Strong emotions and mystery. this exhibition invited visitors to enter a world of images that frightens, entices and opens up to unknown spaces. That turns everyday life into poetry and leaves room for you to feel and interpret. The romanticism was an era in art history that left traces we still follow today.
The exhibition The Romantic Eye took a broad look at the period in 19th-century art known as Romanticism. In this exhibition, we aimed to explain what Romanticism was and how it influenced its time. We also tried to show that Romanticism was not purely a 19th-century phenomenon: to this day, we still encounter many of the questions and ideas of that time.
A world of frightening yet enticing imagery that opens up to reveal mysterious spaces in darkness, mist and light. But also a world that turns the most trivial details into poetry, that inspires searching and yearning, that exposes the depths of consciousness and calibrates our sensitivity. A visual world where the boundaries between art, fantasy and reality are about to dissolve.
Romanticism was revolutionary in many respects, not least because art at the time invited viewers to place themselves within the work, to experience it on much freer terms than had previously been the case. The power of imagination became the starting point for a new way of engaging with art that drew on personal memories and experiences rather than learned texts. The boundary between art and reality was no longer so clearly defined. Thanks to a new range of motifs and a more realistic way of depicting nature and people, art became accessible to a wider audience.
Victor Emil Janssen, Self-Portrait at the Easel, c. 1828. Oil on paper mounted on canvas. Photo: bpk, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Elke Walford
Johan Christian Dahl, The Morning After the Storm, 1819. Photo: Sibylle Forster, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Caspar David Friedrich, Cross By the Baltic Sea, 1815. Oil on canvas. Private collection
Knud Baade, Sky Studies 1/3, 1838. Photo: Børre Høstland, Nasjonalmuseet
Leif Engström, Spruce 1. Photo: Jessika Thörnqvist and Kim Ramberghaug
Wilhelm Bendz, The Artist Georg Heinrich Crola in his Studio, 1832. Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Anders Kilger
Lovisa Ringborg, Asylum, 2010. Photo: © Lovisa Ringborg
Peder Balke, Moonlit View of Stockholm. Photo: Morten Henden Aamot, The Gundersen Collection
Georg Friedrich Kersting, Young Woman Sewing in the Light of a Lamp, 1823. Photo: Margarita Platis, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Gustav Adolph Hennig, Reading Girl, 1828. Photo: Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig | PUNCTUM B. Kober
Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Observing the Moon. Photo: Private collection
Knud Baade, Sunset, Dresden. Signed 1838, oil on wood.
John-E Franzén, Land’s End, 1981-82. Photo: Helene Toresdotter, Malmö Konstmuseum
Marcus Larson, Stormy Sea. Signed 1857, oil on canvas.
Friedrich von Amerling, Portrait of the Court Actor Friedrich Reil (1773-1843). Signed 1838, oil on canvas.
Johann Erdmann Hummel, Grinding the Granite Bowl, 1831. Photo: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie/Jörg P. Anders
The exhibition included works acquired by Nationalmuseum over the past few years, as well as key works on loan from other museums, chiefly in Germany, Norway and France. It also includes some contemporary art to illustrate how Romanticism lives on to this day. The featured 19th-century artists included Peder Balke, Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, Caspar David Friedrich, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Eugène Delacroix, Johan Christian Dahl and Marcus Larson. The contemporary artists are listed below.
Thank you!
The exhibition was generously supported by the Herbert and Anne-Marie Lembcke Ad Infinitum Foundation.