THE ROCOCO

Time Period
1700 – 1750

The rococo derives its name from a combination of the French rocaille, meaning pebble
or shell and barroco, meaning baroque, thus motifs in the rococo were thought to
resemble ornate shell or pebble work

 Historical Background
Center stage in early-eighteenth-century politics was the European conquest of
the rest of the world. The great struggles of the time took place among the colonial
powers, who at first merely established trading stations in the lands they encountered?
But later occupied distant places by layering new settlers, new languages, new
religions, and new governments onto an indigenous population. At first, Europeans
hoped to become wealthy by exploiting these new territories, but the cost of maintaining
foreign armies soon began to outweigh the commercial benefits.
As European settlers grew wistful for home, they built Baroque- and Rococo-
inspired buildings, imported Rococo fashions and garments, and made the New World
seem as much like the Old World as they could In France, the court at Versailles began
to diminish after the death of Louis XIV, leaving less power in the hands of the king and
more in the nobility. Therefore, the
Rococo departs from the Baroque interest in royalty, and takes on a more
aristocratic flavor, particularly in the decoration of lavish townhouses that the upper
class kept in Paris—not in Versailles

 Patronage and artistic life

It was impossible for a Frenchman to make a career in painting without the
blessing of the French Royal Academy, which insisted on a very traditional style of
representation in the fine arts. Artists were trained by studying anatomy and drawing
from live models. No artist could succeed without demonstrating his mastery of
perspective; this was key to the eighteenth-century understanding of spatial
relationships. Women need not apply, because extremely few were admitted,
regardless of their talent.
The French Academy's training had far-reaching effects. '(hen other countries
established their own academies, they took the French as their model. In this way,
artists promoted themselves through a distinguished organization that was both
elevating and limiting at the same time

 Innovations of rococo architecture

There are no straight lines in the Rococo—everything is sophisticated elegance
and stylish grace, the height of refinement. Taking the Baroque one step further,
Rococo architects made walls pliable surfaces in which forms undulated and curved in
such a manner that it is sometimes difficult to determine exactly what shape a building
is.
Further, Rococo buildings unite the arts of painting, architecture, and sculpture in
a complete artistic unity

 Characteristics of rococo architecture

Architecture is where Rococo artists best expressed their artistic unity with the
other arts. The architect conceived of his building as a work of sculpture, whose walls
bend and undulate at his will, creating dynamic and moving spatial environments.
Churches avoided stained glass because clear light was needed to shine on the painted
walls revealing the delicate interplay of pastel colors. Sculptures were placed
everywhere—on altars, on capitals, on cornices—there were no empty spaces. Legs of
figures that were painted on ceilings overlap their frames coming out into our own
space. Rococo art is a living organism of forms that is generated by a single artistic
principle: More is more.

 Major Work Rococo Architecture

Johann Bathasar Neumann, Vierzehnheiligen (Church of theFourteen Saints), 1743—
1772, Staffelstein, Germany (Figure21.1)
 • Exterior: undulating forms in a complex arrangement of curved shapes;
towers of complicated curvilinear design
• Interior: no straight lines; curves and oval shapes interlock and intertwine;
light pastel colors abound; combination of painting sculpture and architecture;
Altar of Mercy placed conspicuously in the center

 Innovations of rococo painting

Just as in architecture, Rococo painting shuns straight lines, even in the frames
of paintings. It is typical of Tiepolo to have curved frames with delicate rounded forms in
which the limbs of several of the figures spill over the sides so that the viewer is hard-
pressed to determine what is painted and what is sculpted.
Rococo art is flagrantly erotic, sensual in its appeal to the viewer. The curvilinear
characteristics of Rococo paintings enhance their seductiveness. Unlike the sensual
paintings of the Venetian Renaissance, these paintings tease the imagination by
presenting playful scenes of love and romance with overt sexual overtones.
Freedom of expression swept through France and England at the beginning of
the eighteenth century and found its fullest expression in the satires of Jonathan Swift's
Gulliver's Travels and Voltaire's Candide. The visual arts responded by painting the first
overt satires, the most famous of which are by the English painter Hogarth
Satirical paintings usually were done in a series to help spell out a story
completely as in Marriage la Mode (Figure 21.6). Afterward they were transferred to
prints, so that the message could be mass-produced. Themes stem from exposing
political corruption to spoofs on contemporary lifestyles. Hogarth knew that the pictorial
would reach more people than the written, and he hoped to use his prints to didactically
expose his audience to abuses in the upper class. Society had changed so much that
by now those in power grew more tolerant of criticism so as to allow satirical painting to
flourish, at least in England. Today, the political cartoon is the descendant of Rococo
satirical prints.
Although the French are most noted for the Rococo, there were also active
centers in England, central Europe, and Venice.
  Characteristics of rococo painting

Rococo painting is the triumph of the Rubénistes over the Poussinistes. Artists,
particularly those of Flemish descent like Watteau, are captivated by Rubens's use of
color to create form and modeling.
Figures in Rococo painting are slender, often seen from the back. Their light
frames are clothed in shimmering fabrics worn in bucolic settings like park benches or
downy meadows. Gardens are rich with plant life and flowers dominate. Figures walk
easily through forested glens and flowery copses, contributing to a feeling of oneness
with nature reminiscent of the Arcadian paintings of the Venetian Renaissance.
Colors are never thick or richly painted; instead, pastel hues dominate. Some artists,
like Rosalba Carriera, specialized in pastel paintings that possessed an extraordinary
lifelike quality. Others transferred the spontaneous brushwork and light palette of
pastels to oils.
By and large, Rococo art is more domestic than Baroque, meaning it is more for
private rather than public display. Féte galante painting, a term typified by Watteau,
featured the aristocracy taking long walks or listening to sentimental love songs in
garden settings.
Inspired by the Rococo, English portrait painters of the period derived a style that
combined French elitism with grand classical allusions. Their paintings are marked by
full-length life-size figures in cutting-edge fashion. Reynolds tended to favor allegorical
settings and references, Gainsborough was more interested in representing the pastoral
glory of the English countryside behind his figures.

 Major Works of French Rococo Painting]

Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Return from Cythera, 1717—1719, oil on canvas,
Louvre, Paris
• Submitted painting to the Royal Academy as a presentation piece
• Light and dreamy atmospheric perspective
• Iridescent colors
• Slender, delicate figures
 • Arcadian elements
• Asymmetry
• Féte galante
• Venus overlooks the scene, bedecked with flowers
• On right: lady listens to a proposition by a pilgrim carrying a handbook on
love, a stick, and a flask
• Gilded boat topped by flying cupids
• Bacchus allusion in the panther hide
• Inspired by a 1700 play
• Indebted to Rubens, Titian, Veronese; Mona Lisa—like background
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing, 1766, oil on canvas, Wallace Collection,
London (Figure 21.3)
• Figures are small in a dominant gardenlike setting
• Atmospheric perspective Puffy clouds; rich vegetation; abundant flowers;
sinuous curves
• Patron in lower left looking up the skirt of a young lady who swings
flirtatiously, boldly kicking off her shoe at a Cupid sculpture
• Unsuspecting bishop swings her from behind
• An intrigue painting; patron hides in a bower; Cupid asks her to be discreet
and may be a symbol for the secret hiding of the patron
Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Self-Portrait, 1790, oil on canvas, Uffzi,
Florence (Figure 21.4)
• Forty self-portraits exist, all highly idealized
• Looks at the viewer as she paints a portrait of Marie Antoinette, who is
rendered from memory since she was killed during the French Revolution;
subject in painting looks admiringly upon the painter
• Light Rococo touch to the coloring
• Inspired by the portraits of Rubens
Major Work of Italian Rococo Painting
Giambattista Tiepolo, detail of the Madonna and Child from Scuola Grande dei
Carmini, 1748, Fresco, Venice (Figure 21.5)
 • Feeling of limitless space, dazzling light, pastel colors
• Debt to Veronese in drapery
• Di sotto in su
• Spiraling forms
• Historical and allegorical imagery mixed
• Painted figures intermix with sculpted figures
• Elaborate frames on paintings; legs hang over frame

Major Works of Eighteen Century English Painting

William Hogarth, The Breakfast Scene from Marriage la Mode, 1745, oil on canvas,
National Gallery, London (Figure 21.6)
• One of six scenes in a suite of paintings called Marriage la Mode
• Narrative paintings
• Highly satiric paintings about aristocratic English society and those who would
like to buy their way into it
• Breakfast Scene. shortly after the marriage, each partner has been pursing
pleasures without the other
- Husband has been out all night with another woman (the dog sniffs
suspiciously at another bonnet); the broken sword means he has been
in a fight and probably lost (and may also be a symbol for sexual
inadequacy)
- The wife has been playing cards all night, the steward indicating by his
expression that she has lost a fortune at whist; he holds nine unpaid
bills in his hand, one was paid by mistake
- Turned-over chair indicates that the violin player made a hasty retreat
when the husband came home
Thomas Gainsborough, Blue Boy, 1770, oil on canvas, Huntington Library, San
Marino,
California, and Sarah Siddons, 1785, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
(Figures 21.7 and 21.8)
• Portrait painter, over seven hundred exist
• Influenced by Watteau in the feathery light-hued landscapes
• Influenced by van Dyck in large formal standing portraits as in Blue Boy
• Blue Boy. debt to van Dyck in pose and coloring; firmly modeled figure; aristocratic
elegance; tasteful color-coordinated drapery; said to be painted of Gainsborough's
friend's son, not an aristocrat but an ironmonger; cool blues set off against stormy
sky; legend around the work alleges that Gainsborough painted the portrait in blue to
prove Reynolds wrong about the viability of blue as a central color in a portrait
• Sarah Siddons: aristocratic portrait of actress painted in fashionable dress of the
time, not weighed down by allegories and symbols; bold profile even though sitter
had a long nose; sitting in a modern chair not a throne; simple curtain; various forms
of drapery painted to reflect the texture of each fabric

Joshua Reynolds, Sarah Siddons as a Tragic Muse, 1783—1784, oil on canvas,

Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, California, and Lord Heathfield Govenor
ofGibraltar during the Siege of 1779—83, 1787, oil on canvas, National Gallery,
London (Figures 21.9 and 21.10)
• Women are flattered; idiosyncratic features are reduced
• Women often have allegories or mythological attributes
• Women are unaffected by relationships, obligations, domestic responsibilities
• Men posed with allegories
• Backgrounds are often perfunctory
• Discrete reference to rank; figures are rarely ostentatious
• Hands have simple gestures
Vocabulary
Academy: an institution whose main object is to train artists in an academic tradition,
ennoble the profession, and hold exhibitions
Apotheosis: a type of painting in which the figures are rising heavenward
Féte galante: an eighteenth-century French style of painting that depicts the aristocracy
walking through a forested landscape
Pastel: a colored chalk that when mixed with other ingredients produces a medium that
has a soft and delicate hue

Summary

The early eighteenth century saw the shift of power turn away from the king and
his court at Versailles to the nobles in Paris. The royal imagery and rich coloring of
Baroque painting was correspondingly replaced by lighter pastels and a theatrical flair.
Watteau's lighthearted compositions, called féte galantes, were symbolic of the
aristocratic taste of the period.
Partly inspired by the French Rococo, a strong school of portrait painting under
the leadership of Gainsborough and Reynolds emerged in England. In addition,
English painters and patrons delighted in satirical painting, reflecting a more relaxed
attitude in the eighteenth century toward criticism and censorship.
The aristocratic associations of the Rococo caused the style to be reviled by the
Neoclassicists of the next generation, who thought that the style was decadent and
amoral. Even so, the Rococo continued to be the dominant style in territories occupied
by Europeans in other parts of the world—there it symbolized a cultured and refined
view of the world in the midst of perceived pagans.