End of Rococo and the Call of a New Art

Francois Boucher, The Toilette of Venus, 1751
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The respect and power Louis XIV established over all of Europe during the grand siecle had completely vanished during Louis XV's(1715-1774) long reign due to his excesses, extravagance and incompetence in war. The feckless life in Versailles, became even more frivolous, scandalous and detached from the real world.  Madame de Pompadour's protege, Francois Boucher painted pastoral scenes of aristocrats imitating shepherds and farmers frolicking in nature dressed in satins and silks, accompanied by pristine clean dogs and sheep, causing critics to complain "His lovers are shepherds, but incapable of watching a flock." Life in Paris imitated life at court. 1The aristocracy lived only for its pleasure without any idea of the realities of the lower classes.  

Francois Bocher, Dark-Haired Odalisque, 1745
(Musee du Louvre)

Rococo was the style for the decorative and fine arts during Louis XV's reign. The oval frame, pastel pinks, yellows and blues, undulating forms, wooded landscapes, plump bodies and themes of love and seduction were all typical features to be found in rococo paintings.  Even with indoor scenes where there were straight walls in the background, continuous arabesques were more prominent.  While most of the French population suffered, the aristocracy played in a world of make believe behind closed doors. 


Art criticism, came into its own as we understand it today with La Font de Saint-Yenne's pamphlet published in 1747, about the current state of painting in France. In his lengthy pamphlet, La Font severely criticized the decadence of contemporary art, calling out to artists to let go of the frivolous and sensuous subject matter for a return to the grand manner of history painting.2

Jean-Baptist Greuze, Father Reading the Bible to His Children, 1755 

When the philosopher, writer, art critic Diderot reviewed the Salon some twenty years later, he found fault with painting on moral, social and aesthetic grounds, especially calling Boucher depraved.3  He found Boucher blatantly artificial and mercenary, criticizing his formulaic pastorals, parsley trees and powdered female bottoms. 4
Diderot called for a new art that would promote virtue and not vice.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze's genre paintings about drame bourgeois, depicting the lives of the middle classes in an austere way, with elevated virtue could be identified as the perfect models for this new art.  In the etching of Father Reading the Bible to His Children, we see a middle class family who is engrossed in what their father is reading with their backs to the door.  This is a family who is not interested in what is going on outside with the nobility.  The sons are engrossed in what their father is reading, one stands with a solemn expression on his face. Just the fact that the father is reading shows that they are educated. The maid in the background informs us of the financial stability of the family.  It is a clean, orderly, humble setting in an enclosed space, quite a contradiction to Boucher's paintings of nubile ladies carouseing in nature.  With his somber, moralizing paintings Greuze would be the bridge between Rococo and Neoclassicism.

Francois Boucher, Shepherd and Shepherdess Resting, 1761
(Wallace Collection, London)

 Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Village Bride, 1761
(Musee du Louvre)

1 Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris, Vintage Books, New York, 149
2  Rémy G. Saisselin, The Enlightenment against the Baroque - Economics and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century, University of California Press, 1992; 49

3  Ibid., 50
4  Diderot, Denis translated by John Goodman, Diderot on Art I The Salon of 1765 and Notes on Painting, Yale University 1995, xxiii 

The Salon - Different Artistic Styles from 18th and 19th Centuries

The official art exhibition of the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1748- 1890 was the Salon.  Artwork selected for exhibition at the Salon typically fit the characteristics of Academic Art. 

If you wanted to make it as an artist, you had to be exhibited in the official Salon which was controlling the art world.  The latest and the greatest of the time were determined there.

In order to be seen in one of these exhibitions, your work had to be huge or hope you won't be skied (placed high above)  All the walls were packed from  the floor to the ceiling with paintings.

The catalog of the exhibit would have little snippets of  literature or poetry listed with the paintings.  

There was a hierarchy of genres that was acceptable when selecting paintings for the official Salon:

     1.  History Painting

     2.  Portraiture

     3.  Genre (everyday life scenes)

     4.  Landscape

     5.  Still Life

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii,1784, approx 10 1/2 x 14'
(NEOCLASSICAL STYLE HISTORY PAINTING)

Neoclassicism (1750-1820), the art of the ideal, drew upon Western classical art and culture.  

Jacques-Louis David is painting not his own time but an image of the Romans from ancient history, in order to make a comment on his own society. He believed that 'Art should be morally instructive.' At this time society was degenerating, so he was painting an ideal for his time to reinforce the morals of  family, patriotism and society.

Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, 16 X 23 1/2'
(ROMANTICISM)

Romanticism (1800-1850) was an artistic movement that grew out of the Enlightenment based on ideas of reason, democracy and order. It emphasized very passionate emotions, very exotic settings that appeal to the imagination, extremes of human experience - events that wouldn't happen to the average person in everyday life, and the notion of the sublime. All of the ideals of Neoclassicism was under fire at this period and there was a strong reaction to the French Revolution.

Theodore Gericault didn't actually experience this scene but he talked to the survivors of this atrocity.  There is drama and an immensity to this canvas, later-on scale becomes important for the Impressionists.  

There is still a triangle in the composition but it's skewed so there is much more emphasis on the dynamism of this particular event.  

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850, approx. 10 1/2 x 22'

(REALISM)

Realism is an artistic style, it does not necessarily mean a replica of a real experience, it is interpretive and naturalistic not realistic.  This monumental painting has no association with the past. Courbet could have experienced this scene of the burial from the French countryside.