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808! CHAPTER 27 Romanticism, Realism, Photography: Europe and America, 1800 to 1870

ROMANTICISM Whereas Neoclassicism’s rationality reinforced Enlightenment thought, particularly Voltaire’s views (see “Voltaire,” page 779), Romanticism owed much to the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see “Rousseau,” page 781). Rousseau’s exclamation “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains!”—the opening line of his Social Contract (1762)—summarizes a fundamental Romantic premise. Romanticism emerged from a desire for freedom—not only politi- cal freedom but also freedom of thought, feeling, action, worship, speech, and taste. Romantics asserted that freedom was the right and property of all. !ey believed that the path to freedom was through imagination and feeling rather than reason.

!e allure of the Romantic spirit grew dramatically during the late 18th century, when the term originated among German liter- ary critics. !eir aim was to distinguish peculiarly “modern” traits from the Neoclassical traits that already had displaced Baroque and Rococo design elements. Consequently, some scholars refer to Romanticism as a phenomenon that began around 1750 and ended about 1850, but most use the term more narrowly to denote an art movement that "ourished from about 1800 to 1840, between Neo- classicism and Realism.

Roots of Romanticism !e transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in art was more than a stylistic shi#. It represented a philosophical change in emphasis from calculation to intuition, from reason to emotion. Among the leading manifestations of Romanticism was height- ened interest in the medieval period and in the sublime. For people living in the 18th century, the Middle Ages were the “dark ages,” a time of barbarism, superstition, mystery, and miracle. !e Romantic imagina- tion stretched its perception of the Middle Ages into all the worlds of fantasy open to it, includ- ing the ghoulish, infernal, terrible, nightmarish, grotesque, and sadistic—the imagery that comes from the chamber of horrors when reason sleeps.

Related to the imaginative sensibility was the period’s notion of the sublime. Among the indi- viduals most involved in studying the sublime was the British politician and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797). In A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Burke articulated his de$nition of the sublime: feelings of awe mixed with terror. Burke observed that pain or fear evoked the most intense human emotions and that these emotions could also be thrilling. !us raging rivers and great storms at sea could be sublime to their view- ers. Accompanying this taste for the sublime was the taste for the fantastic, occult, and macabre.

John Henry Fuseli. !e Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Füssli, better known by his English name—J%&' H(')* F+,(-. (1741–1825)—lived in Rome from 1770 to 1778, settled in England in 1799, and eventually became a member of the Royal Academy of Art and one of its instruc- tors. Largely self-taught, he contrived a distinc- tive manner to express the fantasies of his vivid

27-8 J!"# H$#%& F'($)*, !e Nightmare, 1781. Oil on canvas, 39 3 340 + 49 1 1 20. Detroit

Institute of the Arts (Founders Society purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Bert L. Smokler and Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleishman).

The transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism marked a shift in emphasis from reason to feeling. Fuseli was among the first painters to depict the dark terrain of the human subconscious.

imagination. Fuseli specialized in night moods of horror and in dark fantasies—in the demonic, the macabre, and o#en the sadistic.

In !e Nightmare (/.0. 27-8), a beautiful young woman lies asleep, draped across the bed with her limp arm dangling over the side. An incubus, a demon believed in medieval times to prey, o#en sexually, on sleeping women, squats ominously on her body. In the background, a ghostly horse with "aming eyes bursts into the scene from beyond the curtain. Despite the temptation to see the painting’s title as a pun because of this horse, the word nightmare in fact derives from “night” and “Mara.” Mara was an evil spirit in Scandinavian mythology who tormented and su1ocated sleepers. Fuseli was among the $rst to attempt to depict the dark terrain of the human subconscious that became fertile ground for later artists.

William Blake. In their images of the sublime and the terrible, Romantic artists o#en combined something of Baroque dyna- mism with naturalistic details in their quest for grippingly moving visions. !ese elements became the mainstay of Romantic art and contrasted with the more intellectual, rational Neoclassical themes and compositions. !e two were not mutually exclusive, however. Gros, Girodet-Trioson, and Ingres e1ectively integrated elements of Neoclassicism with Romanticism. So, too, did the visionary English poet, painter, and engraver W.--.23 B-24( (1757–1827).

Blake greatly admired ancient Greek art because it exempli- $ed for him the mathematical and thus the eternal, and his work o#en incorporated classical references. Yet Blake did not align himself with prominent Enlightenment $gures. Like many other Romantic artists, he also found the art of the Middle Ages appeal- ing. Blake derived the inspiration for many of his paintings and poems from his dreams. !e importance he attached to these

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