Exercise 1

Germany could rightly be called the cradle of European Romanticism.  Goethe and other Sturm und Drang writers established many of the fundamental Romantic character types and literary modes.  German Romantic intellectuals blazed new trails in scholarship, calling attention to the richness of the medieval past and national folk traditions.  You learned about the aesthetics of Romantic art mainly through English artists such as Constable and Turner, and French artists including Gericault and Delacroix.  During the same period, however, German artists were developing their own versions of Romantic painting.  Consider, for example, Caspar David Friedrich, who painted The Cross on the Mountain, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, and The Tree of Crows; Philip Otto Runge, the painter of Morning; and an artist known as  Spitzweg, who painted Room of the Poet and Art and Science.  How do these works resemble and differ from those by the French and English Romantic painters you have studied? How would you characterize the individual styles of these German painters? What Romantic values do their works represent?

Exercise 2

The painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American artists to achieve significant reputations both at home and abroad.  Although these artists were associated with the Hudson River region of Upstate New York, they painted scenes throughout North America, and some even visited South America in search of material  that would satisfy their and the public's taste for Romantic landscapes.  The leading members of the Hudson River School included Thomas Cole (1801-48), who painted The Voyage of Life: Childhood and The Voyage of Life: Youth; Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), whose works include Niagara and Morning, Looking East Over the Hudson Valley from the Catskill Mountains; Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), who painted Seal Rock and Yosemite Valley; and George Caleb Bingham (1811-79), painter of Fur Traders Descending the Missouri.  What subject matter and stylistic features do these paintings share? How would you define the characteristics of Hudson River School painting? How do these works resemble and differ from other Romantic paintings you have studied? To what extent to these paintings represent a uniquely American Romantic aesthetic?