Chapter 34: A Darker World

Napoleon and the Romantic Imagination

The General Bonaparte, c. 1797-1798 Jacques-Louis David

Oil on canvas, 31 7/8 by 25 5/8

Romanticism
Romanticism conflicts with the natural, rational order of Neoclassicism. It abandons the rational of the mind for the intuition (and emotion) of the soul. Feeling, not thought, reveals the truth. Spiritual, not material, is the focus. Romantics seemed to understood that the old world was gone. Revolutions political, scientific, Industrial were changing the path of humankind forever. It was a time of reinvention. Some artists believed they were changing the world with their art, like the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Romanticism
Romantics were fascinated with individual intuition and creativity. The spiritual is inextricably bound to the unifying principles of Nature. Romantic art contains themes of adventure, man versus nature, heroic quests for knowledge, tragically learned lessons, and journeys to fantastic other worlds. These reflect the Romantic fascination with emotion and the imagination. Romantics were drawn to the workings of the human mind, journeys of selfdiscovery, and the journey of humankind as a whole.

Romanticism in Art
Each individual has the right to (and should) have his/her own interpretation of all. Stress is on the individual, which conflicts with the Classical/Neoclassical idea of universal truths and universal expression. Artists express themselves in individual, personal ways, and the viewers should understand that.

Napoleon A Romantic Hero

Napoleon was a successful military leader, fiercely dedicated to principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality. He abolished serfdom throughout much of Europe, created stability in France, and wished to bring stability to all of Europe. He was a brilliant administrator, who reorganized the education system and civil law. He was the savior to many who had lived in war torn countries, including France. He was a man of common origin who had risen by his skills to dominate the world.

Spain
Under the rule of King Charles III (1759 1788), Spain had instituted many liberal reforms. King Charles IV, however, was frightened by the French Revolution, so he repealed the reforms. He also banned books from France, which he thought might encourage the Spanish people to revolt as the French had.

Francisco Goya, The Family of Charles IV, 1800, Oil on canvas,

8 9 by 11

Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas, 1656

Francisco Goya, The Family of Charles IV, 1800, Oil on canvas, 8 9 by 11

Commissioned in 1789, this work consciously echoes Velzquezs Las Meninas, which was in the Royal Spanish Collection. However, the work reads more as parody than compliment. Apparently, the royal family, blind to their unflattering presentation, greatly admired the painting for its grandeur.

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

Like many Europeans, the Spanish artist Francisco Goya supported Napoleons accession to power, believing that Napoleons goal was to establish fair and efficient government. Napoleon sent his army across Spain in an attempt to force Portugal to abandon its alliance with England, which led to the Spaniards attacking the French troops using Guerilla warfare. In March of 1808, Napoleon named his brother King of Spain, causing the Spanish citizens to revolt. Goyas work include social commentary and horrific scenes of war.

Francisco Goya, Great courage! Against corpses! from Disasters of War, No. 39 1810-1814

Francisco Goya,The Third of May, 1808 (1814-1815)

Oil on canvas 8 9 by 13 4

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

When the citizens of Madrid rose up against Napoleon in 1808, hundreds died in battle and hundreds more were executed the next day outside of town. Goya painted his The Third of May to mark this event, which crystallized the opposition of both Goya and the Spanish people to Napoleons despotic actions.

Francisco Goya. Saturn Devouring One of His Children. 18201823,

Oil on plaster

4 9 7/8 2 8 5/8"

Goyas Black Paintings

At the age of 72, Goya moved into a cottage outside of Madrid. Over the next several years, he painted series of 14 oil paintings directly on the walls of his home. These are called the black paintings. The best-known of Goyas Black Paintings was painted in the entrance hall. It is Saturn Devouring One of His Children, taken from Roman Mythology. Perhaps it is the commentary of an old man on society as a whole, a man who had witnessed and recorded unimaginable horrors of war for decades.

The Great Man Theory

The Great Man theory was a concept that was promoted by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and English philosopherhistorian, Thomas Carlyle. It is founded on the belief that the world is governed by a single, divine nature, which is called the absolute mind or the world spirit. It asserts that human history is driven by the achievement of great men (and only men) who lead humanity forward by intuiting the world spirit. An individual such as Napoleon (or Alexander the Great or Charlemagne) personifies the world spirit, manifesting an orderly process to history.

The Great Man Theory

Through conflict, these great men lead the absolute mind to resolution. With each historical step, the absolute mind progresses forward, closer to the ultimate goal of Spiritual Freedom. Of Napoleon, Hegel wrote: I have seen the emperor, that world soul, pass through the streets of the town on horseback. It is a prodigious sensation to see an individual like him who, concentrated at one point, seated on a horse, spreads over the world and dominates it.

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Napoleon - The Heros Fall

Napoleons darker side revealed a man of enormous ego and an insatiable appetite for power. The stability he wished to establish across
Europe was brought about by force. He crowned himself Emperor, abandoning the principles of the French Revolution that he had once supported. He led his armies on endless military campaigns (causing hundreds of thousands of casualties) in an attempt to conquer Europe, and he often suppressed the national identities of those nations he conquered.

Europe in 1815

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Second Exile of Napoleon: St. Helena Island in the Atlantic Ocean

Plaster cast of death mask of Napoleon I from the original 1821

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The Promethean Hero in England

The mythological titan Prometheus had great appeal for English Romantics. Prometheus defied the Gods of Olympia by giving humankind fire, which Zeus wanted only the Gods to have. As punishment, Prometheus was bound to a rock. Each day his liver was eaten out by a bird. Each night, his liver re-grew so that he could be tortured anew the next day. The fire of Prometheus came to represent knowledge and Prometheus was the hero who sacrificed to attain and spread knowledge. George Gordon aka Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), and his wife Mary Shelley (1797-1851) all embraced aspects of the Promethean story.

Lord Byron and the Promethean Ideal

Lord Byrons poem Prometheus (1816) compares Prometheus daring to oppose the Olympians gods with the daring of Napoleon in his visionary conquests. pp. 1085-1086

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Prometheus and Literature

Percy Shelley addressed the Promethean theme in a play, Prometheus Unbound, that upheld the ideals of free will, goodness, and idealism in the face of opposition a response to the mistakes of the French Revolution. Mary Shelleys Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus focuses on the limits, which both Prometheus and the doctor of her novel exceeded and the dreadful consequences that ensued just as Napoleons rise and fall demonstrated. pp. 1087

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749-1832)

Though he personally disliked romanticism, Goethe was responsible for two enduring icons of the movement: Werther and Faust. Faust, written between 18081832, epitomized the Romantic hero, driven to master the world for Faust sold his soul to the devil for knowledge.

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Faust
Goethe conceived the idea for Faust in the 1770s, but did not begin writing until 1800, and continually worked on it until his death in 1832. The play is based on a German legend about a physician who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge beyond the human scope. pp. 1088-1091

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

Goethes Faust is an educated man who longs for greater knowledge and experience. He suffers from the Romantic complaint of ennui (listlessness and melancholy.) The devil (named Mephistopheles) fulfills Fausts desire by permitting him to experience the whole range of Romantic imagination and knowledge in exchange for the promise of his soul. Faust seeks transcendental knowledge, which science, philosophy, and religion and all rational knowledge failed to fulfill.

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Faust and Gretchen with the ever-present Mephistopheles in the background

Gretchen refuses Fausts help to flee prison. She takes responsibility for her actions, and repents to God. God relieves her of her suffering and saves her soul. She dies and is taken to Heaven.

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Thodore Gricault (1791-1824)

Gericault was trained in the Neoclassic style, and made his early reputation painting military subjects that expressed both the heroic ideal and the hollowness of militarism. His masterwork, The Raft of the Medusa, uses a rigid geometry, like Neoclassicism, but savagely critiques the society that spawned disasters such as the one presented. Gricaults portraits of the insane reflect both the scientific belief and the Romantic notions of the time.

Thodore Gricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818

Oil on canvas, 16 1 by 23 6

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Gericault, Portrait of a Kleptomaniac

Gericault, Portrait of Child Murderess

Classic and Romantic After Napoleon

Following Napoleons final defeat and exile in 1815, French art, like French society, battled between Classic and Romantic styles, between royalists and liberals.
Under the leadership of the Count of Artois, Ultraroyalists attempted to stamp out liberalism and all the reforms that had accompanied it.

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