Prestel Romanticism: Imagination and Longing in Art: The Beautiful and the Sublime in Art

"In this lavishly illustrated book, Wolf explores how Romantic painting took hold and evolved in Europe. Picking out Blake, Turner, Gericault, Caspar David Friedrich and others, he also asks why Romanticism - once referred to by Goethe as 'sickness' - retains such a broad, powerful presence in contemporary culture." — Apollo This richly illustrated volume invites readers to explore the phenomenon and fascination of Romanticism, a movement that shaped the cultural and aesthetic landscape of the nineteenth century and continues to resonate in modern consciousness. The Romantic era ignited a profound shift in the arts, celebrating imagination, emotion, and the sublime power of nature. The book offers a nuanced view of Romanticism’s revolutionary impact. It journeys through the movement’s origins in the experimental ferment of the eighteenth century, its apex in German, French, and British painting, and its later echoes across Europe and North America. The author examines key figures such as Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, Eugène Delacroix, and Théodore Géricault, exploring their transformative approaches to landscape, light, and human passion. The narrative also unravels the movement’s intricate relationship with themes of melancholy, the sublime, and the spiritual reconciliation of the individual with the universal. Acclaimed art historian Norbert Wolf illuminates Romanticism’s capacity to evoke longing, its poeticization of life through art, and its engagement with profound contradictions— an embrace of both light and shadow. By tracing the stylistic and cultural trajectories of Romantic painting, from Germany’s High Romanticism to the North American Hudson River School, he situates these works within broader artistic and intellectual traditions. Filled with breathtaking reproductions of major works, and backed by impeccable scholarship, Romanticism reveals a movement that transcended national boundaries and bridged the intersection of emotion, imagination, and the sublime.