Romance and the Romantics with Simon Rees

Sir Joshua Reynolds, Constable and Turner – with a bit of Mendelssohn

These three great English painters bridged the period from Neo-Classical to Romantic painting, in portraits, landscapes and historical scenes. Reynolds was in a way the figure against whom Constable and Turner reacted (along with William Blake). Constable painted portraits and the landscapes of his home county of Suffolk using free brushstrokes and asymmetrical compositions, while Turner developed his style of landscape painting, in Britain, the Alps and Italy, becoming more and more ‘impressionistic’ in his brushwork, to borrow a term from a later period. Felix Mendelssohn wrote music that encapsulated a similarly Romantic vision of landscape and city-scape, ranging from the rocky wonders of Fingal’s Cave in the Hebrides to the tranquil landscapes described in his Italian Symphony.

In the series:
May 14: Walter Scott’s Novels and Poems, and the Operas They Inspired
May 21: Beethoven, Liszt and the Romantic Imagination
May 28: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Constable and Turner – with a bit of Mendelssohn