18th-century French art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The visual arts of the 18th century were highly decorative and oriented toward giving pleasure, as exemplified by the Regency Style and Louis XV Style, and the paintings of François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Watteau and Chardin, and portrait painters Quentin de La Tour, Nattier and Van Loo. Toward the end of the century, a more sober style appeared, aimed at illustrating scenery, work, and moral values exemplified by Greuze, Hubert Robert and Claude Joseph Vernet.
Régence (1715 - 1723)
In the arts, the style of the Régence is marked by early Rococo, characterised by the paintings of Antoine Watteau (1684–1721).
Rococo developed first in the decorative arts and interior design. Louis XIV's succession brought a change in the court artists and general artistic fashion. By the end of the old king's reign, rich Baroque designs were giving way to lighter elements with more curves and natural patterns. These elements are obvious in the architectural designs of Nicolas Pineau. During the Régence, court life moved away from Versailles and this artistic change became well established, first in the royal palace and then throughout French high society. The delicacy and playfulness of Rococo designs is often seen as perfectly in tune with the excesses of Louis XV's regime.
The 1730s represented the height of Rococo development in France. The style had spread beyond architecture and furniture to painting and sculpture, exemplified by the works of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. Rococo still maintained the Baroque taste for complex forms and intricate patterns, but by this point, it had begun to integrate a variety of diverse characteristics, including a taste for Oriental designs and asymmetric compositions.
Louis XV (1723–1774)
See also