“Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling - Charles Baudelaire”
It is hard to precisely define what the term romanticism means but it can be understood as a reaction to the birth of modern world and its key features and celebrates individual imagination.
JMW Turner, Rain Clouds, c. 1824
This artistic movement embraced individuality and subjectivity and explored various emotional and psychological states and moods. Painters turned to inner emotions and glorified harmony and peace one with the nature and other with each other. The newly found emotionalism stood in contrast to the favoured classicism (which was orderly, logical, rational and step-by-step).
John Constable, Study of Clouds, c. 1822
Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, c. 1808
Works by Henry Fuseli, JMV turner, Caspar David Friedrich and others evoked emotions such as apprehension, horror, terror, awe, hope, despair and worked on new aesthetic ideals such as sublimity and beauty of nature as the landscape painting became a metaphor of human soul as well as its innermost feelings. As quoted by Caspar David Friedrich “If he sees nothing within, then he should stop painting what is in front of him.”
Similarly the images record the dulcet tones of the relationship shared between a human and nature. The female form draped in white tulle whose delicate folds and lines represents the white skies and the blooming as well as rotting white dahlia with its harmonious colours, soft and dainty curves stands at par with the human body. With the colour white dominating further stimulate the mind and echoes spiritual qualities of romanticism.
Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, c. 1781