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Special Exhibition
The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860
The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art,
1760–1860 is the first major collaborative
exhibition between the Yale University
Art Gallery and the Yale Center for
British Art. The exhibition opens at the
Gallery on March 6, bringing together
over 300 works from the museums’
holdings, augmented by special loans
from select private collections and
Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library. The
Critique of Reason features paintings,
sculptures, medals, watercolors, drawings,
prints, and photographs by such
iconic artists as William Blake, John
Constable, Honoré Daumier, Pierre-
Jean David d’Angers, Eugène Delacroix,
Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya,
John Martin, and Joseph Mallord
William Turner. Challenging the
notion that Romanticism stood in
opposition to reason and the scientific
method, the exhibition’s eight thematic
sections reveal the Romantics as
attentive explorers of their natural and
cultural worlds as well as artists deeply
engaged with the mysterious and the
spiritual.
Two galleries in the exhibition
explore the tension between subjective
expression and scientific description in
the Romantic era. “Landscape and the
Perceiving Subject”—inspired directly
by Constable’s remark that “painting is
a science and should be pursued as an
enquiry into the laws of nature”—is the
largest section in the show and boasts
some of the most stunning works in
Yale’s collections, including those by
Constable, Jean-François Millet, and
Turner. The paintings, watercolors, and
prints exemplify how the Romantics
used their careful observations of
nature, space, light, and weather to
evoke mood and meaning.
“Nature: Spectacle and Specimen”
showcases works that straddle the line
between art and science. These include
stunning views of Mount Vesuvius by
Turner and anatomical studies by such
artists as Delacroix and George Stubbs,
who present exacting depictions of
mammalian anatomy while dramatizing
the wildness of their subjects using
highly theatrical compositions.
The Romantics came of age in
an era of colonial expansion, travel,
trade, and ethnographic study, which
led to both scholarly discourse and
popular fictions regarding non-
Western cultures and locales that
stimulated the artistic imagination.
The works in “Distant Lands, Foreign
Peoples” range from studies of exotic
costumes by Eugène Fromentin, John
Frederick Lewis, and Auguste Raffet
to watercolors and photographs that
transform Egyptian monuments into
Romantic ruins.
The prevailing notion of the
Romantic artist as an isolated dreamer
given to introversion and removed
from society and politics is refuted
throughout the section titled “The
Artist as Social Critic.” Many artists
from this period were vociferous
social commentators, carrying out the
Enlightenment ideals of free thought
and action. Yale’s stellar print collections
are brought to the fore here with
rarely exhibited works by Daumier and
Géricault and the full suite of Goya’s
galvanizing Disasters of War (etched
1810–20, published 1863).
“Religion after the Age of Reason”
illustrates the changing approaches
to sacred themes in the Romantic
era. Diverse subjects reveal that the
Romantic artists’ engagement with
religion was not a naive reversion
to mysticism, but rather a means to
extend their cultural relevance. John
Martin’s The Deluge (1834) and William
Blake’s Jerusalem: The Emanation
of the Great Albion (1804–20), for
instance, show the Romantics directly
addressing the place of religion by
individualizing biblical themes
and religious experience. Closely
connected is the section on “The
Literary Impulse,” which features an
array of works inspired by literature,
including classical mythology and
modern poetry. Henry Fuseli’s Dido
(1781), Delacroix’s illustration for
Goethe’s Faust (1827), Géricault’s
lithographs inspired by Lord Byron
(1823), and Blake’s illustrations for
Dante (1827) all illustrate a dynamic and
evolving relationship between word
and image in the Romantic period.
Romantic portraiture emphasized
the sitter’s psychological state, evoking
an empathetic relationship between
subject and viewer. The portraits on
view in “Beyond Likeness” exhibit
different styles and techniques, from
the expressive brushwork of Delacroix
and Thomas Lawrence to intimately
conceived medals by David d’Angers.
Also on view are early, poignant photographic
portrayals of such Romantic
figures as Victor Hugo and Charles
Baudelaire.
While many sections of the
exhibition explore the shifting
ideas and pictorial content that
preoccupied the Romantics, “The
Changing Role of the Sketch” shows
how technical processes changed in
tandem with widening ambitions
for art. Constable’s cloud studies and
Gustave Courbet’s Hunter on Horseback
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