Like many other national galleries, the Tate Gallery has a far greater collection than it can put on show at any particular time, so the latest re-hang focuses on paintings that can be broadly put under the title The Romantics – the movement which moved away from realism to encompass the realm of the emotions. The substantial display involves rooms usually dedicated to the work of Turner, a relaxation that suggests more adventurous themes in the future.
One of the key romantic images, The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis, is one of the most popular paintings in the Tate. The picture depicts the elegantly dressed and handsome 17-year-old poet lying dead on his attic bed after taking the phial of arsenic held in his hand, his face a dun white, while his poems lie torn into fragments on the floor. Through the window can be seen a distant view of St Paul’s Cathedral. It evokes all the tragedy of an artist’s life – youth, lack of appreciation, despair – but its tear-jerking evocation of sentimental values are best viewed as fantasy rather than any accurate depiction of really.
While Wallis was painting a highly fictionalised and fanciful version of the death of the poet, others such as William Blake were exploring more profound issues. For Blake, the role of the artist was to paint what they felt rather than what they saw – a view well exemplified in eight spectacular hand-coloured etchings found hidden in a railway timetable among a box of second-hand books in the 1970s. Taken from Blake’s series of illuminated books, the printed and painted images deal with major themes such as life and death, and feature mythical god-like figures. Like much of Blake’s work, all can be read in different ways.
The notion of the artist as an enlightened and inspired genius – a characteristic of the Romantics – brought with it an interest in the power of visions, exacerbated by a trend for gothic literature and art. This freedom brought them the opportunity to experiment with imagery and subject matter to create pictures of great emotional intensity. Artists let their imagination run riot, evoking idealised alternatives to the material world, such as in John Constable’s luscious Flatford Mill – an image that is seen to show the true, idyllic nature of the English landscape, its peace and stability a safe refuge from a world of growing industrialisation. The concept of the idealised nature of landscape was fully explored by artists such as Samuel Palmer, whose relationship with the natural world was one imbued with a powerful sense of the imagination.
Equally engaging are Turner’s paintings characterised by the experimental use of colour and the depiction of light and atmosphere. Little recognised at the time, Turner was undeterred by public opinion and heroically followed his own impulses, continuing to exhibit his ever more engaging semi-abstract compositions. Look out for Norham Castle, Sunrise and Sun Setting over a Lake. The two rooms last rooms look at the legacy of the Romantics with works by the mid-20th century Neo-Romantics such as Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash, who looked back to Blake and Palmer, as well as landscape photography which parodies or plays off the Romantic tradition.
With 170 paintings, prints and photographs spread over nine thematic rooms, there is much to see and savour, but as an exploration of the complexities and contradictions of Romanticism, there are leaps and gaps that can be confusing. What is evident is the creative power of the human mind and its often-uneasy relationship to the natural world – work that paradoxically offers both an escape from reality while also seeking to put it in perspective.
