Context

Section 2 - Context
1) The Romantic period

“Liberty leading the people”, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830

Romanticism started in 1798 and ended in 1832.

Delacroix was a romantic painter, and his art style is reflected in every one of his paintings. War was ideal for the romanticism as it combines terror, violence and heroism. In the painting above we can see all of these characteristics, describing what happened in the French Revolution which started in 1789. "Liberty leading the people", communicates the intensity and greatness that the romanticism had.

The artist tried to draw the attention on the centre of the painting. This was done by using a brightly coloured flag which the women holds up in the air. Furthermore, Delacroix created a pyramid structure with dead soldiers on the ground representing the base and liberty as the peak. Mainly, this was used so as to balance the composition that was already too busy.

The use of colors is crucial to demonstrate that every character in the painting was fighting for one same reason, even though they were all from different social classes. The yellow color of the woman’s dress represents liberty, while the red color of the flag represents the workers from Paris.

So that the observer can focus itself on important things, the light is another significant element which was used several times in the Romantic period. 

2) The French Revolution

The French Revolution was a period of radical, social and political disorder in France (1789/1799) that affected French people. It determined the decline of powerful monarchies and churches and the rise of democracy and nationalism. In England, initial support for the Revolution was first idealist, but when the French failed to live up to expectations, most English intellectuals gave up to the Revolution. Instead of searching for rules governing nature and human beings, the romantics searched for a direct communication with nature and treated humans as unique individuals not subject to scientific rules.

On 10 August 1792 the Paris Commune stormed the Tuileries Palace and massacred the Swiss Guards.

3) Characteristics of Romanticism

4) Painting of the Romantic period

       

                                                 

Delacroix, Frédéric Chopin, 1838

5) Lord Byron

Lord Byron together with Keats were considered very good poets from the Romantic period and also rivals. Byron, a nobleman, was a classic romantic hero of that age, recognized principally by being restlessness, courageous and adventurous, which generated great envy in the middle-class Keats. While Byron’s poems described what he saw, imagination and inspiration prevailed in Keats’ poems.