Art 109: Renaissance to Modern Westchester Community College Prof. M. Hall © Spring 2011 Romantic Landscape Painting 1213.jpg Romantic Landscape The Academic Hierarchy of Genres ranked landscape painting low in its scale of values Henry Singleton, The Royal Academicians in General Assembly, 1795 Royal Academy of Art Collections Romantic Landscape But landscape painting took on increasing prominence and prestige in the Romantic period Eugene Delacroix, Sunset, c. 1850 Pastel on blue laid paper, mounted on paper board Metropolitan Museum of Art “Over the course of the 18th century there was a remarkable change in attitudes toward nature, discoverable in all the arts, especially literature, painting and landscape architecture. It culminated in the Romantic landscape tradition in Europe and America in the 19th century, the golden age of landscape painting. It marked a major change in the relationship of man to nature.”- Peter Barnett, Art in History Blog http://artid.com/members/art_in_history/blog/post/2706-pastoral-and-sublime-the-two-faces-of-romantic-landscape John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds, ca. 1825 Metropolitan Museum “Romantic landscape covers the gamut between the Pastoral - inhabited landscape: comfortable and relatively tame, with shepherds and peasants - and the Sublime - wild nature: vast and powerful, inspiring terror and awe.” Peter Barnett, Art in History Blog http://artid.com/members/art_in_history/blog/post/2706-pastoral-and-sublime-the-two-faces-of-romantic-landscape Carl Julius von Leypold, Wanderer in the Storm, 1835 Metropolitan Museum Romantic landscapes are typically “moody” in atmosphere. The mood-enhancing effects of dusk and dawn, along with ruins and other signs of decay, are used to invoke wistful contemplation of the passing of time Théodore Gericault, Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct, 1818 Metropolitan Museum Shipwrecks and storms were a popular means of exploring human vulnerability Horace Vernet, Stormy Coast Scene after a Shipwreck Metropolitan Museum Horace Vernet, Stormy Coast Scene after a Shipwreck Metropolitan Museum “In Romantic art, nature—with its uncontrollable power, unpredictability, and potential for cataclysmic extremes—offered an alternative to the ordered world of Enlightenment thought.” Metropolitan Museum 1210.jpg Romantic Landscape One of the leading Romantic landscape painters was the German painter Caspar David Friedrich This painting depicts a funeral in a cemetery amidst the ruins of a Gothic cathedral Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810 Staatliche Museum, Berlin Web Gallery of Art 1210.jpg The mood is eerie and foreboding – making it a quintessentially Romantic painting Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810 Staatliche Museum, Berlin Web Gallery of Art 1210.jpg “The emblems of death are everywhere – the season’s desolation, the leaning crosses and tombstones, the black of mourning that the grieving wear, the skeletal trees, and the destruction time wrought on the church.” Gardner, p. 346 1210.jpg “The painting is a meditation on death.” Gardner, p. 346 Romantic Landscape Friedrich is often related to the 18th century concept of the Sublime Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer above the Mists, 1817-18 Kunsthalle, Hamburg Web Gallery of Art Romantic Landscape The Sublime is the sensation we experience when confronted with the boundlessness of nature, or the immeasurable power of natural forces Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer above the Mists, 1817-18 Kunsthalle, Hamburg Web Gallery of Art “As articulated by the British statesman Edmund Burke in a 1757 treatise and echoed by the French philosopher Denis Diderot a decade later, "all that stuns the soul, all that imprints a feeling of terror, leads to the sublime."” Metropolitan Museum Romantic Landscape The Sublime evokes feelings of terror and wonder, because it reminds us of how insignificant we are in the larger scheme of things Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Seashore, 1809-10 Staatliche Museum, Berlin Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Seashore, 1809-10 Staatliche Museum, Berlin “In Friedrich’s picture a man, seen from the back, looks out at the incomprehensible vastness of the sea and sky at night. The small scale of the man . . . Against the endless space of the heavens and the sea evokes a breathtaking apprehension of the infinite, a sense of cosmic boundlessness, and by contrast a profound realization of one’s own insignificance and mortality.” Jonathan Fineberg, p. 99 Romantic Landscape The American Hudson River School was also influenced by the Sublime Thomas Cole, Falls of the Kaaterskill, 1826 Web Gallery of Art “Born in England, Thomas Cole emigrated to the then British colony of North America when he was 17 . . . From 1825 he lived in New York, where he soon gained a reputation as a landscape painter, particularly after a trip along the Hudson River, which he undertook to paint in a number of canvases. This was the start of the Hudson River School which Cole founded and which attracted other artists such as Durand and Church, who worked in a similar style. Cole's generation initiated a truly American style of painting, which developed for the first time in the 19th century . . .” Web Gallery of Art Romantic Landscape The Hudson River School focused on the awe-inspiring magnificence of the American landscape Thomas Cole, Distant View of Niagara Falls, 1830 Art Institute of Chicago “Whether he [an American] beholds the Hudson mingling waters with the Atlantic . . . or stands on the margins of distant Oregon, he is still in the midst of American scenery – it is his own land; its beauty, its magnificence, it’s sublimity – all are his . . . .” Thomas Cole 1213.jpg Romantic Landscape This painting by Thomas Cole depicts a sharp curve in the Connecticut River near Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts Thomas Cole, The Oxbow (View from Mt. Holyoke, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm), 1836 Metropolitan Museum 1213.jpg “Cole divided his canvas into dark, stormy wilderness on the left and sunlit civilization on the right” Gardner, p. 348 1213.jpg The painter is tiny compared to the vast landscape that surrounds him Romantic Themes Bierstadt Cole’s successors explored the majestic landscape of the American west Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868 Smithsonian American Art Museum Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868 Smithsonian American Art Museum Albert Bierstadt’s images of the American west gave visual expression to the 19th century concept of Manifest Destiny Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868 Smithsonian American Art Museum “Manifest destiny, or the theory that God gave white Americans the sole responsibility and authority to make use of the land, was a national concept that Hudson River School painters and literary figures at the time sought to portray. It inspired them to paint and write about the glorious landscape as God's nurturing gift to the pioneers of the day.” Worcester Art Museum Romantic Landscape 1124 In England, the leading landscape painter was John Constable He painted scenes of the countryside near his boyhood home in Suffolk John Constable, The Haywain, 1821 National Gallery, London 1124 “The Haywain is a placid, picturesque scene of the countryside. A small cottage is on the left, and in the center foreground a man leads a horse and wagon across a stream. Billowy clouds float lazily across the sky.” Gardner, p. 347 1124 “The Haywain is also significant for what it does not show – the civil unrest of the agrarian working class . . . . Gardner, p. 347 Romantic Themes 1124 Constables landscapes were painted when the industrial revolution was transforming the English countryside They are a nostalgic representation of a rapidly disappearing way of life John Constable, The Haywain, 1821 National Gallery, London “This nostalgia . . . renders Constable’s work Romantic in tone.” Gardner, p. 347 1212.jpg Romantic Themes Constable’s contemporary, J.W.M. Turner, also responded to the impact of rapid modernization in the 19th century Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840 Museum of Fine Arts Boston 1212.jpg Romantic Themes This painting was based on an account of the captain of a slave ship who threw his sick and dying slaves overboard in a storm, because his insurance only covered slaves lost at sea, and not those who died of other causes Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), 1840 Museum of Fine Arts Boston 1212.jpg “Turner’s frenzied emotional depiction of this act matches its barbaric nature.” Gardner, p. 347 1212.jpg “The artist transformed the sun into an incandescent comet amid flying scarlet clouds. The slave ship moves into the distance, leaving in its wake a turbulent sea choked with the bodies of slaves sinking to their deaths.” Gardner, p. 347 1212.jpg “The scale of the miniscule human forms compared to the vast sea and overarching sky reinforces the sense of the sublime, especially the immense power of nature over humans.” Gardner, p. 347 1212.jpg “Almost lost in the boiling colors are the event’s particulars, but on close inspection, the viewer can discern the iron shackles and manacles around the wrists and ankles of the drowning slaves, denying them any chance of saving themselves.” Gardner, p. 347

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