Rococo

 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 favoured elaborate ornamentation and intricate detailing.

 The movement, developed in France lasted between 1730 till mid 1780s, 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.

 Rococo was perhaps the most rebellious of design styles. Often described as the final
expression of the Baroque movement, it was exceptionally ornamental and theatrical –
a style without rules. Compared to the order, refinement and seriousness of the
Classical style, Rococo was seen as superficial, degenerate and illogical.
 Another key feature of the design is its curved asymmetric ornamentation, where its
forms often resemble the letters 'S' and 'C', and where one half of the design does not
match the other.

 The Rococo first emerged as a style developed by craftspeople and designers rather
than architects, which explains why it is found primarily in furniture, silver, ceramics
and Interiors.

 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.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

 Genre paintings were popular ways to represent the Rococo period's bold and joyous
lust for life. This included works denoting outdoor pastimes, erotic paintings,
landscapes, and the "celebrity" portrait, which positioned ordinary people in the roles
of notable historical or allegorical characters.
  Rococo art and architecture carried a strong sense of theatricality and drama,
influenced by stage design. Theater's influence could be seen in the innovative ways
painting and decorative objects were woven into various environments, creating fully
immersive atmospheres.

 Detail-work flourished in the Rococo period. Stucco reliefs as frames, asymmetrical

patterns involving motifs and scrollwork, sculptural arabesque details, gilding,
pastels, and tromp l'oeil are the most noted methods that were used to achieve a
seamless integration of art and architecture.

 The term "rococo" was first used by Jean Mondon in his First book of Rococo Form
and Setting in1736, with illustrations that depicted the style used in architecture and
interior design.

Beginnings of Rococo
In painting Rococo was primarily influenced by the Venetian School's use of color, erotic
subjects, and Arcadian landscapes, while the School of Fontainebleau was foundational to
Rococo interior design.

The Venetian School

The noted painters Giorgione and Titian, among others, influenced the Rococo period's
emphasis on swirling color and erotic subject matter. Pastoral Concert (c. 1509), first
attributed to Giorgione, though now credited by most scholars as one of Titian's early works,
was classified as an outdoor party, by the Louvre when it first became part of the museum's
collection. The Renaissance work depicting two nude women and two aristocratic men
playing music in an idealized pastoral landscape would heavily influence the development of
Rococo's paintings. The term referred to historical paintings of pleasurable past times and
became popularized in the works of Jean-Antoine Watteau.

Jean-Antoine Watteau

Jean-Antoine Watteau spearheaded the Rococo period in painting. Born in a small provincial
village in Belgium that had recently been acceded to the French, his precocity in art and
drawing led to his early apprenticeship with a local painter. Subsequently he went to Paris
where he made a living producing copies of works by Titian and Paolo Veronese. He joined
the studio of Claude Audran, who was a renowned decorator, where he met and became an
artistic colleague of Claude Gillot, known for his decoration of commedia dell'arte, or comic
theater productions. As a result, Watteau's work often expressed a theatrical approach,
showing figures in costume amongst backdrop scenery, lit up with artificial light.

Artworks and Artists of Rococo

PROGRESSION OF ART
1717

The Embarkation for Cythera

Artist: Jean-Antoine Watteau

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, or
appearing between the couples and pushing them along, and nature is a languid but fecund
presence. Overall, the painting celebrates the journey of love. As contemporary critic Jeb Perl
wrote, "Watteau's paired lovers, locked in their agonizing, delicious indecision, are emblems
of the ever-approaching and ever-receding possibility of love."

As art critic Holly Brubach wrote, "Watteau's images are perfectly suspended between the
moment just before and the moment after... the people he portrays are busy enacting not one
but several possible scenarios." His figures are not so much recognizable individuals, as
aristocratic types, with smooth powdered faces, that together create a kind of choreography of
color and pleasure.
With this work, Watteau's reception piece for the Academy, he pioneered the fête galante, or
courtship painting, and launched the Rococo movement. As Jonathan Jones wrote, "In the
misty, melting landscapes of paintings ... he unequivocally associates landscape and desire: if
Watteau's art looks back to the courtly lovers of the middle ages it begins the modern history
of sensuality in French art."

Oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris

c. 1718-19

Pierrot
Artist: Jean-Antoine Watteau

This painting (formerly known as Gilles) depicts Pierrot, a traditional character in

Italian commedia dell'arte. He is elevated on center stage in what appears to be a garden and
he faces the viewer with a downcast expression as his white satin costume dominates, its
ballooning midsection lit up. He seems almost like a two-dimensional cut-out figure. Other
stock characters surround him but Pierrot remains separate as if he has stepped out of their
scene. The negative space in the upper left further emphasizes Pierrot's isolation. As Jonathan
Jones wrote, "Watteau makes the fiction of the picture manifest," as the character, "in his
discomfort and alienation, rebels not only against his stock character role in the comedy, but
his role in this painting. His stepping out of the play is also a stepping out of the fiction
painted by Watteau."

Watteau pioneered the artistic representation of theatrical worlds, a distinctive Rococo genre,
and he also recast the character of Pierrot from a kind of bumbling, lovelorn fool into a figure
of alienated longing. As Jones wrote, "representation of theatrical, socially marginal worlds,
following Watteau, is central to French modern art, from the impressionists' cafe singers to
Toulouse-Lautrec's dancers and prostitutes and Picasso's Harlequins." As the figure of Pierrot
became a figure of the artist's alter ego, this painting influenced a number of later art
movements and artists, including the Decadents, the Symbolists, and artists like André
Derain, as seen in his Harlequin and Pierrot (c. 1924). The influence also extended to pop
culture as shown in David Bowie's early performance in Lindsay Kemp's Pierrot in
Turquoise (1967) where Bowie said, "I'm Pierrot. I'm Everyman. What I'm doing is theatre,
and only theatre. What you see on stage isn't sinister. It's pure clown. I'm using myself as a
canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time."

Oil on canvas - Musée du Louvre, Paris

c. 1730

The Entrance to the Grand Canal

Artist: Canaletto

This noted landscape depicts the entrance to the Grand Canal in Venice, with a number of
gondoliers and their passengers maneuvering horizontally across the canvas. Their
asymmetrical placement creates movement as three gondolas extend upward in the center and
draw the viewer's eye into the distance, further emphasized by the perspective of the
buildings on the right and the church on the left. The subtle use of local colors give the piece
a golden feel and a sense of the idyllic life of the times, which was informed by the Venetian
school's love of Arcadian landscapes that heavily informed the Rococo aesthetic.

Canaletto was a pioneer in painting from nature and conveying the atmospheric effects of a
particular moment, which has led some scholars to see his work as anticipating
Impressionism. As Jonathan Jones wrote, "the delicate feel for light playing on
architecture...makes Canaletto so beguiling." At the same, his innovative use of topography,
rendering a locale with scientific accuracy, influenced subsequent artists, as art historian John
Russell noted, "he took hold of his native city as if no detail of its teeming life was too small
or too trivial to deserve his attention."

Venice was a noted stop for British aristocrats on the Grand Tour, and most of Canaletto's
work was sold to this audience. The British art dealer Owen Swiny encouraged him to paint
small, even postcard-sized, topographical views to sell to tourists, and the banker and art
collector, Joseph Smith, became a noted patron, selling a large number of his works to King
George III. In 1746 Canaletto moved to London where he painted scenes of London, such as
his Westminster Bridge (1746). Ever since his work has retained its popularity and influence:
it was featured in the David Bickerstaff film Canaletto and the Art of Venice (2017), and this
painting was used in the video game Merchant Prince II (2001).

Oil on canvas - Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

1733-34

Soap Bubbles
Artist: Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin

This painting depicts two children at play. An older boy, leaning forward, blows through a
reed, expanding a luminous soap bubble. A younger child in shadow, wearing a cap with a
plume, peers over the ledge, his gaze also focused on the shimmering bubble. The color
palette, muted with various shades of rich brown and black, emphasizes the contrasting light
and ruddy glow of the boy's hands and face, so that the viewer too becomes aware of the
hushed absorption in childhood play. The paint applied with a thick impasto conveys the
tactile textures of stone, fabric, and skin. The work creates a feeling of childhood innocence
focused on an ephemeral joy, while also being allusive, as the artist's contemporaries would
have registered the soap bubble as a symbol of life's transience.
Influenced by Dutch Golden Age genre painters, Chardin's realistic genre scenes were his
unique contribution to the Rococo period. Unlike most artists who focused on the aristocracy
and its entertainments, he depicted domestic scenes, children at play, and still lifes, all
reflecting the Rococo's homage to leisurely pastimes. As Jones also wrote, Chardin painted
"the world of middle-class pleasures" and the "French aesthetic of the everyday ...appears for
the first time in Chardin's paintings and made him a cult figure for modern French artists and
writers." His work influenced Gustave Courbet, Paul Cézanne, Édouard Manet, and Vincent
Van Gogh, among others.

Oil on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1751

La Toilette de Vénus (The Toilet of Venus)

Artist: François Boucher

This portrait depicts a nude Madame de Pompadour in the guise of Venus, the classical
goddess of love, attended by three cherubs and two white doves. She sits on a chaise lounge,
its back framed with gold rocaille topped with a statue of a reclining cherub.

Blue drapes, luminescent with light and shadow, open to a partial view of a beautiful garden,
frame the scene with an atmosphere of leisure. The figurative treatment is idealized, almost
air-brushed, while the setting is ornately detailed and decorative, creating an overall effect
that embodies the concept of luxury itself.
Boucher transformed the Rococo period with his sensual depictions of the era's notable
citizens, social celebrities, and past times, creating his own distinct, pictorial brand. A
veritable "who's who of the time", Madame de Pompadour commissioned Boucher to paint
this work for her private dressing room in the Chateau de Bellevue. The painting was a
tribute to her, as she had played the title role of Venus in La Toilette de Venus (1750) at
Versailles.

As art historian Melissa Lee Hyde wrote, Boucher's portraits often pointed "to an interesting
conflation of theatrical/performed identities and lived identities," showing "a passion for what
we might call the art of appearance and an understanding of that art as a vehicle for
fashioning and representing identity."

Within a few decades, Neoclassicism repudiated Boucher's work for the same qualities that
made it so popular among the aristocratic class. His work has only recently begun to be re-
evaluated by art historians such as Melissa Lee Hyde and Jed Perl, and contemporary artists
John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage have cited Boucher as a direct influence.

Oil on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1767-68

The Swing
Artist: Jean-Honoré Fragonard

This iconic work depicts a fanciful woman flying on a swing in a verdant garden, her dress
blooming like an extravagant pink flower, as a young dandy falls back into the bushes on the
left, his face blushing with excitement to look up her skirt. In the shadows at the right an
older man is pulling on the swing's ropes to propel the young woman forward. Beneath her
are two embracing cherubs and at the left, another cupid stands on a pedestal holding his
hand up to his lips in admonition. The image was scandalous for its time because of its
densely layered sexual allusions.

Fragonard's expressive brushstrokes create a swirling flow between figure and foliage, so that
nature itself seems to be caught up in the excitement of the moment. At the same time, the
artist used light and shadow to direct the viewer's eye toward discovering the work in stages.
The viewer notices first the woman on the swing, then the young man, and, finally, the older
man in shadow at the right. The effect is one of a kind of stage lighting, creating drama and
narrative.

Fragonard's work was rediscovered by the writers Edmund and Jules de Goncourt in L'Art du
XVIIIe siècle (Eighteenth-Century Art) (1865), and his work subsequently influenced the
Impressionists, particularly Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Berthe Morisot, who was also his
granddaughter. The Swing has become an artistic and cultural icon. It was revisited by
contemporary artists Yinka Shonibare and Kent Monkman in their own work. Balloon artist
Larry Moss referred to it in his 3D installation of The Swing for his Masterworks series at the
Phelps Art Center in 2013.

Oil on canvas - Wallace Collection, London

1752

Allegory of the Planets and Continents

Artist: Tiepolo

This gorgeously festive depiction of the sun's course across the sky is presented in an operatic
splendor of swirling arabesques, color, and light. At left of center, the Greek sun god Apollo
stands with the radiant orb behind him, calling up the sun horses on his right. On the cornice,
groups of allegorical figures with representative animals denote Europe, Asia, America, and
Africa, while the gods, symbolizing the planets, swirl around the sun god. Mars, the god of
war, is reclining with a nude Venus, on a dark cloud beneath Apollo, while Mercury with his
caduceus in hand flies down from the upper left.

This painting was made for a dazzling staircase ceiling he created at the Würzburg Residenz
in Germany for the prince-bishop Carl Phillip von Grieffenklau. Painted on an enormous
vault, Tiepolo's trompe l'oeil treatment created a dramatic impression in contrast to the white
marble Neoclassical staircase designed by Balthasar Neumann. Tiepolo's painting of the
Europe section includes a portrait of the architect, as well as of von Grieffenklau.
Additionally, the artist portrayed his son Giandomenico and the artist Antonio Bossi, both of
whom worked with him on the project, and a self-portrait.

This fresco remains the largest in the world, composed so that the painting's individual
sections could be viewed from a particular stopping place, as if the perspective adjusted to the
position of the viewer. Tiepolo's innovation was his arrangement of pastels in a
complementary scheme, so that the tension in the color would emphasize the narrative
movement and the dramatic poses of the figures to create a lively effect. The result was
called sprezzatura, or a "studied carelessness." As art historian Keith Christiansen wrote,
Tiepolo "celebrates the imagination by transposing the world of ancient history and myth, the
scriptures, and sacred legends into a grandiose, even theatrical language." It was this quality
of Tiepolo's imagination that influenced Francisco Goya throughout his career, both in his
early tapestry designs and later in his etchings as he drew upon Tiepolo's mysterious and
sometimes bizarre prints in the Capricci (c. 1740-1742) and the Scherzi di fantasia (c. 1743-
1757).

Oil on canvas

c. 1770

The Blue Boy

Artist: Thomas Gainsborough

This full-length portrait depicts a boy, wearing blue satin knee breeches and a lace-collared
doublet as he gazes, unsmiling, at the viewer. Holding a plumed hat in his right hand, his
other hand cocked on his hip, he conveys both self-confidence and a touch of swagger.
Composed in layers of slashed and fine brushstrokes with delicate tints of slate, turquoise,
cobalt, indigo, and lapis lazuli, the blue becomes resplendent, almost electric against the
stormy and rocky landscape.
Originally, the painting was thought to portray Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy
merchant, but contemporary scholarship has identified the model to most likely be the artist's
assistant and nephew Gainsborough Dupont. As art critic Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
wrote, the work "is a kind of English Civil War cosplay popular for masquerade balls in the
18th century," depicting the boy in the outfit of a cavalier, worn by aristocratic Royalists of
the 1630s. His posture and facial expression play the part as well, for cavaliers were defined
not only by their stylish clothing but their nonchalant and swashbuckling attitude. Thus, the
work, Gainsborough's most popular, is a tour de force, combining masterful portraiture with a
costume study and his artistic reply to the works of Anthony van Dyck, famous for his
portraiture of King Charles I's court and the cavaliers who supported him. Yet, by primarily
using blue, traditionally thought to be more suited for background elements, Gainsborough
also challenged traditional aesthetic assumptions.

The work carries Rococo's traditional visual appeal and play with costumed figures, but
Gainsborough also added innovative elements of realism, as seen in the buttons tightly lacing
the doublet together, and prefigured Romanticism by portraying a solitary figure outlined
against a turbulent sky. Gainsborough came to exemplify British Rococo with society
portraits of his wealthy clients.

The painting was immediately successful at its 1770 debut at the Royal Academy of Art in
London and became so identified with British cultural identity that, when in 1921 the Duke of
Westminster sold it to the American tycoon Henry Huntington, it caused a scandal. Friedrich
Wilhelm Murnau's silent film Knabe in Blau (The Boy in Blue) (1919) was inspired by the
painting, as was Cole Porter's song Blue Boy Blues (1922). Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg
and contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley were inspired by the work, and artist Alex Israel
referenced it in his Self Portrait (Dodgers) (2014‒2015). Shown at the Huntington Museum,
paired with Thomas Lawrence's portrait of a girl in pink, Pinkie (1794), the work has taken
on further cultural relevance, as both paintings have been used in the TV pilot for Eerie,
Indiana (1991) and as set decorations on episodes of Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963).

Oil on canvas - Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Rococo: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

French Rococo
France was the center of the development of Rococo. In design, the salon, a room for
entertaining but also impressing guests, was a major innovation. The most famous example
was Charles-Joseph Natoire and Germain Boffrand's La Salon de la Princesse (1735-1740) in
the residence of the Prince and Princess de Soubise. The cylindrical interior's white walls,
gilded wood, and many mirrors created a light and airy effect. Arabesque decorations, often
alluding to Roman motifs, cupids, and garlands, were presented in gold stucco and plate
relief. Asymmetrical curves, sometimes derived from organic forms, such as seashells or
acanthus fronds, were elaborate and exaggerated. The minimal emphasis on architecture and
maximum emphasis on décor would become cornerstone to the Rococo movement.

Painting was an essential part of the Rococo movement in France, and the noted painters who
led the style, Antoine Watteau followed by François Boucher, influenced all elements of
design from interiors to tapestries to fashion. Other noted artists included Jean-Baptiste van
Loo, Jean-Marc Nattier, and François Lemoyne. Lemoyne was noted for his historical
allegorical paintings as seen in his Apotheosis of Hercules (1733-1736) painted on the Salon
of Hercules' ceiling at Versailles. A noted feature of French Rococo painting was the manner
in which a number of noted artist families, such as the van Loos and the Coypels, maintained
a consistent style and subject matter in their workshops.
Italian Rococo
Painting took the lead in Italian Rococo, exemplified by the works of the Venetian
artist Tiepolo. Combining the Venetian School's emphasis on color with quadratura, or
ceiling paintings, Tiepolo's masterworks were frescos and large altarpieces. Famed
throughout Europe, he received many royal commissions, such as his series of ceiling
paintings in the Wurzburg Residenz in Germany, and his Apotheosis of the Spanish
Monarchy (1762-1766) in the Royal Palace in Madrid.

Italian Rococo was also noted for its great landscape artists known as "view-painters,"
particularly Giovanni Antonio Canal, known simply as Canaletto. He pioneered the use of
two-point linear perspective while creating popular scenes of the canals and pageantry of
Venice. His works, such as his Venice: Santa Maria della Salute (c. 1740), were in great
demand with English aristocrats. In the 1700s it became customary for young English
aristocrats to go on a "Grand Tour," visiting the noted sites of Europe in order to learn the
classical roots of Western culture. The trips launched a kind of aristocratic tourism, and
Venice was a noted stop, famed for its hedonistic carnival atmosphere and picturesque views.
These young aristocrats were also often art collectors and patrons, and most of Canaletto's
works were sold to an English audience, and in 1746 he moved to England to be closer to his
art market and lived there for almost a decade.
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Rosalba Carriera's pastel portraits, both miniature and full-size, as well as her allegorical
works were in demand throughout Europe, as she was invited to the royal courts of France,
Austrian, and Poland. She pioneered the use of pastels, previously only employed for
preparatory drawings, as a medium for painting, and, by binding the chalk into sticks,
developed a wider range of strokes and prepared colors. Her Portrait of Louis XV as
Dauphin (1720-1721) established the new style of Rococo portraiture, emphasizing visual
appeal and decorative effect.

In architecture, Italy continued to emphasize the Baroque with its strong connection to the
Catholic church until the 1720s when the architect Filippo Juvarra built several Northern
Italian Palaces in the Rococo style. His masterwork was the Stupinigi Palace (1729-1731),
built as the hunting lodge for the King of Sardinia in Turin. At the same time, Rococo
interiors became popular in Genoa, Sardinia, Sicily, and Venice where the style took on
regional variations particularly in furniture design. Italian Rococo interiors were particularly
known for their Venetian glass chandeliers and mirrors and their rich use of silk and velvet
upholstery.
German Rococo

Germany's enthusiasm for Rococo expressed itself exuberantly and primarily in architectural
masterpieces and interior design, as well as the applied arts. A noted element of German
Rococo was the use of vibrant pastel colors like lilac, lemon, pink, and blue as seen in
François de Cuvilliés' design of the Amalienburg (1734-1739), a hunting lodge for the Holy
Roman Emperor Charles VII in Munich. His Hall of Mirrors in the Amalienburg has been
described by art historian Hugh Honour as exemplifying "easy elegance and gossamer
delicacy."

German design motifs while employing asymmetry and s- and c- curved shapes, often drew
upon floral or organic motifs, and employed more detail. German architects also innovatively
explored various possibilities for room designs, cutting away walls or making curved walls,
and made the siting of new buildings an important element of the effect, as seen in Jacob
Prandtauer's Melk Abbey (1702-1736)

English Rococo
England's employment of Rococo, which was called "French style," was more restrained, as
the excesses of the style were met with a somber Protestantism. As a
result, rocaille introduced by the émigré engraver Hubert-François Gravelot and the
silversmith Paul de Lamerie, was only employed as details and occasional motifs. Around
1740 the Rococo style began to be employed in British furniture, most notably in the designs
of Thomas Chippendale. His catalogue Gentleman's and Cabinet-makers' directory (1754),
illustrating Rococo designs, became a popular industry standard.

Rococo had more of an impact upon British artists such as William Hogarth, Thomas
Gainsborough, and the Swiss Angelica Kauffman. In his The Analysis of Beauty (1753)
Hogarth advocated for the use of a serpentine line, seeing it as both more organic and
aesthetically ideal. Gainsborough first studied with Gravelot, a former student of Boucher,
whose feathery brushwork and color palette influenced Gainsborough's portraiture toward
fluidity of light and color. Though Swiss-born, Angelica Kauffman spent most of her life in
Rome and London. From 1766 to 1781 she lived in London where influential Sir Joshua
Reynolds particularly admired her portraiture. One of only two women elected to the Royal
Academy of Arts in London, she played a significant role in both advancing the Rococo style
and, subsequently, Neoclassicism.