Romanticism 18th-Century Background- The word "Romantic" first became current in 18th-century English and originally meant "romance-like", that is, resembling the strange and fanciful character of medieval romances.

The word came to be associated with the emerging taste for wild scenery, "sublime" prospects, and ruins, a tendency reflected in the increasing emphasis in aesthetic theory on the sublime as opposed to the beautiful. The British writer and statesman Edmund Burke, for instance, identified beauty with delicacy and harmony and the sublime with vastness, obscurity, and a capacity to inspire terror. Continued

Also during the 18th century, feeling began to be considered more important than reason both in literature and in ethics, an attitude epitomized in the work of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. English and German Romantic poetry appeared in the 1790s, and by the end of the century the shift away from reason towards feeling and imagination began to be reflected in the visual arts, for instance in the visionary illustrations of the English poet and painter William Blake, in the brooding, sometimes nightmarish pictures of his friend, the Swiss- English painter Henry Fuseli, and in the sombre etchings of monsters and demons by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya.

The United States- The major manifestation of American Romantic painting was the Hudson River School, which found its inspiration in the rugged wilderness of the north-east United States. Washington Allston, the first American landscapist, introduced Romanticism to the United States by filling his poetic landscapes with subjective feeling. The leading figure of the Hudson River School was the English-born painter Thomas Cole, whose depictions of primeval forests and towering peaks convey a sense of moral grandeur.

Cole's pupil Frederick Church adapted the Hudson River style to South American, European, and Palestinian landscapes. The big names during the period are: William Turner John Constable Francis Goya Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School Asher B. Durand William Blake Thomas Doughty

(English) William Turner - Rain, Steam and Speed

William Turner – Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps

(English) John Constable – The Flatford Mill

John Constable – The Salisbury Cathedral

(Spanish) Francis Goya – Saturn Eating Cronus

Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School The school was founded by Thomas Cole. It was a loose designation form the many landscape artists who lived in NYC from the 1820s to the turn of the century. Their original subject was the natural scenery along the Husdon River and in New England. The other area painted was – the American frontier. The American landscapists felt they were eyewitnesses to the great discoveries of American beauty.

Thomas Cole

Asher B. Durand – Kindred Spirits This 1849 painting depicts William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Cole in Kaaterskill Clove.

William Blake – The Tyger

William Blake - Abel

Thomas Doughty – Denning’s Point, Hudson River

Now, after seeing all of these, write a brief description of what all of these have in common.