Romanticism in France
also: Romantisme · French Romanticism
Romanticism appeared in France in the late eighteenth century as a revolt against the formality and strict rules of Neoclassicism, and peaked in the first half of the nineteenth in the writing of Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, the poetry of Alfred de Vigny, the painting of Eugène Delacroix, and the music of Hector Berlioz. French romantic painting has been called "theatrical romanticism": less concerned with philosophy than with extravagant effect, it twisted and stretched figures, crowded the canvas, left lines imprecise, and staged scenes in exotic settings - Egypt, the Ottoman East. Géricault's Raft of the Medusa turned a contemporary shipwreck into tragedy; Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus brought Byron's violence to the Salon, and Liberty Leading the People made the July Revolution unforgettable. The movement faded late in the century before realism, Art Nouveau, and modernism.
Defining characteristics
- Dramatic color and movement prized over line and finished contour
- Crowded, theatrical compositions full of twisted, straining figures
- Extreme emotion - tragedy, heroism, desperation - rendered at full volume
- Loose, visible brushwork and deliberately imprecise drawing
- Exotic settings: Egypt, the Ottoman East, the medieval past
- Contemporary events staged as grand historical spectacle
Key figures
- Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) — First major painter of French Romanticism, turning news into tragic spectacle
- Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) — The painter most associated with Romanticism: color, movement, and Byronic drama
- Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824) — David's pupil whose mysterious, theatrical light announced the new sensibility
- Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835) — Napoleonic battle painter who bridged Neoclassicism and Romantic drama
- Victor Hugo (1802-1885) — Poet and novelist whose prefaces and verse gave the movement its voice
Example works
- The Raft of the Medusa — Théodore Géricault (1818-1819)
- Liberty Leading the People — Eugène Delacroix (1830)
- The Death of Sardanapalus — Eugène Delacroix (1827)
Sources
- Romanticism in France - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- The Raft of the Medusa - Wikipedia encyclopedia