Rococo Art and Paintings

In art, Rococo means the light, playful and highly decorative style that grew up in France in the early 1700s, after the death of Louis XIV, as a reaction to the Baroque grandeur of Versailles. Tate describes it as light, sensuous and intensely decorative, a style of short curves, scrolls and counter-curves. The Getty's art vocabulary adds opulence, asymmetry, grace, gaiety and a light palette, in contrast to the heavier forms and darker colors of the Baroque.

Sources: Tate: Rococo · Getty AAT: Rococo

Rococo art is light, curving and playful: pastel colors, asymmetrical C- and S-shaped curves, shells and flowers, and subjects of love, leisure and myth. The National Gallery in London says it is dominated by asymmetry, curved forms and light, bright colors. The Wallace Collection adds that pink and turquoise were favorite hues, that rustic shepherds and shepherdesses were a favorite theme, and that flirtatious, frivolous subjects run from Watteau through Boucher to Fragonard.

Sources: National Gallery: Rococo (glossary) · Wallace Collection: What is Rococo? · Wallace Collection: Re-viewing the Rococo

Rococo began in France around 1715 and was out of fashion by the 1780s. Tate says it developed after the death of Louis XIV in 1715, in reaction to the Baroque grandeur of Versailles, and the National Gallery in London ties it to the reign of Louis XV (1715–1774). By the 1780s, the Wallace Collection says, a revolution in taste had replaced it with Neoclassicism, and by the French Revolution of 1789 it had fallen from favor entirely.

Sources: Tate: Rococo · National Gallery: Rococo (glossary) · Wallace Collection: Re-viewing the Rococo · Wallace Collection: What is Rococo?

Rococo originated in France, at the court of Louis XV, and spread across Europe from there. The Getty's art vocabulary says it emerged in France around 1700 and dominated Europe until the Classical Revival of the late 18th century. The Wallace Collection says it was also popular in Italy, southern Germany, Austria and Russia, and Tate says the painter Philip Mercier brought it to Britain.

Sources: Getty AAT: Rococo · Wallace Collection: What is Rococo? · Tate: Rococo

Rococo is named after rocaille, the French word for the shell-covered rock-work used to decorate artificial grottoes and fountains. The Wallace Collection says the word was first used in the early 1730s for anything exaggerated, asymmetrical or irregular, and only later for the fashionable style. The National Gallery in London notes that Neoclassical critics of the late 18th century applied the label as an insult.

Sources: Wallace Collection: What is Rococo? · Tate: Rococo · National Gallery: Rococo (glossary)

No single artist started Rococo: it began as a style of interior decoration in France, and painters took it up. In painting, Antoine Watteau came first. The National Gallery in London says he invented the fête galante, and that the French Academy created a new category for his Pilgrimage to Cythera in 1717. Tate names Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard as the painters who exemplify the style.

Sources: Getty AAT: Rococo · National Gallery: Jean-Antoine Watteau · Tate: Rococo

Rococo ended because taste turned against it as frivolous and decadent. In the 1750s and 1760s critics such as Denis Diderot attacked Boucher's pastorals as false and over-refined, just as Neoclassicism was stirring. By the 1780s, the Wallace Collection says, its curves and candy colors had given way to the clean lines of Neoclassicism, and the revolutionaries of 1789 condemned it as the style of a decadent, over-privileged class.

Sources: Wallace Collection: Boucher the artist · Wallace Collection: Boucher and the pastoral · Wallace Collection: Re-viewing the Rococo · Wallace Collection: What is Rococo?

Baroque is the grand, dramatic style of the 17th century; Rococo, from early 18th-century France, is lighter, more intimate and more playful. Tate describes Baroque as dynamic and realistic and closely tied to the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and Rococo as a reaction to the Baroque grandeur of Versailles. The Getty contrasts Rococo's light palette with the heavier forms and darker colors of the Baroque.

Sources: Tate: Baroque · Tate: Rococo · Getty AAT: Rococo

Rococo is curving, colorful and frivolous; Neoclassicism, which replaced it, is severe and morally serious, modeled on ancient Greece and Rome. Tate dates Neoclassicism from about 1750, fed by the discovery of Pompeii and Winckelmann's history of ancient art. The Wallace Collection says that by the 1780s Rococo's asymmetrical curves had given way to the clean, clear lines and primary colors of Neoclassicism.

Sources: Tate: Neoclassicism · Wallace Collection: Re-viewing the Rococo

The best-known Rococo painters are Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard in France, the three Tate names as the style's exemplars. Others include Jean-Siméon Chardin, Jean-Marc Nattier and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun in France; Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in Italy, whom the National Gallery in London calls the greatest Italian Rococo painter; and William Hogarth and Thomas Gainsborough in Britain, where Tate traces the style's influence.

Sources: Tate: Rococo · National Gallery: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

A fête galante is a painting of elegantly dressed men and women flirting, dancing and making music in a park, the kind of picture Watteau invented. The National Gallery in London describes them as small cabinet pictures that explore the psychology of love, usually in a landscape, and says the French Academy created the new category when Watteau presented his Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera in 1717. Nicolas Lancret and Jean-Baptiste Pater took up the theme.

Sources: National Gallery: Jean-Antoine Watteau · National Gallery: Nicolas Lancret · National Gallery: Jean-Baptiste Pater

The Swing shows a young woman on a swing, pushed by an older man, while her admirer looks up at her from the bushes. The Wallace Collection, which owns it, traces it to a commission of 1767: a gentleman of the court wanted his mistress painted on a swing pushed by a bishop, with himself admiring her legs; the painter Doyen refused and suggested Fragonard. In the finished picture the older man is no longer a priest, and a statue of Cupid by Falconet comments on the story.

Sources: Wallace Collection

Paris and London hold the largest groups. The Louvre has Watteau's Pilgrimage to Cythera and Pierrot, Boucher's Diana Leaving Her Bath and Chardin's The Ray. The Wallace Collection in London has Fragonard's The Swing and Boucher's 1759 portrait of Madame de Pompadour, and the National Gallery in London has Gainsborough's Mr and Mrs Andrews and Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode. In the United States, the National Gallery of Art in Washington has Fragonard's A Young Girl Reading, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art has Watteau's Mezzetin.

Sources: Louvre Museum · Wallace Collection · Wallace Collection: Madame de Pompadour's portrait · National Gallery, London · National Gallery of Art, Washington (Google Arts & Culture)

Yes. Every painter on this page died by 1842, so their paintings are in the public domain in the United States and in countries where copyright ends 70 years after the artist's death. You can download them free and use them for anything, including commercial projects. A few countries have their own rules on photographs of artworks, so check them if you publish outside the U.S.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain