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Neoclassical & Romantic

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In the late 1700's, while the revolutionaries were disposing of the French aristocracy by means of the guillotine, artists were busy disposing of the aristocratic Rococo style with a style that reflected their revolutionary politics. Artists rejected the florid excess of the Rococo and drew on ancient Greece and republican Rome for inspiration. This attempt to revive the art and architecture of the ancient world is known as the Neoclassical (new classical) style. 

The chief proponent of this style was Jaques Louis David . Another leading Neoclassical artist was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The Neoclassical style of the French Revolution even influenced Americans. Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, and the University of Virginia, were both constructed in the Neoclassical style.

In art, every attempt to create orthodoxy seems to produce a reaction. In the first quarter of the 1800's, throughout Europe, in the visual arts, literature and music, this reaction was the Romantic movement. Where Neoclassical artists were political, Romantic artists were interested in the exotic, the wild and the emotional. Some elements of the Romantic movement opposed the scientific inquiries of the the Enlightenment. The leading proponent of Romantic painting was Eugene Delacroix. The Romantic movement was not limited to the visual arts. The movement also included composers such as Beethoven, Chopin and Wagner, and writers such as Lord Byron, Shelly and William Blake.

Also of interest during this time was the rise of utopian and socialist movements that produced an artistic movement known as Social Realism . Social Realists painted pictures that championed the cause of the poor underclass of Europe. Jean-Fran�ois Millet created images in a form of "romantic realism" that portrayed the poor in a positive light.

Another realist was the Spanish painter Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes . Goya used the medium of printmaking to bring his artistic vision to a wider audience. The French painter, sculptor and editorial cartoonist, Daumier, also made use of the printmaking medium lithography to disseminate his pictures.

David's
" The Death of Marat"

wpe24.jpg (44097 bytes)

Delacroix's
"The Massacre at Chios"

wpe26.jpg (59276 bytes)

Daumier's
"The Third Class Carriage" 
(fragment)

Additional Resources

bullet Read about and view paintings from the age of enlightenment in France .
bulletRead more about the romantic artist Delacroix.
bullet Read about the French Revolution .
bullet Read about the French radical Jean Jacques Rousseau .

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