Romanticism Art Movement: Key Figures and Lasting Influence

This comprehensive section traces the emergence of modern art from its precursors to the revolutionary Impressionist movement. Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947), a wealthy industrialist whose family fled 17th-century French persecution, established the Courtauld Fund in 1923 with £50,000 specifically for modern foreign paintings, addressing Britain's lagging appreciation of Impressionism. Édouard Manet (1832-1883) represents the critical transition between academic and modern art, with his scandalous 'The Luncheon on the Grass' (1863) challenging conventions. The Impressionist movement formally emerged in 1874 when young painters rejected the official Salon and held their first independent exhibition in photographer Nadar's studio, characterized by free brushwork, broken strokes, and lack of finish. Monet's 'Impression, Sunrise' (1872) attracted particular scorn but became the movement's namesake. Degas's British appeal stemmed from his figure paintings and drawing-based work, while Pissarro's cityscapes captured industrial modernity. This foundational period established the principles that would transform Western art forever.

Modernist poetry is self-conscious and knows what it is doing. TS Eliot praised James Joyce's 'mythical method' of relocating modern human experience within the greater world of myth. Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) represent the great year of modernist poetry. The mythic method allows modernists to establish resonant connections between present and past while highlighting spiritual emptiness of modern life. Modernism didn't evolve in a vacuum but had important precursors: Symbolism (French symbolist theory emphasizing suggestion over statement), Imagism (led by Ezra Pound, emphasizing direct treatment, concision, and musical phrase), and Impressionism (fragmented chronology and shifting perspectives in novels by Conrad and Ford). These movements established techniques central to modernist practice.

Impressionism was a revolutionary 19th-century art movement that emerged in France as a reaction against the French Academy's traditional academic standards, which favored historical and religious subjects with detailed Renaissance-inspired techniques; the movement, pioneered by artists like Claude Monet and Pierre Renoir, focused on capturing the unique play of light and everyday scenes through quick brushstrokes, transforming the criticism that their work was merely 'an impression' into the movement's name, and ultimately influencing not only painting but also literature and music before evolving into Post-Impressionism and Modernism.

José Martí was identified as a precursor to Modernism, with early work showing signs of modernist influence through simple and free verses. Esteban Echeverría was another precursor who experimented with modernist techniques before the movement fully developed. These writers began exploring beautiful language, rhyme, and exotic elements, though their work was not fully modernist. Some precursors were concerned with social and political issues rather than purely aesthetic concerns, wanting to create literature that would awaken people and encourage them to fight for their rights.

Art historians identify two starting points for modern art: Realism (사실주의) and Impressionism (인상주의). Realism, led by Courbet, revolutionized art by depicting ordinary people like laborers instead of religious figures or nobles, representing a conceptual shift in subject matter. Impressionism, which emerged with the bourgeoisie's new interests, is considered by many as the true starting point. The term originated from a critic's negative review of Monet's 'Impression, Sunrise,' which the artists adopted. Manet is credited as the 'father' of Impressionism for inspiring younger artists through his participation in the Salon des Refusés, while Monet completed the movement's vision.

The romantic revolution created unprecedented interconnection among the arts, with artists becoming interrelated groups. Berlioz collaborated with Byron, Chopin with Heine, Schumann with ETA Hoffmann and Jean-Paul Richter. Composers became omnivorous readers who wrote words, criticism, memoirs, poetry, and entire opera texts—a radical departure from Bach or Mozart. The pivotal figure was Beethoven, who cast adumbrations of musical and extra-musical fusions. His Pastoral Symphony represented classical control of programmatic meaning, suggesting feelings without indulging in tone painting. Berlioz then seized on this extra-musical concept, making literary attachment central to his work, fundamentally changing how music communicates meaning.

This section positions Romanticism as a threshold period for Global modernity, intervening in three fields: reinvigorating Romanticism studies by showing how Romantic texts unsettle modes of spatial enclosure, temporal regulation, and logics of subject formation; demonstrating how intertwining literary studies, philosophy, and critical theory was central to Romanticism itself and exerted extended influence on late 20th-century writings; and bringing Romanticism into interdisciplinary conversations on climate change and energy ecology. The book traces Romanticism's crisis of community in two directions: older conceptions based in divine sovereignty and patriarchal authority, and emerging regimes of rationalization and calculability. The section demonstrates the book's method through detailed literary analysis of Blake, examining how the dative case represents non-traditional sharing called love, and participial ongoingness captures relationality. The book resists historicist approaches, instead seeing poetry as offering a different measure of the commons—a way of thinking and feeling through communal life without grounds, property, totality, or identity.

The rise of Romanticism in the 19th century marked the end of the Scottish Enlightenment's intellectual dominance. Romanticism challenged the rationalist and scientific approach by emphasizing emotion, individual experience, and limitations of scientific methodology. Romanticism combined with religious emotion created a powerful movement challenging the Enlightenment's rationalist approach. The Scottish Enlightenment's interdisciplinary approach differed from contemporary interdisciplinary work, which involves collaboration between specialists rather than unified intellectual frameworks. The movement's holistic approach integrating history, philosophy, economics, and psychology established models for interdisciplinary scholarship that continue to influence contemporary academic practice.

Romanticism cannot be reduced to 19th-century literature but spans philosophy, politics, law, and sociology. It appears across political spectrums—from democratic republics to monarchies—and influenced both revolutionary and conservative movements. Westernism, a German-derived worldview, characterized early Romanticism's opposition to industrialization and mechanization. A significant portion of Romantics emerged from Northern Europe, particularly Saxons, as a response to Mediterranean rationalism. Southern European nations maintained greater skepticism. The French Revolution was fundamentally romantic despite figures opposing it as bourgeois. This demonstrates Romanticism as a comprehensive cultural phenomenon rather than merely a literary trend.

Romanticism is not merely a simple opposition between reason and sentiment but a complex, transversal movement spanning multiple disciplines. It is characterized by fascinating contradictions and cannot be easily categorized. The movement opens to multiple interpretations and engages deeply with human experience. The Romantic individual is fundamentally different from the Enlightenment's rational subject, characterized by a sense of soul illness and existential crisis. Pascal's anthropological revolution marks the beginning of the Romantic crisis, with humanity experiencing a 'shipwreck without spectators.' Romanticism represents a recovery of what Enlightenment had supposedly forgotten: sentiment, faith, intuition, and the sense of the whole.

Visual imagery and art serve as powerful mechanisms for constructing and naturalizing national identity, as demonstrated by how Afrikaner nationalism in apartheid South Africa used monuments, sculptures, photo comics, and other visual media to create an exclusive white national imaginary that marginalized Black populations; this ideological construction required constant evolution to reflect changing political circumstances while maintaining the appearance of naturalized national belonging.

Visual art, particularly historical paintings like Pedro Bruno's 'Pátria' (1919), serves as a powerful mechanism for constructing national identity while simultaneously promoting racial exclusion. This artwork depicts white figures as the central actors of Brazilian history, systematically erasing black and indigenous populations from the national narrative. The painting was created during a period when scientific racism, eugenics, and the embranquecimento (whitening) project were prevalent, reflecting how artistic production can reinforce state-sponsored ideologies of racial hierarchy. The analysis reveals that such artworks function not merely as aesthetic expressions but as political documents that shape collective memory and perpetuate systemic exclusion of marginalized groups from national identity.

This section examines how Romantic literature and visual art shaped Polish historical memory and national identity. Until the 19th century, Poles generally remembered the Teutonic Order negatively, but the year 1454 became particularly significant in Royal Prussian consciousness. After the partitions of Poland, this date lost its propagandistic value. The negative image of the Teutonic Order as bloodthirsty and aggressive became widespread during the 19th century, particularly in literature. Adam Mickiewicz's 'Grażyna' (1823) and 'Konrad Wallenrod' (1828) portrayed the Teutonic Order negatively, as did Juliusz Słowacki's 'Mindowe' (1829). Jan Matejko's paintings 'The Battle of Grunwald' (1878) and 'The Prussian Homage' (1882) profoundly influenced Polish historical consciousness and school textbooks at all levels. Maria Konopnicka's 'Rota' (1910) became a major competitor to 'Mazurek Dąbrowskiego' as Poland's national anthem after 1918, with the line 'aż się rozpadnie w proch i w pył krzyżacka zawierucha' becoming a powerful symbol of Polish resistance against German oppression.

Romantic artists like Frédéric Sorrieu used visual imagery to shape national consciousness. His paintings depicted people from Europe and America marching toward the Statue of Liberty, symbolizing liberty as a female figure holding a torch. This art showed absolute monarchy symbols shattered on the ground, representing the end of oppressive centralized rule. Nations were visualized through distinct flags, with the United States and Switzerland leading the way to establish nation-states. Jules Michelet defined a nation not merely by common language, race, or religion, but as 'the culmination of a long past of endeavor, sacrifice, and devotion based on shared glories of the past and common will in the present.' This definition emphasized that nations exist through the ongoing consent of their inhabitants.

Francisco Eppens (1913-1982) was a Mexican muralist and graphic designer who became one of the primary architects of Mexico's national visual identity during the mid-20th century; he served as a key designer for the Secretaría de Hacienda, creating iconic postal stamps and fiscal timbres that incorporated pre-Hispanic symbols and modernist aesthetics, culminating in his masterpiece 'El Mestizaje' (The Mestizaje) at UNAM's Faculty of Medicine, which symbolically represents the cosmic order and the union of indigenous and Spanish heritage through the four elements—water, air, fire, and earth—alongside his later work on the national coat of arms in 1968.