romanticism first raised the problem of the language of art. “Art is a language of a completely different kind than nature; but it also contains the same miraculous power, which equally secretly and incomprehensibly affects the human soul” (Wackenroder and Tieck). The artist is an interpreter of the language of nature, a mediator between the world of spirit and people. “Thanks to artists, humanity emerges as a complete individuality. Through modernity, artists unite the world of the past with the world of the future. They are the highest spiritual organ in which the vital forces of their outer humanity meet each other and where the inner humanity manifests itself first of all” (F. Schlegel).
At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the ideas of classicism and Enlightenment lost their attractiveness and relevance. The new, which, in response to the canonical techniques of classicism and the moral social theories of the Enlightenment, turned to man, his inner world, gained strength and took possession of minds. Romanticism became very widespread in all areas of cultural life and philosophy. Musicians, artists and writers in their works sought to show the high purpose of man, his rich spiritual world, the depth of feelings and experiences. From now on, man with his inner struggle, spiritual quests and experiences, and not the “blurred” ideas of general well-being and prosperity, became the dominant theme in works of art.
Romanticism in painting
Painters convey the depth of ideas and their personal experiences through their creations using composition, color, and accents. Different European countries had their own characteristics in the interpretation of romantic images. This is due to philosophical trends, as well as the socio-political situation, to which art was a living response. Painting was no exception. Germany, fragmented into small principalities and duchies, did not experience serious social upheavals, artists did not create monumental paintings depicting titanic heroes, here interest was aroused by the deep spiritual world of man, his beauty and greatness, moral quest. Therefore, romanticism in German painting is most fully represented in portraits and landscapes. The works of Otto Runge are classic examples of this genre. In the portraits made by the painter, through the subtle elaboration of facial features, eyes, through the contrast of light and shadow, the artist’s desire to show the inconsistency of personality, its power and depth of feeling is conveyed. Through the landscape, a slightly fantastic, exaggerated image of trees, flowers and birds, the artist also tried to discover the versatility of the human personality, its similarity with nature, diverse and unknown. A prominent representative of romanticism in painting was the landscape artist K. D. Friedrich, who emphasized the strength and power of nature, mountains, seascapes, consonant with man.
Romanticism in French painting developed according to different principles. Revolutionary upheavals, stormy social life manifested themselves in painting by the artists’ tendency to depict historical and fantastic subjects, with pathos and “nervous” excitement, which was achieved by bright color contrast, expression of movements, some chaos, and spontaneity of the composition. Romantic ideas are most fully and vividly represented in the works of T. Gericault and E. Delacroix. The artists masterfully used color and light, creating a pulsating depth of feeling, a sublime impulse towards struggle and freedom.
Romanticism in Russian painting
Russian social thought responded very keenly to new directions and trends emerging in Europe. and then the war with Napoleon - those significant historical events, which most seriously influenced the philosophical and cultural quests of the Russian intelligentsia. Romanticism in Russian painting was represented in three main landscapes, monumental art, where the influence of classicism was very strong, and romantic ideas were closely intertwined with academic canons.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, increasing attention was paid to the image creative intelligentsia, poets and artists of Russia, as well as ordinary people and peasants. Kiprensky, Tropinin, Bryullov with great love they tried to show the depth and beauty of a person’s personality, through a glance, a turn of the head, and details of a costume to convey the spiritual quest and freedom-loving character of their “models.” Great interest in a person's personality, her central place in art contributed to the flourishing of the genre of self-portrait. Moreover, the artists did not paint self-portraits to order; it was a creative impulse, a kind of self-report to their contemporaries.
Landscapes in the works of the romantics were also distinguished by their originality. Romanticism in painting reflected and conveyed a person’s mood; the landscape had to be in tune with it. That is why artists tried to depict the rebellious nature of nature, its power and spontaneity. Orlovsky, Shchedrin, depicting the sea element, mighty trees, mountain ranges, on the one hand, conveyed the beauty and diversity of real landscapes, on the other, created a certain emotional mood.
Romanticism in the fine arts was largely based on the ideas of philosophers and writers. In painting, as in other forms of art, the romantics were attracted by everything unusual, unknown, be it distant countries with their exotic customs and costumes (Delacroix), the world of mystical visions (Blake, Friedrich, the Pre-Raphaelites) and magical dreams (Runge) or gloomy depths subconscious (Goya, Fusli). The artistic heritage of the past has become a source of inspiration for many artists: Ancient East, Middle Ages and Proto-Renaissance (Nazarenes, Pre-Raphaelites).
In contrast to classicism, which exalted the clear power of reason, the romantics sang passionate, stormy feelings that captured a person entirely. The earliest responders to new trends were portraits and landscapes, which became favorite genres of romantic painting.
Heyday portrait genre was associated with the interest of the romantics in the bright human individuality, beauty and richness of it spiritual world. The life of the human spirit prevails in romantic portrait over interest in physical beauty, in the sensual plasticity of the image.
In a romantic portrait (Delacroix, Géricault, Runge, Goya) the uniqueness of each person is always revealed, the dynamics, the intense beat of inner life, and rebellious passion are conveyed.
Romantics are also interested in the tragedy of a broken soul: the heroes of their works are often mentally ill people (Gericault “A Madwoman Suffering from an Addiction to Drugs”) gambling", "Children's thief", "Insane, imagining himself as a commander").
Scenery conceived by romantics as the embodiment of the soul of the universe; nature, like the human soul, appears in dynamics, constant variability. The ordered and ennobled landscapes characteristic of classicism were replaced by images of spontaneous, rebellious, powerful, ever-changing nature, corresponding to the confusion of the feelings of romantic heroes. The Romantics especially loved to write storms, thunderstorms, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, shipwrecks that could have a strong emotional impact on the viewer (Gericault, Friedrich, Turner).
The poeticization of the night, characteristic of romanticism - a strange, unreal world living according to its own laws - led to the flourishing of the “night genre”, which became a favorite in romantic painting, especially among German artists.
One of the first countries in whose fine arts romanticism developed wasGermany .
Creativity had a noticeable influence on the development of the genre of romantic landscapeCaspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). In his artistic heritage Landscapes with images of mountain peaks, forests, the sea, the sea coast, as well as the ruins of old cathedrals, abandoned abbeys, and monasteries predominate (“Cross in the Mountains,” “Cathedral,” “Abbey Among the Oak Trees”). They usually contain a feeling of constant sadness from the awareness of a person’s tragic loss in the world.
The artist loved those states of nature that most correspond to its romantic perception: early morning, evening sunset, moonrise (“Two Contemplating the Moon”, “Monastery Cemetery”, “Landscape with a Rainbow”, “Moonrise over the Sea”, “Chalk Cliffs” on the island of Rügen", "On a sailboat", "Harbor at night").
The constant characters in his works are lonely dreamers, immersed in the contemplation of nature. Looking into the vast distances and endless heights, they become familiar with the eternal secrets of the universe, carried away into beautiful world dreams. Friedrich conveys this wonderful world with the help of a magically shining light- radiant solar or mysterious lunar.
Friedrich's work aroused the admiration of his contemporaries, including I. W. Goethe and W. A. Zhukovsky, thanks to whom many of his paintings were acquired by Russia.
Painter, graphic artist, poet and art theoristPhilip Otto Runge (1777-1810), mainly devoted himself to the portrait genre. In his works he poeticized images ordinary people, often - their loved ones (“The three of us” - a self-portrait with his bride and brother, has not survived; “Children of the Huelsenbeck family”, “Portrait of the artist’s parents”, “Self-portrait”). Runge’s deep religiosity was expressed in such paintings as “Christ on the Shores of Lake Tiberias” and “Rest on the Flight to Egypt” (unfinished). The artist summed up his thoughts about art in his theoretical treatise “The Color Sphere.”
The desire to revive religious and moral foundations in German art is associated with creative activity artists Nazarene school (F. Overbeck, von Karlsfeld,L. Vogel, I. Gottinger, J. Sutter,P. von Cornelius). Having united in a kind of religious brotherhood (“Union of St. Luke”), the “Nazarenes” lived in Rome according to the model of a monastic community and painted paintings on religious subjects. They considered Italian and German painting as a model for their creative searches.XIV - XVcenturies (Perugino, early Raphael, A. Durer, H. Holbein the Younger, L.Cranach). In the painting “The Triumph of Religion in Art,” Overbeck directly imitates Raphael’s “School of Athens,” and Cornelius in “Horsemen of the Apocalypse” imitates Durer’s engraving of the same name.
Members of the brotherhood considered spiritual purity and sincere faith to be the main virtues of the artist, believing that “only the Bible made Raphael a genius.” Leading a solitary life in the cells of an abandoned monastery, they elevated their service to art to the category of spiritual service.
The “Nazarenes” gravitated towards large monumental forms and tried to embody high ideals with the help of the newly revived fresco technique. Some of the paintings were completed by them together.
In the 1820s and 30s, members of the brotherhood dispersed throughout Germany, receiving leading positions in various art academies. Only Overbeck lived in Italy until his death, without betraying his artistic principles. The best traditions of the “Nazarenes” were preserved for a long time in historical painting. Their ideological and moral quest influenced the English Pre-Raphaelites, as well as the work of such masters as Schwind and Spitzweg.
Moritz Schwind (1804-1871), Austrian by birth, worked in Munich. In easel works he mainly depicts the appearance and life of ancient German provincial cities with their inhabitants. This was done with great poetry and lyricism, with love for its characters.
Carl Spitzweg (1808-1885) - Munich painter, graphic artist, brilliant draftsman, caricaturist, also not without sentimentality, but with great humor, talks about city life (“Poor Poet”, “Morning Coffee”).
Schwind and Spitzweg are usually associated with the movement in German culture known as Biedermeier.Biedermeier - this is one of the most popular styles of the era (primarily in the field of everyday life, but also in art) . He brought to the fore the burghers, the average man in the street. Central theme Biedermeier painting became daily life a person, flowing in an inextricable connection with his home and family. Biedermeier's interest not in the past, but in the present, not in the great, but in the small, contributed to the formation of a realistic tendency in painting.
French romantic school
The most consistent school of romanticism in painting developed in France. It arose as an opposition to classicism, which had degenerated into cold, rational academicism, and brought forward such great masters who determined the dominant influence of the French school throughout the 19th century.
French romantic artists gravitated toward subjects full of drama and pathos, internal tension, far from “dull everyday life.” By embodying them, they reformed pictorial and expressive means:
The first brilliant successes of romanticism in French painting associated with the nameTheodora Gericault (1791-1824), who, before others, was able to express a purely romantic sense of conflict in the world. Already in his first works one can see the desire to show dramatic events modernity. For example, the paintings “Mounted Rifle Officer Going on the Attack” and “Wounded Cuirassier” reflected the romance of the Napoleonic era.
Gericault’s painting “The Raft of the Medusa,” dedicated to a recent event, had a huge resonance modern life- the death of a passenger ship due to the fault of the shipping company . Gericault created a giant canvas 7x5 m, on which he depicted the moment when people on the verge of death saw a rescue ship on the horizon. The extreme tension is emphasized by the harsh, gloomy color scheme, diagonal composition. This painting became a symbol of modern Gericault France, which, like people fleeing a shipwreck, experienced both hope and despair.
The topic of your latest big picture- “Epsom Races” - the artist found it in England. It depicts horses flying like birds (a favorite image of Gericault, who became an excellent rider as a teenager). The impression of swiftness is enhanced by a certain technique: the horses and jockeys are painted very carefully, and the background is broad.
After the death of Gericault (he died tragically, in the prime of his strength and talent), his young friend became the recognized leader of the French romanticsEugene Delacroix (1798-1863). Delacroix was comprehensively gifted, possessing musical and literary talent. His diaries and articles about artists are the most interesting documents of the era. His theoretical studies of the laws of color had a huge influence on future impressionists and especially on V. Van Gogh.
Delacroix’s first painting, which brought him fame, was “Dante and Virgil” (“Dante’s Boat”), based on the plot of “The Divine Comedy.” She amazed her contemporaries with her passionate pathos and the power of her gloomy coloring.
The pinnacle of the artist’s creativity was “Freedom on the Barricades” (“Freedom Leading the People”). Credibility real fact(the picture was created at the height of the July Revolution of 1830 in France) here merges with the romantic dream of freedom and the symbolism of the images. A beautiful young woman becomes a symbol of revolutionary France.
The earlier painting “Massacre on Chios”, dedicated to the struggle of the Greek people against Turkish rule, was also a response to modern events. .
Having visited Morocco, Delacroix discovered the exotic world of the Arab East, to which he devoted many paintings and sketches. In "Women of Algeria" the world of the Muslim harem appeared before the European audience for the first time.
The artist also created a series of portraits of representatives of the creative intelligentsia, many of whom were his friends (portraits of N. Paganini, F. Chopin, G. Berlioz, etc.)
In the later period of his work, Delacroix gravitated towards historical themes, working as a monumentalist (paintings in the Chamber of Deputies, Senate) and as a graphic artist (illustrations for the works of Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron).
The names of English painters of the Romantic era - R. Benington, J. Constable, W. Turner - are associated with the genre of landscape. In this area, they truly opened a new page: their native nature found such a broad and loving reflection in their work that no other country knew at that time.
John Constable (1776-1837) was one of the first in the history of European landscape to write sketches entirely from life, turning to direct observation of nature. His paintings are simple in their motifs: villages, farms, churches, a strip of river or sea beach: “Hay Wagon,” Detham Valley,” “Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Garden.” Constable's works served as an impetus for the development of realistic landscape in France.
William Turner (1775-1851) - marine painter . He was attracted by the stormy sea, showers, thunderstorms, floods, tornadoes: “The last voyage of the ship “Brave”, “Thunderstorm over the Piazzetta.” Bold coloristic explorations and rare lighting effects sometimes turn his paintings into shining phantasmagoric spectacles: “Fire of the London Parliament”, “Blizzard. The steamer leaves the harbor and sends distress signals when it gets into shallow water.” .
Turner owns the first painting of a steam locomotive running on rails - a symbol of industrialization. In the film "Rain, Steam and Speed" a steam locomotive rushes along the Thames through a foggy rain haze. All material objects seem to merge into a mirage image that perfectly conveys the feeling of speed.
Turner's unique study of light and color effects largely anticipated the discoveries of French impressionist artists.
In 1848, arose in Englandpre-raphaelite brotherhood (from Latin prae - “before” and Raphael), which united artists who did not accept their contemporary society and the art of the academic school. They saw their ideal in the art of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance(hence the name). The main members of the brotherhood areWilliam Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In their early works these artists used the abbreviation RV instead of signatures .
The love of antiquity was similar to the romantics of the Pre-Raphaelites. They turned to biblical subjects (“The Light of the World” and “The Unfaithful Shepherd” by W. H. Hunt; “The Childhood of Mary” and “The Annunciation” by D. G. Rossetti), plots from the history of the Middle Ages and plays by W. Shakespeare (“Ophelia” by Millais ).
In order to paint human figures and objects in their natural size, the Pre-Raphaelites increased the size of the canvases, landscape sketches made from life. The characters in their paintings had prototypes among real people. For example, D. G. Rossetti portrayed his beloved Elizabeth Siddal in almost all his works, continuing, like a medieval knight, to remain faithful to his beloved even after her untimely death (“Blue Silk Dress”, 1866).
The ideologist of the Pre-Raphaelites wasJohn Ruskin (1819-1900) - English writer, art critic and art theorist, author of the famous series of books “Modern Artists”.
The work of the Pre-Raphaelites significantly influenced many artists and became a harbinger of symbolism in literature (W. Pater, O. Wilde) and fine arts (O. Beardsley, G. Moreau, etc.).
The nickname "Nazarenes" may have come from the name of the city of Nazareth in Galilee, where Jesus Christ was born. According to another version, it arose by analogy with the name of the ancient Jewish religious community of the Nazarenes. It is also possible that the name of the group came from traditional name“Alla Nazarena” hairstyle, common in the Middle Ages and known from A. Dürer’s self-portrait: style of wearing long hair, parted in the middle, were reintroduced by Overbeck.
Biedermeier(German: “brave Meyer”, philistine) - surname fictional character from the poetry collection of the German poet Ludwig Eichrodt. Eichrodt created a parody of a real person - Samuel Friedrich Sauter, an old teacher who wrote naive poetry. Eichrodt in his caricature emphasized the philistine primitiveness of Biedermeier's thinking, which became a kind of parody symbol of the era. sweeping strokes of black, brown and greenish colors convey the fury of the storm. The viewer's gaze seems to be in the center of a whirlpool; the ship seems to be a toy of waves and wind.
The presentation will introduce creativity outstanding painters France, Germany, Spain and England of the Romantic era.
Romanticism in European painting
Romanticism is a movement in the spiritual culture of the late 18th - first third of the 19th centuries. The reason for its appearance was disappointment in the results of the French Revolution. The motto of the revolution is “Freedom, equality, brotherhood!” turned out to be utopian. The Napoleonic epic that followed the revolution and the gloomy reaction caused a mood of disappointment in life and pessimism. A new fashionable disease “World Sorrow” quickly spread in Europe and appeared new hero, yearning, wandering around the world in search of an ideal, and more often - in search of death.
Contents of Romantic Art
In the era of gloomy reaction, the English poet George Byron became the ruler of thoughts. His hero Childe Harold is a gloomy thinker, tormented by melancholy, wandering around the world in search of death and parting with life without any regret. My readers, I’m sure, now remember Onegin, Pechorin, Mikhail Lermontov. The main thing that distinguishes a romantic hero is his absolute rejection of gray, everyday life. The romantic and the philistine are antagonists.
"Oh, let me bleed,
But give me space quickly.
I'm scared to suffocate here,
In the damned world of traders...
No, better is a vile vice,
Robbery, violence, robbery,
Than accountant morality
And the virtue of well-fed faces.
Hey little cloud, take me away
Take it with you on a long journey,
To Lapland, or to Africa,
Or at least to Stettin - somewhere!
G. Heine
Escape from the gray everyday life becomes the main content of the art of romanticism. Where can a romantic “escape” from everyday life and dullness? If you, my dear reader, are a romantic at heart, then you can easily answer this question. Firstly, The distant past becomes attractive to our hero, most often the Middle Ages with its noble knights, tournaments, mysterious castles, and Beautiful Ladies. The Middle Ages were idealized and glorified in the novels of Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, in the poetry of German and English poets, in the operas of Weber, Meyerbeer, and Wagner. In 1764, the first English "Gothic" horror novel, Walpoll's The Castle of Otranto, was published. In Germany at the beginning of the 19th century, Ernest Hoffmann wrote “The Devil’s Elixir”; by the way, I advise you to read it. Secondly, a wonderful opportunity for “escape” for a romantic was the sphere of pure fiction, the creation of an imaginary, fantastic world. Remember Hoffmann, his “Nutcracker”, “Little Tsakhes”, “The Golden Pot”. It’s clear why Tolkien’s novels and Harry Potter stories are so popular these days. There are always romances! After all, this is a state of mind, don’t you agree?
Third way The romantic hero’s escape from reality is an escape to exotic countries untouched by civilization. This path led to the need for a systematic study of folklore. The art of romanticism was based on ballads, legends, and epics. Many works of romantic visual and musical art are associated with literature. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante again become the rulers of thoughts.
Romanticism in fine arts
In each country, the art of romanticism acquired its own national traits, but at the same time all their works have much in common. All romantic artists are united by a special attitude towards nature. The landscape, in contrast to the works of classicism, where it served only as decoration, a background, for romantics acquires a soul. The landscape helps to emphasize the state of the hero. It will be useful to compare European fine art of romanticism with art and.
Romantic art prefers the night landscape, cemeteries, gray mists, wild rocks, ruins of ancient castles and monasteries. A special attitude towards nature contributed to the birth of the famous landscape English parks (remember regular French parks with straight alleys and trimmed bushes and trees). The subjects of paintings are often stories and legends of the past.
Presentation "Romanticism in European fine arts" contains large number illustrations introducing the work of outstanding romantic artists of France, Spain, Germany, and England.
If the topic interests you, perhaps you, dear reader, will be interested in reading the material in the article “ Romanticism: passionate nature" on the Arthive website dedicated to art.
I found most of the illustrations in excellent quality on the website Gallerix.ru. For those who want to go deeper into the topic, I recommend reading it:
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- Lukicheva K.L. History of painting in masterpieces. – Moscow: Astra-Media, 2007.
- Lvova E.P., Sarabyanov D.V., Borisova E.A., Fomina N.N., Berezin V.V., Kabkova E.P., Nekrasova World artistic culture. XIX century. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007.
- Mini-encyclopedia. Pre-Raphaelism. – Vilnius: VAB “BESTIARY”, 2013.
- Samin D.K. One Hundred Great Artists. – M.: Veche, 2004.
- Freeman J. History of Art. – M.: Astrel Publishing House, 2003.
Good luck!
