Traveler's Guide to Art & Architecture: Art

Romantic

Late 18th-19th Centuries--The romantics felt the classically minded Renaissance and baroque artists had gotten it wrong; the Gothic Middle Ages was the place to be. They idealized the romantic tales of chivalry; had a deep respect for nature, human rights, and the nobility of peasantry; and were suspicious of progress. Their paintings tended to be heroic, historic, dramatic, and beautiful. They were inspired by critic and art theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900), who traveled throughout Northern Italy and was among the first to sing the praises of pre-Renaissance painting and Gothic architecture. Significant artists of this period include: William Blake (1757-1827). Romantic archetype, Blake snubbed the stuffy Royal Academy of Arts to do his own engraving, prints, illustrations, poetry, and painting. His works were filled with melodrama, muscular figures, and sweeping lines; modern, angst-ridden, "Goth" teens really dig his stuff. Judge for yourself at London's Tate Britain and Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery. John Constable (1776-1837). Constable was a great British landscapist, whose scenes (especially those of happy, agricultural peasants) got more idealized with each passing year--while his compositions and brushwork became freer. You'll find his best stuff in London's National Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, and Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery. J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851). Turner, called by some "The First Impressionist," was a prolific and multitalented artist whose mood-laden, freely brushed, watercolor landscapes influenced Monet. The River Thames and London, where he lived and died, were frequent subjects. He bequeathed his collection of some 19,000 watercolors and 300 paintings to the people of Britain with the request that they be kept in one place. London's Tate Britain displays the largest number of Turner's works, while others grace London's National Gallery, Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham's Museum and Art Gallery and Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery. Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1870s). This "brotherhood" of painters declared that art had gone all wrong with Italian Renaissance painter Raphael (1483-1520) and set about to emulate the Italian painters who preceded him--though they were not actually looking at specific examples. Their symbolically imbued, sweetly idealized, hyper-realistic work depicts scenes from romantic poetry and Shakespeare as much as from the Bible. There were seven founders and many followers, but the most important were Dante Rossetti, William Hunt, and John Millais; you can see work by all three at London's Tate Britain, Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery, and Manchester's City Art Gallery.

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