18th-Century Art in EUROPE and NORTH AMERiCA – CHAPTER 26, Stokstad
Vocabulary: fete galante, hotel, interior design, pastels, porcelain, salon, history painting, satirical painting,
grand tour, cenotaph
EUROPE
Rococco
-b. in Paris, c. 1710: The French Taste
-Developed as a relief from Late Baroque formalities
-Baroque=grand scale theater -- Rococo= smaller, more intimate stage
-festive rooms, small works
-Rococo replaced Baroque grandeur with playfulness, grace, charm
-However, classicism does appear again in later part of century
-with death of Louis XIV (1715), many of court of Versailles moved to town life
-Parisian town houses= hôtels
-Paris was the social center of early 18th c. Europe
-aristocracy= primary art patrons
-rocaille= shellwork/pebbles in grottoes = inspiration for Rococo motifs
-French Decorative Arts -furniture= grand, extremely ornate
-furniture design= lighthearted, many S-curves, very decorative, inlays, silks, tapestries
-Last European art style in which archi, ptng, sculp, & decorative arts took same direction
-began primarily as a style of interior design
-playful art, born of sumptuous interior decorations
-Interiors= designed as total works of art, incl. architecture, relief sculptures, wall
paintings, elegant furniture, enchanting small sculpture, ornamental mirrors,
ceramic pieces, silver, easel paintings, decorative tapestry
SEE: Salon de la Princesse, by Germain Boffrand
-new techs= pastels & porcelain
-Rococo owed more to poetic style of Bernini- rather than intensity of Caravaggio
-took some inspiration from Rubens -art moved from palace halls to fashionable town houses
-style is light and airy, frivolous, playful- sensuous intimacy
-particularly suited to the frivolous life of French court -used brocades and silks rather
than heavy velvet as in Baroque
-forms are light and graceful, many floral patterns
-many pastel colors, whites, silver, gold
-Sculpture -many small figurines and figure groupings
-playful, often mythological
-some gentle eroticism, often nude, lighthearted
-made to fit into interiors, rooms rather than focus of vast structure
-garden ornaments popular
-SEE: Clodion (Claude Michel) - Satyr and Bacchante, c.1755, in the Met website:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/14.40.687
and Clodion’s work THE INVENTION OF THE BALLOON in Stokstad
BEYOND THE ROCOCCO and FRANCE
Major Developments in Philosophy
Read about the Enlightenment in General: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment
Major Developments in Painting
Poussinistes vs. Rubénistes = draftsmanship vs. color
-intellect vs. emotion -dominated by France and England
-SEE: Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher
-all painted pastoral scenes with lovers and people frolicking, playfulness
-Watteau, Return to Cythera, 1717, acceptance piece for French Royal Acad)
-Rubeniste
-fêtes galantes= elegant entertainment
-Compare to Baroque Rubens's Allegory of the Outbreak of War, http://lit-upart4.blogspot.com/2007/04/rubens-allegory-of-outbreak-of-war.html
Although the individual figures may be painted in a similar style to Ruben’s, Watteau’s painting has no hint of the
revolution that will come to a boil in France by the end of the century.
-Chardin, Greuze, Hogarth, Vigee-Lebrun, Canaletto
-painted more moralistic, middle-class people, genre scenes
-Chardin= narrative, moral tales, dignity of common
-Canaletto introduced vedutas - scenic portrayals of Venetian views
-English painting= Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Reynolds (continue in the tradition of Van Dyck who trained with
Rubens)
-Reynolds & Gainsborough= Greatest of Eng portrait painters
-later 18th c.=a revival of Classicism, antique Roman style
-textile industry very important - tapestries
-English minor arts dominated by designs of Thomas Chippendale
-decorative but very functional
-Italy remains rooted in Classicism and Christianity
-SEE: Tiepolo, Ceiling fresco at Kaisersaal, Wurzburg, Germany, 1751-52
-SEE: Angelica Kauffmann’s Cornelia Pointing to Her Children as Treasures, 1785-- Italian trained
Swiss painter who worked in London
-SEE: Anton Raphael Meng’s, Parnassus, 1761
Important Stylistic Genres of Painting & Sculpture:
Satirical & Social Painting- Hogarth, Greuze, Chardin
Portraiture- Gainsborough, Reynolds, Guiard, Vigee-Lebrun, Pigalle, Houdoun, GirodetTrioson, Smibert, Stuart
Romance of Science- Ledoux, Wright
History Painting-Kauffman, West, David, Trumball
Romantic Painting- Fuseli, Blake
Important women painters- where did they work and how did they get there? See insert in Stokstad on
Women and the Academies
-Rosalba Carriera= Portrait of Charles Sackville, 1730
-Adelaide Labille-Guiard= Self Portrait with 2 Pupils, 1785
-Angelica Kauffmann=Cornelia Pointing to her Children as Treasures, 1785
-Marie Vigee-Lebrun= Portrait of Marie Antoinette with her Children, 1787
Major Developments in Architecture
Revivals and Romanticism: Cutting and Pasting the Past onto the Present
Gothic Revival- Strawberry Hill by Horace Walpole1749-77 England
Classical Revival-Chiswick House by Richard Boyle, 1724-40, John Wood (elder & younger) housing project in
Bath called The Circus, 1754-58 England
Romantic/Classical- Henry Flitcroft and Henry Hoare’s The Park at Stourhead (Claude Lorrain’s Landscape
come to life complete with reproduction of the Pantheon), 1743-65 England
Neoclassism- Jacques Germain Soufflot’s Pantheon (church of Sainte-Genevieve) Paris (for the French,
classicism was the only style)
Sublime Romanticism- Claude-Nicolaus’s design for the town of Chaux- never built, but what a grand idea.
Stripped down classicism.
Period also gave birth to American painters John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West,
& Gilbert Stuart
-first American artists= limners (drawers)
see blog about the Enlightenment: http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/1700-1800-Age-of-Enlightenment.html
and the met’s essay on America: www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/arid/hd_arid.htm
Watson and the Shark by Copley
Engage the Heart and instruct the mind- Read the National Gallery’s Essay on American and British Historical
painting
http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg61/gg61-over1.html
Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West 1770 in Stokstad
(From the essay above at the National Gallery Website)
West stated, “The same truth that guides the pen of the historian should govern the pencil of the
artist…. I want mark the date, the place, and the parties engaged in the event; and if I am not able to
dispose of the circumstances in a picturesque manner, no academical distribution of Greek or Roman
costume will enable me to do justice to the subject.” Reynolds graciously acknowledged that West’s
straightforward approach gave a new, more realistic, direction to history painting.
Portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart (yes the picture on the one dollar bill)
Because he painted all the major figures of the Federal Period in America, considered to be the Father of
American Portraiture It would be interesting to compare his work with that of Hyacinthe Rigaud who painted all
the heads of state in Europe.
Sculpture
-Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova, he became the heir of Bernini for his grand public monuments, but
also in the style of his erotic mythological subjects that he created for private collectors.
-Other sculpture that was small, intimate, viewed up close--integrated with decorative interiors in townhouses
SEE: Clodion, Satyr and Bacchante, c. 1775,
-Neumann and D. Zimmermann took Rococo decoration to breathtakingly elaborate extremes
-use of gold, white, pastels, ribbonlike moldings, irregular ornamental designs, lacy, curling motifs
SEE: Kaisersaal, Wurzburg, Germany, c. 1740