Turner's Los Caprichos

In the series of prints, Los Caprichos, there lies a dark, ominous visage of humanity, one in which we see the artist 's future work following the same style.The Sleep of Reason (fig 1). A human sleeps, quite peacefully, as if unintentionally oblivious to the bats and owls and lynx that lay in wait, ready to strike with wide eyes. A singular creature stands out from the rest, as it is staring at the viewer, rather than focusing on the sleeping figure. This forces us to meld with the world presented in the piece, to become an active participant in the world. The monsters of Goya 's dreams cross the dimensional lines of the print to threaten us, the viewer.

The artist asleep within the image is besieged by creatures that are commonly

One of the great painters of the Romantic period is Joseph Mallord William Turner. Turner belongs among Romantics, who rebelled against the rational thinking of the Enlightenment by championing intense emotion and feel as a form of aesthetic experience. This can be seen in Turner 's The Field of Waterloo (fig 2).The heavens are in upheaval, darkness smothers the scene, and dead bodies litter the ground, producing a scene fraught with emotion. Turner chose to show the aftermath of Britain 's victory at Waterloo, shrouding the battlefield in gloom and the only source of light illuminates only the dead and their searching loved ones. Emphasizing the realities of war, suffering, and grief rather than fleeting victory. Instead of rationalizing the war, and showcasing the good spoils of the war, Turner creates a piece that allows the audience to wallow for a moment in the immense emotion associated with the event.

William Blake, another central figure of the 19th century art scene, had his own Romantic visions, quite literally. In The Ghost of a Flea (fig 3), Blake paints a strange animal-human hybrid that is said to have come to the artist in a spiritual vision. This figure is meant as the soul being condemned to reside in the body of a flea. A poet as well as a painter, Blake was an example of the Romantic artist, believing wholeheartedly in the power of imagination and the ability of art to convey profound ideas and