Rococo & Enlightenment

The eighteenth century to about 1780: the age of the salon, the grand tour and the Encyclopédie. In France, after the heavy grandeur of Louis XIV, painting grew light and intimate. Watteau invented the fête galante, lovers in dreamy parks; Boucher and Fragonard painted pastel goddesses and swings, and this decorative manner, Rococo, spread to every palace in Europe. At the same time the century's taste for reason and observation produced Chardin's still lifes, Hogarth's moral satires, Canaletto's exact views of Venice and the society portraits of Reynolds and Gainsborough. By the end of the period critics were calling for something more serious, and Neoclassicism was on its way.

What to look for: pastel colours, curling ornament, playful love scenes and soft, feathery brushwork (Rococo); or a cool, factual eye for faces, cities and kitchen tables.

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Artists

William Blake · Francisco Goya · Jacques-Louis David · William Hogarth · Thomas Gainsborough · Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun · John Trumbull · Joshua Reynolds · Jean-Honoré Fragonard · Joseph Ducreux · Henry Fuseli · John Soane · Antonio Canova · Canaletto · François Boucher · Benjamin West · Kitagawa Utamaro · Giovanni Battista Piranesi · Jean-Antoine Watteau · Giovanni Battista Tiepolo · Angelica Kauffmann · Qianlong Emperor · Thomas Chippendale · Joseph Wright of Derby · John Singleton Copley · Charles Willson Peale · Giuseppe Castiglione · Thomas Rowlandson · James Gillray · George Stubbs

Best-known works

“The Swing” — Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767
“The Blue Boy” — Thomas Gainsborough, 1770
“The Embarkation for Cythera” — Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1717
“The Chocolate Girl” — Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1744
“An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” — Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768
“A Young Girl Reading” — Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1770
“A Harlot's Progress” — William Hogarth, 1732
“Watson and the Shark” — John Singleton Copley, 1778
“The Lady with a Fan, The Artist's Wife” — Alexander Roslin, 1768
“The Death of General Wolfe” — Benjamin West, 1770
“Broken Eggs” — Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1756
“One Hundred Horses” — Giuseppe Castiglione, 1728
“Mr and Mrs Andrews” — Thomas Gainsborough, 1748
“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
“Farewell of Hector and Andromache” — Anton Losenko, 1773
“Red and White Plum Blossoms” — Ogata Kōrin, 1715
“The broken pitcher” — Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1771
“Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus” — Angelica Kauffmann, 1774
“The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus” — Joseph Wright of Derby, 1771
“Brown Odalisque” — François Boucher, 1740s
“The Stonemason's Yard” — Canaletto, 1725
“La Naissance de Vénus” — François Boucher, 1754
“Diana and Endymion” — Francesco Solimena, 1705
“The beautiful Strasbourgian” — Nicolas de Largillière, 1703