Romanticism
"I have to stay alone in order to fully contemplate and feel nature."
Romanticism is the 19th century movement that developed in Europe in response to the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment values of reason. The movement was characterised by the emphasis on emotion and imagination as well as the glorification of nature with its irrational forces. Whereas Neoclassicism praised the return to the classical beauty and the perfection of the ancient world, Romantic artists preferred to revive medievalism. Explore the Romanticism movement by starting from What is Romanticism? and browse our curated list of artworks from romantic painters such as Théodore Géricault, Francisco Goya, Eugène Delacroix and others.
Romanticism Quotes
I have to stay alone in order to fully contemplate and feel nature. I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. Solitude is indispensible for my dialogue with nature.
Caspar David Friedrich
The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead.
Caspar David Friedrich
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling .... When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and [yet] with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful, as we every day experience.
Edmund Burke
Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.
Immanuel Kant
Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.
Eugène Delacroix
Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of source of their wonders.
Francisco Goya
