Rococo

The light, decorative style of the eighteenth century, born in France after the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Aristocrats moved from Versailles to elegant Paris townhouses and wanted intimate, charming art for small rooms. Watteau painted fêtes galantes, lovers in silk in dreamy parks; Boucher painted pink and blue goddesses; Fragonard's The Swing sums up the mood. Colours are pastel, brushwork feathery, ornament curls into shells and scrolls, and subjects are love, leisure and gentle mythology. The style spread across Europe, to Tiepolo's ceilings in Venice and Würzburg and to Bavarian churches, until critics around 1760 began to call it frivolous.

How to tell it apart: Baroque before it is darker, heavier and more serious; Neoclassicism after it is sober, linear and moral.

2,537 works in the quiz. Play a round on Rococo.

Artists

Francisco Goya · William Hogarth · Thomas Gainsborough · Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun · Jean-Honoré Fragonard · Joseph Ducreux · Canaletto · François Boucher · Jean-Antoine Watteau · Franz Xaver Winterhalter · Giovanni Battista Tiepolo · Joseph Wright of Derby · Rachel Ruysch · George Romney · Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin · Jean-Baptiste Greuze · Giovanni Paolo Panini · Jean-Étienne Liotard · Antonio Corradini · Adélaïde Labille-Guiard · Bernardo Bellotto · Maurice Quentin de La Tour · Rosalba Carriera · Francesco Guardi · Fyodor Rokotov · Alexander Roslin · Dmitry Levitzky · Jean-Marc Nattier · Richard Wilson · Étienne Maurice Falconet

Best-known works

“The Swing” — Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767
“The Embarkation for Cythera” — Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1717
“The Chocolate Girl” — Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1744
“A Young Girl Reading” — Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1770
“A Harlot's Progress” — William Hogarth, 1732
“The Lady with a Fan, The Artist's Wife” — Alexander Roslin, 1768
“Diana leaving her Bath” — François Boucher, 1742
“Marriage à-la-mode” — William Hogarth, 1743
“The Ray” — Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, 1727
“The Lock” — Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1777
“Portrait of Madame de Pompadour” — François Boucher, 1756
“A Journalist Lecturing on the Orrery” — Joseph Wright of Derby, 1766
“The Banquet of Cleopatra” — Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1743
“The broken pitcher” — Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1771
“The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus” — Joseph Wright of Derby, 1771
“Brown Odalisque” — François Boucher, 1740s
“The Stonemason's Yard” — Canaletto, 1725
“The Stolen Kiss” — Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1787
“Portrait of a Lady in Blue” — Thomas Gainsborough, 1780
“La Naissance de Vénus” — François Boucher, 1754
“Portrait of an Unknown Woman in Russian Costume” — Ivan Argunov, 1784
“Catherine II the Legislatress in the Temple of the Goddess of Justice” — Dmitry Levitzky, 1783
“Hercules and Omphale” — François Boucher, 1732
“The Bucintore Returning to the Molo on Ascension Day” — Canaletto, 1729
“Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire” — Thomas Gainsborough, 1785
“Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight” — Joseph Wright of Derby, 1769
“Allegory of the Planets and Continents” — Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1752
“Beer Street and Gin Lane” — William Hogarth, 1751
“Madame de Pompadour” — François Boucher, 1759
“Adoration of the Name of God” — Francisco Goya, 1772