14 - The Sublime in Romantic Painting

Summary

This chapter examines the reception of philosophies of the sublime in European painting of the Romantic period. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, many painters took up subjects that echo descriptions of the sublime offered by Burke, Kant, and other philosophers, prompted by art critics who attempted to apply the idea of the sublime to art. The chapter focuses on artists who engaged with three facets of the sublime that had become recurrent concerns of British and German philosophical aesthetics: (1) vastness, captured in landscapes of towering mountains and the open ocean; (2) power, expressed through the imagery of volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters; and (3) violence, depicted in paintings of animal conflict.