Artist and the Concerns of Romanticism

Technically, the term “ Romantic” nowadays is defined like something belong to our emotion when we fuse our happy feeling together and create a “sweet” mood that can make us feel like out of the world. Besides, “romantic” is also used to imply something unrealizable. However, back to the Romantic Era when the term “Romantic” was defined different comparing with it meaning nowadays.

In the book Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities, the first meaning of “romantic” was defined “ First was the important emphasis they placed on personal feeling and their expression”(447). Artist at this time was no longer influenced by the early eighteenth century art, their styles followed by their personal feeling. For instance, Francisco Goya who painted The Family of Charles. In his point of view, he depicted the royal family “Instead of grace and elegance, Goya’s patrons radiate arrogance, vanity, and stupidity”(462). In fact, when we look at this painting, we hardly recognize that this is a king’s family because the faces of the characters are so ugly and innocent, opposite with what we usually think about a royal family.

Romanticism Without Borders

romanticism

The Hay Wain

“Romantic” could also means fear or drama, it sounds unreasonable or contradiction with the meaning of the word romantic that we usually think about. In fact, in the Romantic Era, through Goya’s painting Execution of the Madrilenos, he expressed his anger by depicting a dramatic scene. Soldiers without their face, the dim light aims to the execute victim and the fear of the innocent people plus with their blood. All of this created a dramatic scene or a horror of war. We could see the author’s emotion here, Goya tried to convey his own emotion thought the execution and because he was a great artist thus his emotion became our own.

Another aspect...