Discuss the trend of 18th-century Romanticism and give examples of the stylistic characteristics, ...

Romanticism was not so much a style as a set of attitudes and characteristic subjects. The 18th century is sometimes known as the Age of Reason for its leading thinkers placed their faith in rationality, skeptical questioning, and scientific inquiry. Rebelling against those ideas, Romanticism urged the claims of emotion, intuition, individual experience, and the imagination. Romantic artists gloried in mysterious or awe-inspiring landscapes, picturesque ruins, extreme events, and exotic cultures. Eugene Delacroix, the leading painter of the Romantic movement, was fascinated by the exotic cultures of North Africa and created numerous paintings depicting scenes that were part of this Oriental realm. The imagery and subject matter of Women of Algiers displayed this sensuous, seductive exoticism. Other paintings focused more on barbaric splendor and cruelty. Delacroix's technique is freer and painterly; forms are built up with fully loaded brushstrokes, contours are blurred, and the colors are broken.