Tour: 18th-Century France -- Boucher and Fragonard
Overview
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The Enlightenment
During the eighteenth century, Enlightenment thinkers transformed western
Europe into a modern society. Critical of orthodoxy, these philosophes
radically changed the way men thought about religion, economics,
political philosophy, and education. Their method was rational and secular,
founded on a belief that the exercise of reason alone could reveal ultimate
truths and move man to improve his condition.
Montesquieu analyzed the forms of government to
discover the "spirit" behind them. In despotism he found fear; in the
republic, virtue. The Enlightenment invested man with "inalienable rights."
It led eventually to revolution in the American colonies and France, and in
the process created a climate for art that served a "higher" purpose.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who contrasted the innate virtue of man in his
natural state with the artifice of civilization, noted that the prevailing
rococo style "contributed little to . . . public virtue."
The Salon
Beginning in 1737, the Royal Academy of Painting and
Sculpture presented a public exhibition about every two years of up to 450
paintings and sculpture in the Salon Carré, a great square hall in
the Louvre palace. From this location, the expositions themselves came to
be called Salons.
In the active intellectual climate of the eighteenth century, the Salons
presented yet another arena for inquiry. Newspapers described the works
exhibited, and the Academy sold programs. Unofficial guides were also
written. Although often anonymous and circulated privately, these guides
established art criticism as a subject of intelligent discourse. The most
perceptive and influential of the new critics was the encyclopedist Denis
Diderot. His preference for art that was morally uplifting fueled growing
sentiment against the sensuous and decorative rococo style.
Boucher and Fragonard
The criticism of Diderot and others stimulated artists to a new
seriousness but did not change the pastel complexion of rococo overnight,
as demonstrated by the works of Boucher and Fragonard in the Gallery, all
done after 1750.
Boucher was influenced by the subjects and delicate
manner of Watteau's fêtes galantes, which he had copied for
published engravings. He soon came to the attention of the king's mistress,
Madame de Pompadour, and rose to prominence under her patronage. In addition
to a productive career as a painter, he was also the principal designer for
Sèvres porcelain and the Beauvais tapestry works, both projects dear
to Madame de Pompadour. Boucher imparted the intimacy of the boudoir to all
of his subjects, whether domestic scenes, pastoral idylls, or mythological
themes.
Fragonard began to study painting first with
Chardin, then with Boucher, adopting the latter's subjects but painting
with a freer technique. He won both admiration for his fluid brushwork
and criticism for the dashed, unfinished look of his canvases. During study
in Italy he sketched Renaissance gardens, and these continued to haunt his
expansive outdoor scenes peopled with tiny figures.
Fragonard's popularity made him wealthy, but he outlived his own era.
Even before the revolution, sober neoclassical styles were replacing the
giddiness of rococo. Fragonard was forced to flee France as the world he
portrayed and the patrons he served fell to the guillotine.
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