Romanticism belongs to the “big” styles in fine arts, which means there is a grand philosophy and aesthetic foundation to the vision and the world outlook of the artists. This calls for special principles of selecting subjects and scenes, techniques and expressive means.

So, what exactly was so peculiar about romanticist perspective? Well, let’s compare. Classicists, for instance, rest on the idea of the mastermind, the universal order that regulates the behaviors and reasoning. A classicist person follows the divine law in anything he does, and puts duty, moral imperative and the common good to the foreground, leaving individual emotions, wishes and personal happiness behind.

Romanticists, on the contrary, perceived the world as the product of absolute freedom. They defy all limitations and boundaries, rules and laws, and instead of the universal order they praise the chaos of passions. Everything “normal” and routine is dead to them, everything conventional and stable is just a limitation. Romantic subjects and themes are expressly exotic, extravagant and unique. The people depicted are the combined image of a free man – the paintings swirld with rebels, vagabonds, adventurers, and our daily life is quite scarce a source to look for a good story. This is why romanticists turned to literature far more frequently than representatives of other styles.

Literature provided the artists with the emotional experience, idols and passionate stories to convey in their paintings. It is the selection of stories, the subjects to depict that explains the vast difference between romanticist literary paintings and works of other artists. Romanticists never fell for the characters adored by classicists who sacrificed their personal happiness to follow the moral imperatives. Instead they were attracted to characters overwhelmed with passion, striving for freedom and expressing their beliefs, they longed to escape from the drag of the routine, whatever the cost. You can easily recognize a romantic painting by the colour scheme. They are predominantly bright, saturated, featuring sharp contrasts of colour elements, the complexity of semitones, and black was practically rejected. Romanticists cherished brown colour as the “patina of time”, this museum-scented colour symbolized the transience of life, which makes a person think of how little time we have and how wrong it is to live our lives by somebody else’s rules neglecting one’s own desires.