The Romantic Period: Arts and Culture

• Unit 1 focuses on the Romantic period, spanning from 1815 to 1848.

Arts and Culture

• Europe experienced relief after Napoleon's fall, despite his unified legal system.
• Napoleon's totalitarian leadership exhausted European nations through wars.
• The Congress of Vienna aimed to restore old monarchies and aristocracies, adopting conservative and reactionary approaches.
• Politics in the subsequent three decades involved liberal, radical, and romantic attempts to overthrow reactionary monarchical systems.
• Artists, writers, and intellectuals felt unsettled and frightened by the loss of stability after Napoleon's fall, resisting a return to past inequities.
• Rationalism was dismissed as artists and intellectuals turned to worshipping feeling, emotion, and the unknown.
• A new self-conscious awareness, combined with scientific study of humans and their world, led artists to feel a sense of loss and detachment from classical Greek and Roman values.
• Greek and Roman art, literature, and philosophy became separate cultural developments rather than direct personal inheritances.
• Artists and intellectuals sought royal and aristocratic patronage over wealthy capitalists, focusing on tales and events of the past.
• Romantics positioned themselves as sensitive messengers of truth.
• Romantics revered the sublime, which includes objects or effects evoking powerful emotions and ideals that dominate the personality.
• England's revolution was industrial, leading to suffering and violence, with Romantics offering support to the lower classes.
• The physical world was rapidly changing, with gaslight becoming common by 1830.
• By 1835, the telegraph emerged as a significant communication form.
• In 1837, the Great Western steamship crossed from England to New York in 15 days.
• By 1840, railroads were being constructed throughout Europe and the eastern United States.
• The Industrial Revolution led to a new realism.

Architecture

• Romanticism led to excessively decorative interiors with an eclectic character, lacking stylistic unity.
• Furnishings and interiors became more comfortable than before.
• Heavy, festooned draperies and rich, fringed table covers were in vogue.
• Chairs were padded and upholstered in velvet and tufted satins, featuring rich, pinkish mauves and faded reds.
• Motifs shifted from classical antiquity to medieval, Renaissance, and Near Eastern ornamentation.

Basic Clothing Silhouette

• Romantic aesthetics included simple, elegant gowns, with ladies posing to accentuate the rounded lines of the garments.
• Padded shoulders and chests, pinched waistlines, and padded hips created an hourglass silhouette for both women and fashionable men.
• Rounded lines, serpentine body curves and rich texture define the overall effect.
• Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne in 1837 marked the beginning of a shift in the female silhouette.

Male Clothing

• A tall, flaring top hat was standard for formal occasions, except with court dress.
• Hair was worn fuller, with small beards and moustaches.
• Coat and overcoat collars rolled high to lengthen the neck and frame the white shirt, with snug leg-of-mutton sleeves to broaden the shoulders.
• Shirts featured a high pointed collar and tied cravat.
• Coats were fitted with flaring tails or square skirts, often paired with a girdle or Basque belt to cinch the waist.
• Styles could be double- or single-breasted.
• Waistcoats were padded and pigeon-breasted.
• Caped overcoats were common for outdoor wear.
• Full-length trousers fastened under the instep and were padded at the hips.
• Pointed boots were worn under trousers.

Female Clothing

• Hair was centrally parted with sausage curls at the temples and back, styled with complex twists, knots, flowers, and ribbons.
• Boat necklines were often trimmed with a wide, stiffened bertha or ruffle.
• Bodices were tightly fitted over a corset.
• All bodices fastened down the back with buttons, lacings, or hooks and eyes, concealed.
• High waistlines dropped slightly below the bust.
• Expansive puffed sleeves were positioned well below the shoulder line.
• Ankle-length skirts flared over layered petticoats, with ruffles at the top of the petticoat to enhance the back flare.
• Appliqué, ruching, embroidery and lace ruffles trimmed all edges of the gown.
• Ballet flats were worn, fastened with cross-lacings up the leg.

Fabric

• Standard male fabric was woollen broadcloth with velvet, sable, or less precious fur trim.
• Waistcoats used velvet, brocade, and embroidered satin, with striped, flowered, or plaid silk.
• Women favored lightweight cotton for daywear, including muslin, chintz, and calico.
• Gauze layered over silk used in party wear.
• Heavier fabrics included silk, satin, taffeta, velvet, wool, and cashmere.

Colours

• Deep, dark colours were used for coats and evening trousers.
• Light colours were used for daywear trousers, waistcoats, cravats, and ladies' wear.
• Other colours include Cream, Grey, Tan, Yellow, Royal Blue, Rose, Lavender, Purple, Red, Green and Plum

Accessories

• High boots were worn by men.
• Flat shoes with cross lacing up the leg for women.