1. Romanticism vs. Realism
Romanticism – ( ) an artistic movement in reaction to the despair of life during the Industrial Revolution. The Romantic period, which was an escape from despair, can be seen in visual art, music and literature. Romantics valued individual experiences, imagination, freedom and a break from normal expectations of ‘art’.
Romanticism = idealistic, imaginative, implausible, supernatural, artificial, exotic, complex, unrealistic, dramatic and/or an escape from reality

2. Romanticism vs. Realism
Realism- ( ) was an artistic movement that tended to portray life as it was in reality. Realism is considered to be a response to Romanticism and focused on reality, particularly the unpleasant aspects of life.
Realism = truthful, accurate, normal, unpleasant aspects of life, ordinary people, all classes of people, and/or focus on struggles of everyday life

3. Romanticism vs. Realism
Romanticism: idealistic, imaginative, implausible, supernatural, artificial, exotic, complex, unrealistic, dramatic and/or an escape from reality
Realism: truthful, normal, unpleasant aspects of life, ordinary people, all classes of people, and/or focus on struggles of everyday life
Over the next several slides, you will be presented with examples or visual art, music and literature that is associated with either Romanticism or Realism. Can you tell the difference?
Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800)
Honoré Daumier’s The Third Class Wagon 1862–1864
Realism
Romanticism

4. Romanticism vs. Realism
Realism: truthful, normal, unpleasant aspects of life, ordinary people, all classes of people, and/or focus on struggles of everyday life
REALISM…
Hubert von Herkomer, Hard Times 1885
Why?
This depiction focuses on a working class family and their unpleasant, real-life struggles to survive

5. Romanticism vs. Realism
Karl Bryullov, The Last Day of Pompeii, 1833
Romanticism: idealistic, imaginative, implausible, supernatural, artificial, exotic, complex, unrealistic, dramatic and/or an escape from reality
Why?
Even though the Volcano that destroyed Pompeii was a real historical event, this depiction is romantic in that it is imaginative, complex, exotic and dramatic.

6. Romanticism vs. Realism
Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, 1808
Beethoven’s 5th Symphony could be described as imaginative, dramatic, complex and an escape from reality

7. Romanticism vs. Realism
Workers performing strenuous work in a field
REALISM
Jean-François Millet, The Gleaners, 1857

8. Romanticism vs. Realism
A novel about Ichabod Crane, featuring superstition, ghosts, headless horsemen and suspense…
Fictional, supernatural, imaginative, escape from reality
ROMANTICISM
Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1820

9. Romanticism vs. Realism
A novel about the turmoil in London and Paris that eventually led to the French and American Revolutions
Real-life ordeals, focus on different classes
REALISM
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

10. Romanticism vs. Realism
Thomas Jones, The Bard, 1774
A bard is an old English word for a poet or playwright. This image depicts the 1283 event in which English King Edward I (same king from the Braveheart story) conquered Wales and ordered all the bards to be slaughtered.

11. Romanticism vs. Realism
A book written in 1826 about the struggles of a handful of Mohican warriors caught up in the French and Indian War (1757)
Fictional, imaginative, dramatic
ROMANTICISM
James Fennimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, 1826

12. Romanticism vs. Realism
Real life struggles of workers
REALISM
Ilya Repin, Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870–1873

13. Romanticism vs. Realism
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People 1830
Idealistic, imaginative…

14. Romanticism vs. Realism
Ordinary activities of a worker (laundress)
REALISM
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Laundress, 1761

15. Romanticism vs. Realism
Mozart’s Symphony #40, 1788
…could be described as imaginative, dramatic, complex and an escape from reality

16. Romanticism vs. Realism
Ilya Repin, Religious Procession in Kursk Province, 1880–83
Dirty, dusty, poor and crippled children at the forefront…

17. Romanticism vs. Realism
Ilya Repin, Leo Tolstoy, 1887
Ilya Repin’s portrait of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy
Ordinary, normal, real-life (a famous author with a book in a chair)

18. Romanticism vs. Realism
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1869
An 1869 novel detailing the French Invasion of Russia in the early 1800s and the effect on Russian society, as seen from the perspective of five Russian aristocratic families….
Real-life struggles of life in Russia

19. Romanticism vs. Realism
Ivan Aivazovsky, 1850, "The Ninth Wave"
People clinging to debris from a ship the morning after a shipwreck. The warm tones represents hope for survival. This painting is sometimes called "the most beautiful painting in Russia“.
Romanticized, idealized, dramatized

20. Romanticism vs. Realism
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818
Romanticized, idealized, dramatized