ABSTRACT
During the interval between the first and the second phase of Romanticism in England, say, roughly, between a little after 1820 and a little after 1840, there had begun in France a feverish and magnificent revival of Romance. Its interest for us here lies in the fact that it anticipated that close association between the arts which was to distinguish Victorian from Georgian and Regency Romanticism. To some extent the way had been prepared for it by Rousseau; by Mme de Stael's discovery of Germany, also; but the strongest impulse came from two English writers, from Scott and from Byron, the one made amply available to French readers from 1816, the other from 1819. The supreme development of Romantic painting in France sprang from a purely pictorial source, also English; from Constable, three of whose pictures, including The Hay Wain, were shown in the momentous Salon of 1824.
