Europe and America, 1700 to 1800

Rococo – characterized by an elaborately ornamental late baroque style of decoration prevalent in 18th-century Continental Europe, with asymmetrical patterns involving motifs and scrollwork.

rocaille – an 18th-century artistic or architectural style of decoration characterized by elaborate ornamentation with pebbles and shells, typical of grottos and fountains.

femmes savantes – French for “learned woman.” Term used to describe the elite, cultured hostesses of Rococo salons.

salon – Gathering of elite socialites and intellectuals for the purpose of popular conversation and academic discourse.

Poussinistes – a group of French artists, named after the painter Nicolas Poussin, who believed that drawing was the most important thing. On the other side were the Rubenists, named after Peter Paul Rubens, who prioritize color.

Rubénistes – An admirer or imitator of Rubens; specifically one of a group of late 17th-cent. French artists and critics who emphasized the importance of the exuberant and expressive use of colour, as epitomized in the work of Rubens. Contrasted with Poussinist.

fête galante – French for “amorous festival.” A type of Rococo painting depicting the outdoor amusements of French upper-class society.

Neoclassical – the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the “classical” art and culture of classical antiquity.

Pompeii – the Italian seacoast, that was known for the luxury and dissipated ways of its citizens. It was destroyed in the first century by an eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius.

Royal Academy of the Arts – an honorary academy in London (founded in 1768) intended to cultivate painting and sculpture and architecture in Britain. Royal Academy. honorary society, academy – an institution for the advancement of art or science or literature.

The Enlightenment – The Western philosophy based on empirical evidence that dominated the 18th century. Inspired a new way of thinking critically about the world and about humankind, independent of thoughts on religious, myth or tradition.

French Revolution – an uprising in France against the monarchy from 1789 to 1799 which resulted in the establishment of France as a republic. An example of the French Revolutionis the storming of the Bastille by the French citizens.

“Natural” Art – A movement in literature and the arts, and an approach to philosophy. Literary and artistic naturalism aims at accuracy and objectivity and cultivates realistic and even sordid portrayals of people and their environment.

The Grand Tour of Italy – “Pilgrimage” of aristocrats to see great sights of antiquity, specifically on tours through Italy. These tourists hoped to increase their knowledge of the arts, literature and history via established itineraries and organized touring groups.

Grand Manner portraiture – an idealized aesthetic style derived from classical art, and the modern “classic art” of the High Renaissance. In the eighteenth century, British artists and connoisseurs used the term to describe paintings that incorporated visual metaphors in order to suggest noble qualities.

Federal Style – the name for the classicizing architecture built in the newly founded United States between c. 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815. … The name Federal style is also used in association with furniture design in the United States of the same time period.

hedonism – the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. It is also the idea that every person’s pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain.

RENAISSANCE 1400 – 1800 AD CE

• Renaissance: Italy 1400 – 1600 CE
• Renaissance: Europe 1500 – 1600 CE
• Baroque 1600 – 1700 CE
• Rococo 1700 – 1750 CE

PRE-MODERN 1800 – 1880 CE

• Neo-Classicism 1750 – 1880 CE
• Romanticism 1800 – 1880 CE
• Realism 1830’s – 1850’s CE
• Impressionism 1870’s – 1890’s CE
• Post-Impressionism 1880’s – 1920’s CE

One thing you will notice is that the length of time for each “style” of art is getting shorter and shorter.  This shortening is primarily due to changes in communication.  When everyone is isolated (no trains, phones, cars, planes or internet) ideas seem to take much longer to develop.  In this case, with the use of the train and later on the automobile and electricity, ideas will change and develop much at a much faster rate.  Also remember that these styles are not independent of the styles that came before them.  Ask yourself, what were these artists interested in and what might they be reacting to?

Louis XIV still ruled as the Sun King of France

• Ruled from Versailles

By 1800

• Revolutions had overthrown the monarchy in France
• British colonies in America win independence (1776)
• Industrial Revolution
• Began in England
• Transformed the economy of Europe and North America

Revolutionary change

• Social as well as political
• Economic, and technological
• Major transformations in the arts
• In the 18th century, shifts in style and subject matter were fast and significant

Rococo

• Death of Louis XIV in 1715
• Many changes in French high society
• Elite abandoned the court of Versailles for the pleasures of town life

Resurgence of power

• Members of the nobility exercised their rights
• Exempt from certain taxes
• Exempt from forced labor on public works
• Sought to expand their power
• Reestablished themselves as art patrons
• Hôtels (town houses) of Paris
• Became the centers of a new, softer style of art called Rococo

In the early years of the 1700s, at the end of the reign of Louis XIV (who dies in 1715), there was a shift away from the classicism and “Grand Manner” (based on the art of Poussin) that had governed the art of the preceding 50 years, toward a new style that we call Rococo.Versailles was abandoned by the aristocracy, who once again took up residence in Paris. A shift away from the monarchy, toward the aristocracy characterizes this period.

What kind of lifestyle did the aristocracy lead during this period? Remember that the aristocracy had enormous political power as well as enormous wealth. Many chose leisure as a pursuit and became involved themselves in romantic intrigues. Indeed, they created a culture of luxury and excess that formed a stark contrast to the lives of most people in France. The aristocracy, only a small percentage of the population of France, owned over 90% of its wealth. A small, but growing middle class does not sit still with this for long (remember the French Revolution of 1789).

Salon de la Princesse 

• Parisian salons were the center of Rococo social life
• Fulfilled the role that Louis XIV’s palace used to have

In Baroque France

• palaces were centralized and grand

Rococo

• private homes were intimate and decentralized
• Architectural style mirrored this social and cultural shift

Salon de la Princesse

• Softened the strong architectural lines and panels of the earlier style
• Flexible, snake like curves with numerous mirrors
• The walls melt into the ceiling
• Irregular painted shapes, sculpture and rocaille shells replace the hall’s molding
• Painting, architecture, and sculpture combine to form a single piece

Curving plant like vines and foliage blends with the shell forms to give an effect of freely growing nature

• Suggesting that the designer permanently decked the Rococo room for a festival

French Rococo interiors were lively total works of art

• Exquisitely wrought furniture
• Enchanting small sculptures
• Ornamented mirror frames
• Delightful ceramics and silver
• Small paintings
• Decorative tapestries
• no longer has the movable furniture and decorations that it once did

Amalienburg

• The French Rococo style quickly spread beyond Paris
• A small lodge
• Designed by French architect François de Cuvilliés
• In the park of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich
• Example of Germany’s adoption of the Paris style

Hall of Mirrors

• Combination of different architectural styles
• Stucco relief
• Silvered bronze mirrors, and crystal
• Represents the Rococo style at its peak
• Silvery light
• Reflected and amplified by windows and mirrors
• Bathes the room in light
• Everything seems organic, growing, and in motion

Femmes Savantes and Salon Culture

• Rococo style suggests that the taste and social power of women dominated
• To a large extent, they did

Held some of the most influential positions in Europe:

• Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV of France
• Maria Theresa, arch duchess of Austria/queen of Hungary and Bohemia
• Empresses Elizabeth
• Catherine the Great of Russia

In the early 18th century, Paris was the social capital of Europe

• The Rococo salon was the center of Parisian society
• Wealthy and ambitious women competed to host the most famous and most accomplished people to their salons
• Were called femmes savantes (learned women)

Organizing spicy conversations

• Being a smart ass was important
• Participants considered enthusiasm or sincerity in bad taste

Vierzehnheiligen    

• Rococo style was not just domestic
• Pilgrimage church
• Near Staffelstein
• German architect Balthasar Neumann
• Interior is a fantasy world
• Has the energy of Italian Baroque architecture but not the dark drama
• Large windows flood the interior with an bright light
• Feels light and delicate
• Influenced by the architect Borromini but it’s much more complex
• Neumann got rid of all the straight lines
• made up of ovals and circles
• lots of curves within a traditional basilica plan
• Combination of architecture, painting, sculpture, and music that blends together

The Rococo style of art emerged in France in the early 18th century as a continuation of the Baroque style.In contrast to the heavier themes and darker colors of the Baroque, the Rococo style was characterized by an opulence, grace, playfulness, and lightness.

Rococo motifs focused on the carefree aristocratic life and on lighthearted romance rather than heroic battles or religious figures; they also revolve heavily around nature and exterior settings. In the mid-late 18th century, Rococo was largely supplanted by the Neoclassic style.

With the death of Louis XIV in 1715, French life itself became exuberant. This was an age whose taste was formed by society women with real, if covert, political power, especially Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour.

The salons, gatherings held by particular hostesses on particular days of the week, were the social events of the day. A famous musician might appear at one salon, while artists and art lovers would always gather at Mme. Geoffrin’s on Mondays. A highly developed sense of wit, irony, and gossip was necessary to succeed in this society.

So skilled was the repartee in the salons, that the most biting insult could be made to sound like the highest compliment. Sexual intrigue was not merely commonplace but expected.

ANTOINE WATTEAU 

• Most people associate him with French Rococo
• The differences between the Baroque age in France and the Rococo age –
• Compare Rigaud’s portrait of Louis XIV (1701 – Baroque) with Watteau’s L’Indifférent (1716 – Rococo)

• Rigaud portrayed the king as pompous of full of glory
• Watteau’s painting is delicate and light in both color and tone
• The artist presented a slow, gliding dance
• If the two paintings were hung together, could almost make fun of the rigidness of Baroque
• In Rigaud’s, rigid architecture, banner-like curtains, flowing ermine (white fur), and fleur-de-lis pattern
• In Watteau’s, the dancer moves freely through faded colors
• As in architecture, this contrast of paintings also highlights the different patronage of the eras
• Royal patronage, particularly that of Louis XIV, dominated the French Baroque period
• Rococo appealed to a wider group, a group with money where private patrons bought art

Watteau

• created a specific type of Rococo painting
• fête galante (amorous festival) painting
• Depicted the outdoor entertainment of French high society

Pilgrimage to Cythera

• Entered this painting for admission to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture
• The fête galante was not acceptable in any of the categories
• The academy created a new category for his entry

Two competing doctrines sharply divided the membership of the French academy

1. Followers of Nicolas Poussin (Poussinistes)

• Form was the most important element in painting
• “Colors in painting should be used to persuade the eyes” (used only for effect and not really essential)

2. Followers of Peter Paul Rubens (Rubénistes)

• Proclaimed that natural color was above all else and should be used as the artist’s guide

Watteau was Flemish

• Looked to Ruben for inspiration

Pilgrimage to Cythera

• Costumed lovers who have made a “pilgrimage” to Cythera
• Island of eternal youth and love, sacred to Aphrodite
• Figures and cupids move from the shade of trees
• Blend of elegance and sweetness
• Usually very small paintings
• Slow movement from different and unusual angles.
• Experimented with numerous poses
• Lots of smooth color changes
• Appealed to wealthy patrons

FRANÇOIS BOUCHER

Followed Watteau

• Major patron was Madame de Pompadour
• Became famous for his graceful paintings
• Painted shepherds, nymphs, and goddesses

Cupid a Captive

• Figures are structured like a pyramid
• Background of trees and leaves
• Clothes hide and reveal their bodies

Combination of Italian and Baroque ideas

• Crisscrossing figures
• Curvilinear forms

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (April 5, 1732 – August 22, 1806)

• French painter and printmaker
• Known for his exuberance and hedonism (pursuit of pleasure).
• One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades
• Produced more than 550 paintings (not counting drawing and etchings)
• Only five are dated.

JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD 

• Boucher’s greatest student
• Outstanding colorist whose decorative skill almost surpassed Boucher’s

The Swing (also known as The happy accidents of the swing) 1767

• Two theories about this painting –
• Unsuspecting old bishop swings the young man’s pretty sweetheart higher and higher
• Or she is being pushed into this position by her priest-lover

Her lover (and the work’s patron), in the lower left corner

• The young man is getting an interesting view up the women’s skirt
• Lady kicks off her shoe toward the statue of Cupid
• Cupid holds his finger to his lips

The landscape setting is out of Watteau

• Shady area between trees
• Resembles a stage set
• Glowing pastel colors and soft light allude to sensuality

Fragonard’s The Swing (from the Khan Academy)
As with most Rococo paintings, the subject of Fragonard’s The Swing is not very complicated! Two lovers have conspired to get this older fellow to push the youg lady in the swing while her lover hides in the bushes. Their idea is that as she goes up in the swing, she can part her legs, and he can get a perfect view up her skirt.

They are surrounded by a lush, over grown garden. A sculptured figure to the left puts his fingers to his mouth, as though saying “hush,” while another sculpture in the background has two cupid figures cuddled together. The colors are pastel — pale pinks and greens, and although we have a sense of movement and a prominent diagonal line — the painting lacks all of the seriousness of a baroque painting.

If you look really closely you can see the loose brushstrokes in the pink silk dress, and as she opens her legs, we get a glimpse of her garter belt. It was precisely this kind of painting that the philosophers of the Enlightenment were soon to condemn. They demanded a new style of art, one that showed an example of moral behavior, of human beings at their most noble.

Fragonards Bathers

Fragonard’s Young Girl Reading

• Unidentified girl wearing a yellow saffron dress
• X-rays have revealed that the canvas originally featured a different image which Fragonard painted over.
• One in a series of paintings by Fragonard featuring young girls.
• What I find most interesting about this piece is the use of brushstrokes and allowing those brushstrokes to show.  This a departure from earlier work where allowing the hand of the artist to show in the work was a sign of incompetence . 2D Design students – notice the contrat of yellow-orange and blue.  Fragonard is using complements to give the painting life.
• After his marriage in 1769 he also painted children and family scenes.
• Stopped exhibiting at the Salon in 1767
• Almost all his work was done for private patrons.
• One of them was Mme du Barry, Louis XV’s most beautiful mistress
• Tried the new Neoclassical style
• Was admired and supported by Neoclassical artist Jacques Louis David
• Ruined by the Revolution and died in poverty.

The Fragonard Room

from Khan AcademyScientific experiments like the one pictured here were offered as fascinating shows to the public in the mid-eighteenth century. In Joseph Wright of Derby’s painting A Philosopher Giving A Lecture at the Orrery (1765), we see the demonstration of an Orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system that was used to demonstrate the motions of the planets around the sun—making the universe seem almost like a clock.

In the center of the Orrery is a gas light, which represents the sun (though the figure who stands in the foreground with his back to us block this from our view); the arcs represent the orbits of the planets. Wright concentrates on the faces of the figures to create a compelling narrative.

With paintings like these, Wright invented a new subject: scenes of experiments and new machinery, and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution (think cities, railroads, steam power, gas and then electric light, factories, machines, pollution). Wright’s fascination with light, strange shadows, and darkness, reveals the influence of Baroque art.

Enlightenment
Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a shift in thinking occurred. This shift is known as the Enlightenment. You have probably already heard of some important Enlightenment figures, like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire. It is helpful I think to think about the word “enlighten” here—the idea of shedding light on something, illuminating it, making it clear.

The thinkers of the Enlightenment, influenced by the scientific revolutions of the previous century, believed in shedding the light of science and reason on the world, and in order to question traditional ideas and ways of doing things. The scientific revolution (based on empirical observation, and not on metaphysics or spirituality) gave the impression that the universe behaved according to universal and unchanging laws (think of Newton here). This provided a model for looking rationally on human institutions as well as nature.

Reason and Equality
Rousseau, for example, began to question the idea of the divine right of Kings. In The Social Contract, he wrote that the King does not, in fact, receive his power from God, but rather from the general will of the people. This, of course, implies that “the people” can also take away that power! The Enlightenment thinkers also discussed other ideas that are the founding principles of any democracy—the idea of the importance of the individual who can reason for himself, the idea of equality under the law, and the idea of natural rights. The Enlightenment was a period of profound optimism, a sense that with science and reason—and the consequent shedding of old superstitions—human beings and human society would improve.

You can probably tell already that the Enlightenment was anti-clerical; it was, for the most part, opposed to traditional Catholicism. Instead, the Enlightenment thinkers developed a way of understanding the universe called Deism—the idea, more or less, is that there is a God, but that this God is not the figure of the Old and New Testaments, actively involved in human affairs. He is more like a watchmaker who, once he makes the watch and winds it, has nothing more to do with it.

The Enlightenment, the Monarchy and the Revolution
The Enlightenment encouraged criticism of the corruption of the monarchy (at this point King Louis XVI), and the aristocracy. Enloghtenment thinkers condemned Rococo art for being immoral and indecent, and called for a new kind of art that would be moral instead of immoral, and teach people right and wrong.

Denis Diderot, Enlightenment philosopher, writer and art critic, wrote that the aim of art was “to make virtue attractive, vice odious, ridicule forceful; that is the aim of every honest man who takes up the pen, the brush or the chisel’ (Essai sur la peinture).

These new ways of thinking, combined with a financial crisis (the country was literally bankrupt) and poor harvests left many ordinary French people both angry and hungry. In 1789, the French Revolution began. In its first stage, all the revolutionaries ask for is a constitution that would limit the power of the king. Click here to read the Declaration of the Rights of Man—a document produced by the revolutionaries at the beginning of the revolution.

Ultimately the idea of a constitution failed, and the revolution entered a more radical stage. In 1792, Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, were beheaded along with thousands of other aristocrats believed to be loyal to the monarchy.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Aristocratic culture celebrated in Rococo art did not go unchallenged

• Feudal system that served as the foundation of Europe dissolved
• Rigid social hierarchies relaxed
• By the end of the 18th century, revolutions had erupted in France and America
• A major factor in these political, social, and economic changes was the Enlightenment

Enlightenment

• New way of thinking critically about the world and about humankind
• Independent from religion, myth, or tradition
• Basis of Enlightenment thought was empirical evidence (based on observation that can be tested)
• Promoted the scientific questioning of all beliefs
• Rejected unfounded beliefs about the nature of humankind and of the world
• Encouraged the scientific method

Roots in the 17th century

• Mathematical and scientific achievements
• René Descartes
• Blaise Pascal
• Isaac Newton
• Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

England and France were the principal centers of the Enlightenment

• Influenced the thinking of intellectuals throughout Europe and in the American colonies
• Benjamin Franklin
• Thomas Jefferson

• insisted on empirical proof of his theories
• Encouraged others to avoid metaphysics and the supernatural
• Became a cornerstone of Enlightenment thought
• Experiments revealed a rationality in the physical world
• Promoted a rationally organized society

Locke

• developed these ideas further
• “Doctrine of empiricism”
• Knowledge comes to people through their sense of perception of the material world
• From these perceptions alone people form ideas
• Asserted that human beings are born good, not cursed by “Original Sin”
• Laws of Nature grant them the natural rights of life, liberty, property, freedom of conscience
• Government is by contract, and its purpose is to protect these rights
• If and when government abuses these rights, citizens have the right to revolution
• Empowered people to take control of their own destinies

The Philosophes

• Newton and Locke inspired many French intellectuals (philosophes)
• Applied reason and common sense to human problems
• Criticized the powers of church and state as irrational limits placed on political and intellectual freedom.
• Believed in accumulation and spread of knowledge
• Humanity could advance to a happier state than it had ever known
• Matured into the “doctrine of progress”
• Corollary doctrine of the “perfectibility of humankind”
• Previous societies perceived the future as inevitable
• Cycle of life and death
• Religious beliefs determined fate
• Philosophes took on the task of gathering knowledge and making it accessible to all who could read
• Democratization of knowledge

Diderot

• Greatly influenced the Enlightenment’s rationalistic and materialistic thinking
• Became editor of the Encyclopédie
• Compilation of articles written by more than a hundred contributors
• The Encyclopédie was comprehensive
• Its formal title was Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts
• Included all available knowledge
• Historical, scientific, and technical as well as religious and moral—and political theory
• First volume appeared in 1751 and the last of the 35 volumes of text and illustrations in 1780

Voltaire

• Hated and attacked in his writings
• Wrote about the tyrannical rule of kings
• Selfish privileges of the nobility and the church
• Religious intolerance
• Injustice of the ancien régime (the “old order”)
• Authorities regularly condemned and burned his books/pamphlets
• Protested against government persecution of the freedoms of thought and religion
• Believed humankind could never be happy
• Until an enlightened society removed the traditional obstructions to the progress of the human mind
• Convinces a whole generation that fundamental changes were necessary
• Paved the way for a revolution in France that he never intended
• Probably would never have approved of it
• He was not convinced that “all men are created equal”

Political, economic, and social consequences of increase of knowledge

• French Revolution
• American Revolution
• Industrial Revolution in England
• Growth of cities
• Emergence of an urban working class
• Expansion of colonialism
• Manifest Destiny (the ideological justification for continued territorial expansion)

Industrial Revolution

Research into electricity and combustion

Discovery of oxygen and the power of steam

• Beginning of the Industrial Revolution
• Replaced human labor
• Began a new era in world history

By 1850, England had a manufacturing economy

• Revolutionary development
• Societies were capable of producing a seemingly limitless supply of goods and services.

Developments also affected the arts

• Use of new materials for constructing buildings
• Invention of photography

Joseph Wright

• English painter
• Painted dramatic candlelit and moonlit scenes

A Philosopher Giving a Lecture at the Orrery

• Subject is about how fascinating science can be
• A scholar demonstrates a model of the solar system called an orrery
• Each planet (represented by a metal ball) revolves around the sun (a lamp) at the correct speed
• Dramatic light and shadow
• Children are in awe
• One person takes notes
• One woman sits at the left
• Two men at the right pay close attention
• People are in a circle just like the orbiting planets
• Wright’s realism appealed to the people of his day
• Scientific inventors often purchased works such as Orrery

Diderot on Chardon and Naturalism

• One of the first art critics
• Made an encyclopedia of human knowledge
• Contributed reviews of the biennial Salon of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture to the Paris journal Correspondence littéraire
•  Reviewed the 1763 Salon

Praised still lifes and naturalism in painting:

“There are many small pictures by Chardin at the Salon, almost all of them depicting fruit with the accoutrements for a meal. This is nature itself.  The objects stand out from the canvas and they are so real that my eyes are fooled by them. . . . In order to look at other people’s paintings, I feel as though I need different eyes; but to look at Chardin’s, I need only keep the ones nature gave me and use them properly.”

“Natural” Art – Rousseau

• Key figure of the French Enlightenment
• Declared that the arts, sciences, society, and civilization in general had corrupted “natural man” (people in their primitive state)
• Humanity’s only salvation lay in a return to “the ignorance, innocence and happiness” of man’s original condition

Human capacity for feeling, sensibility, and emotions came before reason:

• “To exist is to feel; our feeling is undoubtedly earlier than our intelligence, and we had feelings before we had ideas.”

Nature alone must be the guide:

• “All our natural inclinations are right.”  “Man by nature is good . . . he is depraved and perverted by society.”

Rejected the idea of progress

• Insisting that “Our minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and sciences have improved.”

Rousseau’s views turned away from the Rococo styletaste for the “natural,” as opposed to the artificial and frivolous

Jean-Baptiste- Siméon Chardin

• Painted quiet scenes of domestic life
• Praise the simple goodness of ordinary people
• Mothers and young children
• lived far from corrupt society

Saying Grace

• Modest room where a mother and her small daughters are about to eat
• Mood of quiet attention
• mellow lighting and color
• studied still-life accessories
• Worn surfaces
• Viewer witnesses a moment of social instruction
• Mother and older sister supervise the younger sister in the ritual of saying a blessing before a meal
• Composition is simple
• Chardin’s paintings were widely accepted
• Louis XV once owned Saying Grace
• Also a favorite of Diderot

Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LebrunVery independent, both personally and financially

• worked for the nobility throughout Europe
• Famous for the force and grace of her portraits, especially wealthy and noble ladies
• One of the few women admitted to the Royal Academy

After the French Revolution the Academy cancelled her membership

• Women were no longer welcome
• enjoyed continued success because of her talent and ability to make connections with those in power

Self-Portrait

Vigée-Lebrun pauses in her work and looks directly at viewers

• Her mood is lighthearted
• Clothing seems Rococo, but her pose and mood are not.
• Self-confident woman
• Art has won her an independent role in society
• Portrayed herself in a close-up, intimate view
• Working on a painting of Queen Marie Antoinette

The Dutchess of Polignac, 1783

• Rococo portraits combine the Baroque sense of lighting with a fascination with texture.
• Vigeé-Lebrun was a favorite painter of Marie Antoinette.
• Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brunwas a French painter, and is recognized as the most famous woman painter of the eighteenth century.
• Her style is neoclassical in exhibiting ideals of simplicity and purity.
• Her work can also be considered Rococo in its grace, delicacy, and naturalism.
• By the time she was in her early teens, she was painting portraits professionally.
• Her studio was seized, for practicing without a license
• Applied to the Académie de Saint Luc, which exhibited her works in their Salon.
• On 25 October 1774, she was made a member of the Académie.

William Hogarth 

• British
• imported painters from the Continent (Holbein, Rubens, and Van Dyck)
• English felt inferior to these artists
• Hogarth tried to change this
• Made fun of the lifestyle of the new middle class

Time of English satirical writing

• Hogarth saw himself as translating satire into the visual arts

Hogarth’s favorites were a series of narrative paintings and prints

• Read like chapters in a book or scenes in a play
• Following a character or group of characters in their encounters with some social evil

Breakfast Scene from Marriage à la Mode

• One in a sequence of six paintings
• Makes fun of the marital immoralities of the upper classes in England
• Marriage of a young nobleman is just beginning to fail
• Husband and wife are tired after a long night
• Wife stayed home for an evening of cards and music-making
• Husband had been away from the house for a night
• Thrusts his hands deep into the empty money-pockets of his pants
• Small dog sniffs at a woman’s lacy cap in his coat pocket
• A steward, his hands full of unpaid bills
• Raises his eyes to Heaven in despair

Hogarth filled the interior of the house with witty clues

• Row of religious paintings on the upper wall of the distant room
• At the end there is a painting covered by a curtain… probably of an erotic subject
• Women were not supposed to view this hidden painting
• At the pull of a cord, the master and his male guests could gaze at the sexy figures

Designed the marriage series to be published as a set of engravings

• Prints of this and his other moral narratives were very popular
• Fake prints were as popular as the originals

Thomas GainsboroughA contrasting blend of “naturalistic” representation and Rococo setting

Shows a lovely woman, dressed informally

• Seated in a rustic landscape
• Soft light and feathery brushwork
• Woman blends with the landscape, treated the same
• Mrs. Sheridan’s dark brown hair blows in the wind
• Originally planned to add several sheep
• Did not live long enough to paint them
• Won fame for his portraits
• Started as a landscape painter

The Excavations of Herculaneum and PompeiiTwo ancient Roman cities on the Bay of Naples

• Excavations fueled the European fascination with classical antiquity
• Discovered paintings, sculptures, furniture, vases, and silverware in addition to buildings

The volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted in August 79 CE

• buried both cities under ash and mud
• exploration of both sites did not begin until the mid-1700s
• were able to reconstruct Roman art and life

New interest in Rome

• Collectors acquired many of the newly discovered objects

“Pompeian” style became very popular in England

• Evident in the interior designs of Robert Adam
• Inspired by straight-lined, frescoes of the Third and early Fourth Styles of Roman mural painting

New Neoclassical style

• replaced the curvy Rococo style

In the Etruscan Room at Osterley Park House

• Adam took decorative motifs (medallions, urns, vine scrolls, sphinxes, and tripods) from Roman art
• Adam was an archaeologist as well
• Explored and wrote accounts of the ruins of Diocletian’s palace at Split
• The archaeological finds from Herculaneum and Pompeii affected garden and landscape design, fashion, and tableware
• Clothing based on Roman classics became popular

Neo-classicism was a child of the Age of Reason (the Enlightenment), when philosophers believed that we would be able to control our destinies by learning from and following the Laws of Nature (the United States was founded on Enlightenment philosophy).  Scientific inquiry attracted more attention. Therefore, Neo-classicism continued the connection to the Classical tradition because it signified moderation and rational thinking but in a new and more politically-charged spirit (“neo” means “new,” or in the case of art, an existing style reiterated with a new twist.)

Neo-classicism is characterized by: clarity of form; sober colors; shallow space; strong horizontal and verticals that render that subject matter timeless, instead of temporal as in the dynamic Baroque works; and, Classical subject matter—or classicizing contemporary subject matter.

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the “classical” art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, competing later with Romanticism. In architecture the style continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and into the 21st.Neoclassicism is a revival of the styles and spirit of classic antiquity inspired directly from the classical period, which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the Rococo style.  The movement is often described as the counterpart of Romanticism.  The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology.  The writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. His books, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture (1750) and Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (“History of Ancient Art”, 1764) were the first to distinguish sharply between Ancient Greek and Roman art, and define periods within Greek art, tracing a trajectory from growth to maturity and then imitation or decadence that continues to have influence to the present day. Winckelmann believed that art should aim at “noble simplicity and calm grandeur”, and praised the idealism of Greek art, in which he said we find: “not only nature at its most beautiful but also something beyond nature, namely certain ideal forms of its beauty, which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us, come from images created by the mind alone.” The theory was very far from new in Western art, but his emphasis on close copying of Greek models was: “The only way for us to become great or, if this be possible, inimitable, is to imitate the ancients”.
With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe. “Neoclassicism” in each art implies a particular canon of a “classical” model.

Angelica Kaufmann

• One of the pioneers of Neoclassical painting
• Born in Switzerland and trained in Italy
• Spent many of her productive years in England
• A student of Reynolds,
• Interior decorator of many houses built by Adam
• Founding member of the British Royal Academy of Arts

Cornelia Presenting Her Children as Her Treasures

• Clothed her actors in ancient Roman clothing
• Posed them as statues within Roman interiors
• Theme is the virtue of Cornelia
• Mother of the future political leaders Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (in the second century BCE, attempted to reform the Roman Republic)
• Painting is about Cornelia’s character
• Takes place after the seated visitor showed off her fine jewelry
• Insisted that Cornelia show hers
• Instead of showing jewelry, she shows her children
• The architectural setting is very Roman
• No Rococo styles

• Revolution of 1789
• Initiated a new era in France

Napoleon Bonaparte

France was in turmoil and Napoleon exploited it. He established a different kind of monarchy with himself at its head. He served in various French army commands and had major campaigns in Italy and Egypt. He gained control of almost all of Europe.

• 1804 – Became king of Italy & Emperor of the French
• 1812 – Napoleon launched an invasion of Russia – Failed and had to retreat
• 1815 – Suffered a horrible loss to the British at Waterloo in present-day Belgium

Napoleon was forced to give up his throne. He went into exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic and died there six years later.

After Napoleon was exiled

• Political geography of Europe changed dramatically
• Big technological and economic changes after the 1850’s

The Industrial Revolution

• Population boom in European cities
• Railroads spread  – helped transport goods and people
• Arts also underwent important changes
• By 1870 Romanticism and Realism art movements emerged
• New construction techniques led to changes in architecture
• Invention of photography

ART UNDER NAPOLEON

In 1794 the French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre and his party falls.

Jacques-Louis David aligned himself with the revolutionary forces and barely escaped with his life. He stood trial and went to prison and worked hard to resurrect his career after release in 1795

Bonaparte approached David in 1804 and offered him the position of First Painter of the Empire

Neoclassicism appealed to Napoleon

• The emperor embraced all links with the classical past as symbolic sources of authority
• Napoleon wanted to rule an empire that might one day rival ancient Rome’s

Jacques Louis David (August 30, 1748 – December 29, 1825) was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, chiming with the moral climate of the final years of the ancien regime.David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre, and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre’s fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release, that of Napoleon I. It was at this time that he developed his ‘Empire style’, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. David had a huge number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.

• Active role in the French Revolution in 1789
• Highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style
• In prison, he aligned himself with Napoleon I.
• Developed his ‘Empire style’, notable for its use of warm colors.
• Had a huge number of students, making him the strongest influence in French art of the 19th century

In 1796 he made the following statement to his students:

“I want to work in a pure Greek style. I feed my eyes on antique statues, I even have the intention of imitating some of them. The Greeks had no scruples about copying a composition, a gesture, a type that had already been accepted and used. They put all their attention and all their art on perfecting an idea that had been already conceived. They thought, and they were right, that in the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself. To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this—and only this—is to be an artist.”

David also believed that paintings depicting noble events in ancient history wouldinstill patriotism and civic virtue in the public

In November 1793 he wrote:

“[The arts] should help to spread the progress of the human spirit, and to propagate and transmit to posterity the striking examples of the efforts of a tremendous people who, guided by reason and philosophy, are bringing back to earth the reign of liberty, equality, and law. The arts must therefore contribute forcefully to the education of the public. . . .The arts are the imitation of nature in her most beautiful and perfect form. . . [T]hose marks of heroism and civic virtue offered the eyes of the people [will] electrify the soul, and plant the seeds of glory and devotion to the fatherland.”

Death of Marat

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, David threw in his lot with the Jacobins, the radical and militant revolutionary faction.

He accepted the role of minister of propaganda, organizing political pageants and ceremonies that included floats, costumes, and sculptural props. David believed that art could play an important role in educating the public and that dramatic paintings emphasizing patriotism and civic virtue would prove effective in rallying the troops.

Began to portray scenes from the French Revolution itself.

He intended Death of Marat not only to serve as a record of an important event in the struggle to overthrow the monarchy but also to provide inspiration and encouragement to the revolutionary forces. Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793), a writer and David’s friend, was tragically assassinated in 1793.

David depicted the martyred revolutionary after Charlotte Corday (1768–1793), a member of a rival political faction, stabbed him to death in his medicinal bath. (Marat suffered from a painful skin disease.) David presented the scene with directness and clarity.

The cold neutral space above Marat’s figure slumped in the tub produces a chilling oppressiveness.

The painter vividly placed narrative details—the knife, the wound, the blood, the letter with which the young woman gained entrance—to sharpen the sense of pain and outrage and to confront viewers with the scene itself.

Death of Marat is convincingly real, yet David masterfully composed the painting to present Marat as a tragic martyr who died in the service of the revolution. David based the figure of Marat on Christ in Michelangelo’s Pietà in Saint Peter’s in Rome. The reference to Christ’s martyrdom made the painting a kind of “altarpiece” for the new civic “religion,” inspiring the French people with the saintly dedication of their slain leader.

The Oath of the Horatii, 1784, oil on canvas, 11 x 14 ft

• Shows the three brothers on the left
• Horatii father in the center
• Sister/wives on the right.

Starting from the left, the Horatii brothers, there are the three of them swearing upon (saluting) their swords as they take their oath.  As members of a patriarchal society, the men show no sense of emotion. Even the father shows no emotions. He holds up three swords. On the right, there are three women weeping, one in the back and two up closer.  The woman dressed in the white is a Horatii sister weeping for both her fiancée and her brother, as the one dressed in brown is a Curiatii sister who weeps for her husband and her brother. The woman in black in the back is holding two children of one of the Horatii husband and the Curiatii wife. The younger daughter hides her face in her nanny’s dress as the son refuses to have his eyes shielded.

The painting depicts the Roman Horatii, who were male triplets destined to wage war against the “Curiatii,” who were also male triplets, in order to settle disputes between the Romans and the Albans. As revolution in France loomed, paintings urging loyalty to the state rather than to clan or clergy abounded. Although it was painted nearly five years before the revolution in France, the Oath of the Horatii became one of the defining images of the time.

In the painting, the three brothers express their loyalty and solidarity with Rome before battle, wholly supported by their father.

• These are men willing to lay down their lives out of patriotic duty.
• The men epitomize patriotism.
• They are symbols of the highest virtues of the Republic, even as the tender-hearted women lay home weeping and mourning, content to wait.
• The mothers and sisters are shown clothed in silken garments seemingly melting into tender expressions of sorrow.

Their despair is partly explained by the fact that one sister was engaged to one of the Curiatii and another is a sister of the Curiatii, married to one of the Horatii. Upon defeat of the Curiatii, the remaining Horatius journeyed home to find his sister cursing Rome over the death of her fiancé. He killed her, horrified that Rome was being cursed. Originally David had intended to depict this episode, and a drawing survives showing the surviving Horatius raising his sword, with his sister lying dead.

David later decided that this subject was too gruesome a way of sending the message of public duty overcoming private feeling, but his next major painting depicted a similar scene – Lucius Junius Brutus brooding as the bodies of his sons, whose executions for treason he had ordered, are returned home.

CORONATION OF NAPOLEON 

• One of the major paintings David produced for Napoleon
• Documented the celebration of the new emperor’s crowning in December 1804

Napoleon knew that art could be used to produce a public image.

• David painted a factual painting, even painting those in attendance
• His sketches show that he did make changes at Napoleon’s request
• Napoleon insisted that David paint the pope with his hand raised in blessing
• Napoleon’s mother appears in the center background, but she refused to attend the coronation
• Lots going on, but still very neutral like Neo-classical art
• Looks like they are on a stage in a theatre
• Divided the painting to reveal polarities
• The pope, bishops, and priests representing the Catholic Church are on the right
• Members of Napoleon’s imperial court on the left

The relationship between church and state caused lots of arguments during this time

• Napoleon’s decided to crown himself
• Usually the pope would do it
• Illustrates Napoleon’s ideas about the relationship between church and state
• Complex statement about the changing politics in Napoleonic France

Background

• Completed in four months, from October 1800 to January 1801
• In May 1800 he led his troops across the Alps in a military campaign against the Austrians
• Defeated them in June at the Battle of Marengo.
• Portrait was commissioned by Charles IV, then King of Spain, to be hung in a gallery of paintings of other great military leaders.

Napoleon and the Portrait

• Napoleon refused to sit for it
• Argued that: “Nobody knows if the portraits of the great men resemble them, it is enough that their genius lives there.”

All David had to work from was an earlier portrait and the uniform Napoleon had worn at Marengo.

• One of David’s sons stood in for him, dressed up in the uniform and climbed on top of a ladder.
• Probably accounts for the young looking man.
• Napoleon said he wanted an equestrian portrait: “calme sur un cheval forgueux” (calm on a fiery horse).

Napoleon did not actually lead his troops over the Alps

• Followed a couple of days after them
• Traveling on a narrow path on the back of a mule

Pantheon

The portico of the Parisian church of Sainte-Geneviève, now the Panthéon,by Jacques-Germain Soufflot (1713–1780), stands as testament to the revived interest in Greek and Roman cultures. The Roman ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon, especially the titanic colonnade of the temple of Jupiter, provided much of the inspiration for Soufflot’s design. The columns, reproduced with studied archaeological precision, stand out from walls that are severely blank, except for a repeated garland motif near the top. The colonnaded dome, a Neoclassical version of the domes of Saint Peter’s in Rome, the Église du Dôme in Paris, and Saint Paul’s in London, rises above a Greek-cross plan.

Both the dome and the vaults rest on an interior grid of splendid freestanding Corinthian columns, as if the portico’s colonnade continued within. Although the overall effect, inside and out, is Roman, the structural principles employed are essentially Gothic. Soufflot was one of the first 18th-century builders to suggest that the logical engineering of Gothic cathedrals could be applied to modern buildings. In his work, the curious, but not unreasonable, conjunction of Gothic and classical has a structural integration that laid the foundation for the 19th-century admiration of Gothic building principles.

Thomas Jefferson

Part of the appeal of Neoclassicism was due to the values with which it was connected—morality, idealism, patriotism, and civic virtue. Thus, it is not surprising that in the new American republic, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)— scholar, economist, educational theorist, statesman, and gifted amateur architect—spearheaded a movement to adopt Neoclassicism as the national architectural style. Jefferson admired Palladio immensely and read carefully the Italian architect’s Four Books of Architecture. Later, while minister to France, he studied French 18th-century classical architecture and city planning and visited the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple at Nîmes.

After his European trip, Jefferson completely remodeled his own home, Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia, which he first had designed in a different style.

University of Virginia

Jefferson’s Neoclassicism was an extension of the Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of human beings and in the power of art to help achieve that perfection. When he became president, he selected Benjamin Latrobe (1764–1820) to build the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., specifying that Latrobe use a Roman style. Jefferson’s choice in part reflected his admiration for the beauty of the Roman buildings he had seen in Europe and in part his association of those buildings with an idealized Roman republican government and, through that, with the democracy of ancient Greece.

In his own designs for public buildings, Jefferson also looked to Rome for models.  For the University of Virginia, which he founded, Jefferson turned to the Pantheon. The Rotunda is the centerpiece of Jefferson’s “academical village” in Charlottesville. It sits on an elevated platform at one end of a grassy quadrangle (“the Lawn”), framed by Neoclassical pavilions and colonnades—just as temples in Roman forums (FIGS. 10-12 and 10-43) stood at one short end of a colonnaded square. Each of the ten pavilions (five on each side) resembles a small classical temple. No two are exactly alike. Jefferson experimented with variations of all the different classical orders in their designs.

Jefferson was no mere copyist. He had absorbed all the principles of classical architecture and clearly delighted in borrowing from major buildings in his own designs, which were nonetheless highly original—and, in turn, frequently emulated.

Jean-Antoine Houdon

Neoclassicism also became the preferred style for public sculptural commissions in the new American republic.

When the Virginia legislature wanted to erect a life-size marble statue of Virginia-born George Washington, the commission turned to the leading French Neoclassical sculptor of the late 18th century, Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828). Houdon had already carved a bust portrait of Benjamin Franklin when he was U.S. ambassador to France. His portrait of Washington is the sculptural equivalent of a painted Grand Manner portrait. But although both Washington and West’s General Wolfe wear contemporary garb, the Houdon statue makes overt reference to the Roman Republic.

The “column” on which Washington leans is a bundle of rods with an ax attached—the ancient Roman fasces, an emblem of authority (used much later as the emblem of Mussolini’s Fascist—the term derives from “fasces”—government in 20th-century Italy). The 13 rods symbolize the 13 original states. The plow behind Washington and the fasces alludes to Cincinnatus, a patrician of the early Roman Republic who was elected dictator during a time of war and resigned his position as soon as victory had been achieved in order to return to his farm.

Washington wears the badge of the Society of the Cincinnati (visible beneath the bottom of his waistcoat), an association founded in 1783 for officers in the revolutionary army who had resumed their peacetime roles. Tellingly, Washington no longer holds his sword in Houdon’s statue.