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The Age of Revolutions
Neoclassicism: The Grand Style
The movement called "Neoclassicism" is discernible from about 1760, the
artists sought anew the underlying principles of ancient art, and their motivation was
often highly moral.
PRUD'HON
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| Justin and Divine Vengeance pursuing
Crime, 1808 |
Using Neoclassical models for Flaxman and Canova, but these are
transformed by dramatic, emotive lighting.
Francisco de Goya
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| May 3rd, 1808,
1814 |
After the splendors of the seventeenth century, the Spanish seemed
content to adopt current international styles without injecting
much originality.
The Spanish insurgents are driven in a seemingly endless stream
towards the pool of light blood in front of the lethal phalanx of
firing French soldiers. The dramatic light clearly shows the fear
for death on the man's face under gunpoint.
Turner
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| May 3rd, 1808,
1814 |
The sea, stretching to the horizon and beyond, illimitable as the
skies above, is one of the elemental images of Romanticism. It compelled
many artists to paint it, yet remained essentially indefinable--seeming,
in an evening calm, to suggest a peace beyond understanding, but
in storm one of the most formidable agents of inhuman, destructive
power in Nature. Dawn after the wreck may well have started
with Turner snatching at an effect of turbulence of light and color
and painting very fast, perhaps with the aid of the sharp end of
the brush, even fingers.
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| Venice: S. Giorgio Maggiore,
1819 |
Turner's first visit to Italy in 1819 was a revelation of light
and color, a decisive event in his career. The freedom of these
water-colors indicates a direct and revolutionary response to the
haunting, luminous atmospherics of Venice, held in pure transparent
tints on a white ground.
Next article:
Revolution in German and French
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