Printmaking in the Age of Romanticism

Friday, April 4, 2003—Sunday, October 19, 2003
Gallery 319
Free Exhibition

This exhibition highlights a selection of lithographs, etchings, and mezzotints from the Institute’s permanent collection that exemplify the tenets of Romanticism. The artists Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Richard Parkes Bonnington, and J.M.W. Turner were active participants in this movement that valued imagination, emotion, exotic cultures, nature, and the literature of Byron, Scott, and Shakespeare. These and other related themes are explored in the works on display. The Romantic era stretched from the French Revolution in 1789 until the middle of the 19th century, with the most intense period of production beginning with the demise of Napoleon in 1815 and progressing until the early 1840s. While many of the artists represented in the exhibition are better known as painters, this exhibition reveals that they were also talented practitioners of lithography and etching. Featured prints include selections from Gericault’s English Set, J.M.W. Turner’s Liber Studiorum, and Bonnington’s views of Paris and Rouen, as well as Delacroix’s Royal Tiger.

Organized by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.