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Europe 1300 - 1800
Course: Europe 1300 - 1800 > Unit 10
Lesson 1: Rococo- A beginner's guide to the Age of Enlightenment
- A beginner's guide to Rococo art
- The Formation of a French School: the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture
- Antoine Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera
- Watteau, Pilgrimage to Cythera
- Boucher, Madame de Pompadour
- The Tiepolo Family
- Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait with her Daughter, Julie
- Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait with her Daughter
- Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait
- Vigée Le Brun, Madame Perregaux
- Unlocking an 18th-century French mechanical table
- Bernard II van Risenburgh, Writing table
- Construction of an 18th-century French mechanical table
- The inlay technique of marquetry
- Fragonard, The Swing
- Fragonard, The Swing
- Fragonard, The Swing
- Fragonard, The Meeting
- Greuze, The Village Bride
- Architecture in 18th-century Germany
- Joachim Michael Salecker, Cup with cover with Hebrew inscriptions
- Maria Sibylla Merian, an introduction
- Maria Sybilla Merian's Metamorphosis of a Small Emperor Moth on a Damson Plum: Getty Conversations
- Rococo Art
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Fragonard, The Meeting
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Progress of Love: The Meeting, 1771-1773, oil on canvas, 317.5 x 243.8 cm (The Frick Collection, New York). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- What is the Rococo?(13 votes)
- Rococo is an 18th century artistic style developed as a reaction to the Baroque style and is more florid and graceful style. Rococo is ornate, asymmetric design with curves and pastel-like colours.(29 votes)
- The faces look unrealistic to me, too smooth I guess. I think they remind me of eggs. Is that the style of the art? Or the fashion of the day?(10 votes)
- It is the style of that day. :3 If you use oil paints for your people and acrylic for the background, and clothing it creates that effect (from experience). Hope that answers your question! :D(7 votes)
- Atthe female art historian describes how the placement of the lovers within the space draws the viewers' eyes up towards the statue of Venus and Cupid. She says that this creates a pyramidal shape.At 1:52, she further describes a v-shaped parting in the trees. This, essentially creates the effect of two pyramids mirroring each other and drawing focus directly to cupid. What intent do you think the artist had in this construction? Does it have any significance? 2:20(2 votes)
- It simply orients the viewer, structures the painting and underscores the narrative. It also reveals Fragonard's academic training and the reliance of academic training on Renaissance and Baroque art.(5 votes)
- In the video the paintings are in a small room is that the original room?(3 votes)
- I don't think this is the original room. As indicated in the video, Madame du Barry refused them and they were returned to Fragonard after hanging only briefly in her "hide-away." As mentioned in the video, the room is in the Frick Museum, a wonderful museum in New York City. The paintings were bought in 1915 from the collection of J. P. Morgan and Mr. Frick died in 1919. He willed his mansion and its contents as a public museum. It opened in 1935.(1 vote)
- What is a pleasure palace?(2 votes)
- a building on the grounds of a larger estate which was designated as a place where people would partake of pleasures. An estate of that sort might also have a building called a stable, which was devoted to things having to do with horses, and a building called a kitchen, which was devoted to things having to do with the preparation of food. It may also have had a chapel, a space devoted to things having to do with religious observance. The particular orientations of the owner of the estate might be discerned by determining to which of these facilities the most time and attention was paid.(2 votes)
- Fragonard's art style is so sumptuous and beautiful. The things Rococo stand for don't necessarily sit well with me (though I prefer Rococo to Baroque), but Fragonard's The Progress of Love (and The Swing) are some of my favourite pieces, bar none. He has a particular way of drawing in the viewer, and his colour choices make it easy for the eye to linger. To think these panels were rejected?
If that moment atshows what replaced The Progress of Love, then I would judge the decision to reject the Fragonard pieces to be a very bad one. The sumptuous, gorgeous images Fragonard created were qualitative and masterful in a way I don't think the 3:15piece really was (though I understand the styles are different). 3:15(2 votes) - what is surreptitious.?0:35(1 vote)
- Surreptitious means done secretly or stealthily, just as the figures in the painting are avoiding discovery.(1 vote)
- What is the etymology of "Rococo"? What does it mean?(1 vote)
- Even though I despise aristocracy, I adore the way the artists depicted the scenes where people indulge in various activities. I am always in a dilemma because I enjoy the lightheartedness of the thematics and the way nature was depicted, and I understand why many philosophers criticized this "movement," but I stand for all of the things that rococo loves representing. I do not think it should be a "bad" way of living, but only if it does not involve you thriving on the hard work of others like the aristocracy did. In an unusual way, I can see a parallel between them and the "primitive" tribes of the time.(1 vote)
- Since she was the King's known consort and the two in the painting seem to be having a secret tryst. Could she have rejected the paintings because they seemed to show her possibly stepping outside her relationship with the king?(0 votes)
- The "story" shown in the painting is a story. That and that alone. It is not a private detective's photograph of an illicit rendezvous.(0 votes)
Video transcript
(lively music) Dr. Zucker: [unintelligible]
take paintings out of context and it's sometimes hard to remember that works of art were meant
for domestic environments. Dr. Harris: Or churches or even
in the case of the paintings that we're looking at
now, Pleasure Pavilions. Dr. Zucker: We're in the Fragonard room at the Frick Collection and we're looking at one of the late Rococo masterpieces. Dr. Harris: Fragonard's
the Progress of Love. Dr. Zucker: The first canvas
shows the inception of love. We see this young boy offering a rose to this rather surprised young girl. Dr. Harris: And in the next panel, we see them having a kind
of surreptitious meeting. Dr. Zucker: Followed by an allegory of the consummation of love, the crowning. This would refer to the marriage. Dr. Harris: And then in the last scene, the two lovers nostalgically looking at their early love letters together. And these four panels were
made for Madame du Barry, the mistress of King Louis XV. Dr. Zucker: The consort
of the king himself. Let's look at one of the panels. Let's look at the meeting. That's my favorite. When we walk up to the meeting, the second panel of the series, you realize how large it is. It's a really substantial painting and it would have been in
a relatively small room. Dr. Zucker: Right next to a window. Dr. Zucker: That's important because the window would have looked out onto the back of the
pavilion onto the garden. Dr. Harris: Overflowing (chuckles) Dr. Zucker: Overflowing, yeah,
representation of nature, would've had a nice parallel
to the landscape outside. Dr. Harris: It's such a dramatic image. One really gets a sense
of a secret meeting. Dr. Zucker: One art historian suggested that the pose of the young
woman is coming directly out of 18th century
theater at this moment. Dr. Harris: So, we see her
suitor climbing up the ladder. Dr. Zucker: So, this is a little
bit of a Romeo and Juliet. Dr. Harris: It is and they
don't wanna get caught. Dr. Zucker: Her left
hand seems to be saying, "Slow down. Wait a moment. "Let me see if the coast is clear." Dr. Harris: (laughs) Yeah. Dr. Zucker: There is this
wonderful sense of anticipation. Dr. Harris: Their bodies
leaned toward one another and formed a pyramid that leads our eye up to the figure of Cupid and Venus. Dr. Zucker: So as if the
painting wasn't clear enough. They are just gonna make sure that we know what this is about. Venus, of course, the Goddess of Love. Cupid, her son. She's withholding his quiver of arrows. I suspect, she's caught him being naughty. He's let those arrows
loose on the couple below and he's now being punished. Dr. Harris: Her pose
mirrors the trees behind her that leaned up in toward the
right side of the canvas. So, there's a V-shaped
parting where we see the sky between Venus and Cupid. We referred a moment ago that the foliage mirroring
the garden outside and that's the thing that I
love so much about Fragonard. The sense that nature can't be controlled. It overflows everywhere. Dr. Zucker: This is a painting where subtlety is in short supply. Nature taking over, being uncontrolled, seems to be a perfect
metaphor for young love. As to what happened, Madame du Barry would
actually reject these panels and what a mistake. These are Fragonard's great masterpiece. Dr. Harris: Naturally, art
historians have a couple of theories why she rejected them. One has to do with the
fact that the architecture of the pavilion was decidedly classical by an Architect named Ledoux and that these Rococo
paintings wouldn't have fit within the classically
inspired architecture and the classically inspired sculpture. So, Madame du Barry
hires instead an artist who painted in a more
classical style named Vien. Dr. Zucker: But to look
at the Fragonard's, is to have a window into the aristocracy. These are paintings that
are about indulgence. Satisfying oneself. After all, these were
for a pleasure palace. These are not paintings
that are about moral goods, the noblement of society
or of the individual. Dr. Harris: It was precisely
paintings about indulgence and pleasure that the philosophers of the enlightment attacked and associated with the corruption of the
aristocracy and the monarchy. Dr. Zucker: These paintings
about love and pleaure, were meant to be situated
in the Pleasure Pavilion Dr. Harris: (laughs) Dr. Zucker: What could
be a better exemplar of everything that was wrong with France? Dr. Harris: And everything that
the revolution would fight against and everything that the new style of Neoclassicism would reject. Dr. Zucker: So interesting
that Madame du Barry, herself rejects these paintings. Another possible reason that
these panels were rejected, has to do with the protagonists and the way, they're depicted. Some art historians have suggested that the young woman, perhaps looked a little bit
too much like Madame du Barry and that the young male lover, may have looked a little
bit too much like Louis XV. Dr. Harris: Now, when
Madame du Barry rejected these paintings and sent
them back to Fragonard, he was never paid. He later added 10 other panels and all of them fortunately, can be seen here together
at the Frick Collection. It's interesting to think
about Fragonard coming at this later moment of the Rococo and the imminence of the revolution. David will protect Fragonard
during the revolution and find him a post within
the Arts Administration. And so, Fragonard's career spans this interesting moment of the late Rococo and Neoclassicism in the revolution. (lively music)