Printmaking in the age of Romanticism

Text only. Images present in original document.
Exhibition Review September 2009


Exhibition: Printmaking in the age of Romanticism
Art Gallery of New South Wales
6 August -25 October 2009















Royal Tiger, 1829
Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)
Lithograph


There are 170 works in this exhibition and they all have been selected from the Art Gallery of NSW’s permanent collection.

Rarely shown, to protect the works on paper from strong light, they represent the epitome of the Romanticism period. In particular many of these works are taken from the heyday of the period, 1820 -1830.

Well known painters of this period are well represented here but also lesser known engravers. The print medium allowed painters such as Turner, Constable and Blake from England and Delacroix and Gericault of France to reach a wider audience. Prints were more accessible to the working classes.

The medium of print enabled artists to express their thoughts and feelings in a way not possible with other mediums. This expression of the artists’ creative inner emotion was an idea shaped at this time.
Many diverse subjects are presented including scenes from well known literature such as writings of Shakespeare, Chaucer and classic tales from Greek or Roman mythology.

William Blake represents Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with his engraving of “Canterbury Pilgrims” (1810) in which each person represented is named. This quite long piece is made up of very fines lines including the background sky and landscape.

Antoine Jean Gros is represented by a lithograph titled “Chief of the Mamelukes on horseback, calling for help” (1817) which follows the Orientalist style. Gros’ paintings often represented Napoleon’s victories of various campaigns and though the Mamelukes were defeated by Napoleon, he so admired their fierceness that he recruited them to the Imperial Guards. This is one of the few lithographs undertaken by Gros.

Theodore Gericault has captured various scenes of social history with his lithographs. “The Boxers” (1818) shows two men of contrasting skin tones engaged in bare fisted boxing. The crowd eggs them on in the outdoor arena. Gericault has used reversal of his drawing techniques to capture the contrast of the two men.

Also displayed is the very detailed work, “The Flemish Farrier” (1821) which was completed during Gericault’s stay in London. It captures the steaming atmosphere of the smithy and shows other figures including a small child.

Eugene Delacroix is another of the French painters in this collection of printed works. Using zoo animals as his models he created a series of works in the later years of Romanticism.





Delacroix was inspired by Gericault’s work and also influenced by such English animal painters as Stubbs and James Ward. The Romantics saw nature’s primal energies as being beyond human reason. The zoo animals from Africa were fascinating to them. Delacroix used similar subjects and poses for his oil paintings as well as these lithographs. For example, the print “Lion of Atlas” (1829) is almost identical to the oil painting, “Lion devouring rabbit”. Some of his works were criticised for being too violent.





It is very interesting to see the range of subjects undertaken throughout this collection. Many of the works relating to myths and legends seem to capture dark emotions that may have surrounded the people of the time and the Napoleonic Wars and yet there are other works that aspire to represent the grandeur of Nature.

The use of the print medium allowed intricate detail – detail we have come to expect in our daily news coverage and advertisements but which was not so readily available to the people of the Romantic period. A tour of this exhibition can give the viewer an insight into the life and times of these extraordinary artists.







References:

 Personal Notes of Exhibition
• Websites:
o http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/current
o http://www.theblurb.com.au/Issue104/Romanticism.htm
o http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/arts/event/12180/printmaking-in-the-age-of-romanticism.aspx
o http://www.eugenedelacroix.org/Lion-with-a-Rabbit.html