Rococo painting, which originated in early 18th century Paris, is characterized by soft colors and curvy lines, and depicts scenes of love, nature, amorous encounters, light-hearted entertainment, and youth. The word “rococo” derives from rocaille, which is French for rubble or rock. Rocaille refers to the shell-work in garden grottoes and is used as a descriptive word for the serpentine patterns seen in the Decorative Arts of the Rococo period.
Centuries before the term “bling” was invented to denote ostentatious shows of luxury, Rococo infused the world of art and interior design with an aristocratic idealism that favored elaborate ornamentation and intricate detailing. The paintings that became signature to the era were created in celebration of Rococo’s grandiose ideals and lust for the aristocratic lifestyle and pastimes. The movement, which developed in France in the early 1700s, evolved into a new, over-the-top marriage of the decorative and fine arts, which became a visual lexicon that infiltrated 18th century continental Europe. Based in France, Rococo was a decorative style most often used in interior design, painting, architecture, and sculpture. Normally associated with the reign of King Louis XV, the movement actually began in the 17th century.
Rococo was manifested out of this new era of thought where society abandoned the formality of the earlier years and began pursuing personal amusement and happiness. One of the first Rococo painters was Jean-Antoine Watteau, whose work began to epitomize the movement with its idyllic and charming approach. Another artist that represented the Rococo period was Francois Boucher, who created paintings and designed tapestries for the French royalty and nobility.
The term Rococo was derived from the French word, rocaille, meaning rock and shell garden ornamentation. The style appealed to the senses rather than intellect, stressing beauty over depth. The movement portrayed the life of the aristocracy, preferring themes of romance, mythology, fantasy, every day life to historical or religious subject matter. Rococo was a light, ornamental, and elaborate style of art, identified by elegant and detailed ornamentation and the use of curved, asymmetrical forms. Other elements of the style included graceful movement, playful use of line, and delicate coloring. Dominated by feminine taste and influence, the lively colors and playful subject matter made it suitable for interior decoration. The Rococo style was also used in portraiture and furniture and tapestry design.
The Rococo style is sometimes considered to be the end of the Baroque period and was eventually replaced by Neoclassicism during the American and French Revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century. Some of the Rocco Art that shaped this movement are mentioned below.
The biographies of the artists are given here and I feel the work need more attention than the Artists Bio data.
JEAN ANTOINE WATTEAU (1684-1721
This painting depicts a number of amorous couples in elegant aristocratic dress within an idealized pastoral setting on Cythera, the mythical island where Venus, the goddess of love, birthed forth from the sea.
The gestures and body language are evocative, as the man standing below center, his arm around the waist of the woman beside him, seems to earnestly entreat her, while she turns back to gaze wistfully at the other couples. A nude statue of the goddess rises from a pedestal that is garlanded with flowers on the right, as if presiding over the festivities. On the left, she is doubly depicted in a golden statue that places her in the prow of the boat. Nude putti appear throughout the scene, soaring into the sky on the left,
OTHER PAINTINGS by Jean Antonine
François Boucher (1703 – 1770)
As Paris teetered on the edge of revolution, King Louis XV and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, eagerly supported Boucher’s visions of an idealistic world. His celebration of noble grace and elegance, along with his flirtatious and eroticized explorations of beauty decorated the refined spaces of aristocratic life. At the same time, his sensuous portraits captured the emergence of Enlightenment philosophy and the aristocratic Salons that nurtured these thinkers. Boucher’s work is a seminal example of a more complex Rococo style, full of contradictions that combine tradition and beauty with innovation…….
Jean-Honoré Fragonard,
Housed at The Frick Collection on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Meeting (1771–72) was commissioned as part of a set of four paintings for King Louis XV’s mistress, the Comtesse du Barry. Together, these “Progress of Love” panels illustrate the development of a romantic relationship. The second in the set, The Meeting, shows a scene that occurs after the young woman has accepted her lover’s marriage proposal; the lover has climbed a garden wall for a stolen private moment with his betrothed. The work reveals Fragonard’s training in history painting, as he infuses the intimate love scene with grandeur and drama. Like FrançoisBoucher, in whose studio he once worked, Fragonard was also influenced by both Italian Baroque and Dutch landscape painting. However, the quick, painterly brushstrokes for which Fragonard was celebrated represent a generational evolution in Rococo, and in The Meeting, the painter demonstrated his mastery over various textures, from billowy clouds to dappled leaves and flowers, and the carefully creased fabrics of the couple’s clothing. Likely because they were not Neoclassical enough, the comtesse returned the paintings to Fragonard, who created seven more works in the series.
Maurice Quentin de La Tour 1704-1788
Gazing serenely toward the side of the frame, the Marquise de Pompadour holds a musical score and sits at a desk, upon which rests a play, an encyclopedia, texts by Voltaire and Montesquieu, a globe, and an engraving. Brilliantly executed in pastel— Maurice-Quentin de La Tour’s signature medium—this full-length portrait of the Marquise announces its sitter’s worldly talents, intelligence, and appreciation for art.
A friend and one-time mistress to Louis XV, the Marquise was a patron of great thinkers like Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She aimed to convince the king to champion the Enlightenment ideas that permeated Parisian society. Despite the painting’s seriousness in advancing that aim, and its relative restraint—seen in the Marquise’s lack of jewelry and simple hair style—it nonetheless exhibits some Rococo whimsy in the blue hues and floral motifs that weave throughout the composition, visually uniting the Marquise’s fashionable, sumptuous dress with her surroundings. It’s a testament to de La Tour’s preeminent skill in the medium, which he used to move traditionally formal portraiture into a more private, psychological realm.
Luis Paret y Alcázar (1746-1779)
Known as the “Spanish Watteau” due to his skilled emulation of the French Rococo style, Luis Paret y Alcázar began and finished his life in Madrid, where today his Charles III Dining Before the Court (c. 1775) hangs in the Museo Nacional del Prado. The oil-on-panel painting compensates for its modest dimensions with the lavish, oversized interior it depicts in remarkable detail. The work shows King Charles III of Spain as he dines at the Royal Palace in Madrid, accompanied by hounds, ambassadors, ministers, and servants, including one who serves him water and wine on bended knee.
In the real-life counterpart to this ceremony, members of the public would observe the royal family eating in their chambers. The artist inserted mythological scenes into the painting—representing themes like love, patriotism, and hunting—in effect heightening the pageantry surrounding what is an unusual subject of royal portraiture. These vignettes are also thought to humorously allude to the king’s inner thoughts. Adding to the jocularity and enigma of the work, its patron is unknown (it was most likely not commissioned by Charles III) and the artist signed his creation in Greek lettering: “Luis Paret, son of his father and mother, made it.”
Giambattista Tiepolo,(1696-1770)
Venice-born artist Giambattista Tiepolo was a disciple of the Grand Manner , a style indebted to the High Renaissance . As such, his use of color and his lofty scenes in bright, open spaces show affinities to Venetian Renaissance master Paolo Veronese.
Yet Tiepolo is also lauded for his contributions to Italian Rococo, which was both based on its French counterpart and an airier iteration of the preceding Baroque. His frescoes in Germany’s Balthasar Neumann -designed Würzburg Residenz are among his most renowned works, epitomizing his use of accurate perspective and luminous color.
In The Marriage of the Emperor Frederick and Beatrice of Burgundy (1751–52), Tiepolo commemorates a piece of local history from 1156, adding whimsy to it. The scene takes place within a rich architectural space, replete with arches, columns, and a balcony from which musicians play. Putti hold up a gold curtain on either side of the ornately decorative proscenium, as if revealing a theater set. Framed within, the Bishop of Würzburg presides over the kneeling couple, the royal family, and the bride’s father; in a humorous touch, the court jester splays himself across the altar steps, his rear to the viewer. In the midst of deep reds, rusts, and golds, Beatrice’s luxurious dress—quintessentially Rococo in pale blue and cream—crowns the lighthearted composition.
Jean-François de Troy (1659-1672)
Jean-François de Troy was trained as a history painter, first by his artist father and then in Rome—where, in 1738, he became the director of that city’s French Academy. But his innovation was the tableau de mode genre: straightforward, detailed scenes of well-to-do society types at leisure. Often compared with Jean-Antoine Watteau’s more general and timeless fête galante scenes, tableaux de modes consciously document a specific time period and social set.
The Declaration of Love (1731) is a defining example of the genre. In this jovial oil painting, a group of genteel ladies and gentlemen pause outside a garden, as one of the young men kneels and presents his beloved with a corsage. Flanking the ladies on either side, the three gentlemen all but blend into their surroundings, as their taupe outfits match both the ground and the classical garden wall. The ladies, however, pop in coordinated fanciful, flower-dotted dresses of pink, blue, and white—which, along with the outdoor setting and romantic theme, creates a visual Rococo feast.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun (1755-1842)
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Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun bucked tradition, and not just with her toothy smile. Born in Paris at a time when women were denied formal art schooling, she received training from her father, though she was largely self-taught, and became a successful professional artist by age 15. At 28, through the intercession of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, she earned a spot in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, joining just three other women.
The drapery, elaborate patterns, and floral elements here align with Rococo aesthetics, but while Vigée-Le Brun adhered to Rococo coloration and subject matter, her oeuvre hovers between that style and the Neoclassicism that supplanted it. Fleeing the country when the French Revolution began, she continued a prolific career in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Russia, before eventually returning to France. In all, Vigée-Le Brun painted over 600 portraits, the large majority of which depict women.
William Hogarth (1697-1764)
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William Hogarth is famed for his revolutionary, morally instructive works, which rely on caricature to humorously point out the ills of 18th-century British society. The London-born engraver and painter’s well-known series, like “A Rake’s Progress” and “Marriage A-la-Mode,” also show a distinctly Rococo bent, albeit a British variation, as Hogarth pokes fun at en-vogue tableaux de mode paintings by the likes of Jean-François de Troy.
“Marriage A-la-Mode” (1742–45), for one, tells the tale of the fictional Earl of Squander, who is planning the marriage of his son to a merchant’s daughter. The first work in the series, The Settlement (1742–44), intimates the moral failings and pretensions of those involved in the match: The Earl sits pompously beside a scroll detailing his family tree, while the merchant attempts to buy social status through the match; meanwhile, the young couple ignores each other. She looks dejected, for he has returned from continental Europe not only with his fashionable Parisian outfit, but also with syphilis, insinuated by the black mark on his neck. Two dogs chained together at their feet represent their ill-fated pairing. As he harnessed Rococo’s satirical potential into a distinct, powerful mold, Hogarth exposed the unsightly underbelly beneath its charming, carefree surface.
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)
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Rococo gained a footing in England due largely to French artist Hubert François Gravelot , who was living in London when William Hogarth founded St. Martin’s Lane Academy in 1735. The school became the seat of English Rococo, as Gravelot, himself a former student of François Boucher, disseminated Rococo drawings and engravings as a teacher. One of his most notable pupils was Thomas Gainsborough.
. A celebrated portraitist, Gainsborough’s true love was landscape, and his portraits fittingly explore the dynamics between human figures and their environments, recalling Rococo’s interest in fashionably clad people in outdoor settings.
The Blue Boy (c. 1770)—one of Gainsborough’s most recognizable works—shows a rosy-cheeked boy in an elegant, detailed outfit against a more painterly backdrop, creating a contrast between the delicate figure and his rustic surroundings. Influenced by 17th-century Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck , the boy’s azure suit was one of Gainsborough’s first attempts at painting a van Dyck-style outfit. It may also have been the artist’s rebuttal to his rival, Joshua Reynolds , who asserted that cool colors like blue and green should not feature prominently in an artwork. At once virtuosic and intimate, the life-sized portrait—which most likely depicts Jonathan Buttall, the son of a well-off merchant, and hangs at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California—reflects Gainsborough’s revelling in the Rococo-style play between fantasy and reality.
Written by:
Rachel Lebowitz
ART 