Painting

VII

Rococo Painting

Rococo art, which flourished in France and Germany in the early 18th century, was in many respects a continuation of the baroque, particularly in the use of light and shadow and compositional movement. Rococo, however, is a lighter, more playful style, highly suited to the decoration of, for example, the Parisian hôtels (city residences of the nobility). Among rococo painters, Jean-Antoine Watteau is known for his ethereal pictures of elegantly dressed lovers disporting themselves at fêtes galantes (fashionable outdoor gatherings); such pastoral fantasies were much emulated by other French artists. Highly popular also were mythological and pastoral scenes, including lighthearted and graceful depictions of women, by François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard. J. B. S. Chardin, however, took a different view, portraying women in his genre scenes as good mothers and household managers; he also was outstanding in rendering still-life. The rococo style in Germany is exemplified by the work of the Italian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who spent some time in Würzburg, Germany; his huge illusionistic ceiling frescoes (1743-1752) decorate the staircase hall and the Kaisersaal (the main reception hall) of the Residenz, the episcopal palace in Würzburg.

Paralleling the rococo tradition of the continent were the works of three major artists of 18th-century England. William Hogarth was known for his moralistic narrative paintings and engravings satirizing contemporary social follies, as in his famous series (first painted and then engraved) Marriage à la Mode (1745), which traces the ruinous course of marriage for money. Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds, following the tradition established by van Dyck, concentrated on portraits of the English aristocracy. The verve and grace of these paintings and their astute psychological interpretations raise them from mere society portraiture to an incomparable record of period manners, costumes, and landscape moods. See Rococo Style.

VIII

Neoclassical Painting

A revolution in painting took place in the latter half of the 18th century, as chaste neoclassicism superseded the exuberant rococo style. This classical revival in the arts was brought about by several occurrences. First, much archaeological excavation began to be done in the mid-18th century in Italy and Greece; books were published containing drawings of ancient buildings, which were eagerly copied by English and French architects. Second, in 1755 the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann published his influential essay Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture), praising Greek sculpture. This work impressed, among others, four foreign artists living in Rome. They were the Scotsman Gavin Hamilton, the German Anton Raphael Mengs, the Swiss Angelica Kauffmann, and the American Benjamin West; all were inspired to create paintings with themes based on classical literature.

It was, however, a French painter—Jacques-Louis David—who became the leading proponent of neoclassicism. He, too, was imbued with classical influences from his stay in Rome, as well as from an earlier source, the paintings of Poussin, the 17th-century French classicist. David's sober style was in harmony with the ideals of the French Revolution. Such a painting as the Oath of the Horatii (1784-1785, Louvre) inspired patriotism; others, such as the Death of Socrates (1787, Metropolitan Museum), preached stoicism and self-sacrifice. Not only did David's subject matter have its sources in ancient history and classical myth, but the form of his figures was based on ancient sculpture. David's great successor was Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, whose cool serenity of line and tone and painstaking attention to details—as in his striking portrait La comtesse d'Haussonville (1845, Frick Collection, New York City)—became identified with the academic tradition in France. Nevertheless, elements of the romantic trend soon to succeed neoclassicism can be found in Ingres's interest in non-European subjects, as demonstrated by several paintings of odalisques (concubines or women in a harem).

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Among the many other French painters influenced by David were several women who figured prominently among his followers. Some of the most outstanding were Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Marie Guillemine Benoist, and Constance Marie Charpentier. Some of the works of these painters have in the past been mistakenly attributed to David; recent scholarship has been attempting to identify their individual contributions. See Neoclassical Art and Architecture.

IX

Romantic Painting

Closely succeeding neoclassicism, the romantic movement introduced a taste for the medieval and the mysterious, as well as a love of the picturesque and sublime in nature (see Romanticism). The play of individual imagination, giving expression to emotion and mood, superseded the reasoned intellectual approach of the neoclassicists. In general, romantic painters favored coloristic and painterly techniques over the linear, cool-toned neoclassic style.

A

French Romantic Painting

A follower of David who ultimately turned more to the romantic style was his pupil Baron Antoine Jean Gros, noted for his portrayals of Napoleon in full regalia and for large canvases vividly depicting Napoleonic campaigns. Gros's colleague Théodore Géricault was especially renowned for his dramatic and monumental interpretation of an actual event. His masterpiece, the Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819, Louvre), endows the suffering of the survivors of a shipwreck with a heroic quality. This painting deeply impressed Eugéne Delacroix, who pursued the theme of suffering humanity in such energetic, intensely dramatic works as Massacre at Chios (1822-1824) and Liberty Leading the People (1830), both in the Louvre. Delacroix and other romantics also drew their subject matter from literature and from travels to the Middle East. Delacroix's divided-color technique (that is, color laid on in small strokes of pure pigment) was to influence the impressionists later in the 19th century.

During the romantic period, several French painters concentrated on picturesque landscape views and sentimental scenes of rural life. Jean François Millet was one of a number of artists who settled at the village of Barbizon, near Paris; taking a worshipful view of nature, he transformed the peasants into Christian symbols (see Barbizon School). Camille Corot, a painter of poetic, silvery-toned woodland scenes and landscapes, included visits to Barbizon among his extensive travels, portraying the lyrical aspects of nature there, as well as in other parts of France and Italy.

B

English Romantic Painting

Romantic landscape painting also flourished in England; the trend began early in the 19th century and is exemplified in the works of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner. Although distinctly different in their styles, both artists were ultimately concerned with depicting the effects of light and atmosphere. Despite Constable's factual and scientific approach—working outdoors, he painted numerous studies of cloud formations and made notes on light and weather conditions—his canvases are poetic, expressing the cultivated gentleness of the English countryside. Turner, on the other hand, sought the sublime in nature, painting cataclysmic snowstorms or depicting the elements—earth, air, fire, and water—in a sweeping, nearly abstract manner. His way of dissolving forms in light and veils of color was to play an important role in the development of French impressionist painting.

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