Romanticism. Defining Romanticism[edit] Basic characteristics[edit] Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the starting point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist.
The importance the Romantics placed on untrammelled feeling is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that "the artist's feeling is his law".[7] To William Wordsworth poetry should be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings".[8] In order to truly express these feelings, the content of the art must come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of.