The Cult of Feeling

Romantic artists elevated emotion from a human weakness to art's highest purpose. Where Neoclassical painters prized rational composition and moral instruction, Romantics argued that art's real job was to express and transmit intense feeling.

This shift changed technique. If feeling came first, then visible brushwork — the artist's energy in every stroke — became a virtue rather than a flaw. Smooth, polished surfaces suggested cold calculation; raw, expressive ones proved authentic passion.