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Artistic references: Turner for The Sublime and Waterhouse for La Belle Dame Sans mercy
The taste for sublime and horror things has also an expression in visual art, such as in the case of J.Turner’s [S] [S2] [S3] [E2] [F1] [F2]paintings(1775-1851). If we take Snowstorm: Hannibal and his army crossing the Alps or The burning of the houses of Parliament as examples, we clearly find characteristics of a sublime piece of work: the fury of snowstorms and avalanches, awesome scenes of precipice in the Alps, the destructive power of nature in shipwrecks in the first painting, the overwhelming power of natural forces and the helplessness of man by means of a vorticous composition in the second one.
Just to have an idea of the settings painted by Turner, here are the two works in order of quotation:
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Unlike Turner, Waterhouse [E] [F] [P] [I] belongs to the following century(1849-1917) and was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite poets.. His carrer was a progression from Greek and Roman subjects to subjects borrowed from mythology and literature, painted in a dream-like romantic style. With the painting La belle dame sans mercy, Waterhouse drew inspiration from the literary theme of the "femme fatale" and perfectly represented the meeting between this supernatural creature (a woman described as pale, with long hair, mysterious, cold in heart and causing man’s destruction) and a solitary knight, who hopes in the woman’s love, as J.Keats explains in the homonymous ballad.
Here follows the quoted painting:
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