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5 the Visual Arts and Music 5 The visual arts and music Stephen C. Behrendt We usually associate Romantic visual art and music with a period extendin,q :- mid- to later eighteenth century until the middle and (for music) later ninetet:': tury-some wouid say even beyond that. One of Romantic art's distinctive :..,. il the artist's desire to express the ideal in terms of the real. Like some Lr: Wordsworth's and Charlotte Smith's poems, it is firmly grounded in actr-i,, dependent for its force upon precise details about leal things. Fundamental r:,- principles are revealed through their appearances within'everyday life'. I-ike . t1-re Romantic artist renders the familiar unique by presenting it in an unac. -- u'av to help the vieu,er to 'see' what has been there all along, hidden in 1',,, u-ithln the ordinary external universe. This is especially ttue r,r'hen it comes to nature. Romanticism transformed t:'. universe from a mere generic backdrop to human activity to a centraL :. .l Romantic art lalgely rejected the neoclassical preference for generallzat. : depicting human activity and the natural world. William Blake, for example, rlrrll r n 'To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction oi \:. Blake, what is most individual and idiosyncratic is what is most valuable to trl: &ii,iLLlii is the physical kernel that holds within it the universal value or truth that i: ,, r'$ni .' l$nn only via the particuiar detail, accurately and minutely rendered. Romantir 11,, are therefore often fil1ed with carefully executed details, whether their subier.' iii*r. Like Romantic art ofte ' ;l:rilffilr jr nature, human activity, or both. Romantic literature, ,, r that nature is both consoling and restorative: seen (and enjoyed) correctlr', rr-- vides the catalyst for altering the individual consciousness, most often for . Thus Romantic visual art often depicts people-especially ordinary people-- tiiijii pleasant, salutary activities within natural settings, which suggests to vietve:, 'tr might improve their own situations at minimal expense (financial or ps\.. ,,t through the medium of nature. At the same time, howevet, visual art cott-. ingly to recognize that nature is both'Destroyer and Preservet', as Percy Sh. , the West Wind: the stormy scenes of Constable and Turner, the cataclysr-t-t.- John Martin, and the starkness of some of Caspar David Friedrich's work: . Tennyson's nature, 'red in tooth and claw'. At other times, artists simply c;. to the sheer immensity of nature, often by having their human figures r'l'hc by the natural setting, as in Friedrich's Lantlscape with Ooks and Hunter (781', tih lW,' ffili ffi The visual arts and music I 63 Romantic art is also concerned with heroism, which European art and culture were .ntirely redefining during this period. The revolutions in America and France had ::gun to reduce the daunting distance between the ordinary citizen's situation and .:at of the traditional hero or heroine. Like those revolutions, which sought to define ,. sovereignty of 'the people'-and thereby of the individual-in defiance of inherited :ia1, political, and economic hierarchies, a revolution in Romantic art dignified the :. of individual whom the fine arts had historically either treated as a butt of humour ,, erlooked altogether. Now George Crabbe wrote about common villagers like Peter ' ::tes, william wordsworth wrote poems featuring beggars and retarded children, followers. To - 1f arv Robinson wrote about London street people and military camp ,e such subjects, and then to tleat them seriously and with dignity, as Romantic - : began to do, was to declare art far more truly'open' and representative of the . sality of human experience than had previously been the case. Romantic art -. just glittering, privileged few but also - - :rr demand that attention be paid not to the il ' : ..'fSt majority of humankind, ln each of whom resided material appropriate for of prominent _ : _-. ,tr comedy of the highest sort. Thls is not to say that depictions period; rures and events faded from view (or prominence) during the Romantic ,:r , however, that by the end of that era it was no longer remarkable to find I . :.,'ith complete seriousness subjects like Goya's victims of war, G6ricault',s ':. Soldiers and asylum inmates, and Constable,s rustic farmers. .i1, Romanticism emphasized individuality. Every individual is unique, r)m argues, and possesses by nature an infinite capacity for experience' -,it and literature created a cult of individualism by linking the individual :-;al, mythological, and symbolic preculsors and prototypes while cultivating .-.:.pendence of mind. Hence Romantic writers remind their contemporaries .:rrn to think for themselves, to bypass or ignore the 'middle-men' (profes- --..,'ers and cultural critics), and in the process to know themselves. The .: -st relishes those characteristics that distinguish the individual from the . r: results in our accepting, like Lord Byron (and like his immensely popu- t- ,il appear in Romantic visual art), that none of us is - i,.;' - ,):-\ rvho frequently contradictory l|r,11,, -.,-. that each of us is compounded of mixed and frequently to and r1l11t,] what we aspire lt u t:S, and idiosyncracies that leave us torn between "- :, :": preoccupied ,lrfi|lllli . -,',ra11y achieve. Romantic art is therefore more than usually - ;ili :- course with failure' rstiiltlltllu ' -.iling with trial, with testing, with triumph, and of the emo- ]i :. : upol1 the personal reflects Romantic art's firm grounding in -! .lr ;11lil5il11 . -':ctivity. Jean-Jacques RouSseau'S ideas concerning human Subjectivity : rrse, during the later eighteenth century, of sentimentalism, which -- -"i' :: .rti and intuition rather than reason and empirical knowledge: what il' ::- :ortant than what one feels about what happens. Romantic visual art ,itr and only liltiti - .:= :heir audiences first through the senses and the emotions r llllll . -::] the analytlcal intellect. In music, the crisp intellectuality of Bach,s ,':-:sonatasgiveswaytotheSheelenergyofBeethoven,sFifth 64 I Romantic orientations Symphony or the emotional extremes of Berlioz's Requiem. Likewise, Romantic pair-:- ings typically demand active emoti onal engagementt rather than passive spectatorsh-: as happens with John Martin's massive apocalyptic canvasses or J. M. w. Turne: , swirling, misty scenes. British art and Romanticism British Romantic art reflects most of these characteristics (see Oxford Companion t- :w Romantic Age, pp.250-60). It is, however, less immediately concerned than Frenci !r.t with the events of the revolution and the Napoleonic era, although later in the pt:r:ou artists like Sir David wilkie, the most important genre painter in the first part c,i --re century, painted many historical subjects, including scenes from contemp.:.il:q history. Landscapes and seascapes are, on the other hand, comparatively more pro:rlio* ent. John Constable andJ. M. W. Turner (see below) were only the most promine:,: un many landscape artists. William Delamott and James Ward painted landscapes :::Ilur enced by precursors like Rubens, while the paintings of Clarkson Stanfield and Fr-L:mr Danby evoke the many moods inspired by nature and the sea. The sea was Ln: i& favourite subject of Richard Parkes Bonington, whose delicate and brilliantly coi,-,-mdi works were influenced by French Romanticism, and of John Sell Cotman, who 11 :,*${rdi orimarilv in watercolours. The work of William Blake (see below) and followers like Samuel Palmer is r-isi:: and spiritual. Palmer's early work reflects his acquaintance with the Bible, \{-,'r Bunyan, Christian mysticism, and the visual style of Blake and John Linnell, t,-: whom he knew. His early works are intense and highly spiritualized pastorai scapes. Like the Germans caspar David Friedrich and otto Runge, palmer sough;:, art to explore the sacred symbolism of natural phenomena. Paintings like Conlir:_i Evening church (1830) seem to merge human figures and rustic architecture t::: landscape itself in a timeless vision of a rural paradise. The Swiss immigrant Henry Fuseli gained fame for his dark, wild, and se::s treatments of mythic and literary subjects, especially from Shakespeare and \{ Best known now for his several versions of The Nightmare (1781-1820), Fur:_ expert at portraying psychological intensity and extreme behaviours, including : and masochism. John Martin was famous for large paintings of cataclysmic : involving broad panoramas, extraordinary architecture, and great numbers :,: figures dwarfed by the immensity of the other details. Best known in his life fc: : ings like Belshqzzor's Feest (1821) andrhe plqins of Heaven (1851-3), Martin alsc ; book illustrations for literary works like Milton's Poradise losf. Less success:-rL William Etty, whose mythological and historical subjects, though technicall.r- : (especially with the nude human body), Iacked vitality and authenticity of e-r The most prominent portrait painter was the brilliant Sir Thomas Lawrence. L; The visual arts and music 65 --:'r:e of the royal family, whose portraits he painted and whose patronage he r.. Pflnce Regent (later George IV) commissioned him in 1g15 to execute ::re rulers and statesmen involved in the struggle against Napoleon. Richar<l ., r highly regarded miniaturist. His wife, Maria coswav, was an accom- ::er (she exhibited more than thirty pictures at the Royal Academy) and - - .risa Stuart costello also gained an early reputation as a miniaturist, - = subsequently directed her energies into literature. Among history paint- =---known Angelica Kauffman (r74r-r807) was influential also on the - : r'. hile the visionary but eccentric James Barry (r7 4r-rg06) defied the Royal : :iotocols of patronage and died penniless. The best-remembered history ::ilamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846), the great rival to the elder American- .:iin West (1738-7820, second president of the Royal Academy). Haydon :'''rd the broad public success he sought; his debts and disappointments led " '-r commit suicide. His most famous painting, Christ,s Entry into lerusalem ,,uded among the spectators portraits of Keats, Wordsworth, and even -:'.".don's greatest memorial is not a visual work, though, but rather his -';:.
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