I have chosen to compare the works of romanticism artists and impressionist artists, and i choose these two styles of art as I simply enjoy them the most out of the styles in the Victorian era. For romanticism it feels as if we can finally see the start of some high fantasy artists as we know it to be today with the grand portrayal of scene and character. With impressionist artists they are taking the very real world often and bringing a life to a picture that is normally difficult to find in the real world. The pieces I have picked for Romanticism are Wanderer above the sea fog by Casper David Friedrich 1818, and Desolation 5th part of the series The course of an empire by Thomas Cole. As for the impressionist pieces I have chosen The Cliff at Etretat after the storm by Claude Monet 1885 and Sunrise at ivry by Armand Guillaumin 1873.
Romanticism-
Wanderer above the sea fog
By Casper David Friedrich, 1818
This is my favorite of the four chosen paintings. In my mind it is the way it sets the man facing the sea against the world itself and he stands in challenge to it with a will and pride that the waves simply cannot wash away. It is in how he is centered on the piece taking up just enough of the portrait to stand out against the waves. Yet even with his centered presence there is enough open space around him to display the power that is backing the ocean. The use of light within the piece feels excellent as well as he stands out so strikingly against the white foreground yet he is not simply shaded in with black but a green that stands sharply with the rocks and the edges of his suite.
When I compare a Romantic piece of art like this to Impressionism I first look for movement in the scene. It is firstly in the movement of the waves that one of the strongest oppositions to impressionism is made. The power and uncontrolled nature of the waves granted by the feeling of movement is able to sharpen the emotions that are trying to display as a whole.
The connection that I personally feel for the piece and why it is my favorite out of the four I choose is that it reminds me of a book series. The way in which the man is starting out into the sea as if he is all that is left and yet it doesn’t matter reminds me of Rand Al’Thor from the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. To mee it is as if the character made in the book series that began releasing 70 years later perfectly fits into the role that the man upon the rock is portraying. I just don’t know another way to describe it than a puzzle piece from another set going perfectly into the puzzle and simply making the end result better.
Desolation, 5th part of the series, The Course of an Empire
By Thomas Cole 1836
Here again we have a single figure standing in the face of the world before it yet in the piece Desolation it is not with pride and will power to face it down. Instead it is the final piece of a memory standing against time as it creeps up on it. In the foreground the moon is rising signifying the end to an era that will only be known in myth. The landscape that once was dominated by human hands being stripped away and returned into nature. With the ocean so vast before the column showing just how tiny of a part it played in the story of the world that dwarfs whatever was there before.
I chose The Cliff at Etretat after the storm as it is a piece that can carry itself well in digital form though I will get into that later. The piece makes interesting use of shading as in the process of making the piece the artist would paint on more layers with the paint underneath still being wet. This means that most of the blending occurs naturally due to the brush stroke itself and enhances the greens and blues in the ocean especially. Impressionist pieces often feel like photos with how still the movement within the price is yet with how the Monet did the mixing within this piece you can easily imagine movement within the waves themselves as they creep up on the beach. HIs use of color is also enjoyable as the stark copper greens against the cliff give the impression of life to the still rock faces as if they are moving with the ocean. His use in lighting gives a good impression in the piece through the middle offshoot does appear a bit darker than it should. I think this is due to how the offshoot of a cliff doesn't appear as far back or tucked behind the right cliff face as it should.
I enjoy the peace as the grey cliffs are spruced with these bright flashes of color that catch the eye and draw attention to the boulder that is spruced with flashes of white, red, and yellow.
The Artists wish to display a place from his youth is nice and it plays in well with the friend he made in the area who was also taken with the cliffs, that being one Guy de Maupassant. The effort taken to make such a piece as well as not only would have to rush in and out of the area due to tidal work but as he made it during the winter the paints would have been a difficulty to work properly in the cold.
I choose Sunrise at Irvy due to the use of sharp lines that is not often found in many impressionist works and I believe it is due to the message that the artist Armand Guillaumin wanted to display. The message being the factories are destroying the natural beauty of what nature has provided. The artists themselves show in both their writings and other pieces of art a leaning towards the Romantics so that comes as no surprise. It is their use of this style of painting to disparage factories that I found interesting though. As we often see, impressionism is used to display the beauty of the world around the artist be it in people or landscape with the use of colors and painting techniques. The counter point thus being made by Guillaumin using impressionism thus stands out much stronger than it would have if he did it in let's say realism.
If you remove the factories and their effects on the landscape it is a nice painting that makes good use of color and shading in the impressionistic style. Though spacing would be off without the smoke as there would be too much empty sky for it to be considered a nicer piece in the style. Yet with filling the background with the sharp lines of the factories and the smoke that they produce the effects stand out that much more. There is a pop to the factories themselves as they stand tall against the rest of the skyline in contrast to the many buildings both around and in front of them. The blocking of the sun also plays a nice touch as he is able to make the foreground much darker and depressing reasonably instead of having it bathed in the nice lighting effects that the sun would require for such a piece, The color use in the water is also nice as the blue stand sharply against an almost polluted looking yellow.
In both of the romantic pieces there is a movement being openly displayed and calling for attention. For the Wanderer in the Fog that movement is the waves crashing against the cliffs as a display of power and force that nature holds. In the Desolation there is a flow and life that I feel like a six sense being that the world around the building and pillar is alive and not dead or dying. Movement itself is one of the basic parts of judging art and between Romantic and Impressionist pieces the impressionist pieces feel like photos with the lack of it within the frame. In the Cliff at Etretat after the storm there simply is none of the life one is expected to see after that storm which thus in naming one feels off put. Then if you look upon the water even though the pieces main drawing point is meant to be the flow within the waves it simply isn’t there. There isn’t any of the foam one expects at the top of each wave, there isn’t unity within the movement of the water that is expected of the ocean, and the paddle boat coming into the bay could just as easily be rocks for how much the water looks to have affected it. I think it is a part of the impressionistic style that was lacking in the early days and would be brought up with Van Gogh's work and how they flow but until then Impressionism feels dead with how lacking that movement element is within the pieces.
Secondly I think Romanticism is a hard painting style to out due for me because of what it is trying to display compared to what impressionism is trying to display. If i were to describe the first thing that comes to my mind when i think of the Victorian era as it is more famously known as i am usually thinking of the commerce and the exploration of the united states along with an almost steampunk vibe from England. There is also the end of the feudalistic era occurring thus there is a last push for the holds that the old stories from the Romans and knights have on the artistic populace. When I think of Impressionistic art I mostly associate it with the start of a form of art. I think that impressionism for the most part was simply to know of an art form for too long of a time and that it was what led into the era of shape art. I think my negative connotation of what leads after impressionism affected my view of the art form itself at the end of the day.
Finally I think that impressionism lacks a step back in painting things when you look at a piece over the screen instead of in person. There is a lack of the rise and shadows that the impressionist pieces rely so much on over the screen format. The texturing that you sense with other pieces isn’t there online for impressionistic pieces as it is the paint itself and not the way the lines are made in the piece if that makes sense. I guess it's like if you put puff paints on a shirt but when you took a photo of that shirt none of the rise or 3-d-ness of the paint was there.
Sunset at Ivry by GUILLAUMIN, Armand. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.wga.hu website: https://www.wga.hu/html_m/g/guillau/03guilla.html
The Cliffs at Etretat, 1885 by Claude Monet. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.claude-monet.com/the-cliffs-at-etretat.jsp
The Course of Empire (paintings). (2021, July 6). Retrieved from Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire_(paintings)
Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, January 21). Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Retrieved from Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog
