The fact that you prefer romanticist genre paintings tells much more about you than your favourite movie, book or your best friend. Why is that and what makes these paintings so unique? Genre paintings present scenes from everyday life that are depicted from different perspectives depending on the style.

With realists, for instance, the genre scenes portray life of a certain type of people rather than an individual person – like damsels marrying men they distaste following their fathers’ orders; or landholders stroking their grayhounds in front of hungry bondmen; the drab routine of toilers etc. Realist genre paintings serve as a photographic data slice on a certain type of people. In impressionism genre scenes highlight the fleeting moments of joyful life, the ephemeral quality of the world around, rather than the actions and characters of people in the paintings.

As for romanticists… well, they are so romantic … Genre paintings are drastically different in romanticism, they have a special flavor and color stipulated by the style. We remember that romanticists take absolute freedom as the basis of human and universal existence. The world is chaotic and creative – everything is possible, and nothing is stable and limited. The artists celebrated anything that goes beyond the boundaries of reasoning and patterns. Hence the subjects and the characters are exotic and adventurous, breathing of heroism and the free spirit, they can be anything but ordinary. In romanticist genre scenes poets are versifying, nuns are dreaming of gentlemen, pageboys are evesdropping and sneak peeking on their signoras, gypsies are dancing, the anachorets are praying… nobody is running off the mill, nothing is boring enough to get thoroughly studied. The canvases are explicitely dynamic, since the fundamental subject of romanticism is the struggle in all of its aspects: the struggle of man against the world, history or nature… up to the point of struggling with himself. Anything better than peace and quietude. Offbeat people and subjects require offbeat representation – the flamboyant colours, deep contrasts, complex semitones are sparkling, intoxicating, and infatuating the viewer. Note the ban on the black and the affection for the brown as the noble colour of mystery that symbolizes time and history, the past where the romantic artists found their inspiration.