Counterargument

Some Romantic critics saw the rift between Neoclassicism and Romanticism to be so wide that they did not believe Neoclassicism to be art at all. For, historically, science and reason have been separate from emotion and feeling. Eugéne Delacroix (1798-1863), a significant Romantic painter, said “cold exactitude is not art; ingenius artifice, when it pleases or when it expresses, is art itself.”[1] Delacroix later described this type of art---clearly referring to the rationalism and calculation of Neoclassicism as the “art of the boring.” Delacroix’s opinion was shared by many Romantics. Therefore, it would seem that Neoclassicism and Romanticism were at extreme odds. However, Delacroix himself often showed traces of Neoclassicism. He was enamored with the Greeks and frequently painted Greek scenes. In his later work, such as in with The Entombment of Christ, Delacroix paints a Romantic, religious scene (something a Neoclassical painter would not even touch) with “an air of classical restraint.”[2] If a Romantic critic of Neoclassicism, such as Delacroix, can not escape Neoclassical methods, clearly the two styles were not so distinct.

The Entombment of Christ

Another example of the apparent, yet close-minded, view that Neoclassicism and Romanticism were in total conflict is the work of the Spanish genius Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Goya’s most famous print is entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Goya states, as an elaboration on this print, that “imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters.”[3] It would seem as though Goya’s message anti-Romantic, against unbridled imagination. Even Goya, who was considered the champion of Romantic art, recognized the dangers inherent in pure Romanticism. Goya, the Romantic, is in many ways most similar to his contemporary Jacques-Louis David, the famous Neoclassical painter. How can this be true if the two styles are so different? Although Goya and David used different styles (Romantic and Neoclassical respectively), they painted for the same reason: “devotion to the unvarnished truth.”[4] Though Goya’s Romanticism involved a revival of the Baroque, the style that Neoclassicism was previously a response to, he used the Neo-Baroque to expose the hypocrisy and stupidity of the royal family in his work The Family of Charles IV. Therefore, Goya’s Romanticism and David’s Neoclassicism are similar, despite differences in physical styles. David painted in support of the French Revolution while Goya painted in protest to King Charles IV. The similiarity is not just that they used art to express politics, but that they used art as a response to old ways in the spirit of the Enlightenment.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

In the examples of Delacroix and Goya, it is apparent that Neoclassicism and Romanticism are siblings in their modernity. Both are necessary in the world, like the ying and the yang. For, as Goya said in finishing his elaboration on The Sleep of Reason, “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts.”[5] One of the greatest painters in history, Francisco Goya, agrees that the essence of art is the combination of reason and imagination; Neoclassicism and Romanticism.