Romanticism in art

The movement of Romanticism flourished after the Enlightenment; a stark transition to the ideals of using only human reason and scientific means. This movement therefore created a new composition and focus for the arts. Depictions of mysterious and imaginative characters took place in many of the Romantic art paintings. These paintings focused more on the medieval belief in superstition and imaginative stories; not on real based events supported by science. Moreover, the depiction of a sensual woman was mostly used in the Romantic art. She symbolized lust, mystery, and forbidden thinking.

Romantic artists also focused on depicting dramatic actions. This helped them create great illusions of the real world. Dark phantoms were depicted as monsters threatening human life. This lead to depicting many different objects, animals, and people to symbolize a certain emotion or belief, creating more motion in the artworks. Also, most of these paintings have an X-shaped composition, which keeps the viewer looking from all sides of the painting for there is a lot of emotion to look at. Shadow is also used to bring out the objects that are being depicted. This creates a great contrast with the figures and its surrounding. This helped the Romantic artists to depict a more dreamlike composition in their paintings.

Since the Romantic movement also focused on nature, many Romantic artists also depicted the beauty of art to show why Romantic writers worshipped it. Therefore, most animals are depicted to symbolize the beauty and power of nature that humans were to worship in the Romantic movement. Romantic artists also went into depicting many landscape paintings to show how soothing nature was in the old days, for the Industrial revolution was taking over these peaceful and beautiful environments. Artists showed their longing for the rural life people had before the Industrial revolution. It also showed that nature was important if one wanted to have a healthy and tranquil life compared to the dark and hard Industrial world.