Romanticism

Feeling, nature and the sublime took over from reason.

Romanticism was a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the utilitarian thinking of industrialisation. Artists sought the sublime – that which both frightens and attracts – in storms, mountains and ruins.

Caspar David Friedrich painted solitary figures before vast landscapes. Turner dissolved light and steam in swirling colour. Goya and Géricault showed the horrors of war and catastrophe, and Delacroix painted passion, revolution and exotic subjects.

Romanticism also awakened interest in each country’s own history, folk life and myths. In the Nordic countries a National Romantic imagery was born, with Old Norse gods, sagas and patriotic landscapes.