The Fall of Napoleon and the Rise of Romanticism

摘要

Whereas traditional views tend to stress the impact of early 19th-century French painters on their 'British counterparts, it also is true that English innovations―notably a new emphasis on pure landscape painting, the experimental, impressionistic techniques of watercolorists, and the works of Romantic writers―exerted an important influence on French art at this time. With the defeat of France's emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815, and the restoration of peace, French and English civilians could, for the first time in almost 20 years, cross the English Channel in safety. Among them were artists, connoisseurs, and collectors eager to rediscover and explore the culture of their erstwhile enemies. Following the end of the Napoleonic regime, however, a conviction also grew that the 18th-century Enlightenment ideals of rationalism, confidence, and order―given artistic expression in the smooth perfection of the Neoclassical style―no longer were valid. A new array of attitudes and aesthetic sensibilities, which came to be called Romanticism, now celebrated extremes of emotion, the irrational, and the power of nature to awe and inspire.