Romanticism - Léon Rosenthal Art of Century

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their feelings and thoughts expanded in forests, at the seaside, or in mountains: if they were tormented, their restlessness calmed down. They were thankful to nature for that soothing action. Unlike poets who revolted against it because it did not echo their love experiences, Romantic artists paid tribute to the maternal and consoling quality of nature.

      Though their universal sympathy went out in many directions, Romantic artists were in fact looking for themselves and, through their prodigal love for so many things and beings, they actually cherished themselves. Their curiosity was eager because their souls had an inextinguishable need of feeding. They never watched anything with dispassionate eyes, simply for the pleasure of knowledge: they would never forget themselves. One did not expect scientific testimony from any of them. They liked truth and wanted to be sincere, but their subjectivity and lyricism could not help but distort reality.

      If he happened to be a man of rare genius, endowed with a whole set of exceptional and superior qualities that enabled him to think, suffer and be thrilled more than other mediocre human beings, the Romantic artist put fervent passion into his work as well as a taste for dramatisation and, in the early years of Romanticism, a dark mood which would get lighter with time but without ever reaching actual joyfulness. Even if he was a powerful worker merely admired for his skills, like Decamps or Barye, the complexity of his expressive moods and sometimes the surfeit and subtlety of details would be enough to prove that he belonged to a tormented generation.

      Before starting a painting, Delacroix gathered information carefully, but once he had started work he could not bear the presence of models who put him off. The repulsion that he felt for his time is a more surprising paradox. The Flemish and Venetian artists whose influence he claimed, Véronèse and Rubens, had magnified the human beings and things around them. Not only did they take pleasure in their art, they thrived on the spirit of beauty in which they lived. They cherished their times and surroundings, in which they found allegory, history and religion. But the Romantic man felt ill at ease in his century: life in his time was dull, monuments were ugly and clothes shapeless. The crowd was merely eager for vulgar pleasures. Artists were isolated because they were different and misunderstood by their contemporaries. An object of vain ridicule early in life, these deplorable sentiments solidified through the trials of sarcasm and persecution throughout an artist’s career.

      John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from The Bishop’s Ground, 1823.

      Oil on canvas, 87.6 × 111.8 cm.

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