abandoning classical drawing and proportions, such as William Blake and Samuel Palmer, as well as the other members of the Ancients (a group of young English artists with an attraction to archaism), and Philipp Otto Runge, in Germany. Though Blake remained well-known as a poet,
these painters did not have a significant influence on the movement after their death.
Although Romanticism in the visual arts was also delayed in France because of the strong hold Neoclassicism still had on the academies, it became increasingly popular. First, it reigned in the form of propaganda for the new Napoleonic regime. Girodet's Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes, for Napoleon's Château de Malmaison was one of the earliest paintings of the genre.
A new French school of Art emerged, developing personal Romantic styles, but also focusing on sending political messages. Among them, Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), had his first success with The Charging Chasseur, a heroic military figure derived from Rubens, in 1812. However, it was his work, The Raft of the Medusa of
1818-9, that became his greatest achievement, and
which in its day, had a powerful anti-government message, too.
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) followed with The Barque of Dante (1822), The Massacre at Chios (1824) and Death of Sardanapalus (1827). But his most memorable work remains Liberty Leading the
People (1830), which along with the Medusa, is considered one of the most remarkable works of French Romantic painting. Both reflected current events, and could be considered "history painting.”
The Spaniard Francisco Goya was another Romantic artist, though his adherence to the Romantic “rules” could be questioned with his demonic and anti-rational monsters.
Elsewhere in Europe, leading artists were: in Russia, portraitists Orest Kiprensky and Vasily Tropinin, with Ivan Aivazovsky specializing in marine painting; in Norway, Hans Gude who painted scenes of fjords; in Italy, Francesco Hayez (1791–1882) who began as a Neoclassical painter, went through the Romantic period, and emerged as a sentimental painter.
J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up (1839). Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London. PD.
11 | Ceres Magazine | Spring 2016