Neoclassical and Romanticism (1750–1850)

Characteristics: Art that recaptures Greco-Roman grace and grandeur, the triumph of imagination and individualityChief artists and major works: David, Ingres, Greuze, Canova, Caspar Friedrich, Gericault, Delacroix, Turner, Benjamin WestHistorical events: Enlightenment (18th century); Industrial Revolution(1760–1850) American Revolution (1775–1783); French Revolution(1789–1799); Napoleon crowned emperor of France (1803)

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of classical antiquity.If Rococo style represented a decadent culture, then Neoclassical subject matter was art with a moral character. Unlike the Rococo art movement, the purpose of art was no longer decorative but to inspire values while yearning towards the greatness of Greco-Roman cultures. Art had a political role to play.In its purest form, it is a style principally derived from the architecture of classical antiquity, the Vitruvian principles, and the work of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio.Neoclassical Art is a severe and unemotional form of art harkening back to the grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome. Its rigidity was a reaction to the overbred Rococo style and the emotional charged Baroque style. The rise of Neoclassical Art was part of a general revival of interest in classical thought, which was of some importance in the American and French revolutions.Important Neo-classicists include the architects Robert Smirke and Robert Adam, the sculptors Antonio Canova,Jean-Antoine Houdon and Bertel Thorvaldsen, and painters J.A.D. Ingres, Jacques-Louis David and Anton Raphael Mengs.Neoclassical Art was also a primary influence on 19th-century Academic Art.

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.Romanticism was arguably the largest artistic movement of the late 1700s.Romantic art focused on emotions, feelings, and moods of all kinds including spirituality, imagination, mystery, and fervor. The subject matter varied widely including landscapes, religion, revolution, and peaceful beauty. The brushwork for romantic art became looser and less precise.William Blake was an English painter and poet who was very influential during the late-eighteenth-century Romantic Age of poetry and the visual arts. John Constable was an English Romantic painter chiefly known for his landscape paintings of the area surrounding his English home.Romanticism was a major international movement that was influential in shaping modern views of art, literature, and music.