Isn’t it Romantic?

Frequent visitors to the Yale Center for British Art may be surprised to see some of its signature paintings—George Stubbs’s Lion Attacking a Horse, J. M. W. Turner’s Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort packet-boat from Rotterdam becalmed, and many more—gracing the walls of the Yale University Art Gallery. But the British art center is currently closed for renovations for a year, and curators at both galleries have taken advantage of the opportunity to mount an exhibition together. The topic: art of the Romantic period, a subject well explored by combining works from both collections.

“Many people think of Romanticism as French, and we’re hoping that after they see this show, they’ll think of it as a cross-Channel movement,” said A. Cassandra Albinson, curator of paintings and sculpture at YCBA, at a press preview on Wednesday.

With more than 300 works, including paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, and photographs, “The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860” is organized into thematic sections including nature, social criticism, landscape, portraiture, and exoticism. The exhibition opened today and runs through July 26.

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