The Romantic Sublime: Art and the Unknowable
Introduction
By the late 18th and early 19th century, the concept of the sublime—an experience that overwhelms us with awe and terror—had long been a subject of philosophical debate. During the Romantic period, artists embraced the challenge of depicting this elusive sensation on canvas.
Romanticism as a movement emphasised emotion, intuition, and the individual’s experience of the vast and unknowable (Wikipedia, 2019). To Romantic artists, nature was not simply picturesque; it was something beyond human comprehension (Riding and Llewellyn, 2013). It was a force that dwarfed us and made us question our place in the world.
Landscape painting became a key medium for expressing the sublime, portraying humans as insignificant and vulnerable in the face of something greater.
However, the challenge lay in making the ineffable visible. How could they paint something that, by definition, was beyond representation?
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Sublime in Landscape Painting
Philip James de Loutherbourg: The Theatrical Sublime
Francis Danby: The Painter on the Edge
Contrasts and Connections
The Enduring Influence of the Romantic Sublime
Reference List
The Sublime in Landscape Painting
The sublime in Romantic painting was often explored through nature’s overwhelming power. Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) and J.M.W. Turner’s tumultuous seascapes have become the quintessential images of the Romantic sublime.
Friedrich’s lone figures, swallowed by the landscape, evoke existential reflection. Turner’s almost abstract handling of paint captures the uncontrollable chaos of nature, dissolving the boundaries between sky, land, and sea.
Beyond these dominant figures, other painters engaged with the sublime in distinct yet interconnected ways. In this blog, we’ll focus on two slightly lesser-explored artists—Philip James de Loutherbourg and Francis Danby—who engaged with the sublime from different perspectives.
Philip James de Loutherbourg: The Theatrical Sublime
Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740-1812), a French-born painter who settled in Britain, became renowned for his dramatic landscapes and large-scale naval paintings. His experience working as a set designer in London can be seen in his approach to painting—every element is choreographed for maximum effect (Tate, n.d.).
This theatricality is exemplified in An Avalanche in the Alps (1803), a painting that dominates the viewer’s field of vision and invokes terror and awe.
An Avalanche in the Alps, 1803, Philip James de Loutherbourg. Oil paint on canvas. 111 × 160 cm.
The composition depicts a moment of impending disaster. An almost blinding white avalanche cascades down the mountainside towards the helpless figures in the foreground. Above them, a massive, jagged rock looms precariously, poised to fall.
The viewer is thrown into the action and left wondering which force of nature will strike first—the avalanche’s deadly cloud or the unstable rockface, unsettled by the shifting landscape?
Loutherbourg amplifies the drama through his use of diagonal lines that guide the viewer’s gaze, and the contrast between light and shadow. What initially appears as a luminous, awe-inspiring force of nature becomes an agent of destruction as the viewer contemplates the fate of the helpless figures.
The theatricality of Loutherbourg’s staging also prevents the scene from being purely one of terror. The figures, though small, are posed in dynamic gestures: one stumbling forward, one praying to the sky, and a third figure calls out, as if ushering them towards safety.
This dramatic movement makes the scene feel as though it is still unfolding. There’s a tension between inevitability and possibility, and the suspense invokes the ‘terror-tinged thrill’ of the sublime (Morley, 2021). We fear for the figures, but we are also caught in the thrill of the spectacle—perhaps our figures still have a chance to escape.
Despite our immersion in the scene, we are still at a safe remove. Loutherbourg’s perspective positions us slightly above and away from the unfolding catastrophe, as though we are onlookers on a distant outcropping. This detachment heightens the sublime sensation—our fear is real but mediated by the security of distance.
In this way, Loutherbourg leans into Burke’s idea that danger, when observed from a safe vantage point, transforms into an elevated, almost pleasurable experience of awe (Crowther, 1989, p.8).
His painting embodies this paradox: the sublime is not just terror but a thrilling encounter with something vastly greater than ourselves, with the power to destroy us.
Francis Danby: The Painter on the Edge
Francis Danby (1793-1861) is best known for his apocalyptic and biblical scenes that embody the sublime through vast, cataclysmic events. However, The Painter’s Holiday (c. 1844) presents a quieter, more contemplative approach to the sublime.
The Painter’s Holiday, c. 1844, Francis Danby. Oil paint on canvas. 76 × 106 cm.
The painting depicts a lone artist lying at the very edge of a cliff, gazing out over a vast, boundless landscape bathed in the glow of the setting sun. Compared to Loutherbourg’s immediate, terrifying chaos, Danby’s sublime is more psychological. It aligns with Immanuel Kant’s idea of the sublime as an internal, contemplative experience (Morley, 2021).
At first, the scene appears tranquil, softened by rose-tinted light. But unsettling details emerge. To the left, half-lost in shadow, a boulder sits precariously near the painter, echoing the looming rock in Loutherbourg’s painting.
Is it stable, or could one small shift in the Earth send it plummeting? Just as the painter tests his own fate, lying millimetres from the cliff edge, nature itself seems on the verge of movement.
The endless landscape enhances the feeling of solitude. The lone painter is the only human figure visible for miles. This solitude feels both comforting and daunting—allowing for an intimate connection to nature while emphasising the insignificance of the individual within it.
While Loutherbourg’s sublime is immediate and violent, Danby’s is slow burning. The golden-hour glow suggests a fleeting beauty. As the sun sinks behind the mountain peak, dusk creeps in, vignetting the painter on the edge. Soon, the painter will be engulfed in nightfall, vulnerable to the unknown, and left in obscurity.
An intriguing detail is the spindly tree to the right of the composition, positioned even slightly more in the foreground than the painter himself. Its twig-like branches and tiny leaves suggest something even more delicate than the human figure. Unlike An Avalanche in the Alps, Danby does not make humans the most fragile element; here, we are simply alone.
The Painter’s Holiday lulls us into a false serenity with its warm tones and peaceful image. But the longer we look, the more sublime it becomes. The gradual encroachment of darkness, the precarious placement of the boulder, and the figure’s solitude all evoke an existential awareness. One that reminds us of nature’s quiet indifference to human presence.
Contrasts and Connections
From their elevated vantage points, high in the mountains, both artists present a vision of the Romantic sublime, portraying human insignificance in the face of nature’s grandeur.
Loutherbourg employs theatricality, using dramatic lighting and action to evoke terror and thrill. Danby lulls us into a quiet contemplation before revealing the creeping fragility of human existence.
Each work features a precariously placed rock, a visual metaphor for nature’s unpredictability. In An Avalanche in the Alps, it’s an active, immediate threat. In The Painter’s Holiday, it’s an almost imperceptible danger.
Through these works, we see the Romantic sublime manifest in different ways. One is a grand spectacle, and the other a lingering unease. Both remind us that the sublime is not just about terror and awe but the fleeting nature of human existence.
The Enduring Influence of the Romantic Sublime
The Romantic sublime, as explored through Loutherbourg and Danby, reminds us of our own smallness and the knowledge that the world moves beyond our control.
These paintings, though created centuries ago, still resonate today, urging us to embrace both the terror and the wonder of the unknown—to stand on the edge of comprehension and feel, if only for a moment, the exhilarating vastness of our existence.
In the next blog, we’ll explore how artists Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman developed the pursuit of the boundless—replacing vast, mountainous landscapes with luminous fields of colour, evoking the sublime through abstraction rather than representation.
Reference List
Crowther, P. (1989). The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press ; New York, pp.8–10.
Morley, S. (2021). A Short History of the Sublime. [online] The MIT Press Reader. Available at: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/a-short-history-of-the-sublime/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2025].
Riding, C. and Llewellyn, N. (2013). British Art and the Sublime. [online] London: Tate Research Publication. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/christine-riding-and-nigel-llewellyn-british-art-and-the-sublime-r1109418 [Accessed 24 Feb. 2025].
Tate (n.d.). Philip James De Loutherbourg 1740–1812. [online] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/philip-james-de-loutherbourg-145 [Accessed 24 Feb. 2025].
Wikipedia (2019). Romanticism. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism [Accessed 24 Feb. 2025].
