[D66] The Romantics and Us

[R.O.]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mfng

11 September 2020

59 minutes

Passions of the People
The Romantics and Us with Simon Schama
Series 1
Episode 1 of 3

With contributions from Harriet Walter, Christopher Eccleston, hip-hop 
artist Testament and French street artist P-Boy, Simon Schama explores 
the elixir of rebellion and the idea – so powerful in the words and 
images of William Blake – that imaginative passion can conquer 
mechanical logic and create an art for the people.

Simon starts by looking at the great icon of popular revolt created by 
Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People. Painted after the July 
Revolution of 1830 in Paris, which finally brought an end to the Bourbon 
monarchy in France, Simon unpacks the legacy of this universal image of 
popular revolt across the ages.

The idea of faith in the power of art and the human imagination began 
with one of the forefathers of romanticism, the visionary poet and 
artist William Blake, so Simon follows his trail in his native city of 
London. Looking at his work from the early 1790s, Simon and hip-hop 
artist Testament explore how Blake’s ideas continue to resonate in our 
own times.

Simon then retraces the steps of Mary Wollstonecraft in Paris, and Dame 
Harriet Walter performs extracts from her moving letters, written at the 
height of the violence. Eventually returning to England, Simon explores 
how the Terror had enormous consequences for the revolutionary cause as 
the Tory government waged their own war of terror on revolutionary 
sympathisers for the next 40 years.

The last part of the film tells the stories of two artists in the next 
generation of romantics to take up the revolutionary cause - Percy 
Bysshe Shelley in England and Theodore Gericault in France. At a time 
when both France and Britain were turning their backs on the Revolution, 
the artists – fuelled by injustice and rage – created two of the 
greatest achievements of romantic art.