The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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Heroic Themes in Art

LOOKING AHEAD

50 CHAPTER 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music

50 Book5

nineteenth century) attracted the growing middle class. The

exchange of ideas and themes among the artists of this era

encouraged a new and lively synthesis of the arts.

Gros and the Glorification of the Hero

Among the principal themes of Romantic art were those

that glorified creative individualism, patriotism, and

nationalism. Napoleon Bonaparte, the foremost living hero

of the age and the symbol of French nationalism, was the

favorite subject of many early nineteenth-century French

painters. His imperial status was celebrated in the official

portraits executed by his “first painter,” Jacques-Louis

David (see Figure 28.2); but the heroic dimension of his

career was publicized by yet another member of his staff,

Antoine-Jean Gros (1775–1835). Gros’ representations of

Napoleon’s military campaigns became powerful vehicles

of political propaganda.

Gros was a pupil of David, but, unlike David, he reject-

ed the formal austerity of Neoclassicism. In his

monumental canvas, Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims at

Jaffa(Figure 29.2), Gros converted a minor historical

event—Napoleon’s tour of his plague-ridden troops in

Jaffa (in Palestine)—into an exotic allegorical drama that

cast Napoleon in the guise of Christ as healer. He

enhanced the theatricality of the scene by means of

atmospheric contrasts of light and dark. Vivid details draw

the eye from the foreground, filled with the bodies of the

diseased and dying, into the background with its distant

cityscape.

In its content, the painting manifested the Romantic

taste for themes of personal heroism, suffering, and death.

When it was first exhibited in Paris, an awed public

adorned it with palm branches and wreaths. But the inspi-

ration for Gros’ success was also the source of his undoing:

after Napoleon was sent into exile, Gros’ career declined,

and he committed suicide by throwing himself into the

River Seine.

Popular Heroism in Goya and Géricault

Throughout most of Western history, the heroic image in

art was bound up with Classical lore and Christian legend.

But with Gros, we see one of the earliest efforts to glorify

contemporary heroes and heroic events. The Spanish

master Francisco Goya (1746–1828) helped to advance

this phenomenon. He began his career as a Rococo-style

tapestry designer and came into prominence as court

painter to the Spanish king Charles IV. But following the

invasion of Spain by Napoleon’s armies in 1808, Goya’s art

took a new turn. Horrified by the guerrilla violence of the

French occupation, he became a bitter social critic, pro-

ducing some of the most memorable records of human

warfare and savagery in the history of Western art.

The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders

of Madrid (see Figure 29.1) was Goya’s nationalistic

response to the events ensuing from an uprising of Spanish

As with literature, so in the visual arts and music the Romantics

favored subjects that gave free rein to the imagination. Nature

and the natural landscape, the hero and heroism, and nationalist

struggles for political independence—the very themes that

intrigued Romantic writers—also inspired much of the art and

music of the nineteenth century. Romantic artists abandoned the

intellectual discipline of the Neoclassical style in favor of emotion

and spontaneity. In place of the cool rationality and order of a

Neoclassical composition, the Romantics introduced a studied

irregularity and disorder.

Even the most superficial comparison of Neoclassical and

Romantic paintings reveals essential differences in style:

Neoclassical artists usually defined form by means of line (an arti-

ficial or “intellectual” boundary between the object and the space

it occupied); Romantics preferred to model form by way of color.

Neoclassicists generally used shades of a single color for each

individual object, while Romantics might use touches of comple-

mentary colors to heighten the intensity of the painted object. And

whereas Neoclassical painters smoothed out brushstrokes to

leave an even and polished surface finish, Romantics often left

their brushstrokes visible, as if to underline the immediacy of the

creative act. They might deliberately blur details and exaggerate

the sensuous aspects of texture and tone. Rejecting the

Neoclassical rules of propriety and decorum, they made room for

temperament, accident, and individual genius. Romantic com-

posers shared with the artists of their time the development of a

more personal and unconstrained style. They tended to modify the

“rules” of classical composition in order to increase expressive

effect. They abandoned the clarity and precision of the classical

composition, expanding and loosening form and introducing unex-

pected shifts of meter and tempo. Just as Romantic painters

made free use of color to heighten the emotional impact of a sub-

ject, so composers gave tone color—the distinctive quality of

musical sound made by a voice, a musical instrument, or a combi-

nation of instruments—a status equal to melody, harmony, and

rhythm. During the nineteenth century, the symphony orchestra

reached heroic proportions, while smaller, more intimate musical

forms became vehicles for the expression of longing, nostalgia,

and love. Program music, music-drama, and virtuoso instrumental

forms added to the wide range of Romantic music.

Finally, the period saw the emergence of grand opera and

the Romantic ballet, artforms that (as with the other arts of the

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