Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts.
In my last column, I touched on the idea of Romanticism and the Romantic Sensibility. There I explained that it wasn’t hearts-and-flowers romantic but rather Romantic in the late 18th- to mid-19th-century sense of the word. Romanticism in art and literature from that period was concerned primarily with the beautiful and the sublime, with interests in the past, myth, psychology, literature, imagination, emotion, the exotic, intuition, fantasy, terror and drama, among a host of other non-logical and non-reasonable things. This is because Romanticism was opposed to the logic and rationality of neoclassicism and Enlightenment thinking, and had also most definitely turned its back on the light, decorative frivolity of the 18th-century Rococo (as had neoclassicism). Romanticism was essentially an attitude rather than a style because any “style” of painting or other art was used during the period (that is, anything that was in use up to that time, including neoclassical styles of painting, just to be confusing), so it was an ideal platform for exploring the nuances of the human condition.
Romanticism is, however, even more complex than the explanation given above because there are many layers to it in all areas of society and culture, and it is thus open to an abundance of interpretations by scholars of the history of art, music, literature and more (happily for them). So I took another look at Romanticism — primarily because there are several paintings from the movement that particularly resonate at this time of year (more on that momentarily) — and found a good, concise description based on what the Romantic artists themselves believed about themselves and their art. It was that they characterized the movement as placing the highest value on the artist’s own sensibility, spontaneity and originality. They also felt that each work of art, if it was to express the artist’s individual life experiences, necessarily had to be unique in its form and language (written, visual, musical). Interestingly, this meant (to them) that many paintings of ostensibly “romantic” subjects, such as exotic or wild landscapes, scenes from medieval literature and history, and themes of supernatural phenomena, as well as those that merely imitated the styles of the great Romantic artists, were rejected for their lack of individual authenticity.
Fortunately, these criteria still resulted in an abundance of very good art (and, admittedly, some not so good). One avenue that Romanticism took was an interest in the medieval period, which at the time was understood to be a period of darkness, superstition, barbarism, mystery and miracle. The Romantic imagination expanded their conception of the Middle Ages to include all the fantastic (as in fantasy world) possibilities open to it, including the nightmarish, the ghoulish, the infernal and the terrible, as well as all the figures that emerge from the imagination when reason sleeps. And herein lies its applicability to this time of year as we approach Halloween (All Hallows Eve, Samhain, etc.), because Romantic artists produced some chilling images indeed.
One of the most famous is “The Nightmare,” by Swiss artist Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), who was one of the first painters to depict the darker terrain of the human subconscious. He is noted for being among the earliest Romantics to specialize in the night moods of horror, the macabre and in dark fantasies. (There are at least a couple versions of “The Nightmare”.) Spaniard Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) carefully considered the tenets of the Enlightenment and neoclassical penchant for rationality and order, and what their dismissal might mean. He did eventually reject them in favour of commitment to the Romantic spirit, investing his art with unleashed imagination, emotion, and even nightmares. An early work, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” from 1798, is a self-portrait that reflects this deliberation, featuring creatures symbolic of folly (owls) and ignorance (bats). In later years, Goya created the Black Paintings, frescoes he painted on the walls of his farmhouse that are terrifying and disturbing reflections of his state of mind near the end of his life.
Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest, oil on canvas, National Gallery Berlin.
jpg, KI
Speaking of madness, one Romantic idea of the artist is of a person possessed — in the sense that their whole creative function is in control of an obsession that s/he cannot master. One such artist was (the legitimately mad, paranoid and murderous) British artist Richard Dadd (1817-1886) who was incarcerated for the last 43 years of his life. During that time, he painstakingly produced “The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke” (from 1855 to 1864), one of the strangest and most psychologically disturbing paintings of the Romantic period. And for sheer atmospheric effect, you can hardly do better than to explore Romantic landscape paintings (which is where the sublime comes into it) that, in addition to invoking feelings of awe and terror, can be downright spooky. A good example of this can be seen in German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich’s (1774-1840) canvas “Abbey in the Oak Forest” of 1810, which is rich in the emblems of death. The leaning crosses and tombstones, the black of mourning, the skeletal trees, the destruction that time has wrought, and the misty, moody atmosphere, all combine to produce a rather haunting mien.
Not forgetting the literature of the period, Romanticism also gave us the horrifying classics “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevensen, and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde, among others (all preceded by Gothic works such as “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole). Even in Canada, we have the melodramatic and (at the time) blood-curdling historical novel “Wacousta” (published 1832) by John Richardson, warranted to produce any number of thrills in the breast of the 19th-century reader. And if you’d like a little musical accompaniment, tune in to works by composers such as Beethoven, Mahler, Elgar, Wagner and Mussorgsky (“Night on Bald Mountain” anyone?) for added effect.
So if you’re looking for some seasonal artistic fare, be sure to check out what the darker side of Romanticism has to offer. It’s sure to put you in the mood.
Kamille Parkinson earned a PhD in Art History from Queen’s University, and is presently a freelance writer and art historian at large. You can find her writing at Word Painter Projects on Facebook, and can contact her at artabouttownygk@gmail.com
Art About Town
Please check with each venue to see if the event/exhibition is actually taking place.
Gallery Raymond
- Gallery artists, to Nov. 7.
Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre
- “Archive” 100Women100Years, October.
Studio 22 Open Gallery
- “Slowing Down” by Debra Krakow and ‘Conversations’ by Erika Olson (to Nov. 28)
Window Art Gallery
- Kingston Printmakers, through November
Agnes Etherington Art Centre
- Shannon Bool: Modernism and its Discontents (to Dec. 6)
- Chantal Rousseau: Tapdancing Seagull and Other Stories (to Dec. 6)
- Rembrandt and Company: 17th C Dutch Paintings from the Bader Collection (to April 11, 2021)
- Nocturn (to April 11, 2021)
- Garden Studies (to Dec. 6)
- Sandra Brewster: Blur (to Sept. 6, 2021)
