ROMANTICISM An artistic movement of the middle 1800s that was a reaction against Enlightenment values and creeping industrialization It stressed the importance of strong emotion, especially the feelings evoked from people confronting untamed nature It tended to evoke powerful feelings of nationalism, noting the spiritual connection between peoples and the unique geographical conditions in which they lived.
“Miners in the Sierras” Charles Christian Nahl and August Wenderoth, 1851-52
Catlin and His Indian Guide Approaching Buffalo under White Wolf Skins George Catlin, 184648
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1861 Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (Westward Ho!)
Albert Bierstadt (American) Among the Sierra Nevada, California - 1868 Among the Sierra Nevada, California, one of Bierstadt's largest and most spectacular Western landscapes, was painted in Rome during the winter of 1867-68 and toured throughout Europe during the following year. Though it was probably the only glimpse Europeans, and even most Americans, would ever have of the majesty of the West, in fact the painting was a construct from start to finish. Upon its public exhibition in the United States, some critics faulted Bierstadt for not producing a topographically accurate portrait of the landscape, while others praised him for his "power of combination, an ideal union of the most splendid and characteristic features of our western mountains, a perfect type of the American idea of what our scenery ought to be, if it is not so in reality."
"The Stampede by Lighting” Frederic Remington, 1908
THOMAS COLE’S THE COURSE OF EMPIRE, 1834-1836 Part of the Hudson River School of Artists Influenced by Romanticism Depicted life in and around the Hudson River Valley Suggested that God was manifested in nature
Thomas Cole, The Savage State, 1836
Thomas Cole, Pastoral or Arcadian State, 1834
Thomas Cole, The Consummation of Empire, 1835-1836
Thomas Cole, Destruction, 1836
Thomas Cole, Desolation, 1836