Romanticism was a reaction against the Neoclassicism that invaded the 19th century, and marked a veritable intellectual rupture. Found in the writings of Victor Hugo and Lord Byron, amongst others, its ideas are expressed in painting by Eugène Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich and William Blake. In sculpture, François Rude indicated the direction this new artistic freedom would take, endowing his work with a movement and expression never previously seen.

By retracing the different stages of its evolution, this book offers a study of the different aspects of the Romantic movement. Thanks to a thorough and in-depth analysis, the reader can understand in its entirety this movement which revolutionised the era.


About the author:
Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, Léon Rosenthal was a teacher of Art History at the famous Lycée Louis le Grand. After his “Sandro Botticelli and his Reputation at the Present Time?", Ernst Gombrich credits him with the observation that Botticelli’s popularity was primarily because his figures could have so many different attributes read into them. Rosenthal wrote many books which are now considered as unmissible as his Géricault, or Romantic Painting: Essay on the Evolution of French Painting from 1815 to 1830.