History of Romanticism.

Caspar David Friedrich – Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog 1818

Romanticism is also known as the romantic era or romantic period was a major art movement in European art that originated during the 18th century. It was a reaction to the social, political and aristocratic norms of the Enlightenment. It was also seen as a movement that rejected the typical ideas of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality of Classicism and Neo-classicism.
Romantics celebrated the spontaneity, imagination, and the purity of nature. Along with these elements it also incorporated a deep feeling of emotion as an authentic source of experience which put new emphasis on emotions such as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe.
Romanticism went beyond the Classicist ideas and began to reach a new medievalism idea of art and narrative to escape from the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism.
The movement embraced the exotic and unknown and went on the idea of the imagination of being this place where you could envision and escape. It placed high value on the achievements of ‘heroic’ artists and individualists whose pioneering examples, it believed would raise the standard of society. (Wikipedia, Romanticism)

History of Landscape Photography.

Ansel Adams- The Tetons and the Snake River

Landscape Photography shows spaces within the world that are huge and continuous, but at other times can be microscopic. The presence of nature can be captured by photographs along with the man-made features that have disturbed the landscapes.
From the beginning of landscape photography and into the present time, some of the most noted photographers have been inspired and challenged by the overall beauty of nature and their desire and appreciation to see it preserved. Many landscape images show little to none human movement and are taken in the search of a pure, clean representation of nature in all its fullness without human influence, instead featuring strongly defined landforms, weather, and ambient light. (Wikipedia, Landscape Photography)

What is Romanticism in Landscape Photography?

Louis Grachos says, “It is difficult fo find an exact or cogent defintion for Romanticsim.”
Charles Baudelaire also stated that,” Romanticism neither depends precisely on choice of subject nor in exact truth, but a mode of feeling,” (Grachos)

Romanticism has long been associated within the landscape. In the medium of photography, the sense of romance of the landscape features it spirit in full bloom. It is very hard to categorise. The very nature of Romanticism is rather uncontrollable and unpredictable. At other times its quiet and sensual power manifests into beautiful and stunning images. Sometimes it features animals or humans, while at other times the landscape will be empty and bare of any form of life. The most notable feature in a landscape image of romantic quality is that it will stir the emotion and feelings and cause inspiration of the imagination. (Fahey)

What is Romanticism in Landscape Photography TODAY?

There are a variety of exhibitions and competitions where photographers are being asked to capture single images that absorb vision of the romantic qualities of nature within the landscape that surrounds them. Namely one of the FIER Institute Initiatives ‘The  Romantic Landscape”. Around the world, countries name their seasons differently, and some also differ with the  starting date of the seasons. The purpose of the Romantic Landscape is to widen our understanding of what contemporary landscapes look like across the world today. (Initiatives)

What makes a Landscape Photograph Romantic?

Mark Meyer debates this issue using this image into whether or not it shows romanticism or nostalgia and how writers have made Romanticism difficult to identify within landscape photography as they equate it to sentimentality and picturesque qualities and ignore the dark critique of human knowledge.

Is this photograph based on romantic tradition?
He believes so. It takes you away from the norms of everyday life and compares the enormity of creation/ the landscape. Everything within our human world pales in comparison to nature in all its beauty.
“Wilderness goes all the way to the core of this world and our human works merely touch the surface.”
It certainly makes you ask yourself seeing these types of images,
Who made this and what is at the end if our lives are so fragile? (Meyer)

The Romantic Landscape.

Jennifer presents the progression of our ideal landscape, from European Romanticism, to American Modernism.

Romanticism in Landscape Painting.

Romantic Landscape 1900

The paintings of the Romantic period were emotional powder kegs. Artists expressed as much feeling and passion that could be painted onto a canvas. A landscape had to arouse a mood; a crowd had to show expressions on their faces. An animal painting had to show some sense of mighty trait of that animal. Even portraits weren’t complete depictions. With little touches, the artist could show his subject surrounded by an atmosphere of innocence, madness, virtue and loneliness.
There was prevalent theme to Romanticism, “nature can change direction without warning, and we puny mortals are not match for it”
There are so many examples of this in Romantic paintings such as shipwrecks which have always had high mortality rates. (Esaak)

Riverside Landscape with a Castle

Along with the emotional feelings that one got from Romantic paintings, contemporary viewers were quite knowledgable of the story behind the subject matter. Artists usually gained their inspiration from current events.
Not every Romantic work related to current events. For the ones that did, there was an increased recognition and an informed viewer-ship for their artists.

Paul Nash.

 

Paul Nash is known as Britain’s outstanding twentieth century landscape painter. He was also known as British surrealist painter, artist of the war, photographer, writer, and designer of applied art.  In the early years of World War I he made subject pictures as well as landscapes up to the early 1920’s. Landscape appears in most of his paintings, if it wasn’t the main subject it was the setting or background to human figures, objects, events and happenings that may be odd but were more than casual or formal compositions. Nash’s values link him to Romanticism, an art that is deeply involved with personal feeling, where elements of nature combine with the identity of an individual.
The emphasis on the contribution of an individual with the world of nature was a root of the Romantic Movement. This is one of the reasons why Nash was known as a Romantic artist. In the field of landscape this also shows him as a painter who captures a ‘landscape of feeling’. Nash’s values link him to Romanticism, an art that is deeply involved with personal feeling, where elements of nature combine with the identity of an individual. (Causey)

Neo-Romanticism.

The most direct influence of Romanticism was Neo-Romanticism.The term Neo-Romanticism is used to cover a diversity of movements in philosophy, literature, music, painting, and architecture, as well as social movements , that came after and integrate elements of the Romantic era. Neo- Romanticism as well as Romanticism are known to be in opposition with naturalism- the idea of naturalism being viewed as foreign and even hostile. In the period following the german unification in 1871, naturalism rejected Romantic literature and identified it as a being misleading, idealistic distortion of reality. It became viewed as not being able to fill the “void” of modern existence. In British art history, the term “Neo-Romanticism” is loosely applied to be related with a school of landscape painting that began in 1930 and continued to the early 1950’s. It was first named in March 1942 by Raymond Mortimer in the New Statesman. (Wikipedia, Neo-Romanticism)

The paintings of the Neo-Romantic era were strongly theatrical and romantic. Common themes included longing for the perfect love, utopian landscapes, nature reclaiming ruins, romantic death, and history in landscape. Many of the artist were influenced by the idea of surrealism. Some critics argued that Neo- Romanticism lacked an acceptable understanding of evil in the modern world. (Agency)