Gothic into Romanticism.
As Clark points out, when one studies the historical shift in architecture and the arts known as the “Gothic Revival,” one ends up considering the Romantic movement itself because in this period the middle-ages “took the place of classical times as an ideal in art.”[1] And though “Romantic Gothic” was mainly found in literature in the 18th century, in the following century it had spread across the cultural sphere to all expressions of romantic creativity. For example the phenomenon known as the picturesque depended heavily on the presence of ruined Gothic buildings, abbeys and castles which would induce feelings of melancholy in the mind of their visitors. For those visitors who had the gift of putting their feelings into words or art, e.g., Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey or Constable’s views of Salisbury Cathedral, the result was a form of expression that encapsulated a mood or an atmosphere. Then there is the literature that dealt with the valour and chivalry of the Middle-Ages ranging from the antiquarianism of Bishop Hurd’s Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762) to the Waverly novels of Sir Walter Scott which democratised the Gothic by making it available to every class of reader rather than just the close-knit circle of scholiasts and antiquarians who were less interested in the aesthetic possibilities of the Gothic Revival and Romantic movement. Scott’s novels were to inspire several painters of the romantic generation, but particularly Delacroix whose fiery expression, though rigidly controlled, was to give shape to these stories of battles, intrigues and romances in such paintings as the Abduction of Rebecca, ( above) from Scott’s Ivanhoe published in 1819.
[1] Clark, Gothic Revival, 66.
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