Resistance and Persistence: On the Fortunes and Reciprocal International Influences of French Romanticism

Given that impatience with limits is a romantic trait, it is not surprising that the movement eludes firm definition and strict chronological boundaries. In accord with the slippery nature of his subject, Hugh Honour entitled the first chapter of his excellent Romanticism (1979) “For Lack of a Better Name.”¹ What is certain is that, between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, innovative, fertile currents of enthusiasm energized European art and literature. The inconstant moods of the solitary creator began to hold sway over the spirited sociability and clarity of thought prized during the Enlightenment; and the notion—dear to academic artists—that art, beholden to time-honored rules, can be learned through imitation of the ideal beauty of ancient sculpture and old master painting was challenged by painters who, sometimes at the cost of alienation from official favor or public acclaim, pursued the promptings of—in the words of Keats—“the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination.”² Today, it is generally accepted that Romantic art—and what follows pertains to France—is so diverse in style that the name can be attached to both the chilly contours of Ingres’s odalisques and the sultry, ambient hues of Delacroix’s harems. At the same time neither would have wished to cohabit a sentence; their very names evoke the divisiveness of the movement. Ingres was horrified by the paintings of Delacroix, who spoke condescendingly of his rival. While Ingres is rightly included in any survey of Romantic art, his was the very face of academic resistance to Romanticism in the name of ideal beauty, rigorous draftsmanship, and classical subject matter. In that reactionary spirit, the imposingly large plaster of Auguste Préault’s frenzied relief Tuerie (Massacre)—both violent and ambiguous in subject—was purportedly admitted to the Salon of 1834 on the advice of the academician and sculptor Jean-Pierre Cortot, who wanted it displayed “like a criminal on a gibbet.”³ That legendary act of disapproval is exemplary of the hostility that French Romanticism engendered in its heyday. Less familiar are examples of criticism—even pronounced dislike—of Romanticism expressed by leading figures in the movement. Addressing these ambivalent voices, this essay sets forth a rhythm of resistance and persistence. I contend that the unease of Romantics vis-à-vis Romanticism is inseparable from their own quixotic quest to transgress convention; that, in the face of negation and ridicule, signal characteristics of the movement endured, affecting the outlook of even its most bitter enemies; that new life was breathed into Romanticism through contact with Realism’s commitment to earth-bound fact; that Romanticism continued to speak to the concerns of artists active long after the mid-nineteenth century, when Realism undermined the Romantic cult of transcendent imagination; and that even twentieth-century Modernism—which abhorred Romantic pathos—is not entirely free of what I call Romanticism’s “indelible stain.” While the sample is small and limited to painting, sculpture, and writing in France—other, international examples may spring to mind—the exposition is intended to give modest purchase on the shape of this elusive movement by dwelling on both its capacity for self-criticism and its remarkable staying power. In the spirit of the sisterhood of art, literature, and politics that was so vital in nineteenth-century France, what follows strives for fluid passage between visual analysis, literary polemic, and cultural criticism.

Heinrich Heine—a German exile in France—provides a test case of Romantic ambivalence. Before he reached his 30s, Heine was a contributing second-generation German Romantic, writing lovesick poetry popularized in Lieder. Yet, after moving to Paris in May 1831, he looked askance at French appreciation of the German Romantics in The Romantic School (first published in French translation, 1832–33).⁴ There, a mixed evaluation includes devastatingly witty put-downs. Of the brothers at the center of this school—August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel—he had little good to say, particularly in regard to the former. The anti-clerical Heine considered the work of...