Baroque and rococo - French art in the 17th & 18th centuries (2024)

Artin France - : 1590 - 1790

Fromclassicalbaroqueto French rococo

George de Latour - Dice players - Preston Hall museum -Stockton

Bythe end of the 16th century, the French Renaissance was coming to anend as writers, thinkers, artists and architects moved on to explorenew horizons. As with the Renaissance, the new directions in French artwere inspired initially by what was going on in Italy. Here, innovativeartists had long since moved on from the naturalism of High Renaissanceart, first into a more exaggerated style known as Mannerism, asexemplified in the works of Bronzino or Tintoretto, and then, by theend of the 16th century to a new type of effusive classicism whichlater on became known as "baroque art"
Baroque was not a break from Renaissanceclassicism,it was a development. At the time,artists and architects whom we today think of as being the masters ofItalian baroque art saw themselves as painting and working in a newphase of classicism, one that emphasised emotions, apprehension,movement and vitality. Baroque was a new classicism exaggerated byintense light and shadow,dramatic perspecitves, and a sometimes exuberant use ofcolour.
Seeing baroque art as a permutation of classicismsometimes requires a leap of faith when one looks at the worksofgreat baroque artists of Italy, Flanders or Spain - such as Caravaggio,Rubens or Zurbarán. By contrast, much of French baroque is altogethermore clearly classical, with less of the effusion seen inother parts of Europe, remaining more "classic" and subdued in itsdevelopment of the idiom of Renaissance art.
The adjective "Baroque" even seems misplaced when used todescribe theworks of some of the greatest French artists of the seventeenthcentury, notably Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin; but it sits wellwith two important artists who were contemporaries of Caravaggio,George de Latour and Philippe de Champaigne.
Sometimecalled "the French Caravaggio", Latour(1593-1652) who came from Lorraine,specialised in paintings, mostly small canvasses showing intimatecandle-lit scenes with intense light and shade. By contrast,Philippe deChampaigne, born in Brussels in 1602, worked for most ofhis lifein Paris, where he was called upon to paint many large religiouspaintings as well as portraits including several of Cardinal Mazarin.His paintings on religious subjects, particularly when relating todeath show all the intensity ofemotion that tends to characterise baroque art.

Nicolas Poussin - The Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth& John
the Baptist - St. Petersburg - theHermitage

Among the French artists of the first half of the 17thcentury,the one with whose works the word baroque is quite easily associatedwas Nicolas Poussin.Born inNormandy in 1593, Poussin came as a young artist to Paris where heworked for a few years before moving to Rome in 1624, and staying therefor most of the rest of his life. He was a fairly prolific painter,taking his inspiration fromgreat religious and classicalthemes,which he interpreted in a grand yet intimate style, less effuse thanthe works of his great Italian contemporaries, less removed from thestyle of the High Renaissance.
Poussin evolved his own theories of painting,notably his idea of the grandemanière,the view that a work of art must narrate a story in the clearestpossible manner, without confusing the issue with too much distractingdetail. In this way, his artdistinguishes itself frommainstreambaroque art in which a profusion of detail often distracts singularlyfrom the main theme.
Poussin's contemporary, Claude Lorrain(1600-1682), was a very different kind of artist, and one whose workswere to inspire a whole following of neoclassical painters. For therecord, it is useful to realise that Claude Lorrain goes under severaldifferent names: born in 1600 in Lorraine, and known from birth as Claude Gellée, hebecame known in the art world as justClaude, or Claude le Lorrain(Claude from Lorraine). In French he is often referred to asLe Lorrain.

Claude Lorrain - Pastoral scene with classical ruins.Grenoble - Musée des Beaux Arts

Like Poussin, Claude Lorrain spent most of his life workinginRome, where he specialised in imaginary scenes from classical mythologyand history. In a sense he was the first great French landscapepainter, taking the landscape element out of the background where ithad been a major but secondary element in the works of many Renaissanceartists, and making it into the dominant element of the painting.Lorrain's paintings thus break from tradition by being notdepictions of people or events in an incidental landscape, butpaintings of landscapes or seascapes that serve as a setting for theidealised depiction of an incidental story or event taken from thebiblical repertoire or from classical mythology. Lorrain's almostmystical depiction of idealised classical Italian landscapes was toinspire many artists not only in France - such as Horace Vernet orHubert Robert - but also in England and other parts of Europe for thenext hundred and fifty years
With the two greatestFrench artists of their timeworking in Rome, patrons inFrancelooking for portraits or works of art for churches, chapels andchâteaux used the services of a large number of less rememberedartists, painting often with considerable skill but as followers,rather than innovators, in the field of art. Two names standoutfrom the rest, Charles Le Brun and Hyacinthe Rigaud.
Charles LeBrun(1619 - 1690), who studied in Rome under Poussin, was considered byKing Louis XIV to be the greatest French painter of all time, and wascommissioned by him for monumental works and ceilings in his palaces atthe Louvre and Versailles. Le Brun also worked for otherpatronsonprojects in various châteaux, such as Vaux le Vicomte,wherehis works can still be seen today.
Le Brun was also oneof the key movers in the struggle to get official recognition for thebest artists in France, an idea that eventually led King Louis XIV toset up, in January 1848, the first French Royal Academy of painting andsculpture. From then on, the country's greatest artists wouldgetofficial acknowledgement, making the Academy theofficial arbiter of good art.
HyacintheRigaud(1659 - 1743) was the great portrait painter of the Grand Siècle, andthe portraits he painted during the second half of the 17th centuryhave determined the way that people see or imagine the great and thefamous who gravitated around the Sun KIng during this period ofabsolutist monarchy in France.
The influence ofLouis XIV on art in his age cannot be underestimated. If the secondpart of the 17th century was not a great period of innovation in Frenchart, this was in no small degree due to the role played by the King andhis court as arbiters of fashion, style and art. Artists who wished tomake their way in life knew that to do so they had to follow in thepath of Le Brun or Rigaud, painting portraits for the wealthy anddecorating their houses and churches with suitably ornate canvasses andmurals in the style of the age. It was not until the start of the 18thcentury that things began to change.
The harbinger of change was Antoine Watteau(1684- 1721). Born in Valenciennes, a town on the border with Flanders,Watteau first found work as an artist in Paris painting copies ofFlemish genre paintings for bourgeois customers. Later he became agenre painter in his own right, specialising in theatrical scenes. Hisdepictions of staged rural scenes are very different from the ruralscenes painted by Claude Lorrain; and while the landscape element isremains important in Watteau's work, it is the people who are the mainsubject. With Watteau, French art began the move from the grandeur ofbaroque art towards the smaller-scale and more intimate style known asrococo.
A contemporary of Watteau, and another genrepainter though not at all in the same genre, was Jean Siméon Chardin(1699 - 1779). Chardin was strongly influenced by Dutch genre paintingwhich had become popular throughout Europe, as the new middle classesand expanding aristocracy sought and commissioned works of art todecorate their houses. Chardin's art is neither baroque nor rococo norclassical; it echoes the work of painters like Vermeer or Pieter deHooch, taking its inspiration from northern Europe, not Italy, fromeveryday life and ordinary people, not from great moments in history,religion or mythology. Chardin painted still life scenes, domesticscenes and portraits of ordinary people, and in doing so helped to moveFrench art in a new direction that was to inspire many French artistsfor over a century. Both Manet and Cézanne recognised theinfluence of Chardin on their own art.
Yet while Frenchart, with Chardin, was moving into new territory beyond the influenceof the baroque, other artists were following Watteau; foremost amongthese was these Paris-born artist FrançoisBoucher (1703 - 1770) who even in his time wasrecognised as the master of rococo art.
A prolific artist, Boucher was both painter and engraver, aswellas a designer of tapestries. After being admitted to the French RoyalAcademy in 1731, he was much in demand as a portrait painter, andreceived numerous commissions from Royal and aristocratic patrons, mostnotably from Madame de Pompadour of whom he painted a numberofportraits.
Boucher painted in a style less delicatethan Watteau, and his work is much more thematically diverse.Hepainted genre scenes, portraits, religious paintings, classical scenesand even chinoiseries, introducing into French art a new sensualitythat owes something both to Rubens and Tiepolo. While hisportraits of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's favourite mistress, arefully clothed, Boucher excelled in nudes variously portrayed as Venus,Diana or other mythological beauties.
His bold use ofcolour - far less discreet than Watteau - was an inspiration to manyyounger artists but displeased the first great French art critic,Diderot, who wrote of one of his paintings on show at the 1763 Salon :"This man is the ruin of all young aspiring painters. Hardly do theyknow how to hold a brush and a palette than they are torturingthemselves with garlands of children, painting podgy vermillionbacksides, and throwing themselves into all manner of extravagancesthat are not compensated for by warmth, nor by originality,norby kindness, nor by the magic of their model: they just imitate hismistakes."
While Diderot was critical of Boucher partly onmoral grounds, he enthused about another younger painter, Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725- 1805). Greuze came to popularity as a genre painter in themanner of Chardin, specialising in sentimental portraits and sceneswith a moral, which went down well with Diderot and were well inkeeping with the spirit of the age.
Greuze'smoralizing scenes, with their stylized poses and classic movements,also prefigure the great heroic works of the up and coming generationof neoclassicists, notably David and Gérard, who would take moralisingart onto a new plane, out of the intimacy of the family scene and smallgenre painting, and onto the vast canvases of the Imperial age that wassoon to dawn
By the 1770s however, Greuze had fallenout with the Academy, and became something of an independent painterand engraver, popular with the people, no longer with the establishment– a popularity that doubtless helped him to come through the FrenchRevolution unscathed.

Classic late rococo : the Swing, by Fragonard - 1767.
London - the Wallace collection

And so finally to the last great artist of thepre-Revolutionaryage, and the final great exponent of French Rococo art, Honoré Fragonard (1732 - 1806).After studying for a short period with Chardin, Fragonard went on towork in the studio of Boucher, with whom he felt considerableempathy - to such a point that Boucher allowed him to copy his ownworks.
After a period when he worked essentiallyon history paintings, interpreted with the lightness of his rococotouch, Fragonard later became known – and is today essentiallyremembered – as the painter of frivolity, painting scenes of thearistocracy at leasure in idealised gardens or parkland, or at homewith their children. As such he was in much demand as long as thearistocracy continued to enjoy their privileged lifestyle; but that wasnot to be for long.
By 1785, rococo as a genre had runits course, and enlightened France was heading for the dramatic eventsof 1789 which would profoundly impact not just the way the country wasorganised, but almost averything about French life andculturetoo. While revolutionary France would have a place for historic art,for some forms of genre art, and for art with a moral, it would have noplace for the frivolity of rococo, so intimately linked to thelifestyles and tastes of the Ancien Regime. And thoughFragonardas a man survived the Revolution, Fragonard the artist did not.It would be a generation or more before any later Frenchartistswould recognise any kind of historic debt to Watteau, Boucher orFragonard.

The About-France.com historyof art in France :

• Artand architecture in Medieval France
• French art in theRenaissance
• French art from Baroque toRococo - 1590 - 1790
• Neoclassicismand Romanticism
• Naturalism and realism -landscape and life in 19th century French art
• Impressionism
• Post-Impressionism - fromPointillism to Cubism