Rococo to Revolution: An Introduction to European Art in the Eighteenth Century
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Experience the opulence and fantasy of Rococo art against the backdrop of the Enlightenment and brewing revolution!
Rococo began in the early 1700s in the decorative arts such as furniture, fabrics, tapestries, glassware and silverware. It was popular in the 1730s until the 1770s. You can recognise it through its light colours like blues, and greens and pinks, curved lines, and inspiration from the natural world. There were Rococo artists from all over Europe, but France was one of the most important centres of the style. There were no museums, but from 1737 public art exhibitions were held in Paris called the “Salon.”
Rococo in France
The movement happened against the backdrop of the French Enlightenment (“les Lumières”), which roughly began in 1715 with the death of Louis XIV and start of the Regency and ended with the French Revolution in 1789.
The Enlightenment is generally thought of as occurring from 1680-1815. It was a period in which scientific, political and philosophical discourse characterised European society. The period is also known for some major challenges to religion in the seventeenth century, moving away from traditional religious models of the universe and towards an empirical, scientific approach. It is also a time of the Grand Tour, in which wealthy families would send their children to travel across Europe, which can be seen in Pompeo Batoni’s portraits.
In France, Louis XIV (who reigned from 1643-1715) was known as the “Sun King.” He shaped his reign into an absolute monarchy and commissioned the Palace of Versailles. The Hall of Mirrors (begun in 1678) was a symbol of the King’s absolute power. Until the official inauguration of the Palace of Versailles on 6 May 1682, the royal court often changed locations. With enough room to house the whole court, Versailles showed that the nobility were prepared to go to any lengths to be close to the King. It also made it hard for the nobility to plot against the throne.
The Palace of Versailles has many representations and allegorical allusions to the sun god (laurel wreathes, lyres, tripods) combined with royal portraits and emblems. The task of building and decorating the ultimate royal residence was entrusted to artists such as André Le Nôtre, Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun (famous for the Hall of Mirrors) and Jules Hardouin-Mansart.
Rococo art focuses on elaborate decoration and richness. Whereas family portraits like Velázquez’ Las Meninas had emphasised restraint in 1656, by the time Louis Michel Van Loo painted La familia de Felipe V in 1743, taste had changed, making the portrait look like a spectacular stage (click the link to read about Velázquez and Baroque art).
In France, Hyacinthe Rigaud and workshop’s, Louis XV at the Age of Five in the Costume of the Sacre (c. 1716-24) makes the king’s humanity seem secondary to all the symbols of his wealth and power. Although there was unrest leading up to the French Revolution of 1789, Rococo art feels removed from that. It’s a bit toned down from the Baroque style, and more light-hearted and playful—but still focused on the riches of the aristocracy.
France’s Ancien Régime, the old political order, was challenged by the writers of the French Enlightenment—Jean Jacques Rousseau, who wrote The Social Contract in 1762, Charles de Montesquieu, who published his major work, The Spirit of Laws in 1748, and Denis Diderot, who laboured over his Encyclopédie for years. These thinkers pointed out the inequality in French society and the problems of the class system.
There were also challenges to religious ideas. In 1755, the Lisbon earthquake and following tidal wave and fires had killed 60,000 people. This made people question God, because it was All Saints’ Day made and Cathedrals were destroyed. Click the link to read about the Problem of Evil in religious philosophy, discussion of which was fuelled by the earthquake. In his Candide (1759) French enlightenment philosopher Voltaire criticised German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s idea that, of all the conceivable worlds, God has chosen to create the best possible one.
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau was fashionable in Paris in the early eighteenth century and painted themes associated with the pleasures of life. He liked painting elegant people in outdoor settings—a kind of painting known as fête galante (“galant festivity”), inspired by Renaissance Venetian painting and Rubens’ Garden of Love.
Watteau was important in a debate in the Parisian art world that had begun in seventeenth century—whether idealised, classical forms in painting were superior, as argued by admirers of Nicolas Poussin, or whether colour should be prioritised over line as argued by admirers of Peter Paul Rubens). Watteau scored a partial victory for the Rubenists in the eighteenth century, when he was entered into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) with his painting Pèlerinage à l’île de Cythère (Pilgrimage to Cythera) (1717). This created the fête galante.
Watteau’s The Perfect Accord (1719) shows couples at leisure in a park with a statue of a herm (a Classical statue associated with fertility—it’s difficult to see in this picture and is omitted from copies, but it’s in the upper-right corner of the original). He also often painted scenes with characters from the Commedia dell’arte, a kind of theatre that was popular at the time.
François Boucher
François Boucher loved Watteau’s work. He was painter to King Louis XV of France and director of the Royal Academy and his work explores pleasure and decadence.
Boucher’s The Toilette of Venus (1751) is characteristic of the Rococo period—you can see the Rococo decoration in the bed in the painting.. It was commissioned for the king’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, who had a big influence over Louis XV. Boucher also painted a portrait of The Marquise de Pompadour.
Boucher’s The Fountain of Love (1748) is a pastoral painting, made as a model for a tapestry. Boucher idealises country life and the decadence of courtship—a glamorous image, but also showing the corruption and excess of the French aristocracy in the eighteenth century. Politically, the French Revolution was a reaction to this; in art, the Neoclassical style emerged to oppose it.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun used a late Rococo style that was suited to the leisure pursuits of the aristocracy leading up to the French Revolution. She was initially rejected by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (for which there were only four positions available to women artists) oversaw the arts in France at the time. However, she became a favourite of Queen Marie-Antoinette and was commissioned to paint over 30 portraits of the Queen—this led to her admittance to the academy.
Élisabeth left France in 1789 after her marriage broke down and went to Italy with her daughter Julie. She painted her Self-Portrait with her Daughter, Julie (bridging Rococo and Neoclassical styles) in the same year; this was also the year of the French Revolution. This painting is known for the intimacy shown between Élisabeth and her daughter. It also shows her skill at depicting draped fabric (Élisabeth wears an ancient Greek-style dress) and the influence of Raphael. The pyramid structure of the two figures recalls Raphael’s Madonna and Child (The Small Cowper Madonna).
Vigée Le Brun’s Self Portrait In a Straw Hat (1782) shows Élisabeth in a fashionable dress, confidently holding the tools of an artist. Her pose recalls Peter Paul Rubens’ Portrait of Susanna Lunden/Le Chapeau de Paille (“The Straw Hat”). Because Rubens’ portrait does not actually depict a straw hat, Élisabeth’s portrait is a playful reference to this.
Some Enlightenment philosophers like Rousseau romanticised the natural world and these ideas had been taken up by Marie Antoinette in her escapist fantasies, with whom Vigée Le Brun played at being a shepherd. The use of a straw hat recalls these rustic themes, and a straw hat is also featured in Vigée Le Brun’s Marie Antoinette en Chemise (1783), in which Marie Antoinette also wears a robe en chemise expensive muslin. This caused a scandal in France because the informal dress was considered to be improper; there were already rumours of Marie Antoinette’s immodesty and immorality.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Outside of France, other artists were exploring the Rococo style. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (also known as Giambattista Tiepolo) was from Venice, although he worked all over Europe. He is known for spectacular paintings with intense light, and large frescoes and cycles.
For instance, Tiepolo’s The Capture of Carthage (1725–29) was made for a palace in Venice and (possibly) shows the conquest of the city of Carthage, in present day Tunisia, by the Roman Scipio Africanus the Younger.
One of Tiepolo frescos is The Marriage of the Emperor Frederick I to Beatrice, Daughter of the Count of Burgundy (1750-53) in the palace in. Stucco and gilt curtains are drawn back to show the scene of the wedding.
Francisco de Goya
Francisco de Goya was from Aragón, in northern Spain, and travelled to Italy as a young artist. As court painter of the Spanish King, Goya was responsible for the care of the royal collection, which included paintings by Titian, Rubens, Velázquez and many others. Therefore, he was able to study these.
His The Wine Harvest (1786) was made for weavers to use as a model for a tapestry for the dining room of the palace of the prince. Even though the Rococo trend was coming to an end, Goya leaned into its light colours and themes. Louis XVI of France, who was beheaded in the French Revolution, was a relative of the King of Spain. Nonetheless, Goya was not afraid to keep the sense of class difference in the painting. Art historians also argue that the fact that the woman looks uneasy shows his willingness to criticise the social system.
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was from London and his art is a result of the rapid growth of the city—it had grown to ten times its population in one hundred years, resulting in problems like the gin epidemic. Hogarth’s Gin Lane etching and engraving called attention to the problem of alcohol addiction.
Hogarth is known for his satirical work. For instance, his Before (1731) makes fun of Watteau and Boucher. Rather than the kind of light-hearted which seduction scenes that they would show, Hogarth shows the man trying to rape the woman.
Hogarth’s The Bench etching and engraving (1758) is also satirical. It shows judges uninterested in the case before them, one of whom is Chief Justice Sir John Willes, who had a reputation for immorality. Hogarth added in unfinished heads above the judges, inspired by taken from Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (click the link to read about Leonardo da Vinci and the High Renaissance). This is because Hogarth wanted to be taken seriously, arguing that painting characters had been important since the Renaissance.
The years 1774-1848 are sometimes called the “Age of Revolution” because of the way these years shaped European and world history, from the collapse of the Ancien Regime, the French Enlightenment and Revolution (1789), the American Revolution, the British industrial revolution and the abolition of slavery. In eighteenth century, the foundations of absolute monarchies were being weakened, but art had become more elaborate. That was about to change, as artists were divided about how to portray this new, post-revolutionary world.
In our next post, find out more about the art of the post-Revolutionary world!
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