Rococo, Realism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism

ROCOCO

Rococo

•flourished in France and Germany in the early 18th century

• in many respects a continuation of baroque

Rococothe period corresponded

respectively to the reign of King Louis XV of France

(1715-74)

Definition

•‘Rococo’ comes from the French rocaille meaning ‘rock work’

•Hallmarks of the style:

•architectural decoration (arabesques, shells, elaborate curves, asymmetry, iridescent pastel colors

•painting (light-hearted and playful)

Beginnings

•Pierre Lepautre introduced arabesques and curves into the interior architecture of the royal residence at Marly

• Jean-Antoine Watteau, used delicate, color drenched canvases of lords and ladies in idyllic surroundings in the heroic Louis XIV style

• Grand Salon, Hotel de Roquelaure

• characteristic of rococo style --pale pastel colors, gold leaf, delicate ornamentation in many curving forms

•Jean-Antoine Watteau is known for his ethereal pictures of elegantly dressed lovers disporting themselves in fetes galantes--such pastoral fantasies were much emulated by other French artists

•The Embarkation for the Island of Cythera (1717) by Watteau

•Francois Boucher highly popular for his mythological and pastoral scenes, lighthearted and graceful depictions of women

•Marquise de Pompadour by Francois Boucher

•mistress of Louis XV, king of France

Reclining NudeBoucher

Jean Honoré Fragonard

French painter and a favorite in the courts of Louis XV and

XVI

delicately colored scenes of romance often in garden

settings

•reflects the gaiety, frivolity and voluptuousness of the period

•fluid lines, frothy flowers, loose foliage, gracefully posed figures, ladies and lovers or peasant mothers with children as subjects

Rococo

•Rococo gave way to the austere neoclassical style late in the 18th century and disappeared completely after the French Revolution in 1789.

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

NEOCLASSICISM

Neoclassicism

•emulation of Greco-Roman forms, antique revival

•1750s to early 1800s

•tried to replace the sensuality in rococo and baroque with a style that was logical, solemn in tone and moralizing in character

Neoclassicism

•developed following the excavation of the ruins of the Italian cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii

•noble simplicity and calm gradeur of Greco-Roman art, urging artists to imitate the timeless and ideal forms

Jacques-Louis David

• leading proponent of neoclassicism

• imbued with classical influences from his stay in Rome

•sober style in harmony with the ideals of the French Revolution

• Oath of the Horatii (Louvre, Paris) by Jacques-Louis David commissioned by Louis XVI intended to be used to improve public morality through art

• The scene shows the three Horatii brothers vowing to sacrifice their lives for their country

Death of Socrates

Death of Marat

Jacques-Louis David

Sympathetic to the aims of the French

revolution

Jean-August-Dominique

Ingres

cool serenity of line and tone and

attention to details identified with the academic tradition

in France

Grande Odalisque (1814)by Jean-Auguste-Dominique

The Turkish Bath (Ingres)

Ingres’s strengths: superb draftsmanship, keen sensitivity for personality and precise neoclassical linear style were perfectly suited to portraiture

ROMANTICISM

Romanticism•art movement that extends from 1800 to

1850

•The word romantic first became current in 18th-century English and originally meant “romance-like,” that is, resembling the strange and fanciful character of medieval romances. The word came to be associated with the emerging taste for wild scenery, “sublime” prospects, and ruins, a tendency reflected in the increasing emphasis in aesthetic theory on the sublime as opposed to the beautiful.

Characteristics

•highly imaginative and subjective approach

•emotional intensity

•dreamlike or visionary quality

•Caspar David Friedrich, ‘Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog’, 1818

• By the end of the century the shift away from reason toward feeling and imagination began to be reflected in the visual arts, such as etchings of monsters & demons by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya.

•The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

•Feeling a lack of hope in humanity’s ability to rise above misfortune

Third of May, 1808Francisco de Goya

Third of May, 1808

•commemorate Spanish war of liberation, against Napoleon’s armies in the Peninsular War

•Museo del Prado, Madrid

Chronos Devouring One of His ChildrenAnother disturbing

indictment to man’s bestial nature

Confronting humanity with an example of the blackest

forms of behavior

Theodore Gericault

carried further dramatic and coloristic style and

shifted to the emphasis of battle paintings from

heroism to suffering and endurance

•Raft of the Medusa by Gericault

• Death of Sardanapalus (1827)

• inspired by a work of Lord Byron, detailed, violent and dynamic

• chaos engulfing the immobile figure of the dying king

• Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix

• ‘Liberty Leading the People’ after the Revolution of 1830 when Parisians took up in arms to restore the republic created after the French Revolution of 1789-1799

The Death of ChattertonHenry Wallis

REALISM

The GleanersJean Francois Millet

Realism

•mid-19th century France

•Gustave Courbet started to reject neoclassicism and romanticism

•proclaimed a new movement: realism

•representing scenes and events of everyday life

Realism

•realistic in painting everydayevents involving ordinary people

•‘realist’, used to describe works of art where ‘ugly’ objects or figures are represented

•describe scenes of humble life, often criticism to social conditions

•Burial at Ornans

•Funeral of an ordinary villager, showing real people behaving the way real people behave

The GleanersJean Francois Millet

Peasant’s MealDiego Velasquez