Romanticism was an attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified Classicism in general and late 18th-century - Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2012)
Neoclassical and Romantic painting may also be contrasted in terms of technique. Neoclassical painting usually features a linear style (in which the shapes of objects are sharply defined), whereas Romantic painters tended to favor a painterly style (in which freedom of color takes precedence over sharply-defined shapes; objects are depicted with bold strokes of paint, thus leaving forms somewhat blurry). (Essential Humanities, 2008)
A linear-style painting begins as a sharply-defined drawing; colors are then neatly painted between the lines of this drawing (hence the term “linear”). While the painterly style features visible brushstrokes, the linear style features smooth areas of color (in which no brushstrokes can be found). (Essential Humanities, 2008)
Though often posited in opposition to Neoclassicism, early Romanticism was shaped largely by artists trained in Jacques-Louis David 's studio, including Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. (Galitz, 2004)
This blurring of stylistic boundaries is best expressed in Ingres ' Apotheosis of Homer and Eugène Delacroix 's Death of
Bibliography: Drake, A. J. (2004, January 1). Romanticism and Nature. Retrieved from ajdrake.com website: http://www.ajdrake.com/e212_sum_04/materials/guides/rom_nature.htm Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2012, March 3). Romanticism. Retrieved from www.britannica.com website: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/508675/Romanticism Essential Humanities. (2008, January 1). Neoclassical and Romantic Paintings. Retrieved from essential humanities.net website: http://www.essential-humanities.net/western-art/western-painting/neoclassical-and-romantic-painting/ Galitz, K. C. (2004, October 1). Romanticism. Retrieved from Metropolitan Museum of Art website: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm Wikipedia. (2012, February 14). Hudson River School. Retrieved from wikipedia.orgwebsite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_School