Week 2 - Jackie Gonzalez - Romanticism is My Middle Name

It was nice to use this time to brush up on the history of art movements, their aesthetics, and famous art pieces created during the movement. Romanticism is one that I appreciate very much as I am a very emotional person myself. It is a complex movement and the subjects being depicted vary from region to region, but have one similarity which is capturing the sublime. Interestingly, I found out that Caspar David Freidrich's painting, Wanderer Above the Sea Fog is frequently associated with Mary Shelley's famous novel, Frankenstein, due to the shared theme of sublimity as well as the painting looking like the journey Victor Frankenstein takes through the Swiss Alps. Romanticism opposes the rationalism of Enlightenment and glorifies emotion and imagination which was depicted by nature, animals/creatures, and harsh scenes with human emotional outpour that evolved throughout the 18th century and died down toward the second half of the 19th century.  

The painting I picked is called, "Brudeferden I Hardanger (Bridal Party in Hardanger)" by Hans Gude and Adolph Tidemand, painted in Norway in 1848. The painting shows a Bride and her bridal party on their way down the Hardanger fjord. A beautiful day surrounds the boats as well as the towering mountains that could just scoop them up without feeling overwhelming. All in all, nature in this scene makes you feel as if you are reminiscing on a comforting memory. The shades of blues and greens used in this work are stunning, especially the ones used for the river. Towards the front of the painting, the paddles are causing the water to ripple which causes an eye-catching mix happening between the numerous shades of green and the toned-down blue's. The sunlight coming from the left-hand side brightens up the snow on the mountains overall but makes the tops truly pop. The shadows on the rocky cliffs in the background look faint or as if there is a lot of mist around which makes for a calming effect due to the gray and blue shaded blurs as well as the gradient of the sky that blends right into everything in the back. The greens on the trees and the foliage are nicely done, there isn't any use of the color yellow to indicate that there is direct sunlight on the flora that clearly is, which makes the painting even more gentle on the eye. Overall, I absolutely love this work of art, it proves to me that softness is powerful and large landscapes can be the main subject even if there are people in it. 

One of the more prominent naturalistic elements found in Romanticism paintings are the very elevated mountains in the background, and I immediately remembered a photo that I took from my last trip to Mexico back in 2018. My cousins took my family and I to El Lago de Chapala which is one of Mexico's largest freshwater lakes located in Jalisco. The sky and clouds look as if someone blended them for hours on a canvas, they look heavenly. There is a soft, rounded ray of sunlight on the colossal mountain coming from the right-hand side, it reminds me of the misty fjord cliffs found in the painting above. Most of the colors that are in this picture are natural tones with a few acceptions of red or brick within the town below still making it look naturalistic even in a populated area.