The French Romanticism

“Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix (1830)

As we know, the Romanticism was originated in Germany in the late XVIII century. But then this movement was spread in Europe really fast. In different countries, the Romanticism had its own distinctive features. It’s interesting that the French Revolution (1789 – 1794) was the source of the Romanticism. But at first, the Romanticism, inspired by this revolution, influenced the culture of Germany and England, and then, in the 1820s, this movement reached the French culture. Maybe it happened because French people were too busy with their revolution and didn’t have time for all these new movements. They had to build the new France. So instead of them, the Romanticism was developed by the Germans.

Actually, the facts of the French Romanticism are all around the events of the July Revolution in the 1830s. The French Romanticism kind of prepared this revolution, accompanied it, and lived with its results. The main peculiarity of the French Romanticism is a deep connection with The French Revolution. This connection created a new cultural model of the world and people and gave a new understanding of French history. The bases of the French Romanticism were the nature cult, the cult of human feelings, and the negative attitude to the modern civilization. The main issue of this movement in France was the problem of the best social organization.

The French Revolution helped the Romanticism followers understood the dependence of art from history. The importance of the personality of a real author and his biography increased in the French Romanticism.

I think the most significant work of the French Romanticism is “Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix (1830). I’ve chosen this work because we can see the most significant features in this picture. First of all, it’s the spirit of revolution that was in the French society that time. In the foreground, we can see the woman. She isn’t perfect and is in a dirty dress. It distinguishes the Romanticism from the Classical art with its perfect bodies. The hair, fluttering in the wind, is one more significant feature of the Romanticism. It came to the French Romanticism from the German Romanticism (for example Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich).

There is one interesting fact about the woman in this work. In this picture, she is a symbol of the Liberty for the French society. There is a guess that exactly this woman was a prototype for the Statue of Liberty in the USA.

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