The Age Of Enlightenment

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a new movement took place in the culture that would take place of the Age of Enlightenment. This new movement would reestablish the intellectual, artist, literacy values in the culture of the time. The previous movement of the Age of Reason was more intellectually based, as were the new one was emotionally based. That is why this new movement style was known as Romanticism. The shift from a more intellectual based culture to a more emotional based culture was due to the rapid change in the culture of the time. A rather large contributing factor was the increase in industrialization occurring in the nineteenth century. This rise in industrialization caused large percentages of the population to live

Artist began to become more focused on the ability to express feelings of themselves into their own artwork. Artists such as the German painter Caspar David Friedrich boldly states the “the artist’s feeling is his law”(Friedenthal), and poet William Wordsworth says that poetry should begin “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”(Wordsworth). This expression of feelings led to a common occurrence in self-analysis. The subjects of artworks turned to fantastic and exotic scenes of nature largely, but also people. The style of Romanticism was not just purely focused of emotion and nature. As with many other styles, romanticism exhibited an element of erotic love along with eternal femininity. Romanticism has a unique aspect that there was a political and national commitment to the values that it held until around the mid-19th century. With the level of commitment to the values that Romanticism held, there were countless paintings being produced from a wide variety of artists which exhibited these values. There are some that stand above the rest for their ability to convey the values of the time. As so the paintings of Liberty Leading the People, the Burial of Atala, and Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog represent the values of romanticism the

There had been multiple revolutions happening, and fights starting for people to be treated right. Following the revolutions people still remembered them and felt strongly about what had happened, so there was a plethora of paintings done representing what they had fought for and what they had one. One of the strongest paintings representing this concept, is Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. Eugene portrayed a scene in which a woman is leading a diverse group of people behind her, forwards on the battlefield. The women, leading the group of people, with a breast exposed shows that there was still a strong attraction towards femininity in the culture that was erotic in nature, as there still is. The title “Liberty Leading the People” exemplifies how the artist along with the population believes that everyone should have liberty, and if anyone stands in their way, then they will not be dealt