The Romanticism Period
This period in art was filled with frenzy; from the fantastic to the sublime. There was much interest in the mysterious. There was an overflow of emotions represented in the art of "The Romantics". The French Revolution resulted in the fall of the aristocracy. The common man emerged.
Beethoven wrote his "Pastoral Symphony ".
Many traveled to far and away exotic locations as evidenced by the Indian Influence in the Brighton Pavillion
and the poem by Coleridge, "Xanadu-Kubla Khan" that describes an imaginitive and exotic world of fancy.
A stately pleasure dome decree
Where Alph,the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea..........
It was a miracle of rare device
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice..........
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song
To such a deep delight t'would win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air
That sunny dome!Those caves of ice!.........
And all should cry Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise
Stormy skies glorified sunsets and moonlight.
This period was also the time of sensitive mysterious and misunderstood men such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Baudelaire, Victor Hugo and William Blake.
Shakespeare's tortured heroes Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet were idolized. They lived by faith and intuition and rejected reason. I believe Turner's "The Fighting Temeraire" depicts this well. Progress is symbolized by an old fashioned man-o-war being towed to her destruction by a product of the modern age-a small black tugboat belching smoke.
Now to the Age Of Realism......
