Throughout Romantic art and architecture run two consistent threads: a pervasive sense of discord in human experience and an equally pervasive desire for escape. Romanticism did not produce a unified style of art. Indeed it could not be expected to, since the Romantics valued personal expression rather than conformity to any prescribed set of artistic conventions. Romanticism is more an attitude of mind, as well as a willingness to explore the depths of human passion, which Classicists believed would mar the harmony of ideal beauty. The Romantics strove to express the turbulent realities and insecure mood of their age. This instability also prompted escapist tendencies, expressed in a revival of past architectural styles, as well as infatuation with the imagined pleasure-world of the Orient.

For all the diversity of Romantic art and architecture, perhaps its most lasting and influential legacy was in laying the theoretical foundations for a shift from an imitative to an expressive paradigm of creativity, which placed a high value on unique, individual vision and expression. From this fertile source sprung the individual and radically experimental nature of modern and postmodern art.

The spiritual discontent of the age drove Goya to satirize the corruption of the established church in Spain, while in England churchmen and their architects looked back to the Gothic architecture of Medieval Christendom for security. In Germany, the painter Friedrich expressed the desire--also found among other Romantics--to re-establish Christian faith in independence from traditional church liturgy, seeking instead inspiration in nature.

Artists also addressed the social unrest and desire for liberty that swirled amidst the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. A desire for artistic liberty also grew, with increasing value placed on expression of individual vision and feelings. That vision, however, included violence, misery and despair in ways almost unprecedented in Western art.

Artists projected their personal and subjective vision into the realm of nature. They perceived it as a source of succor and inspiration, but also confronted its violence, seeing therein a mirror image of the darkness of the human soul. As cities such as London and Paris expanded rapidly, a desire for escape inspired the attempt to bring nature into the city itself. The needs of the newly wealthy bourgeoisie also called for new building types, but architects proved unwilling to acknowledge modern industrial materials or develop a style to match them. Instead they took refuge in the study and revival of past historical styles, reflecting another aspect of the Romantic desire for escape.

The desire for escape is also manifest in the Romantic interest in the Orient—albeit an Orient of the European imagination and thus a projection of Western longings and fears.