Romantic painting

The romance is a movement within Western painting, part of a broader romantic cultural movement. Its flowering period can be dated between the end of the eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. The characteristics of romantic painting were not unequivocal and differed per country, but the main theme was the imagination and the subjective expression of the individual artist. Often the reality was represented in a somewhat idealized way. Nature was experienced as “animated”. Landscapes and historical events were common topics, but there was also attention for the dark sides of human existence, dreams and extreme experiences. Among the most famous romantic artists are theGerman Caspar David Friedrich, the Englishman John Constable and the Frenchman Eugène Delacroix. Their differences are exemplary for the diversity in which the movement developed in different countries.

This division is based on the consideration of classical and romantic concepts as antagonistic and excluded. Neoclassicism brings new elements that we consider pre-magnetic.

Symptoms of rupture with classical tradition appear soon. This break with tradition comes in two ways:

in the thematic or ideological aspect, for the emergence of new themes (historical, revolutionary, exaltation of the contemporary hero…)
in the pictorial aspect, break with the tradition inherited from the Renaissance (complex compositions, casual views, predominance of color on the line, loose and quick brushstrokes…)
Romanticism is not just an artistic style; It is a vital attitude that affects both art and literature and other areas of life, for most of the nineteenth century. His ideological roots come from the great thinkers of the eighteenth century, especially Rousseau, and in German philosophy linked to the birth of nationalism.

General features
Diversity against uniformity: exaltation of individualism and national traditions and customs, instead of considering classicalism as the only acceptable model in artistic creation.
Aspiration to individual and national freedom, which connects directly with the bourgeois revolutions in which many romantic artists take part.
Historicism as a search in the past of national roots and as a consciousness of the speed of the changes that are taking place at that time agitated and convulsed.
Exaltation of exoticism, imagination and irrationality. The Arab countries and the exotic Spain are fashionable, as well as a religiousness close to mysticism. In the same sense we must interpret the taste for adventure, for risk, for the fight. Romantic is always unsatisfied and always looking for a vital reason.

Style
Around 1800, writers, philosophers and artists in Germany presented a new vision of the world that they called “romantic”. The movement came into being as a reaction to the rationalist neoclassicism oriented towards universal values. She had a subjective, idealistic and individualistic character in the ground. In painting, this usually meant, in the words of Caspar David Friedrich, “that a painter must not only paint what he sees, but also what he perceives in himself, and if he finds nothing there, he must stop painting”. People lost themselves in dreams. In general, reality was rendered more beautiful than it actually was (aesthetization). Passion, emotion and personally experienced sentiment were crucial motives. ” Sehnsucht ” (a kind of indefinite desire) and ” the sublime ” (the experience of the grand and incomprehensible) developed into central concepts.

As recognizable as the term “romanticism” is usually for the general public (often in the “amorous” sense), there are so many controversies in the art appreciation where it concerns a precise delineation of the concept. A certain vagueness in the definition can not be denied. The subjective and personal view led within painting to very different forms of expression and style characteristics, which were regularly contradictory in character. Introversion and solitude contrasted with extraversion and theatricality, the picturesque and the everyday with the monumental and grotesque. Then again the term was used in the nostalgic, dreamy sense of the word, at other times the romantic artists presented an ominous night side of human existence.

Based on desire as a unifying concept, the basic tendencies of romantic painting can be summed up with a) focusing on the imagination, b) the focus on individual expression and c) the independence of the artist, who as a genius could go his own way choose. Around 1800 this meant a true revolution in the concept of what art ought to be.

Themes
Thematically, in the time of Romanticism, there was above all a renewed interest in landscape painting. The intense experience of nature and the wonder about her grandeur were central. However, landscapes were not the only thing, on the contrary. As diverse as the stylistic features of romanticism, the choice of subjects of her painters is also broad. In addition to imposing landscapes and vistas, for example, they frequently chose literary and historical subjects. This choice is related to the enchantment of the distant, the unknown, the imagined, as a form of escapism. Dreams and nightmares were equally desirable motifs. In addition, the “romantic view” returned in virtually all other conceivable themes in painting, from genre work to navies and from portraits to still lifes. There was no subject that was excluded, so long as it could serve as a bearer for the expression of what was called “the romantic soul.”

It is striking that the romantic painter often also took himself to the subject, melancholy musing, in mountains or ruins, sometimes in his own studio. The self-portrait then formed a confirmation of the usually created image of the not yet recognized, socially isolated genius, filled with ” weltschmerz “. An important aspect of romantic painting was the changed role of the artist himself. Romanticism meant a new style of life, a different view of the world. This manifested itself in, among other things, a great wanderlust among the romantic painters, who in particular often traveled to Italy, or also to the Rhine valley.. In a time when traveling by train was not yet the case, long trips were made, regularly even on foot. The longing for distant places underlined “the romantic desire”.

The general characteristics of romantic painting
Predominance of color on the drawing and treatment of light in order to defrost the figures and accentuate chromaticism (storm lights, auroras, twilight,…)
Dramatism of compositions, with great concern for movement and compositional complexity. Importance of violent gestures, of anatomical and environmental details. The movement is accentuated by placing the characters on an unstable basis.
Quick technique, with loose and graceful brushstrokes, inheritance of the Venetian painters, the Baroque flamenco and Goya.
Topics of current affairs (revolutions, wars, disasters) and the great importance of the historical theme (History is the news of the past). The landscape will also be of importance, through which technical innovations appear very often.

Differences by country
Romantic painting got a very different interpretation between 1800 and 1850 in different western countries, emphasizing other aspects. There was unmistakably a joint “program” within European art, with strongly connecting elements, but per country and even region it manifested itself in various forms. Germany, England and France were leading, but also in the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries it always got its own, authentic interpretation. The characteristics and developments for the most important countries are described below.

Romantic painting in Germany
The birthplace of the romantic school was around 1800 in Germany. Certainly after the country was overrun by Napoleon shortly afterwards, an individual identity was emphatically sought. Inspiration was found in the nationalist ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder, the subjectivism of the brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm von Schlegel, the more mystical philosophy of Hegel, individualistic aspects from the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and nostalgic writers such as Novalis and Joseph von Eichendorff. Painting, philosophy and literature were closely interwoven in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century, especially in the northern Protestant areas. The most important exponent of the new painting was Caspar David Friedrich, who knew how to visualize the new transcendental ideas like no other. His works have something exalted, almost unreal. Friedrich, the believer himself expressed his vision as follows: “As the believer prays without speaking a word, and God lends him an ear, so the artist paints from the true feeling, and the art lover understands it, recognizes it”. It was his personal experience. Friedrich and other Northern painters (Karl Friedrich Lessing, Carl Gustav Carus,Ludwig Richter, Carl Spitzweg, Georg Friedrich Kersting, Carl Blechen), centered on the subjective experience, sometimes as an almost divine experience, especially in nature. The Tyrolean Joseph Anton Koch can also be placed thematically in this tradition. Philipp Otto Runge and Gerhard von Kügelgen devoted themselves more to portraying.

In the southern Catholic Germany, the romantic movement experienced a different development, with the Nazarenes as the central movement. Around 1810 these painters turned against the classicistic training culture that was common at the German and Austrian art academies. In particular, they reverted to old German masters such as Albrecht Dürer and to renaissance artists like Rafael and Giotto. Religiosity, Pietism and German patriotismwere important themes, often incorporated in heavy symbolism with “internalization” as an important goal. Important representatives of the Nazarenes were Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Franz Pforr, Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Many Nazarenes moved to Rome around 1820, where they formed a renowned artists’ colony for twenty years. A few decades later their works would inspire the English pre-Raphaelites again.

Romantic painting in England
In England, romance was associated with a cultural heritage dating back to William Shakespeare. Through psychologizing literary works by John Milton and Edward Young, this tradition led to an increased attention to the imaginary, the historical and especially to the fantastic at the end of the eighteenth century. The exhibition of Henry Fuseli ‘s demonic painting The nightmare in 1781 proved to be a marking moment. It is considered the beginning of an early phase in English Romantic painting, which was characterized by the attention paid to the freak. Fuseli’s work was an important source of inspiration for poet-artist William Blakewho argued that the imagination was more important than reason. Also John Martin, with his works on hell-and-damnation, fits into this tradition.

After 1810, English romantic painting entered a new phase, with landscape painting as the dominant direction. This attention to the landscape was in line with the interest already shown in the eighteenth century in gardening architecture and the emerging neo-gothic movement, particularly in the construction of country houses. It aimed above all to emanate an atmosphere of peace and quiet, also as a counterweight to industrialization. John Constable was the best known among the romantic English landscape painters. Where many of his contemporaries traveled to Italy, he sought topics especially in the countryside of England itself. His work was strongly atmospheric and filled with nostalgia, but more realistic, more “of this world” than, for example, that of Friedrich. Characteristic was his loose brushwork and working ” and plein air “.

Considerably further in the free brush handling was William Turner, whose landscape painter later still experimental went after a relatively traditional beginnings. With his later mysterious designs, resolved in light and color, he acquired a special place in English Romanticism, which would later affect Impressionists again. Other landscape painters from the English Romantic period were Richard Parkes Bonington, Francis Danby and the founders of the Norwich School John Crome and John Sell Cotman. Sir Thomas Lawrence was important as a portraitist. William Etty made name with his nudes.

A late highlight experienced the English Romanticism around 1850 with the movement of the pre-Raphaelites, who often referred back to the Middle Ages and the painting of Rafael. The founders of the movement were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Later in the nineteenth century the attention for decorative art increased.

Romantic painting in France
In France, romantic thinking was initially inspired by the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who with his call “back to nature” aroused the interest for the primitive and the archaic: the distance between man and nature had to be reduced. However, this philosophy did not continue in painting. After the French Revolution and during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, the attention for nature shifted rapidly to historical themes and the glorification of the emperor himself. This ordained a neoclassical style, later called empire style, with Jean Auguste Dominique Ingresas a figurehead. The dominance of neo-classicism, however, soon evoked a counter-movement, which fell back on the romantic ideals. Only in the course of the 1820s did the romance in France more or less “prevail” over neoclassicism, although both styles in that country have always been closely intertwined.

Remarkably, in the first half of the eighteenth century, French Romanticism hardly touched on Rousseau’s back-to-nature thinking in thematic terms. In the wake of the neoclassicists, its representatives focused mainly on historical and mythological scenes or literary subjects. Its two main representatives, Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, although they were inspired by the free and sensitive method of John Constable, with a great deal of attention to color intensity and light, but the landscape theme was left to the left. Their works were powerful and full of pathos, but unlike their classicist predecessors, they focused mainly on the nameless hero and the individual who was involved in disastrous circumstances. They were less interested in theatricality, but especially in human passion. The later colouristic pictorial symphonies of Delacroix were not always well understood at the time.

The stamp of the theatrical can be declared applicable to painters such as Eugène Devéria, Horace Vernet and Paul Delaroche, who were more in line with the public’s call for the extraordinary, a flight from the everyday. The emerging orientalism of that time and the sentimental genre of the Italian popular scenes were very close. Pierre-Paul Prud’hon sought his subjects more in mythology.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century the romantic principles were still recognizable in the landscapes of Jean-Baptiste Corot and the allegorical paintings by Gustave Courbet. At the same time, the realistic style is already recognizable in their work, which was soon replaced by Romanticism as a dominant movement in French painting through the painters of the Barbizon School.

Romantic painting in the Netherlands
Dutch painting in the first half of the nineteenth century is also nowadays also known as “the time of romance”, but found only a limited connection with the great romantic movement that took place in Germany, England and France: none heroic historical scenes, no big mountains, no exotic fantasies or horrifying emotions. Nevertheless, Dutch painters of that time do indeed have a romantic attitude, in the sense that they put their own beauty experience above a classic ideal, but without the grand gesture. In the European context, Dutch romanticism is therefore much more modest, almost subcutaneous, atmospheric and in a sense called sentimental. From most of the works there was a great sensitivity to nature and a strong feeling for the national tradition of marine and landscape painting, with which the most important theme was immediately named. Nostalgia predominated, contemporary elements, which, for example, remind of the time of the emerging industry, were almost entirely absent. In this image, painters fit likeBC Koekkoek, Bart van Hove, Salomon Verveer, Andreas Schelfhout, Johannes Tavenraat, marine painter Louis Meijer, Wijnand Nuijen and the young Johannes Bosboom. Cornelis Springer and Jan Weissenbruch also made a name as city painter. Other names in the romantic tradition are Jan Willem Pieneman, the only notable Dutch history painter, Jan Adam Kruseman, who also drew attention as a portraitist, and Petrus van Schendel, known for his night scenes in artificial light.

Romantic painting in Belgium
Belgian Romanticism had its peak during the reign of Leopold I (1831-1865) and was mainly dominated by history painting. Her most important representative was Gustaaf Wappers, who concentrated mainly on the history of Flanders, in a patriotic spirit. His Delacroixs De Vrijheid leads the people- inspired painting Tafereel of the September Days 1830 on the Grand Place in Brussels in 1835, in which he glorifies the foundation of the Belgian state in 1830, as exemplary. Another important history painter was Antoine Wiertz, who often went back to classical antiquity. Both Wappers and Wiertz were inspired by the baroque work of Pieter Paul Rubens and they did not hesitate to imitate their great example. Nicaise De Keyser, a third big name in the Belgian romantic tradition, was inspired more by French academic art. Thematically, he focused mainly on the Flemish history of the Middle Ages and later on. Are the Golden Spurs and the battle of worringen are considered icons of Belgian romance. Other names in the list of Belgian history painters are Adèle Kindt, Ernest Slingeneyer, Louis Gallait, Ferdinand de Braekeleer,Jean Baptiste Madou, Joseph Benoît Suvée, Edouard De Bièfve and Hendrik Leys. The fame of Belgian history painters reached far beyond the Belgian borders and their work was particularly popular in Germany and France.

Spain
At the turn of the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century in Spain Francisco de Goya stands out as one of the great names of Romanticism. From 1790 he devoted himself to dramatic themes, mixing the fantastic and the real. When he painted the events of the Spanish War of Independence, he created an atmosphere of nightmare in a historical, artistic and human document whose strength places him among the most powerful and visionary painters of his generation, one of the most genial romantics.

They are typically romantic works, within the production of Goya, The charge of the Mamelukes and the shootings of May 3 (1814, Prado Museum). Goya, deceased in 1828, shows in his late works a romantic interest in the irrational. Of note in this period are the Black Paintings of Quinta del Sordo (1819 – 1823, Prado Museum).

Other Spanish romantic painters are José Casado del Alisal, centered on historical themes; Antonio María Esquivel, Sevillian in whom the academic format shows a melancholy atmosphere full of sentimentality; José Gutiérrez de la Vega, one of the main names of the Seville School of Spanish Romanticism, Genaro Pérez de Villaamil, painter of the typical, city and landscape; Manuel Rodríguez de Guzmán, painter of Andalusian scenes; Francisco Lameyer y Berenguer, Antonio Fabres and Mariano Fortuny, of orientalizing tendency;Manuel Barrón Y Carrillo, great landscaper; Eugenio Velázquez, with religious work; Francisco Pradilla and Ortiz and Eduardo Rosales, painters of medieval scenes; Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer with paintings about popular characters from various regions of Spain, and Leonardo Alenza, painting paintings in the hard and tragic style of Goya, with a bitter costumbrismo.

Portugal
Domingos Sequeira made the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism, being the first to begin a romantic journey, through the late work Death of Camoes exposed in Paris in 1824, a course that would continue until his death in 1837. Still in the neoclassical phase explores various thematic, showing up genius in all, from allegory to painting of history, religious and scenes of local life. In the portrait also shows a remarkable quality and evolution, being to mention the Portrait of the Count of Farrobo, of 1813, that rests on neoclassical ideas, but the Portrait of the children(in image), circa 1816, with distinctly romantic characteristics. His religious painting, made from 1827, presents a masterly domain of light, approaching the diffuse form only comparable to Rembrant and Turner.

Romantic painting in United States
In the United States, Romanticism manifested itself mainly in the form of landscaping. Its early practitioners, like Karl Bodmer and especially Washington Allston, were influenced by the dramatic English and German poetry, and its production captures the nature in its most pungent aspects. But it is with the monumental landscaping of the Hudson River School that American Romanticism reaches its apogee.

The school flourished between 1820 and 1880. Its members were mostly based in the New York region, around the Hudson River, but traveled extensively to the Rocky Mountains and other still unexplored regions of the country in search of grandiose settings. Some made use of photography as a preparatory aid in their works, which were characterized by a detail that is sometimes realistic but with great sensitivity to the beauties of nature, especially for light and atmospheric effects. Its founder was Thomas Cole, influenced by the Theory of the English Sublime, and its production is marked by the search of the grandiose and by the concomitant use of allegories, leaving important series like The trajectory of the Empire and The trip of the life, of moralizing character.

The next generation had its greatest exponents in Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt, who gained immense fame in their time and contributed to strengthen the sense of national identity, being considered, in their optimistic idealism, perfect spokesmen of the American Manifesto Destiny. In this sense, they stimulated interest in the colonization of the American West. His work took the landscape genre to a heroic dimension, defending the thesis that man and nature could coexist peacefully. Other notable members of this group were Samuel Colman, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Gifford Sanford Robinson, William Stanley Haseltine,Hermann Ottomar Herzog, Thomas Hill and Thomas Moran.

By the middle of the century the Hudson River School had a derivation with the Luminists and Tonalists, influenced by the Barbizon School, who painted a more quiet, lyrical and intimate view of nature, with a discreet palette and attractive atmosphere effects. Fitz Hugh Lane, David Johnson, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Leon Dabo and Martin Johnson Heade are good examples of this trend, which prevailed until the early 20th century.

In the field of the portrait are interesting Nathaniel Jocelyn and John Neagle, and of the historical painting the Romanticism found important vehicles in John Trumbull and Emanuel Leutze. The record of the Indians, cavalry, cowboys, or settlers was explored by Charles Deas, Frederic Remington, George Caleb Bingham, Charles Ferdinand Wimar, Alfred Jacob Miller, Charles Marion Russell and many others.

Brazil
Brazil also witnessed an important romantic movement in painting, which flourished late in the second half of the nineteenth century, exhibiting singular characteristics. It brought a strong neoclassical charge and soon merged with Realism into an eclectic synthesis. The center of national art was then the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, whose rigid aesthetic principles did not allow an expression of the creative individualism that marked Romanticism in other countries. Nor was dramatic drama especially sought, except for very rare cases, and the local romantics assumed a more restrained, more poetic tone.

In Brazil the movement had its focus on nationalism and Indianism, but it was in an academic environment that the main names of the romantic generation were formed: Manoel de Araújo Porto-alegre, Victor Meirelles, Pedro Américo, Rodolfo Amoedo and Almeida Júnior. His work, mainly sponsored by the State, was fundamental for the elaboration of a symbolic imaginary capable of agglutinating the nationalist forces in action at that moment, in which the Brazilian empirehad just graduated and lacked a “civilized” history in order to claim a dignified place among the more advanced nations. The way out was to appeal to the portrait of members of the reigning new house and to events that had marked the national history, such as the great battles that defined the territory. Until recently considered barbaric and despicable, the Indians also occupy a prominent position in Brazilian romantic art as the ideal prototype of a pure culture and integrated with its environment. Foreign artists also made a great contribution at that time, engaging in historical nationalist painting and landscaping, attracted by the exotic tropical scenery. Among these we can mention Nicola Antonio Facchinetti, landscape artist, Eduardo de Martino, marinist, andJosé Maria de Medeiros, François-René Moreaux and Augusto Rodrigues Duarte historical painters.

Romantic painting in other countries
Style categories are sometimes difficult to apply to the romantic movement in other European countries. However, this does not apply to Scandinavia and more particularly Denmark, where a strong influence was felt from the North German romanticism. An important catalysing role was played by the Royal Danish Art Academy, where a strong spirit of innovation was blowing at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Important representatives of the painting were Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Wilhelm Bendz, Ditlev Blunck, Christen Købke, Constantin Hansen, Wilhelm Marstrand andMartinus Rørbye. They developed a characteristic own realistic style, mixed with idealistic romantic elements. In addition, influences were observable from seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting. This style period would eventually go down in history as the Danish Golden Age. Also Norway had after its independence in 1814 romantic heyday with painters Johan Christian Dahl, Adolph Tidemand and Hans Gude.

In Denmark Romanticism appears only in the mid-nineteenth century, after the fall of absolutism and the founding of the new state. Then interest turns to nationalist themes and earlier Italianized art cedes the place for scenes showing the local farms and fishermen. Nationalism comes to a head around the debate on the first Danish Constitution, when painting isolates itself from the rest of Europe and acquires a provincial character. This trend was only broken around 1870, when artists like Peder Severin Krøyer travel through Europe and come into contact with the new naturalistic and realistic currents. Among the best representatives of romantic painting are Christen Dalsgaard,Julius Exner, Jørgen Sonne and Frederik Vermehren, who mainly worked on genre scenes and nationalist folk themes in the Jutland plains, paying close attention to atmospheric effects. His observation of detail paved the way for the introduction of Realism in the country.

The Norway had in Germany a major center for the formation of its first painters. Hans Gude and Johan Christian Dahl, who settled there, made significant contributions to the development of German landscaping, but Gude later had special relevance to Norwegian painting, which is considered the founder. He was a master in Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe and Berlin of three generations of Norwegian painters, among whom Frederik Collett, Erik Bodom, Amaldus Nielsen and Gunnar Berg, who would come wherever he was teaching. In the main, Romanticism in Norway followed the path of other European countries. After 400 years as a backward province, the nationalist impulse that emerged after a partial independence from Denmark in 1814 was only able to find traces of identity in the peasant culture and the beautiful landscape of the region, which became the centers of interest for art. Other Norwegian romantics werePeter Nicolai Arbo,Lars Hertervig,Knud Bergslien,Peder BalkeandAdolph Tidemand.

In Switzerland a great representative of Romanticism was Arnold Böcklin. Inspired by the work of German Friedrich and also linked to Symbolism, he created a fantasy world that emphasized mystery and death, addressing mythology and allegory. It was an important influence for 20th century artists such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico. Other authors named are Albert Anker and Konrad Grob, with their attention to the people of the countryside; Antonio Ciseri, active between Switzerland and Florencewith a realistic style but with a theme of biblical scenes played with a romantic pungency; Barthélemy Menn, an introducer in the region of outdoor painting and owner of an intimate landscaping style, and Johann Gottfried Steffan, perhaps the most important Swiss landscaper of the nineteenth century, with great sense of atmosphere.

Colonized by the English at the end of the eighteenth century, Australia did not take long to form a national school of romantic painting, exploring the characteristics still unknown to the Westerner of this vast continent. Here the painting begins to take its breath from the 1840s, when travelers, foreign residents and local artists mark an active presence in the country, and an art and consumer market begins to form. The landscape is the central theme of the Australian romanticism, both as a way to consolidate a sense of national identity and to make known to the world the beauties of the earth. Among the best painters of the time were Knut Bull, Augustus Earle, John Glover, Samuel Thomas Gill, Nicholas Chevalier, Eugene von Guérard, HJ Johnstone, James Howe Carse, William Strutt, Abraham-Louis Buvelot, Frederick McCubbin and Thomas Baines.

The legacy of romance
The end of the romantic school is often marked around the middle of the nineteenth century, although that varies slightly from country to country. In any case, a tendency towards a more realistic and naturalistic way of painting was noticeable around that time: no more “romanticizing”, making everything more beautiful or intensifying, but displaying reality as it is perceived, without frills. This of course did not mean that what was called “the romantic spirit” immediately disappeared from painting. Romantic motifs also remained of great influence in later periods. The emphasis on the individual creative drive of the artist, as an expression of his personal feelings, would become a permanent feature of modern art. Aspects like nostalgia, pathos and escapism were style characteristics that would never disappear again. Romanticism in the sense of giving an extra and deeper meaning to the everyday eventually came back to virtually every distinguished art movement.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, continuing until the First World War, romantic painting would still have a number of strong offshoots, particularly in the North European countries and the United States, also known as late Romanticism. Around 1900, many elements of Romanticism were also explicitly reflected in the flow of symbolism (with its attention to imagination, fantasy and intuition) and in expressionism (in the expressive pathos). Edvard Munch, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Franz von Stuck and Arnold Böcklinare, however different with respect to each other, examples of painters from this period who have clearly explicit romantic roots. Later on the interest in romantic painting would be regularly sparked by nationalistic ideas, until the Nazi era.

Art historians differ on the influence of Romanticism on modernist art from the twentieth century. Jos de Mul, professor of philosophy at Erasmus University, argues how the romantic school has been at the basis of almost all artistic developments in the twentieth century. In his eyes, the basis of all innovative art rests on the desire for harmony, concealed behind the senses, knowing that this desire will never be fulfilled. This ambivalent attitude of the artist, who continues to try to approach the absolute, but at the same time is characterized by doubt, according to De Mul finds its origin in romance and has never changed.

This does not alter the fact that from a more visual point of view and objective style characteristics nineteenth-century painting is miles away from the modernist art forms of the twentieth century. The dominance of abstract currents in the twentieth century pushed the romance with predicates as sentimental and corny into the vergeizardje. In the art criticism, people were often talked about, hardly received any attention. Many works disappeared in depot. It was only around the millennium transition that the attention to romance as a stylistic period increased again, as evidenced by an increasing number of exhibitions, the emergence of a stream of new studies and an increasing interest in the art market.

Source from Wikipedia