Romanticism Prints Collection

Print Collections > Romanticism

Romanticism first emerged in the world of visual arts at the beginning of the nineteenth century in France, Britain and Germany. Romanticist artists focused on the expression of imagination and emotion, the poet Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1846, 'Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in a way of feeling.'

Romanticists looked inwards to find subjective responses to the world around them, creating a sense of awe, wonder and mystery to their work. The notion of the individual artist as an isolated, melancholic genius sprang from the Romanticist sensibility and lingered well into the following century.

Some of the most prominent artists of the time where Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable in Britain, Caspar David Friedrich in Germany and in France Eugene Delacroix.