How Romanticism Was Expressed in American Art, How it Differed From the Period Before it, and Who the Major Painters and

1
How Romanticism Was Expressed in American Art,
How it Differed From the Period Before it, and
Who the Major Painters and Schools Were Within
the Group

• Alyssa Miller, Casey Morgan, and Paige Corathers
  Pd. 4

2
How was Romanticism Expressed in American Art?

• Triggering a radical restructuring of the society
  on the economic, social and emotion levels, the
  industrial revolution inspired the rise of
  Romanticism in American art. Although Europe was
  the dominant artistic influence during the
  century, the artists in America were recreating
  their own style of art based on the distinctive
  qualities of the American landscape and the
  democratic processes.

3
Continued..

• The primary feature of American Romanticism--the
  obsession with and celebration of
  individualism--takes on particular social
  relevance because U.S. culture has always prized
  individualism and egalitarianism. Democracy
  elevates everyone (white males in this time
  period, that is) to the same status. One is no
  longer part of a traditional, old-world
  hierarchy. It is key to see that American
  Romantics can both celebrate the "common man" and
  their own, more spiritually/psychologically elite
  selves.

4
Continued

• During the early nineteenth century, the wealthy
  and leisured class was the major patrons of the
  Hudson River School of artists. Luman Reed
  patronized arts because he felt that the American
  artists were beginning to create art that was
  distinctively American.

5
How Art During the Romantic Period Was Different

• Romanticists used their art to glorify nature,
  folk art and custom and express themselves with
  emotion and intuition. They showed intense
  emotion to be a source of new knowledge,
  self-identity and aesthetic experience and
  emphasized such sensations as freedom, fear,
  horror, and the awe experienced in confronting
  the sublimity of nature. In doing so they
  promoted patriotism, the adoration of the senses
  over reason and intellect and the rediscovery of
  the artist as a divine creator.

6
Continued..

• Romanticism reached beyond the rational ideal
  models to elevate a revived medievalism and
  elements of art perceived to be authentically
  medieval in an attempt to escape the confines of
  population growth, urban sprawl, and
  industrialism.
• Basically, the romantic period came from a
  counter-reaction to the enlightenment period of
  growth.
• 
  (http//www.arteducation.com.au/art-movements/roma
  nticism.php)

7
How Romantic Art Compares to Enlightenment Art

• The European Enlightenment, stressing the
  normative role of reason in the conduct of social
  life, and universal standards for excellence in
  the arts, was cosmopolitan. Romanticism may be
  thought of as a counter-Enlightenment movement,
  or perhaps as an oppositional phase of
  Enlightenment that was grounded in difference
  rather than uniformity. During the Enlightenment
  Period, the art was based off reason and logic ,
  it intensified media, industry, and growth as a
  culture.

8
Continued..

• Where Enlightenment thinkers and artists assumed
  that humankind is essentially similar across all
  ages and geographic origins, romantics generally
  believed in the uniqueness of individual
  expression as it is constituted by life
  experience, an important dimension of which is
  frequently national character.

9
How to Identify Romantic Art

• As they are in literature, the hallmarks of
  romantic painting are nationalism and the power
  of individual perception. In France, J. A. Gros
  glorified Napoleon's victories, while in Spain,
  Francisco de Goya showed the horrors of war in
  such canvases as The Third of May, 1808 (1814).
  France, long dominated by the strict
  neoclassicism of Jacques Louis David, became the
  home of an impassioned school of history
  painting, exemplified in such powerful works as
  Théodore Géricault's The Raft of Medusa (1819).
• (http//www.discoverfrance.ne
  t/France/Art/romanticism.shtml)

10
Comparing..

• Romantic Art Work

• Enlightenment Art Work

Romantic Art was much more emotional and
Enlightenment Art was more informational and
straight to the point. The Romantic Artists
focused more on portraying the feeling of the
painting not just what was going on in it. Then
comes the saying, A picture speaks a thousand
words .. This was implied first in Romantic Art.
11
Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)

• Was an important member of the Hudson River
  School of landscape painting, a pupil and friend
  of Thomas Cole (1801-48), the movement's leader,
  and a contributor to Luminism. In addition to
  capturing the physical and spiritual beauty of
  native American scenery, Church travelled
  extensively the length and breadth of the
  continent, depicting tropical forests,
  spectacular waterfalls, volcanoes and icebergs.

12
Continued..

• At his peak during the mid-Victorian Age, he was
  one of the most famous artists in the United
  States, but tastes changed, and by the time he
  died he was largely forgotten. Famous paintings
  by Church include The Falls of Niagara (1857,
  Corcoran, Washington), The Heart of the Andes
  (1859, Metropolitan Museum New York), Twilight in
  the Wilderness (1860, Cleveland Museum of Art),
  and Cotopaxi (1862, Detroit Institute of Arts).
  His art is currently undergoing a revival, due to
  today's environmental concerns.

13

• Cotopaxi (1862) oil on canvas,Detroit Institute
  of Arts
• By Frederic Edwin Church

14
Thomas Cole (1801-48)

• The greatest American landscape painter of the
  first half of the 19th century, and a founder of
  the Hudson River school of landscape painting,
  Thomas Cole was noted for his style of romantic
  realism in the way he depicted the grandeur and
  rugged natural beauty of the American wilderness.

15
Continued...

• In New York the sale of three paintings financed
  a summer tour of the Hudson River Valley where he
  painted famous Kaaterskill Falls and the ruins of
  Fort Putnam. On his return to New York he placed
  three landscape pictures in the window of a
  bookstore, which attracted the attention of the
  painters and art collectors John Trumbull
  (1756-1843), William Dunlap (1766-1839) and Asher
  B Durand (1796-1886). Trumbull was so taken with
  Cole's painterly skills that he purchased one of
  the works and introduced him to several of his
  friends who also became patrons of the artist.

16

• The Last of the Mohicans (1826) Scene
• By
• Thomas Cole

17
Works Cited

• "The Collection National Gallery of Art."
  NGA.gov. NGA, 2010. Web. 14 Apr. 2010.
  lthttp//www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/amer.shtmgt
  .
• Garlick, Dr. Kenneth. British and North American
  Art to 1900. Bergamo George Rainbird, 1965.
  Print. Peckham, Joel. "American Romanticism /
  Transcendentalism Art and Literature Links ."
  joelpeckham.com. Joel Peckham, Fall 2007. Web. 4
  Apr. 2010. lthttp/// www.joelpeckham.com/transcen
  dentalism.htmlgt. "Romanticism." Great Masters
  Gallery. GMGallery, 1998- 2010. Web. 1 Apr. 2010.
  lthttp//www.topofart.com/movements/Romanticism/gt.