46.00 As we enter the 18th century, we pass from the powerful era of Rembrandt, Rubens, Velazquez, and Bernini into a time of aristocratic frivolity and levity. Eighteenth century French art is perhaps the most radically transformed. What had been the spawning ground of Classicizing Baroque, dominated by the dictatorial French Academy, became the birthplace of a new pink, painterly, frothy style known as Rococo. The most talented of the Rococo painters was a Belgian painter named Watteau, who emigrated to France. His Gilles reveals a sensitive, delicate, almost melancholy temperament that parallels the artist's own personality. Of all the Rococo painters, Watteau appears to be the only one who could see beyond the Rococo's frilly dresses and elegant park-like settings to the underlying decay of French aristocratic society.
47.00 Like Gilles, Watteau's Pilgrimage to Cythera, emits a sweetly regretful tenderness of mood. The lords and ladies of the painting promenade slowly back to their awaiting ship, after having spent an idyllic day on the "island of love." A sculpture of Venus on the right is a frequent element in Rococo painting, one of the few holdovers of the seventeenth century's Academic requirements for Greco-Roman subject matter. Another of the major strictures, however, has been jettisoned: color instead of line now dominates the scene. Watteau is a painterly painter in the manner of Rubens, rather than a linear master like Poussin.
48.00 A second important Rococo artist, Fragonard, swallowed the entirety of the style whole. Frivolous subject matter (The Rendezvous shows an elicit meeting between a wealthy young woman and her swain), a feathery, park-like setting, and a pastel color scheme centering on silvery greens, pink, and white fully exemplify the Rococo style. Fragonard even has a sculpture of Venus and Cupid in the background.
49.00 The most typical of all the Rococo paintings in this review is Fragonard's The Swing. Much of Rococo art could be described as coquettishly erotic and this example is the height of coquettish eroticism! The young woman on the swing, dressed in pink and white, is being swung to and fro by an elderly gentleman, perhaps her father. Down in the bushes below is a young man, strategically positioned so as to see up his beloved's petticoats! Paintings like these of Fragonard were extraordinarily popular among the aristocrats of 18th century Paris. They had moved back to the city from Versailles after the death of Louis XIV and were living in elegant townhouses known as hôtels. Many Rococo paintings became interior decorations for their new homes.
50.00 Young Girl Reading demonstrates that Fragonard really COULD paint decently, once he left the whipped cream behind. His painterly application of pigment and slashing brushwork are incredibly attractive and are indicative of a man with considerable talent.
51.00 Less talented, but blessed by the patronage of Mme. de Pompadour, was Boucher. His Triumph of Venus is yet another pink and white Rococo confection.
52.00 While Rococo fever was high among the 18th century French aristocracy, Chardin was producing an attractive, down-to-earth type of genre painting. An honest man of simple, homey values, Chardin created still lifes and interior scenes that seem to laud the life of the common man (see Slides 53 and 54).
53.00 This is Chardin's Grace at the Table (or The Benediction). See the caption of Slide 53 for more information about the artist.
54.00 Once developed in France, the Rococo spread to the Austria-Germany area where it flourished in the hands of architects like Neumann (see Slide 55) and itinerant painters like the Italian Tiepolo (see Slide 56). This slide shows the interior of Neumann's Kaisersaal, an ornate room of the Archbishop's Episcopal Palace in Würzburg. Its undulating golden moldings, oval shape, and raspberry and cream color scheme signal its Rococo style.
55.00 The centerpiece of the Kaisersaal's ceiling is a magnificent, airy painting by Tiepolo. The subject is a gussied up version of how Beatrice of Burgundy was brought to her husband-to-be, Frederick Barbarossa: she rides in the chariot of Apollo across an azure sky!
56.00 England of the 18th century was NOT receptive to Rococo. The stolid English preferred the "morality plays" of William Hogarth, which severely poked fun at the aristocracy, or a prim and proper portrait style, ultimately derived from the elegant portraits of Anthony Van Dyck.
Two of Hogarth's most famous series (he printed these so they would be affordable to the middle and lower classes), were Marriage à la Mode (Slide 56) and The Rake's Progress. The Breakfast scene of the first describes the morning after a big party in the house of the "decayed nobility." The second traces the ups and downs in the life of young rake who marries an old crony for her money and ends his life in a madhouse! The Orgy Scene (Slide 57) is from this second series. Both series, as you might gather, were unfavorable to the upper classes and had very firmly stated morales!
57.00 Slide 57 is Hogarth's Orgy Scene from the Rake's Progress series. Only the color scheme and creamy surface are reminiscent of French Rococo; the theme is totally unlike French 18th century art. See the caption for Slide 56 for more information on Hogarth and this painting.
58.00 While the lower classes were enjoying the sharp wit of Hogarth, wealthier Englishmen were commissioning Gainsborough and Reynolds to do "proper" likenesses of them. Portraiture thrived in 18th century England. This is Thomas Gainsborough's Robert Andrews and His wife. The figures are reminiscent of the stiff elegance of Anthony van Dyck's images, but Gainsborough's real flair was for landscape, as evidenced by the background's beautiful, freely painted rendition of the English countryside.
59.00 The Market Cart of Gainsborough is another exemplification of the painter's gift for landscape, Differentiated from Van Ruisdael's bleak views of the Dutch Republic, Gainsborough's scenes exude a mood of happy tranquility. With Gainsborough, man and nature appear to co-exist in total harmony.
60.00 Sir Joshua Reynolds was the President of the Royal Academy in England and a major dictator of style. Though didactic and inflexible in his pronouncements, and a social climber by nature, Reynolds produced some of the more lively and accomplished portraits of his era. Lady Caroline Howard exemplifies the grace and naturalness of pose that typify much of Sir Joshua's work.