Romanticism exalted individualism, subjectivism, irrationalism, subjectivism, irrationalism, imagination, emotions and nature-emotion. Romantic artists were fascinated by the nature, genius, their passions and inner struggles, moods, mental potentials, and the heroes. They investigaed human nature and personality, the national and ethnic origins, the medieval era, the exotic, the mysterious and more. They had a role of an ultimate egoistic creator, with the spirit above strict formal rules and traditional procedures.
The Heirs of David
At the beginning of the Revolution, a young woman, notably Marie Guillemine Leroulx de la Ville, also know as Mme Benoist (1768-1826) is among David's pupils. It was 'easy to see from the purity of drawing that she waas a pupil of David', a critic remarked when her arresting portrait of a black woman was shown at the Salon at 1800.
Marie Guillemine Benoist, Portait of Black Woman,1800.
Oil on canvas, 81 x 65cm. Louvre, Paris.
With this painted image of great visual sensitivity, the soft black skin set off by the crisp white freshly laundered and ironed drapery and head-dress, Marie Benoist made a radical break with the eighteenth-century tradition of representing non-European people as picturesquely exotic 'types'. It is obviously show the portrait of an individual, and a highly finished portrait rather than an etude or study from life such as were done mainly as demonstrations of an artist's technical ability.
On the other hand, it differs from contemporary portraits of white woman. This painting seem to have pandered to male voyeurism even though it was painted by a woman and without having been commissioned. At that time, female nudity was associated either with a divinity or personification or scientific ethnographic illustrations of people in a state of nature. Marie Benoist's painting does not have any of those categories and yet the bare breast of her black woman would seem to have, perhaps ambigious. It was almost certainly painted on the artist's own initiative and remained in her possesion until 1818 when it was bought by the French state for the Louvre.
Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon in the Plague House at Jaffa, 1804.
Oil on canvas, 5.32 x 7.20m. Louvre, Paris.
The above painting Antoine-Jean Gros is one of the David's favourite and most successful pupil. In this painting, Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835) celebrated the glory of Napoleon and the benefits of his regime. He began with an incident in Egyptian campaign of 1799 - General Bonaparte visiting his plague-stricken troops in Jaffa as shown in the painting. The various symptoms and effect of the plague are illustrated like bubonic sores, emaciation, feverish thirst and vomiting and one of Bonaparte's aides holds a handkerchief to shield his nose from the stench. But the general is invulnerable, almost immortal, touching a sick man with the gesture of a divinely appointed healer-king, if not that of Christ.
Goya
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) is a far greater artist may initially have conceived his two paintings The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808 as replies to Gros who became the most influential painter of his generation, partly through prints which dessminated his major compositions.
Francisco de Goya, The Third of May 1808, 1814.
Oil on canvas, 2.6 x 3.45m. Prado, Madrid.
In both composition and subject matter, The Third of May 1808 seems to be direct riposte to the faintly absurd Capitulation of Madrid (Versailles) by Gros and perhaps also a desenchanted comment on the stoic heroism of David's Oath of the Horatti. Goya's French soldiers echo the stance of the Horatti and thet shoot a group of defenceless civilians rounded up in Madrid after the previous day's uprising against the French army of occupation. The emphasis is placed on the victims, especially the man in a white shirt who stands with outstretched arms before the facelss firing-squad.
Goya, an almost exact contemporary of Jacques-Louis David, established himself in the 1780s as the leading painter in Spain, specializing in religious pictures, portraits and much employed by the royal court. He also knew well one or two of the Spaniards who welcomed the Enlightenment and shared their hatred of injustice, religious fanaticism, superstition and cruetly. After that, he made his first great series of etchings, Los Caprichos (The Caprices), published in 1799 which is the year he was appointed first painter to the king.
Francisco de Goya, Blowers (Soplones), no.48 of Los Caprichos, 1799.
Etching and aquatint, 21.5 x 15 cm. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Francisco de Goya, That is Worse (Esto es peor), no. 37 (32) of
Los Desastres de la Guerra, 1812-15. Etching, 15.7 x 10.7 cm
Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring one of his Children, 1820-3.
Wall painting in oil transferred to canvas, 146 x 83 cm. Prado, Madrid.
Gericault
The shift in emphasis from heroism to suffering, from victors to victimss, is also apparent in the work of the French painter Theodore Gericault (1791-1824). His first exhitbited work was a painting of a cavalry officer thrilling to the music of battle, the boom of cannon and the whine of grape-shot in 1812. He was a middle class painter with a private income large enough to enable him to work without commissions.
When he set out to make his reputation at the Paris Salon of 1819, he took a subject of his own choosing and painted it on a vast scale: the survivors from the wreck of a French government frigate, La Medusa, in the Atlantic in 1816.
Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the 'Medusa', 1819.
Oil on canvas, 4.91 x 7.16cm. Louvre, Paris.
When the ship was found, the captain and the senior officers took the seaworthy lifeboats and cast 150 passengers and crew adrift on a makeshift raft on which only 15 survivied a horrifying ordeal of 13 days. When the picture was first exhibited, comments in the press were strongly colored by the scandal of La Medusa. By elevating a topical 'low-life' subject to such a colossal and heroic scale, Gericault might seem to have been attaking by implication not only the long-established hierachy of genres but also the recent Bourbon restoration. The Raft of the 'Medusa' was well received by the artistic establishment. Gericault was awarded a gold medal and given a commission for a large religious painting.
Ingres
The Odalisque of 1819 was the first of the many nudes in West Asian settings which Ingres painted in the course of his long career, including the Odalisque with a Slave and the Turkish Bath which he proudly inscribed his age-82. Both paintings reveal the same fleshy, expressed erotic sensuality with the utmost refinement of line, often in bright, rather acid colors.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Odalisque with a Slave, 1842.
Oil on canvas, 71 x 100cm. Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Turkish Bath, 1859-63.
Oil on canvas, 1.08m diameter. Louvre, Paris.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)
In 1828, the picture was shown in the last Salon held under the Restoration, at a moment when Romanticism in arts was being adequated with liberalism in politics. Declaroix's next major work The 28th July: Liberty Leading the People showing the revolution of July 1830 and was shown in the first Salon of the new regime under Louis-Philippe.
Eugene Delacroix, The 28th July: Liberty Leading the People,1830.
Oil on canvas, 2.59 x 3.25m. Louvre, Paris.
For this evocation of fighting on the barricades, this painting perhaps is the most famous visual imate of revolution ever created. It is more idealized than the many other representations of the July days, but also more vivid and disturbing. In this painting, Liberty herself with a bayoneted rifle in one hand is tricolor in the other and advances inexorably towards the spectator. The picture bring a remark made by the French novelist and liberal politician Benjamin Constant (1767-1830): ' Human beings are sacrificed to abstractions; a holocaust of individuals is offered up to the "people"'.
Bibliography
Romanticism-Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
Romanticism in Art
http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/c17th-mid19th/romanticism.htm
Book of "A WORLD HISTORY OF ART"
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