A History of European Art

Lecture 40: Romanticism in the 19

th Century

The “timeless torpor” and natural eroticism of these women, in relaxed poses

that are never arti¿ cial and never cold, are communicated to us by colors

newly infused with subtle warmth. This painting embodies the palette of

the mature Delacroix, based on his continuing study of Titian, Rubens, and

other colorists.

At the same moment, a great colorist, whose work was also known to

Delacroix, was painting across the English Channel, in London. He was

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). Turner infused nature with his

spirit, his imaginings. Nature was ¿ ltered through his sensibility, and that

sensibility, especially in his mature paintings, dictated the forms that nature

took on his canvas. Turner was a proli¿ c painter who left 300 paintings and

20,000 watercolors, of which just one work must suf¿ ce here, The Burning

of the Houses of Parliament (1834–1835). When ¿ re devastated the Houses

of Parliament, Turner, an eyewitness, made two paintings of the scene. On

the one hand, they are reports, showing Westminster Bridge and the medieval

towers of Westminster Abbey across the river. But most of all, they show an

infernal blaze that unites all the elements of the picture. Indeed, one historian

has accurately observed that this painting unites the four elements—earth,

air, ¿ re, and water—in a cosmic display that emphasized what was lost.

The coloristic expression typical of much of Romantic painting is found, in

its different ways, in Turner and Delacroix. The next lecture will introduce us

to the black and white world of Daumier’s lithographs and the dark, earthy

world of mid-century Realism. Ŷ

John Constable:

The Hay Wain, 1821, oil on canvas, 4’ 3 ¼” x 6’ 1” (130.2 x 185.4 cm),

National Gallery, London, Great Britain.

Eugène Delacroix:

Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1827, oil on canvas,

6’ 10 ¼” x 4’ 10” (209 x 147 cm), Musée des Beaux-Arts,

Bordeaux, France.

Works Discussed