The 18th century, between grace, reason and revolutions

Rococo and Lights

Decorative grace only tells part of the century

Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard invent spaces for play, desire and ambiguity; Tiepolo opens the ceilings onto limitless skies; Canaletto transforms the city into a precise spectacle. But Chardin slows down his gaze in front of ordinary objects, Hogarth constructs a moral satire in series and Goya reveals the violence that reason is not enough to dissipate. Rococo thus coexists with realism, caricature, scientific painting, vedutism, ukiyo-e and the return to Antiquity. Reading the 18th century requires comparing these languages instead of making them a simple succession of styles.

New audiences

Academies, Salons, Grand Tour and prints change the circulation of images

The royal and religious commission remains decisive, but it is no longer alone. Public exhibitions in Paris, the Royal Academy in London, Grand Tour travelers, merchants, collectors and the rise of prints created other reputations. The portrait asserts a more mobile social identity; the genre scene enters the bourgeois interior; views of Venice become travel memories; Hogarth's engraved series and Japanese leaves reach wider audiences. The international career of Kauffman, Liotard, Batoni and Bellotto shows how the 18th century painter can be a traveler, entrepreneur and mediator between several tastes.

Around 1800

Antiquity, revolution and subjectivity are preparing a new modernity

Mengs, Vien then David oppose rococo flexibility with a firmer line, ancient subjects and moral ambition. The French Revolution soon transformed the conditions of commission, the institutions and the political meaning of history painting. Yet the passage is never clear: Vigée Le Brun, Gérard and Lawrence extend the art of court portraiture; Blake invents a personal mythology; Girodet and Prud'hon slide neoclassicism towards dreams; Goya moves from royal tapestry to satire, disaster and anxiety. Outside Europe, Utamaro, Jakuchû and Okyo recall that the same century produced other relationships with line, nature and printed images.

Sources and routes

Deepen 18th century painting