Clouds and Scale

Cloud usage in Romanticism is so unique to the movement and contributing to the expression of emotion the movement is based on. So, the final 3 sections of this study will be dedicated to cloud concepts.

The first aspect the Romantic cloud usage emphasizes scale in Y. This mainly means showing that landmarks reaching high into the sky with cloud interaction to show massive scale: earth reaching into the heavens.

As exhibited by The Hobbit and Moana:

The art style is not in the same category as Romanticism, but in this shot from Hercules, we see a mountain that literally leads to the heavens:

Cloud Variety

Continuing cloud concepts, the next Romanticism cloud trait I found was drastic range in cloud lighting within same scene: dark vs light and warm vs cool.

Bierstadt examples:

I found it interesting that the paintings above used atmospheric rules for clouds (warm colors close to the screen are warm and get cooler as they recede). Moanadoes the opposite, but it stills fits perfectly.

Cloud Design

The final Romanticism characteristic section is cloud is design tools. The first design tool is massing clouds or volumes to create unified, architectural structures built from the ground up into the sky. This empathizes the awe of nature.

Thomas Cole:

Mad Max: Fury Road storm example:

And the same concept in Godzilla (2014):

The next design concept is rhythm with volumes. Joseph Wright displays rhythm with smoke clouds that lead our eyes:

The final cloud design concept is space. Something I found odd and greatly interesting was negative space cloud design from Wright and Aivazovsky:

That concludes my study on Romanticism characteristics in film. I had so much fun exploring these concepts and digging into specifics that I was having trouble explaining and even seeing, at first. I originally had a blog study outlined a few months ago for the topic of how films can imitate paintings, but it was much too broad. Narrowing it down to a specific movement allowed me to uncover more specific details.

I’d love to look into more art movements in the future like Neoclassicism which ran parallel to Romanticism (below). There’s so much to explore!