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19th Century Romanticism Research Paper

Decent Essays

During the nineteenth century, the population of Europe doubled in size. At the same time, material culture changed more radically than it had in the previous thousand years. “The application of science to practical invention, begun in the eighteenth century, had already sparked the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, the mass production of material goods by machine.” (Page 210) The first phase of industrialization occurred in mid eighteenth century England, with the development of the steam engine and the machinery for spinning and weaving textiles. Monopolized by the English for a half century, the Industrial Revolution spread to the rest of Europe and to the United States by the 1830s. As increasing production of coal, iron, and steel …show more content…

In nature, with its shifting moods and rhythms, the Romantics found solace, inspiration, and self-discovery. “To Enlightenment thinkers, “nature” meant universal order, but to the Romantics, nature was the humankind to God. “Natural man” was one who was close to nature, unspoiled (as Rousseau had argued) by social institutions and imperatives.” (Page 213) The Romantics lamented the dismal effects of growing industrialization. In rural settings, they found a practical refuge from urban blight, smoke-belching factories, and poverty-ridden slums. The natural landscape, unspoiled and unpolluted, revealed the oneness of God and the universe. This pantheistic outlook, more typical of Eastern than Western religious philosophy, came to pervade the literature of European and American …show more content…

Unlike professionally trained artists, such as Cole and Church, folk artists lacked technical schooling in the visual arts. Nevertheless, they were inspired to adorn their everyday surroundings with object that often manifest extraordinary sensitivity to design and affection for natural detail. One of the most distinctive of nineteenth century folk art genres was the hand stitched quilt, a utilitarian object produced almost exclusively by women. Unlike academic art objects, quilts were often communal projects. Several women embroidered or appliques designs onto individual fabric patches salvaged from leftover sewing materials. “Then, at popular quilting “bees,” they assembled the patches into bedcovers some 9 by 8 feet in size.” (Page

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