Chaos phenomenon in the 19th century romantic landscape painting

The universe that starts with chaos will end with chaos. Chaos, which is associated with the creation of the universe in belief systems and science, is a term used in every field of daily life. Meaning mostly disorder and disruption, chaos has a devastating power against the order of the universe. Even tough chaos theme is present in pre-Renaissance era, by coming into prominence in landscape paintings in the Romantic movement in the 19th century, this term is founded itself with philosophy. One of the most important reasons for this is being inspiration of the philosophers of the era for romantic artists. Particularly, the ideas of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant on "sublime and beauty aesthetics" associates sublime with chaos and this, adds a different point of view to the phenomenon. These ideas profoundly affected the painters of the Romantic movement, made them reflect chaos in the context of sublime in their landscape paintings, gained them new perspectives and saved landscape paintings from being merely an imitation of nature and caused it to have an intellectual content and to turn into a means of expression conveying feelings. Chaos in Romantic landscapes is mainly addressed in the context of nature – human. Additionally, it is represented religiously and became a way of expressing sublime with heaven – hell and apocalypse scenarios In this study, by starting the definition and narrative of chaos in different fields, its relation with landscape paintings of Romantic movement is tried to be determined, related works are studied in terms of art history and through the works of referenced artists the concept of chaos is tried to be analysed.