Art in Focus

Chapter 20: Rococo Art

Lesson Summaries-English

          At the end of the seventeenth century, the power of Holland and Spain decreased, as did the quality of the art from these countries. A new art style emerged in France to replace the Baroque. This new style, known as the Rococo, showed a concern for elegance and gaiety.

Lesson 1
Art in France

          At the beginning of the eighteenth century in France, Rococo art placed emphasis on the carefree life of the aristocracy, persons of high rank and privilege in the royal court. The new style depicted love and romance using graceful movement, playful lines, and delicate colors. King Louis XIV created a lavish palace at Versailles. Here, many of its delicate decorations marked the beginning of the Rococo. In painting, graceful, controlled works were created for palaces and châteaus. Antoine Watteau, the court painter to King Louis XV, painted characters from the theater and the French aristocracy at play. His painting Embarkation for Cythera uses dainty figures and silvery colors to present a dreamlike, bittersweet scene. Another court painter, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, liked to depict the idle pastimes of the upper class. In his painting The Swing, he uses glowing pastel colors and axis and contour lines to unite the composition. The artist Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, on the other hand, preferred to paint peasants and the middle class. His still lifes encourage close observation of everyday objects, and his genre scenes illuminate beauty hidden in the commonplace.

Lesson 2
Art in England and Spain

          Artists in England and Spain responded in different ways to the Rococo style. Mainly, they adopted the Rococo’s delicate, light-washed painting technique but represented a variety of subjects.

          In England, portrait painting became very popular. The rival painters Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough depicted the fashionable English nobility. Gainsborough’s delicate brushwork and rich, glistening colors contribute to the success of his painting The Blue Boy. William Hogarth’s paintings, on the other hand, showed all types of people and told stories that exposed the foolishness of the time.

          After the Great Fire of London in 1666, the architect Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt many of the city’s churches. He often used tall, slender steeples and patterns of dark and light on the façades.

          In Spain, the artist Francisco Goya was influenced by the Rococo style but eventually rejected it. He began by painting court portraits, including his confident depiction of the Duchess of Alba. After reaching middle age, he became a rebel and used his painting to protest against war. He grew more and more bitter, and his final works represent his dreams and visions. This made him the first artist to use his own mind for inspiration. For this reason, Goya is seen as the bridge between the art of the past and the art of the present.