Romanticism describes a movement which developed in Europe during the first part of the 19th century. It presented itself as a reaction against Classicism, rejecting its rules, ideals and the endless Greek and Roman subjects. Instead it looked for fresh influences and themes in medieval art, folklore, the Orient, and the literature of Byron, Shakespeare, and Goethe, among others. Contemporary history and the Napoleonic era fascinated the Romantics, who also drew inspiration from nature, regarded as a place of refuge for human passions. Romanticism freed the imagination and gave priority to subjectivity, sensibility and the irrational. Before it became a style, Romanticism was a way of feeling.
We owe the first examples of this tendency to painters like Swiss-born Fuseli (1741-1825) and Blake (1757-1827) in England, as well as Goya (1746-1828) in Spain, who gave us a visionary body of work tinged with fantastic elements. In France the first Romantics were students of the Neo-Classical school who sought new subjects, making way for pathos and imagination; they included Gros (1771-1835), Girodet (1767-1824) and Géricault (1791-1824). Romanticism only established itself as a style with Delacroix (1798-1863); based on a dynamic drawing method, his free brushwork gave colour more than its share. La liberté guidant le peuple, representing the popular uprising against Charles X in 1830, and La Mort de Sardanapale, inspired by Byron’s Oriental play, provide two examples of Delacroix’s new choice of subjects and his powerful technique.
Romanticism was essentially a movement in literature and painting, but it also found expression in sculpture with artists like Rude (1784-1855), David d’Angers (1788-1855) and Préault (1809-1879). Their preferred material was bronze: warmer than marble, it conveyed all the momentum of Romanticism. It also made it possible to distribute the new models more widely thanks to the manufacture of small bronzes.
