Romantic art

Romanticism in the visual arts, originating in the 1760s, marked a shift towards depicting wild landscapes and dramatic scenes, reflecting a departure from classical artistic norms.

Its influence eventually spread globally, shaping various art forms and inspiring artists to express a more profound, emotional response to the natural world and societal changes.

Romantic art highlighted the power of the individual perspective and the universal human experience, resonating across different cultures and leading to lasting impacts on artistic expression worldwide.

Friedrich often used single figures, or features like crosses, set alone amidst a huge landscape, "making them images of the transitoriness of human life and the premonition of death".

Friedrich’s iconic works, such as Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, symbolize the search for meaning within nature's overwhelming beauty and the solitude of the human experience.

Artists like Philipp Otto Runge and Joseph Anton Koch often drew upon German mythology, national identity, and the folk traditions of their homeland, blending historical subjects with dreamlike and fantastical elements.

In literature, the Romantics, including poets like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Novalis, sought to transcend the boundaries of reason and explore the depths of human emotion and spirituality, deeply influencing the visual arts.

Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) had his first success with The Charging Chasseur, a heroic military figure derived from Rubens, at the Paris Salon of 1812 in the years of the Empire, but his next major completed work, The Raft of the Medusa of 1818–19, remains the greatest achievement of the Romantic history painting, which in its day had a powerful anti-government message.

With Shakespeare, Byron was to provide the subject matter for many other works of Delacroix, who also spent long periods in North Africa, painting colourful scenes of mounted Arab warriors.

His Romantic period included many historical pieces of "Troubadour" tendencies, but on a very large scale, that are heavily influenced by Gian Battista Tiepolo and other late Baroque Italian masters.

When it did develop, true Romantic sculpture—with the exception of a few artists such as Rudolf Maison—[13] rather oddly was missing in Germany, and mainly found in France, with François Rude, best known from his group of the 1830s from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, David d'Angers, and Auguste Préault.