A new closeness to nature

Romanticism was a multifaceted art movement, a key component of which was a new interest in nature. Instead of idealized landscapes, precise observations of nature, depictions of extraordinary, sometimes destructive natural phenomena or the sublimity of nature came to the fore. During the Romantic period, the genre of landscape painting experienced an unprecedented appreciation. Evidence of human activity, such as medieval ruins, was also of particular importance. Often overgrown with vegetation, they symbolized the resilience of nature, the inescapable course of time or played a role as a newly respected cultural heritage in increasingly emerging nationalist ideas. In A Brush with Nature: Romantic Landscape Drawings, the Getty Center in Los Angeles presents works by many famous painters of the late 18th and 19th centuries that illustrate the complex relationship between artists and nature. The exhibition runs from February 18 to May 25.

Never before had artists worked so often en plein air as in the Romantic period. They recorded precise observations of nature and details in drawings and watercolors, which served as studies for their paintings, which were produced in the studios. Some artists also regarded the drawings as fully-fledged works of art: an idea that would have been unthinkable in previous art eras. The exhibition includes drawings by Gilles-François-Joseph Closson, Caspar David Friedrich, Théodore Géricault, Paul Huet, Alfred William Hunt, Franz Kobell, Hubert Robert, Philipp Otto Runge and William Turner. Most of the exhibits come from the collection of the Getty Center.

The pictures were added on February 20.