Rococo Art Style (18th Century)

Contents

• Introduction
• Origins
• Rococo in France
• Rococo in Italy
• Rococo in England
• Rococo in Germany

For a brief introduction to the architectural aspects of this art style, see: Rococo Architecture.

Introduction

Centred in France and emerging as a reaction to the Baroque grandeur of

King Louis XIV's royal court at the Palace of Versailles, the Rococo movement
or style of French painting was associated particularly with Madame
Pompadour, the mistress of the new King Louis XV, and the Parisian homes of
the French aristocracy. It is a whimsical and elaborately decorative style of
art, whose name derives from the French word 'rocaille' meaning, rock-work
after the forms of sea shells.

In the world of Rococo, all art forms, including fine art painting,
Rococo Nymphenburg Porcelain group architecture,sculpture, interior design, furniture, fabrics, porcelain and other
(1756) Bavarian National Museum. "objets d'art" are subsumed within an ideal of elegant prettiness.
By Franz Anton Bustelli.

Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717)

Louvre, Paris.
By Jean-Antoine Watteau.

PAINTING COLOURS
For details of colour pigments
used by Rococo painters, see:
Eighteenth Century Colour palette.

MOVEMENTS, STYLES, SCHOOLS Rococo art is exemplified in works by famous painters like Jean-Antoine
For information about the major
Watteau (1684-1721) especially his 'fete galante' outdoor courtship parties;
Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806) with his pictures of love and seduction;
movements in painting and
sculpture, see: History of Art.
WORLD'S GREATEST ARTWORKS
For the Top 300 oils, watercolours
see: Greatest Paintings Ever.
For the Top 100 works of sculpture
see: Greatest Sculptures Ever.
GREAT EUROPEAN PAINTERS
For biographies and paintings
of the greatest artists in Europe
from the Renaissance to 1800,
see: Old Masters: Top 100.
WORLDS TOP ARTISTS
For the greatest view paintings:
Best Landcape Artists.
For the finest still lifes, see:
Best Still Life Painters.
For the greatest portraits
see: Best Portrait Artists.
For the top historical painting,
see: Best History Painters.
AESTHETICS
For a discussion about beauty
in the visual arts, see:
Art Definition and Meaning.
EVOLUTION OF VISUAL ARTS
For chronological details see:
History of Art Timeline.
Francois Boucher (1703-70) with his lavish paintings of opulent self-
indulgence; the Venetian Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) known for his
fantastically decorative Wurzburg Residence frescoes (1750-3); and the
sculpture of Claude Michel Clodion (1738-1814), sculptor of the Arc de
Triomphe in Paris, best known for his terracotta sculpture of nymphs and
satyrs. In Britain, Rococo painting achieved its zenith in the female portraits
of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88). Rococo was eventually replaced
by Neoclassical art, which was the signature visual style of Napoleon in France
and of the American revolution.
Rococo: Origins
Rococo is the frivolous, wayward child of noble, grand Baroque. The parent
was born in Italy, the child in France. The Baroque (barocco, a rough pearl)
developed in the early 17th-century and spread rapidly throughout Europe. At
first predominantly a sculptural and architectural style, its greatest exponent
and genius was Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) who, like Michelangelo
before him, was first and foremost a sculptor, but turned naturally to
painting, theatrical decorations and architecture while serving several Popes
in the remodelling of Rome. His "Ecstasy of St. Teresa" and the small church
of S. Andrea al Quirinale in Rome both reveal the tendencies which lead on to
the rococo style: a brilliant use of light and shade on expensive and elaborate
materials, such as coloured marbles and bronze.
The seventeenth century was an age of grandeur, of strong religious
sentiments expressed clearly and forcibly in striking visual forms in the
paintings of Caravaggio and Cortona, the sculptures of Bernini and the
architecture of Francesco Borromini (1599-1667). Its most important
manifestations were Italian, and it was really the swan song of Italy as a
creative power, for already at the death of Pope Urban VIII, Bernini's patron,
the new star was making its appearance - France, which was to continue her
meteoric rise throughout the century and dominate fashionable and artistic
Europe in the succeeding century. See also: Rococo Artists.
The Rococo Style in France - Characteristics
In 1651 the young Louis XIV came of age and by the 1660s any dissensions
in France had been totally suppressed, so that Louis could devote his
attentions to the building and decoration of his palace at Versailles. Here,
the Italian baroque style was adopted and modified by Louis' all-powerful
artist, designer and interior decorator, Charles Lebrun, to glorify not the
saints of the Catholic Church, but the King of France: "Le Roi Soleil". Louis'
absolute rule involved not only visual proof of his supremacy, but an
elaborate court etiquette as stiff and unnatural as the gardens laid out by Le
Notre around the Palace. This extreme formality was felt in such apartments
as the famous Hall of Mirrors and the multicoloured Ambassadors' Staircase,
and it is against this background that the Rococo is set; France was
demonstrating that already she was arbiter of taste and eager for novelty.
French Rococo Architecture, Interior Design and Decoration

The Rococo is rightly associated with the 18th-century in France, but even
within the last years of the previous century, indications of the new style
appear, as in the work of the court architect, Jules-Hardouin
Mansart (1646-1708), at the Trianon at Versailles, and at Marly, another
royal residence. In these two buildings Mansart broke away from the
stultifying use of marble and bronze, turning rather to wooden panelling and
paler colours. The very scale of the Trianon indicates a desire to escape from
the grandiose palace, a feeling which occasioned a number of highly
significant works in the 18th-century. [Note also the influence of the
earlier Fontainebleau School (1530-1610) on the evolution of the Rococo
style, in particular its playful stucco carvings and other Rococo-like motifs.]

Louis XIV appears to have much encouraged this reaction, as illustrated by

his famous injunction to Mansart concerning the decoration of the room of the
very young Duchesse de Bourgogne in the Chateau de la Menagerie: "You
must spread everywhere the feeling of youthfulness". This was in 1699, and
the King still had another sixteen years to live, years which were to determine
the course of art and decoration for at least the next generation, not only in
France but as far afield as Sicily and Austria.

If the Rococo was specifically a French creation, many factors from further
afield influenced and fostered the style, as, for example, the graphic works of
such seventeenth-century Italian artists as Stefano delia Bella, who spent a
long time in Paris. In his designs delicate, feathery lines enfold forms which
are often purely decorative in intent, as much rococo art was to be.

Many engraved books from the last decades of the seventeenth century
reveal the rococo style in embryonic form. The tight scroll-work so
characteristic of Flemish and German renaissance decoration, and even of the
Fontainebleau School, was liberated, making it less severe and symmetrical,
and fantastic elements were introduced, unknown in the originals. This is seen
in France in the furniture of Andre-Charles Boulle and in Venice in the
furniture of Andrea Brustolon, where curving, intricate baroque forms began
to be modified around the turn of the century.

One of the first appearances of the new style in a highly important setting is
in the bedroom of Louis XIV at Versailles. This was redecorated about 1701
mainly in white and gold, relying entirely for its effect on the crisp contrasts of
finely sculptured pilasters against rich areas of gilded carving, and, set above
the chimney-pieces, large mirrors with rounded tops. Large areas of Venetian
mirror-glass were, of course, important decorative features as early as the
creation of the Galerie des Glaces, and also of the Mirror Room in the Grand
Trianon: they have often been mistakenly identified solely with the advent of
the rococo style, in which, indeed, they were to play an important part. The
design of Louis' bedroom, however, still bears witness to a strong preference
for the Classical Orders, with pilaster decoration in the typically academic
seventeenth-century tradition.

One of the problems of any examination of rococo decoration is that we are

uncertain as to how much of it originated from the small army of
draughtsmen, whose leading figures such as Mansart kept behind the scenes,
and how much from the great architects themselves. Thus, while a building or
an interior passes as the work of Mansart or De Cotte, the novel details in it
may just as well have sprung from a 'ghost' designer with a certain sense of
fantasy and an originality which the Royal Architect passed off as his own.

These draughtsmen were in all probability familiar with books of decorative

patterns - derived from the era of Renaissance art - illustrating the famous
grotesques of Raphael in the Villa Madama and the Vatican
Loggia. Grotesques, descended from the stucco reliefs and paintings in
Roman tombs (or grottoes, hence 'grotesques'), played an important part in
French decoration as early as the 1650s and later appeared in some of
Lebrun's own decorations, such as those in the Galerie d'Apollon in the
Louvre. They consisted of curving plant-and-scroll forms, often originating in
an urn or pot and winding upwards in a regular pattern, inhabited by playful
monkeys, insects and other creatures who provide a slight asymmetrical
touch. The lightness of this type of decoration was borne in mind by Pierre
Lepautrewhen he decorated the King's suite of rooms at Marly in 1699.

Lepautre's interiors at Marly are, tragically, known to us only from drawings.

They show that he dispensed with the heavy, rectangular frames around
doors and mirrors, replacing them with miniature curving decorations
integrated into the corners of mouldings, which themselves were finer and
more elegant in effect than ever before. In place of the traditional painted and
gilded ceiling, Lepautre simply articulated the great white plaster expanse
with a delicate gilded rosette at the centre - this was to be imitated on both
ceilings and panelling throughout the rococo period.

The rococo style developed most strongly during the Regency of the Duc
d'Orleans (1715-23), whose town residence was the Palais Royale. Here,
licence was the rule, and the tone of rococo society was set: a society which
demanded constant novelty, wit and elegance - precisely the qualities of the
rococo style. Society opened its doors to people whom Louis XIV would never
have accepted: the newly rich and increasingly important intellectuals. During
the Regency much of the aristocracy, which had found itself confined to
Versailles during Louis XIV's reign, returned to Paris and commissioned new
town houses, as in the Place Vendome, where the transitional style can still be
clearly seen.

Their interiors did not call for the elaborate ceiling-paintings of the previous
century, and in their place a new school of painters emerged who specialized
in the gently curving trumeaux (over-doors) and small-scale painted panels
which form a great part of the output of (eg) Francois Boucher (1703-70).
Also in constant employment from this period until the Revolution were the
scupteurs, who executed the often minutely detailed carving on the boiseries,
the decorated panel-framings.

It was in about 1720 that the transitional style began to give way to a clear
rococo style. The term 'rococo' probably derives from the French 'rocaille',
which originally referred to a type of sculptured decoration in garden design.
Certainly the leading designers of the rococo style, Gilles-Marie
Oppenordt, Nicolas Pineau and Juste-Aurele Meissonnier, were very
much aware of it. The grotesques of the seventeenth century were now
transformed into arabesques under Claude Audran, Watteau's teacher, full
of a new fantasy and delicacy.

The main steps forward were made in interior decoration and painting, while
little of importance happened to the appearance of the exterior, except that a
certain light sophistication replaced the heaviness of the Louis XIV style, and,
instead of relying on the Classical Orders, architects such as Jean
Courtonneand Germain Boffrand produced buildings whose main effect lay
in the subtle treatment of stonework and the skilful disposition of delicate
sculpture against sophisticated rustication. In Paris, two of the best examples
are the famous Hotel de Matignon of 1722-23 and the Hotel de Torcy of 1714.

In interior decoration a steady progression towards extreme elaboration is

seen during the Regency, as demonstrated by the Palais Royale and Hotel
d'Assy, culminating in such triumphantly sophisticated rooms as the Salon
Ovale of the Hotel de Soubise in Paris (1738-39) by Boffrand, whose influence
on German rococo architecture was to be considerable.

A tendency to replace the huge series of very formal apartments favoured in

the Louis XIV period with smaller, more intimate rooms is also seen, as in the
Petites Appartements in Versailles, where form follows function more closely.
Sadly these, together with many of the greatest rococo rooms, have
disappeared without trace. Apart from Paris, much fine architecture and
decoration in the full-blown rococo style was effected at Nancy, where the
dethroned King of Poland lived.

NOTE: For other important art and design trends similar to Rococo, see Art
Movements and Schools (from about 100 BCE).

French Rococo Painting

Paradoxically, the rococo style was heralded in painting, much earlier than in
the other arts, by a Flemish painter, Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721).
He moved to Paris in about 1702 and began working as a theatrical scene-
painter, before studying with the Keeper of the Luxembourg Palace, Claude
Audran, an artist who painted in a decorative, late baroque style. It was the
Rubens' Life of Marie de Medicis' series in the Luxembourg Palace which most
impressed Watteau and through him was to influence the course of French
rococo painting. He studied these together with the great Venetian painters
and, in the words of Michael Levey, although he had "no public career, no
great commissions from Church or Crown; seldom executed large-scale
pictures: had no interest in painting historical subjects", he became the
greatest French artist of the first half of the century.

Watteau's pictures - See: Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717) Louvre, Paris;

Charlottenburg, Berlin - with their combination of Rubens' colour and his own
delicate eroticism, were always more than a little melancholy. The lyrical
quality of his painting, with its suggestion of sophisticated amorality, was
precisely that sought by French society in the Regency years: Watteau was
not only catering for a taste but also creating one. For more about nudity in
Rococo painting, see: Female Nudes in Art History.

The other two major painters of the French rococo period, Francois
Boucher(1703-70) (noted also as the director of the Gobelins
tapestry factory) and Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806), both purveyed
an entirely different variety of the style from that of Watteau and are often
thought to have vulgarized where Watteau had refined. Whereas Watteau
achieved an all-enveloping aura of aristocratic distancing, Boucher and
Fragonard produced a more intimate and obvious effect.

Significantly, Boucher's career opened as an engraver of Watteau's pictures,

and from then on assumed the pattern of traditional success. Winning the Prix
de Rome, he worked in Italy from 1727 to 1731. In 1734 he became an
Academician, and with the help of his friend and Louis XV's
mistress, Madame de Pompadour, he became the most sought-after
painter in France for every type of picture, but in particular for his
vivid mythological painting of classical subjects. In these, often rendered in a
somewhat unsubtly erotic vein, Boucher, like Watteau, revealed a strong debt
to Rubens and Venetian art, especially to Paolo Veronese, his finest
predecessor in painting brilliantly clothed and displayed mythologies. Boucher
became Director of the Academy in 1765, and altogether made a highly
important contribution to the rococo movement through his many paintings
and his designs for tapestries and other decorations.

In the unreality of most of his later forms one recalls Sir Joshua Reynolds'
sense of outrage at discovering Boucher had forsaken models. By comparison
with the unreal world of Watteau, Boucher's settings are even less real, while
the contrast with Thomas Gainsborough, who composed his landscapes
with pieces of mirror, twigs and moss, is still more extreme. Miniature trees
surround rustic buildings, which appear to have been made in icing-sugar,
and water looks as if it were made of glass. There is no real light and shade,
perhaps so as not to contrast too strongly with the surrounding pale and
shallow rococo boiserie decoration into which it was set.

While there were a number of great individual artists, there were also families
of painters who followed an almost unchanging stylistic tradition. Among
these are the Coypels, who executed the chapel ceiling at Versailles, the Van
Loosand the De Troys, all of whom painted consistently amusing pictures for
the upper classes and for the rising middle classes, who appear for the first
time in the rococo period as important patrons and to some extent account
for the increased demand for portraiture. Some of the most delicious
evocations of the sophistication of society are found in the portraits of Nattier,
Drouais, Roslin and, of course, Boucher himself, whose delicate likenesses of
Madame de Pompadour are among the finest portraits of any woman in that
century. See also the Rococo portraits by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun (1755-
1842), the court portraitist to the French Queen Marie-Antoinette.

Alongside portraiture, many other specialized branches of painting arose,

such as the still life, where Jean Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755) and Francois
Desportes (1661-1743) were foremost.

In these 'lesser' fields one man is outstanding: Jean Chardin (1699-1779).

His delightfully simple and deeply sincere genre subjects and his still life
paintings have a quality which seem at first glance closer in feeling to Dutch
Realism - with an added dash of French precision and sensibility - than to the
prevailing rococo style. A masterpiece could be born from a tiny picture of a
Delft vase with a few flowers or from a simple two-figure study. It is their
very delicacy and refinement that links them to the rococo. Another
outstanding Rococo genre painter was the 'moralistic' Jean-Baptiste
Greuze (1725-1805).

French Rococo Furniture and Decorative Arts

The same delicacy characterizes French Furniture and a good deal of

the French Decorative Art of the period. Between about 1715 and
1770 French designers created furniture which remains unparalleled in its
beauty of line and detail, minute finish and costly materials expertly used.
Also in this period most of the furniture types with which we are familiar
today came into being: such pieces as the writing-table (bureau plat), the
secretaire (of many different types, notably the drop-front and cylinder type)
and the sofa in many guises (canapes, lits de repos).

The heavy pieces of the later 17th-century inlaid with brass and tortoise-shell
in the manner of Boulle were replaced from the Regency onwards by smaller,
lighter pieces, a development that coincided with the decrease in the size of
rooms and the lessening formality. The chest-of-drawers (commode) was
lifted off the floor on delicate curving legs, and bombe fronts were covered
with sinuous ormolu which often flowed over the entire piece and in which
much of the finest decoration of the Rococo is found. In this rococo craft,
superb uses were made of inlaid woods of all types, often imported from the
Orient, contributing both to the high cost of the piece and to the craze for the
exotic which invaded French society and led to the use (often entirely
misplaced) of terms such as "a la polonaise", "a la grecque" and "a la
chinoise". In furniture the major manifestation of this interest in the Orient
was in the use of imported or imitation lacquer, many good pieces of Oriental
lacquer suffering badly in the process of dissection and reshaping.

The display of luxury in rococo craftwork was not, of course, confined to

furniture, and the stark appearance of many rococo ensembles today is
misleading. The frivolities and trimmings - frills, ribbons, elaborate hangings
on beds, doors and windows, festoons of fringes, gimps and baubles - often
only associated with the Victorians, added to the atmosphere of luxury and
comfort, a quality little known in seventeenth-century French interiors.

In spite of the extreme rigour of the Guild system, possibly even thanks to it,
French furniture achieved, in the eighteenth century, such a state of
perfection that it was sought after through-out Europe. The Guild regulations
encouraged specialization and incited the sons of master craftsmen to
continue in their fathers' trade by the prospect of economic advantages. The
result was exceptional professional skill, and the rise of veritable dynasties of
joiners and cabinet-makers, handing down the secrets of their craft from
father to son.

Thus, the menuisier practised only the creation of the actual form of the
furniture; the ebeniste created the elaborate layers of inlay and surface
decoration and yet another craftsman was responsible for fitting the gilt-
bronze decoration over the prepared framework; no guild was permitted to
intrude on the territory of another. As with the other arts, great names arose
in each field: Foliot, Lelarge, Sene, Cressent, and an increasing number of
Germans: Oeben, Riesener, Weisweiler. They rose to positions of great
influence and a signed piece by one of these craftsmen was as sought after as
any painting by Boucher or Fragonard.

The Rococo was a style in which the feminine element predominated,

demonstrated in furniture in the supple and often sensuous curves, fragile
appearance, and even terminology: duchesse (duchess) and sultane
(sultana). Flowers decorated much of the wall-panelling and furniture of the
period, and many rococo boiseries contain elaborate trompe d'oeils of
garlands and sprays of flowers inhabited by tiny birds and animals, the direct
descendants of the grotesque. The small scale of much of the furniture,
particularly pieces designed for writing, almost precludes its use by a man,
although, paradoxically, one of the finest creations of the period, Louis XV's
own desk executed by Oeben and Riesener between 1760 and 1769 is large
and surprisingly masculine.

Porcelain was sometimes incorporated into French furniture design, usually in

the form of painted plaques or discs set in bronze frames. Much of it is from
the factory of Sevres. Louis XV had himself provided funds to back a porcelain
enterprize at Vincennes, near Paris, specifically to imitate Meissen porcelain,
which moved in 1756 to Sevres. Although not the first factory in France to
produce porcelain (Rouen and Saint-Cloud were both operating in the last
years of the seventeenth century), Vincennes-Sevres was certainly the most
successful in its production of hard-paste porcelain, counting important
painters such as Boucher among its designers.

The value attached to Sevres porcelain is attested to by the number of

individual pieces or sets such as that made for the Empress Maria Theresa in
1758 sent by Louis XV as diplomatic gifts. Other famous sets include the
services made for Catherine the Great and Madame du Barry. The colours
perfected at Sevres are not so different from those found in Boucher's
paintings - greeny blues and a wonderful pink known as rose Pompadour. The
types of objects manufactured ranged from wall-sconces to ink-wells and pot-
pourri vases, of which some of the finest examples are in the Wallace Art
Collection, London.

For more about Rococo porcelain and Rococo sculpture, read about two
important French sculptors Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-1785) and Etienne
Maurice Falconet (1716-1791).

The rococo style in France represented her greatest artistic contribution

before the rise of Impressionism in the nineteenth century and embraced all
the arts to an extent found nowhere else in Europe apart from Germany. The
amazing quality of French Rococo is due to the maintenance of the highest
standards throughout. It has the added appeal of patronage by such figures
as Madame de Pompadour, with whom the style is identified, and it stood at
the end of a long tradition of the finest French craftsmanship.

The Rococo Style in Italy - Characteristics

A large part of the story of the Rococo in Italy is that of painting in Venice -
especially painting by the great genius Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770) -
since the important products of the style in its most original form are found
there. With the exception of some buildings by Juvarra and Bernardo Yittone,
Italian architecture of the first half of the century passes fairly directly from
the late baroque style to early Neoclassicism, with little evidence of a definite
rococo style.

Italian Rococo Architecture, Interior Design and Decoration

Architecture and decorative art was dominated by the work of two men at the
turn of the century, Bernini and Borromini, but in particular the latter. Soon,
however, the leading architect in Rome was Ferdinando Fuga (1699-1782),
a Florentine whose greatest works were the Palazzo delia Consulta (1732-37)
and the facade of Santa Maria Maggiore (1741-43). In the former, a delicate
rhythm was created not by massive orders of columns but by subtly
proportioned and slightly recessed panels. Against these were set highly
decorative windows, and the whole was crowned by a large central sculpture
of angels supporting a cartouche. It is much more sculptural in effect than
any French building of the same date, and links up rather more with German
Rococo. The same central emphasis is found in the facade of Santa Maria
Maggiore, but there the whole facade is conceived as an open loggia, relieved
only by light sculpture. Elsewhere in Rome, other architectural undertakings
were coming closer to the spirit of the Rococo, as for example, in the Spanish
Steps (1723-25) by Francesco de Sanctis.

While French architects such as Boffrand were searching for an economical

means of expressing the sophistication of their interiors on the exterior,
Italian architects were still very moch more concerned with the exterior as the
vehicle for an immediate impression. They often devoted their energies to this
at the expense of the interiors and as a result only succeeded internally where
huge spaces were involved, as in some of the works of Filippo
Juvarra (1678-1736).

Juvarra was born in Messina into a family of silver-smiths and was trained in
Rome under Carlo Fontana, gaining his first successes as a designer of
elaborate and decorative stage scenery, an experience which was later to
stand him in good stead. After being appointed First Architect to the King at
the Court of Savoy in 1714, he travelled to Portugal, London and, in 1719-20,
Paris, probably seeing French Rococo in its earliest stages. On his return he
became Italy's closest parallel to the French architect-designer, involved with
not only architecture, but interiors, furniture and the applied arts. His
outstanding achievements are the hunting lodge he designed between 1729
and 1733 for the Court at the Castle of Stupinigi, the Church of the Carmine
(1732-35) in Turin, and the sanctuary of the Superga near Turin (1717-31).
Of these, Stupinigi is his most exciting creation. Gigantic wings radiate from a
domed central core Surmounted by a bronze stag, the white exterior
preparing one for the incredible spatial acrobatics and colour inside the
central Great Hall, which is close to many of Juvarra's architectural fantasies
and theatrical drawings. Much use is made of illusionistic painting, trompe
l'oeil urns filling giant niches painted above the many chimney-pieces in the
hall, while a gently swaying gallery runs round the walls and seems to pierce
the great piers. It is a theatrical tour de force. By comparison, the Superga
and the Carmine seem a little pedantic, but the former is sensationally sited
on a hilltop dominating the surrounding area with its elegant portico and high
dome flanked by onion-domed towers.

Comparable to Juvarra was Bernardo Yittone (1704-1770), who worked

exclusively in Piedmont, where he was born and to which he returned after
studying in Rome and editing the great baroque architect Guarini's
'Architettura Civile'. His most important works are in obscure villages in
Piedmont and unite Guarini's spatial complexity with Juvarra's lightness and
brio. In this vein, his masterpieces are the Sanctuary at Vallinotto (1738-39)
and the church of Santa Chiara at Bra of 1742.

While Vittone's domestic architecture is pedestrian, Juvarra's is not, and his

rococo interiors are among the finest in Italy. Unlike France, Italy was not
ruled by one monarch, so patronage was usually limited to a particular area of
the country, as in Juvarra's case. His patron, Vittorio Amadeo II of Savoy, was
fortunate in having such an able court architect, and for him Juvarra designed
the facade of the Palazzo Madama in Turin (1718-21), and some of the few
interiors which approach the French in quality; such is the Chinese Room of
the Royal Palace in Turin with its lacquer and gilded boiseries, influenced,
possibly, by JA Meissonnier's book of ornaments published in 1734. A
comparison of Juvarra's interiors with others in Italy shows that he alone
stood on an equal footing with other European designers.

Italian Rococo Furniture and Decorative Arts

Unfortunately the history of Italian rococo furniture does not follow such an
easy pattern as the French. The style of the seventeenth century overlapped
into the eighteenth, and pieces which are ostensibly datable before the turn of
the century are often in fact much later. Much of Juvarra's furniture remains
fairly heavy, using natural forms in quite a different way from French
designers such as Nicolas Pineau or Meissonnier.

Splendour, left over from the baroque age, was still the dominant mood for all
major interior designs, and there was no feeling, as in France, or even
Germany, for the small scale. Thus were produced more sophisticated but
equally imposing furniture and settings. Whereas the French taste was for
constant novelty, Italian interiors changed little after the initial swing to the
Rococo had been accepted. As in France, and to a greater extent in England,
the newly rich or moderately well-off were now trying to keep abreast of
contemporary developments.

What surprised most foreign travellers to Italy was the emptiness of the great
suites which lay behind the facades of most large palaces. Apart from the few
splendid apartments on view, the palaces contained many undistinguished
rooms and their contents could not compare with French furniture and the
chic of Parisian styles, for which the Italians substituted tasteless
extravagance. The pictures by Pietro Longhi of Venetian interiors conjure up
the sparsely furnished rooms of many Italian rococo houses.

The figures of Andrea Brustolon and Antonio Corradini dominated Venetian

design at the beginning of the century, their heavy baroque forms continuing
to be produced by succeeding craftsmen well after their deaths, almost until
the end of the century. The Venetians were nonetheless the only Italians who
took the rococo style seriously to heart and emulated the French, producing
exaggerated bombe commodes often teetering on tiny, fragile legs. Few great
names are known in the domain of Italian eighteenth-century furniture and
one thinks mainly of highly important individual pieces such as G. M.
Bonzanigo's painted and gilt firescreen in the Royal Palace at Turin. In Italy,
even more than in France, an apparently insatiable demand for curious or
unusual pieces arose, elaborately painted in the Venetian style with rustic
scenes or flowers, inlaid, but never with the intimate skill of the French
ebenistes. Lacquer, heavy gilding, mirrors, painted glass and combinations of
other materials led to a bewildering and not always happy mixture of styles.

Outstanding in the art of inlay was Pietro Piffetti (1700-77), who worked for
the House of Savoy at Turin, creating highly individual furniture combining
wood and ivory inlays with such refinements in metal as masks at the corners
and mounts for legs. The Royal Palace at Turin contains some breathtaking
pieces, literally covered with ivory inlay and occasionally seeming to be
supported solely by chance, so fragile are the legs beneath their elaborate
upper parts. In the Museo Civico in Turin is a card-table by Piffetti, stamped
and dated 1758, with a wholly convincing trompe l'oeil of playing-cards in
ivory and rare woods.

In the minor arts nothing of great significance was produced in Italy

compared with elsewhere in Europe, and certainly no ceramics factory
appeared to rival that of Sevres. But two factories produced porcelain, much
of which is certainly very beautiful - Vinovo in Piedmont and Capodimonte
outside Naples. Capodimonte porcelain is characterized by the brilliance of its
colouring, often in unexpected combinations as seen in the famous Porcelain
Room from the Palace at Portici (1754-59).

Italian Rococo Painting

Summary

Rococo emerged in Italy slightly later than in France. Early traces can be seen
in the lighter style of late Baroque painting, introduced in Rome and also in
Naples by artists like Luca Giordano (1634-1705) and Francesco
Solimena(1657-1747).

Then, in the space of 25 years, Venice produced Giambattista

Tiepolo (1696-1770), his son, Giandomenico (1727-1804), Antonio Canaletto
(1697-1768), Pietro Longhi (1701-85), Francesco Guardi (1712-93), Giovanni
Battista Piranesi (1720-78) and Canaletto's nephew Bernardo Bellotto (1720–
1780). All of these, except the last two, spent their working lives in Venice,
although Canaletto visited England in 1746. Longhi, and to a lesser extent,
the younger Tiepolo, portrayed the daily life of Venice, the former in small
canvases, the latter in drawings; while Canaletto, Guardi and Bellotto painted
outdoor scenes on the canals and piazza. Piranesi, though born in Venice,
came to Rome in 1738. No paintings by him are known, and his fame rests
entirely on his etchings of architecture and ruins. The elder Tiepolo is best
known for his extraordinary fresco decoration of the state dining room
(Kaiseraal) and the ceiling of the Grand Staircase (Trepenhaus) in the
Wurzburg Residenz of the Prince Bishop Karl Philipp von Greiffenklau, which
was undoubtedly the greatest and most imaginative masterpiece of his
career. The focal point was the soaring fresco of Apollo Bringing the
Bride (1750-1) in the centre of the Trepenhaus, a work which brings to a
majestic conclusion the Italian tradition of fresco painting initiated by Giotto
(1270-1337) four hundred years earlier.

Tiepolo

In the elder Tiepolo, and in him alone, can one speak of a pure rococo style,
related to the late Baroque in many ways, but creating an entirely new type
of visual experience. Not surprisingly, many of the greatest Venetian qualities
from the past are present in his work: the colour and original imagination
of Titian; the figure types and luxurious materials of Paolo Veronese, together
with his love of opulent classical architecture as a backdrop for rich pageants
of history and mythology.

The artificiality of the atmosphere in his early frescoes links Tiepolo at once
with the mainstream of rococo art, but at a time when he could not have
known much about contemporary French painting. From then on his career
was a meteoric success until his eclipse in Madrid at the end of his life at the
hands of the neoclassicists under Mengs (1728-79).

His greatest commission came in 1750, when he went to Wurzburg to paint

frescoes for the newly completed palace there and stayed until 1753 to
decorate the staircase (the largest mural painting in the world), the Kaisersaal
and the chapel. Shortly before leaving for Wurzburg, Tiepolo had decorated
the Palazzo Labia in Venice with the story of Anthony and Cleopatra, one of
his most evocative recreations of classical history.

A comparison of Tiepolo's style with that of his exact contemporary, Boucher,

reveals a different and perhaps more intellectual temperament. His glacially
elegant but still voluptuous nudes and his subtle juxtaposition of types, as in
the Wurzburg staircase where the 'Continents' are brilliantly contrasted, is
more original and complex than anything by Boucher. It was no accident that
Boucher admired Tiepolo above all others; "much more than Watteau's, his
art is that of the theatre, with a stage that is deliberately elevated above us,
and actors who keep their distance", says Michael Levey. Indeed his art is the
last which is truly representative of aristocratic ideals, soon to be replaced by
the republican values of the French Revolution, an art which could only have
flourished in a city-state as decadent as Venice in the eighteenth century

View Painters
While Tiepolo, father and son, were the finest decorators in the city, there
were the vedutisti, or view-painters, such as Canaletto (1697-1768), whose
great fame brought him to England between 1746 and 1756, and his
nephew Bernardo Bellotto (1720-80).

The paintings of Francesco Guardi (1712-93) are triumphs of atmospheric

study and understanding of the singular effects of Venetian light on water and
architecture. With a minimal palette, reduced in some cases almost entirely to
simple greens and greys, Guardi evokes landscape and views of the canals in
much the same way that Tiepolo executes figures, and with magic dots of
colour suggests people hurrying or engaged in conversation in the Piazza San
Marco or any of the many squares of Venice which he so clearly loved.

Pietro Longhi (1702-85), in contrast, specialized in somewhat gauche

renderings of contemporary life; in their gaucheness however lies their great
charm, and in the often delightfully unexpected choice of subject such as the
'Rhinoceros' (National Gallery, London) or the 'Moorish Messenger' (Ca'
Rezzonico, Venice).

But Italy was never as happy with the rococo style as it had been with the
preceding style of the Baroque or that of Neoclassicism, both of them heavier
and more capable of expressing the grandezza so beloved of Italian post-
renaissance art. This, however, appears in Tiepolo in a modified form, and it
is his name which remains outstanding.

The Rococo Style in England - Characteristics

Of all the European countries which had adopted or contributed to the

baroque style, England was the one which paid least attention to the Rococo.

English Rococo Architecture, Interior Design and Decoration

In architecture, at least, England moved directly from the baroque style of

Wren and Vanbrugh to Palladianism, a transition so swift that it allowed of no
intermediate development. With buildings such as Walpole's Strawberry Hill,
Twickenham, built from 1748, and Arbury, Warwickshire, of the same date
and the other Gothick buildings erected during the era of late eighteenth
century architecture it is sentiment which places these works in the rococo
category rather than any relationship with the rocaille.

In fact English Gothick is divided into two distinct categories - 'associational'

and 'rococo', the latter being a light-hearted form of decoration loosely based
on medieval precedents but frivolous enough to become almost a counterpart
of Continental Rococo in its sense of abandon and superficiality. William
Kent(1684-1748), architect and decorator, devized his own vocabulary of
Gothick decoration, which spread as quickly and as effectively over England
as the arabesques of Continental Rococo. But, apart from this, rocaille in
England touched only a handful of interiors, some high-quality furniture,
certain paintings and some porcelain, in particular the products of Chelsea
and Bow.
The earliest example of rocaille in England was the commission given to the
great French designer Meissonnier by the Duke of Kingston in 1735 for a
suite of table furniture in silver. But this was a fairly rare instance and rococo
design was generally confined to engraved decoration on sobre forms almost
entirely unaffected by the style. The new tendencies were disseminated
predominantly by pattern-books such as Matthias Lock's, or Jones's "The
Gentleman's or Builder's Companion" of 1739, which made rococo or quasi-
rococo details available to every craftsman who could afford the volume. The
fact that these were only details, detached from their surroundings, accounts
for the frequently gauche quality of much English rococo furniture. since the
craftsman could not be expected to appreciate the organic nature of the style
from mere fragments.

As in Italy and France, the eighteenth-century patron's taste often extended

to the Oriental in one form or another. accounting for the few rococo rooms of
note in England such as the bedroom at Nostell Priory, Yorkshire, of 1745, or,
the most important. Claydon House in Buckinghamshire (c.1768), where a
series of rooms were decorated by a certain Lightfoot, about whom little is
known. In these rooms, however, the style is by no means as pure as
Continental Rococo.

Rococo decorative art appear in other English town and country house
interiors and issometimes of the highest quality - notably in the hall at
Ragley, at nearby Hagley, and in the swirling plasterwork of the Francini
brothers. who executed much stucco work in Ireland, and are particularly
famed for their work at Russborough. But this attractive local craftsmanship is
a far cry from the consummate, all-embracing schemes of the Continent.

English Rococo Furniture and Decorative Arts

Unlike the French, English cabinet-makers did not usually sign their pieces,
and so comparatively little is known of men such as John Linnell, John
Cobb, Benjamin Goodison and William Vile, who all appear to have
worked extensively in the new fashion. The name of Chippendale is,
however, outstanding, not only because of the quality of his pieces, but also
because of his publication "The Gentleman and Cabinet-maker's Director"
(1754).

In his designs for mirrors and overmantels, often flavoured by chinoiserie,

one sees exotic examples of the rococo style, every bit as meticulous as
French boiserie but designed to be used as isolated features and rarely as
part of a whole decorative scheme. Likewise, the elaborate and fantastic
carvings in the hall at Claydon are isolated in an otherwise classical setting.

English Rococo Painting

In painting, two English artists made certain concessions to the rococo

- William Hogarth (1697-1764) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88).
Hogarth reacted strongly against the type of baroque history painting which
was so sought after by the 'amateurs' and introduced into his own work the
so-called 'Line of Beauty', which he explained in his "The Analysis of Beauty"
(1753) and which was a serpentine line rather like an elongated 'S'. This was,
of course, precisely the form of much rococo decoration.

Gainsborough, on the other hand, began life as a painter of small, stilted

portraits later developing a more sophisticated style after his move to
fashionable Bath. He painted some portraits in a rococo style surprisingly
close to Boucher, their floating brushwork and feathery landscapes, bright
pinks and silvery greys pronouncedly more rococo than any contemporary
English painting. See also the Regency society portraitist Thomas Lawrence.

Neoclassicism swept England from the return of Robert Adam to the country
in 1758, but even his chaste and epicene style echoes the dainty, meticulous
quality of most French rococo decorations and his Gothick is as rococo as any
decoration of that period in England. The Swiss portrait artist and history
painter, Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807), much admired by Sir Joshua
Reynolds for her portraiture, worked with Robert Adam on a number of his
architectural decorations.

The Rococo Style in Germany - Characteristics

In contrast to the superb restraint of the finest French rococo, Germany

provides a breathtaking range of some of the most outrageous and
magnificent rococo architecture and interior decoration in the history of
European art.

German Rococo Architecture, Interior Design and Decoration

This high standard of excellence spread from architecture to applied art -

furniture, furnishings and porcelain - though these rarely surpassed those of
France. Nothing in 18th-century France, Italy or England rivals the sheer
excess of such architectural masterpieces as Melk or the Dresden Zwinger,
and in the number of first-rate churches and palaces alone, Germany easily
outstrips the others. This may stem from the fact that what we now call
Germany, was, in the eighteenth century, divided into several different
principalities, kingdoms anq bishoprics, so that a certain rivalry must have
determined the creation of buildings of major importance - unlike France or
England where the really important commissions were invariably confined to a
small number of patrons.

German rococo can be seen to trace its origins to Roman churches of the
baroque period such as Bernini's Sant' Andrea al Quirinale, where colour, light
and elaborate sculpture are all combined. This is apparent for the first time in
Germany in the Abbey Church of Weltenburg, built after 1714, with its oval
dome cut away internally to reveal a frescoed vision of the heavens above.

Colour was the main string to the bow of German rococo - pink, lilac, lemon,
blue - all were combined or used individually to telling effect, as in the
Amalienburg, near Munich. The heavier, curving forms of the Baroque are
turned into more staccato rhythms in German rococo, and one finds the
influence of a major baroque monument such as Bernini's baldacchino in St.
Peter's Rome, transformed by Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753), into a
confection of the order of the high altar at Vierzehnheiligen, perhaps the most
complex and satisfying of German churches.

While room shapes in France during the eighteenth century did not change a
great deal, and the plan of ecclesiastical buildings hardly at all, German
rococo architects explored every possibility. Walls not only seem to sway
despite their huge scale, but whole sections appear to have been cut away,
with the effect that the enormous frescoed ceilings, which entirely dominate
most of these churches, seem to float above the worshipper.

One of the most exciting features of German rococo architecture is the highly
dramatic siting of some of the most important examples, such as the Abbey of
Melk by J. Prandtauer, begun in 1702. Deliberately placed in a commanding
position high above the Danube, the two great towers dominate a courtyard
in front opened to the outside world by a great Palladian-type arch. Such a
feeling for drama, and for the total involvement of the faithful both externally
and internally, is also found at Ettal, in a reversed role, with the monastery
dominated by surrounding mountains.

Secular building also reached a high level of perfection. Perhaps the most
sophisticated examples are to be found in and around Munich where, as court
dwarf and architect, Francois Cuvillies (1695-1768) was involved in many
buildings, perhaps the finest being the Amalienburg. This small pavilion, built
between 1734 and 1739 and named after the Elector's wife, has, in Hugh
Honour's words, 'an easy elegance and gossamer delicacy'. Its gently swaying
front, shallow rustication and unusual pediments herald one of the loveliest
rooms in Europe - the famous Hall of Mirrors with its silver rocaille against
powder-blue background and glittering glass. At the opposite end of the scale,
Cuvillies Residenz-theater in Munich (1751-53) uses richly gilded figures and
musical instruments to frame the entire auditorium, contrasting vividly with
the red damask and velvet of the walls and seats.

Potsdam and Dresden never produced a rococo style as refined as that of

Munich, but buildings such as the Zwinger (1709-19) by Poppelmann in
Dresden overwhelm by their scale and superabundance of decorative detail.
The effect of this type of architecture is also felt in the little Palace of Sans
Souci at Potsdam (1745-51), which was built for Frederick the Great.

For sheer scale, opulence and overpowering grandeur of detail, the Rococo of
Germany is foremost in Europe.

For more information about Rococo interiors in Russia, see the work
of Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700-71).

Later Variants of Rococo

The rococo style never really died out in provincial France. With the arrival of
Historicism in the 1820s, many craftsmen found it comparatively easy to
produce whole interiors and buildings in the 'Second Rococo' style so favoured
by Louis Phillipe and his queen, examples of which are to be found throughout
Paris.
 The rococo architectural and design revival came to England as early as 1828
with Wyatville's Waterloo Chamber in Apsley House, the interiors of Lancaster
House and the Elizabeth Saloon at Belvoir Castle. It appealed naturally to the
rich of the day, and the Rothschilds decorated several houses in the style,
even incorporating actual 18th-century interiors at Waddesdon Manor in the
1880s.

Royal assent was given to the style by Ludwig of Bavaria in his Linderhof
Palace and Herrenchiemsee of the same period. It became the accepted taste
in the decoration of the many new hotels of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centu

"In my view, you must either do away with ornament - or make ornament the
essence. It's not something you add. It's not icing on a cake. It's everything -
or it's nothing."
Jean-Antoine Watteau
QUOTES
1 of 6

BEGINNINGS

In painting Rococo was primarily influenced by the Venetian School's use of

color, erotic subjects, and Arcadian landscapes, while the School of
Fontainebleau was foundational to Rococo interior design.

The Venetian School

The noted painters Giorgione and Titian, among others, influenced the
Rococo period's emphasis on swirling color and erotic subject matter. Pastoral
Concert (c. 1509), first attributed to Giorgione, though now credited by most
scholars as one of Titian's early works, was classified as a Fête champêtre, or
outdoor party, by the Louvre when it first became part of the museum's
collection. The Renaissance work depicting two nude women and two
aristocratic men playing music in an idealized pastoral landscape would
heavily influence the development of Rococo's Fête galante, or courtship
paintings. The term referred to historical paintings of pleasurable past times
and became popularized in the works of Jean-Antoine Watteau.

School of Fontainebleau 1528-1630

In 1530 King Francis I, a noted art patron, invited the Italian artist Rosso
Florentino to the French court, where, pioneering the courtly style of
French Mannerism, Rosso founded the School of Fontainebleau. The school
became known for its unique interior design style in which all the elements
created a highly choreographed unity. Rosso pioneered the use of large
stucco reliefs as frames, adorned with decorative and gilded motifs that would
heavily influence Rococo's emphasis on elaborated settings.

Gilding was a key contribution of Fontainebleau, providing exquisite splendor

to objects as seen in Benevento Cellini's famous Salt Cellar(1543), which
Francis I commissioned in gold. Even simple elements of Rococo interiors
became highly accentuated as seen in the popularity of cartel clocks,
embedding regular clocks into intricate settings that resembled pieces of
sculpture, and which seamlessly complemented the overall look and feel of
their surrounding interiors.

The Era of Rococo Design

Rococo debuted in interior design when engraver Pierre Le Pautre worked

with architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart on the Château de Marly (1679-1684),
and later at Versailles in 1701 when he redesigned Louis XIV's private
apartments. Le Pautre pioneered the use of arabesques, employing an s-
shaped or c-shaped line, placed on white walls and ceilings. He also used
inset panels with gilded woodwork, creating a whimsical, lighter style. Le
Pautre was primarily known as an ornemaniste, or designer of ornament,
which reflects the popular role at the time of artisans and craftsmen in
developing the highly decorative style.
During the reign of Louis XIV, France had become the dominant European
power, and the combination of great wealth and peaceful stability led the
French to turn their attention toward personal affairs and the enjoyment of
worldly pleasures. When the King died in 1715, his heir Louis XV was only five
years old, so the Regency, led by the Duc d' Orléans, ruled France until the
Dauphin came of age. The Duke was known for his hedonistic lifestyle, and
Rococo's aesthetics seemed the perfect expression of the era's sensibility.
Taking the throne in 1723, Louis XV also became a noted proponent and
patron of Rococo architecture and design. Since France was the artistic
center of Europe, the artistic courts of other European countries soon followed
suit in their enthusiasm for similar embellishments.

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau spearheaded the Rococo period in painting. Born in
Valenciennes, a small provincial village in Belgium that had recently been
acceded to the French, his precocity in art and drawing led to his early
apprenticeship with a local painter. Subsequently he went to Paris where he
made a living producing copies of works by Titian and Paolo Veronese. He
joined the studio of Claude Audran, who was a renowned decorator, where he
met and became an artistic colleague of Claude Gillot, known for his
decoration of commedia dell'arte, or comic theater productions. As a result,
Watteau's work often expressed a theatrical approach, showing figures in
costume amongst backdrop scenery, lit up with artificial light.
In 1712 Watteau entered the Prix de Rome competition of the Académie
Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, and the Academy admitted him as a full
member. His "reception piece" for the Academy, Embarkation for
Cythera (1717), effectively launched the Rococo movement. The Academy
coined the term Fête galante, or courtship party, to refer to the work, thus
establishing the category that was to be a dominant element of Rococo
painting. Fête galante paintings depicted the fête champêtre, or garden party,
popular among the aristocratic class, where, dressed as if for a ball or wearing
costumes, they would wine, dine, and engage in amorous pursuits within
Arcadian gardens and parks. The artistic subject not only appealed to private
patrons, but its mythologized landscapes and settings met the standards of
the Academy which ranked historical painting, including mythological subjects,
as the highest category.
Claude Audren was the official Keeper of the Luxembourg Palace and, while
working with him, Watteau copied Peter Paul Ruben's series of twenty-four
paintings of the Life of Marie de' Medici (1622-25), which was displayed at the
palace. Ruben's series, combining allegorical figures and mythological
subjects with depictions of the Queen and the aristocratic court, continued to
inform Watteau's work. Rubens had pioneered the technique of trois crayons,
meaning three chalks, a technique using red, black, and white, to create
coloristic effects. Watteau mastered the technique to such a degree that his
name became associated with it, and it was widely adopted by later Rococo
artists, including François Boucher.

François Boucher

Influenced by Rubens and Watteau, François Boucher became the most

renowned artist of the mature Rococo period, beginning in 1730 and lasting
until the 1760s. Noted for his painting that combined aristocratic elegance with
erotic treatments of the nude, as seen in his The Toilet of Venus (1751), he
was equally influential in decorative arts, theatrical settings, and tapestry
design. He was appointed First Painter to the King in 1765, but is most known
for his long time association with Madame de Pompadour, the official first
mistress of King Louis XV and a noted patron of the arts. As a result of his
mastery of Rococo art and design and his royal patronage, Boucher became
"one of those men who represent the taste of a century, who express,
personify and embody it," as the noted authors Edmond and Jules de
Goncourt wrote.

Madame de Pompadour

Madame de Pompadour, born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, has been called

the "godmother of the Rococo," due to her centrality in promoting the style
and establishing Paris as the artistic capital of Europe. She influenced further
applications of Rococo due to her patronage of artists such as Jean-Marc
Nattier, the sculptor Jean Baptiste Pigalle, the wallpaper designer Jean-
Baptiste Réveillon, and the gemstone engraver Jacques Guay. The King's
official first mistress from 1745-1751, she remained his confidant and trusted
advisor until her death at the age of 42 due to tuberculosis. Her role and
status became the de facto definition of royal patronage.

CONCEPTS, STYLES, AND TRENDS

French Rococo

France was the center of the development of Rococo. In design, the salon, a
room for entertaining but also impressing guests, was a major innovation. The
most famous example was Charles-Joseph Natoire and Germain Boffrand's
La Salon de la Princesse (1735-1740) in the residence of the Prince and
Princess de Soubise. The cylindrical interior's white walls, gilded wood, and
many mirrors created a light and airy effect. Arabesque decorations, often
alluding to Roman motifs, cupids, and garlands, were presented in gold stucco
and plate relief. Asymmetrical curves, sometimes derived from organic forms,
such as seashells or acanthus fronds, were elaborate and exaggerated. The
minimal emphasis on architecture and maximum emphasis on décor would
become cornerstone to the Rococo movement.
Painting was an essential part of the Rococo movement in France, and the
noted painters who led the style, Antoine Watteau followed by François
Boucher, influenced all elements of design from interiors to tapestries to
fashion. Other noted artists included Jean-Baptiste van Loo, Jean-Marc
Nattier, and François Lemoyne. Lemoyne was noted for his historical
allegorical paintings as seen in his Apotheosis of Hercules (1733-1736)
painted on the Salon of Hercules' ceiling at Versailles. A noted feature of
French Rococo painting was the manner in which a number of noted artist
families, such as the van Loos and the Coypels, maintained a consistent style
and subject matter in their workshops.

Italian Rococo

Painting took the lead in Italian Rococo, exemplified by the works of the
Venetian artist Giambattista Tiepolo. Combining the Venetian School's
emphasis on color with quadratura, or ceiling paintings, Tiepolo's masterworks
were frescos and large altarpieces. Famed throughout Europe, he received
many royal commissions, such as his series of ceiling paintings in the
Wurzburg Residenz in Germany, and his Apotheosis of the Spanish
Monarchy(1762-1766) in the Royal Palace in Madrid.
Italian Rococo was also noted for its great landscape artists known as "view-
painters," particularly Giovanni Antonio Canal, known simply as Canaletto. He
pioneered the use of two-point linear perspective while creating popular
scenes of the canals and pageantry of Venice. His works, such as his Venice:
Santa Maria della Salute (c. 1740), were in great demand with English
aristocrats. In the 1700s it became customary for young English aristocrats to
go on a "Grand Tour," visiting the noted sites of Europe in order to learn the
classical roots of Western culture. The trips launched a kind of aristocratic
tourism, and Venice was a noted stop, famed for its hedonistic carnival
atmosphere and picturesque views. These young aristocrats were also often
art collectors and patrons, and most of Canaletto's works were sold to an
English audience, and in 1746 he moved to England to be closer to his art
market and lived there for almost a decade.
Rosalba Carriera's pastel portraits, both miniature and full-size, as well as her
allegorical works were in demand throughout Europe, as she was invited to
the royal courts of France, Austrian, and Poland. She pioneered the use of
pastels, previously only employed for preparatory drawings, as a medium for
painting, and, by binding the chalk into sticks, developed a wider range of
strokes and prepared colors. Her Portrait of Louis XV as Dauphin (1720-1721)
established the new style of Rococo portraiture, emphasizing visual appeal
and decorative effect.
In architecture, Italy continued to emphasize the Baroque with its strong
connection to the Catholic church until the 1720s when the architect Filippo
Juvarra built several Northern Italian Palaces in the Rococo style. His
masterwork was the Stupinigi Palace (1729-1731), built as the hunting lodge
for the King of Sardinia in Turin. At the same time, Rococo interiors became
popular in Genoa, Sardinia, Sicily, and Venice where the style took on
regional variations particularly in furniture design. Italian Rococo interiors were
particularly known for their Venetian glass chandeliers and mirrors and their
rich use of silk and velvet upholstery.

German Rococo

Germany's enthusiasm for Rococo expressed itself exuberantly and primarily

in architectural masterpieces and interior design, as well as the applied arts. A
noted element of German Rococo was the use of vibrant pastel colors like
lilac, lemon, pink, and blue as seen in François de Cuvilliés' design of the
Amalienburg (1734-1739), a hunting lodge for the Holy Roman Emperor
Charles VII in Munich. His Hall of Mirrors in the Amalienburg has been
described by art historian Hugh Honour as exemplifying "easy elegance and
gossamer delicacy."
German design motifs while employing asymmetry and s- and c- curved
shapes, often drew upon floral or organic motifs, and employed more detail.
German architects also innovatively explored various possibilities for room
designs, cutting away walls or making curved walls, and made the siting of
new buildings an important element of the effect, as seen in Jacob
Prandtauer's Melk Abbey (1702-1736)

English Rococo

England's employment of Rococo, which was called "French style," was more
restrained, as the excesses of the style were met with a somber
Protestantism. As a result, rocailleintroduced by the émigré engraver Hubert-
François Gravelot and the silversmith Paul de Lamerie, was only employed as
details and occasional motifs. Around 1740 the Rococo style began to be
employed in British furniture, most notably in the designs of Thomas
Chippendale. His catalogue Gentleman's and Cabinet-makers'
directory (1754), illustrating Rococo designs, became a popular industry
standard.

Rococo had more of an impact upon British artists such as William

Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, and the Swiss Angelica Kauffman. In
his The Analysis of Beauty (1753) Hogarth advocated for the use of a
serpentine line, seeing it as both more organic and aesthetically ideal.
Gainsborough first studied with Gravelot, a former student of Boucher, whose
feathery brushwork and color palette influenced Gainsborough's portraiture
toward fluidity of light and color. Though Swiss-born, Angelica Kauffman spent
most of her life in Rome and London. From 1766 to 1781 she lived in London
where influential Sir Joshua Reynolds particularly admired her portraiture.
One of only two women elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, she
played a significant role in both advancing the Rococo style and,
subsequently, Neoclassicism.
LATER DEVELOPMENTS

In 1750 Madame de Pompadour sent her nephew Abel-François Poisson de

Vandières to study developments in Italian art and archeology. Returning with
an enthusiasm for classical art, Vandières was appointed director of the King's
Buildings where he began to advocate for a Neoclassical approach. He also
became a noted art critic, condemning Boucher's petit style, or "little style."
Noted thinkers of the day, including the philosopher Voltaire, the art critic
Diderot also critiqued Rococo as superficial and decadent. These trends,
along with a rising revolutionary fervor in France caused Rococo to fall out of
favor by 1780.

The new movement Neoclassicism, led by the artist Jacques-Louis David,

emphasized heroism and moral virtue. David's art students even sang the
derisive chant, "Vanloo, Pompadour, Rococo," singling out the style, one of its
leading artists, and it most noted patron. As a result, by 1836 it was used to
mean "old-fashioned," and by 1841 was used to denote works seen as
"tastelessly florid or ornate." The negative connotations continued into the
20thcentury, as seen in the 1902 Century Dictionary description
"Hence rococo is used... to note anything feebly pretentious and tasteless in
art or literature."

Rococo design and painting would veer toward divergent paths, as Rococo
design, despite the new trends in the capital, continued to be popular
throughout the French provinces. In the 1820s under the restored monarchy
of King Louis Philippe, a revival called the "Second Rococo" style became
popular and spread to Britain and Bavaria. In Britain the revival became
known as Victorian Rococo and lasted until around 1870, while also
influencing the American Rococo Revival in the United States, led by John
Henry Belter. The style, widely employed for upscale hotels, was dubbed "Le
gout Ritz" into the 20th century. However, in painting Rococo fell out of favor,
with the exception of the genre paintings of Chardin, highly praised by Diderot,
which continued to be influential and would later make a noted impact on Paul
Cézanne, Édouard Manet, and Vincent van Gogh.

Edmund and Jules de Goncourt rediscovered the major Rococo painter Jean-
Honoré Fragonard in L'Art du XVIIIe siècle (Eighteenth-Century Art) (1865).
He subsequently influenced the Impressionists, especially Pierre-Auguste
Renoir and Berthe Morisot, and has gone on to influence contemporary artists
like Yinka Shonibare, Kent Monkman, and Lisa Yuskavage.

Also rediscovered by the de Goncourt brothers, Watteau's commedia

dell'arte subjects influenced Picasso, Cézanne, and Matisse, as well as many
poets such as Verlaine and Apollinaire, the composer Schoenberg, and the
choreographer Balanchine.

The term Rococo and the artists associated with it only began to be critically
re-evaluated in the late 20th century, when the movements of Pop Art and the
works of artists like Damien Hirst, Kehinde Wiley, and Jeff Koons created a
new context for art expressing the same ornate, stylistic, and whimsical
treatments. Rococo has had a contemporary influence as seen in Ai
Weiwei's Logos 2017 where, as art critic Roger Catlin wrote, "What looks like
a fancy rococo wallpaper design in black and white and in gold is actually an
arrangement of handcuffs, chains, surveillance cameras, Twitter birds and
stylized alpacas - an animal which in China has become a meme against
censorship." The movement also lives on in popular culture, as shown in
Arcade Fire's hit song "Rococo" (2010).
MOST IMPORTANT ART

Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera (1717)

Artist: Jean-Antoine Watteau
This painting depicts a number of amorous couples in
elegant aristocratic dress within an idealized pastoral setting
on Cythera, the mythical island where Venus, the goddess of
love, birthed forth from the sea. The gestures and body
language are evocative, as the man standing below center,
his arm around the waist of the woman beside him, seems to

ear nestly
entreat her, while she turns back to gaze wistfully at the
other couples. A nude statue of the goddess rises from a
pedestal that is garlanded with flowers on the right, as if
presiding over the festivities. On the left, she is doubly
depicted in a golden statue that places her in the prow of the
boat. Nude putti appear throughout the scene, soaring into
the sky on the left, or appearing between the couples and
pushing them along, and nature is a languid but fecund
presence. Overall, the painting celebrates the journey of
love. As contemporary critic Jeb Perl wrote, "Watteau's
paired lovers, locked in their agonizing, delicious indecision,
are emblems of the ever-approaching and ever-receding
possibility of love."

As art critic Holly Brubach wrote, "Watteau's images are

perfectly suspended between the moment just before and
the moment after... the people he portrays are busy enacting
not one but several possible scenarios." His figures are not
so much recognizable individuals, as aristocratic types, with
smooth powdered faces, that together create a kind of
choreography of color and pleasure.

With this work, Watteau's reception piece for the Academy,

he pioneered the fête galante, or courtship painting, and
launched the Rococo movement. As Jonathan Jones wrote,
"In the misty, melting landscapes of paintings such
as Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera (1717), he unequivocally
associates landscape and desire: if Watteau's art looks back
to the courtly lovers of the middle ages it begins the modern
history of sensuality in French art."
Read More ...

Rococo Artworks in Focus:

Rococo

Rococo in French Decoration

Rococo salons are known for their elaborate detail, serpentine design work, asymmetry
and predisposition to lighter, pastel, or gold-based color palettes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Discuss the importance of the Rococo salon in France and its typical design

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

 After the reign of Louis XIV, the wealthy and aristocratic moved back to Paris from
Versailles and began decorating their homes in the new Rococo style that was
associated with King Louis XV.
 The notion of the salon is an Enlightenment era ideal that transformed the salon,
or living room, into the central space for aristocracy to entertain guests and
engage in intellectual conversation.
 Rococo interiors are highly unified in nature, and represent the coming together of
a number of decorative arts.
 As with other Rococo art forms, the color palette is lighter, the lines are
curvaceous (‘S’ curve), and the decoration is excessive.
 Furniture rose to new heights in the period and emphasized lighthearted frivolity.
 Furniture, friezes, sculpture, metalwork, wall, and ceiling decoration are woven
together stylistically in the Rococo salon.
Key Terms

 asymmetry: Lacking a common measure between two objects or quantities;

incommensurability.
 serpentine: Sinuous; curving in alternate directions.
 mahogany: Any of various tropical American evergreen trees, of the genus
Swietenia, having a valuable hard red-brown wood.
 palette: The range of colors in a given work or body of work.

In 18th century Europe, the Rococo style became prevalent in interior design, painting,
sculpture, and the decorative arts. A reaction to the rigidity of Baroque style, the
frivolous and playful Rococo first manifested itself with interior design and decorative
work. In French, the word salon simply means living room or parlor, and Rococo salons
refer to central rooms that are designed in the Rococo style. In addition, the notion of
the ‘salon’ is an Enlightenment era ideal that transformed the living room into the central
space for aristocracy to entertain guests and engage in intellectual conversation. The
idea that one’s architectural surroundings should encourage a way of life, or reflect
one’s values, was the philosophy of the time.

The Rococo interior reached its height in the total art work of the salon. Rococo salons
are characterized by their elaborate detail, intricate patterns, serpentine design work,
asymmetry, and a predisposition to lighter, pastel, and gold-based color palettes.

Bureau Danton de l’Hôtel de Bourvallais: This example of a Rococo salon exemplifies the serpentine design
work and heavy use of gold that were both typical of the Rococo style.
As another means of reflecting status, furniture rose to new heights during the Rococo
period, emphasizing the lighthearted frivolity that was prized by the style. Furniture
design became physically lighter, so as to be easily moved around for gatherings, and
many specialized pieces came to prominence, such as the fauteuil chair, the voyeuse
chair, and the berger et gondola. Furniture in the Rococo period was freestanding, as
opposed to wall-based, in order to accentuate the lighthearted and versatile atmosphere
that was desired by the aristocracy. Mahogany became the most widely used medium
due to its strength, and mirrors also became increasingly popular.

Rococo salons often employed the use of asymmetry in design, which was
termed contraste. Interior ornament included the use of sculpted forms on ceilings and
walls, often somewhat abstract or employing leafy or shell-like textures. Two excellent
examples of French Rococo are the Salon de Monsieur le Prince in the Petit Château at
Chantilly, decorated by Jean Aubert; and the salons in the Hotel Soubise, Paris, by
Germain Boffrand. Both of these salons exhibit typical Rococo style with walls, ceilings,
and moulding decorated with delicate interlacings of curves based on the fundamental
shapes of the ‘S,’ as well as with shell forms and other natural shapes.

Salon de la Princesse: A Rococo interior from the Hotel de Soubise, Paris that demonstrates highly elaborate
ceiling work.

In France, the style began to decline by the 1750s. Criticized for its triviality and excess
in ornament, Rococo style had already become more austere by the 1760s, as
Neoclassicism began to take over as the dominant style in France and the rest of
Europe.
Rococo in Painting and Sculpture

Rococo style in painting echoes the qualities evident in other manifestations of the style
including serpentine lines, heavy use of ornament as well as themes revolving around
playfulness, love, and nature.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Identify themes and qualities commonly associated with Rococo art

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

 Rococo style developed first in the decorative arts and interior design, and its
influence later spread to architecture, sculpture, theater design, painting, and
music.
 Rococo style is characterized by elaborate ornamentation, asymmetrical values,
pastel color palette, and curved or serpentine lines.
 Rococo art works often depict themes of love, classical myths, youth, and
playfulness.
 Antoine Watteau is considered to be the first great Rococo painter who influenced
later Rococo masters such as Boucher and Fragonard.
 In sculpture, the work of Etienne-Maurice Falconet is widely considered to be the
best representative of Rococo style.
 Rococo sculpture makes use of very delicate porcelain instead of marble or
another heavy medium.

Key Terms

 Rococo: A style of baroque architecture and decorative art, from 18th century
France, having elaborate ornamentation.
 pastel: Any of several subdued tints of colors, usually associated with pink,
peach, yellow, green, blue, and lavender.
 serpentine: Sinuous; curving in alternate directions.

Rococo Painting

Painting during the Rococo period has many of the same qualities as other Rococo art
forms such as heavy use of ornament, curved lines and the use of a gold and pastel-
based palette. Additionally, forms are often asymmetrical and the themes are playful,
even witty, rather than political, as in the case of Baroque art. Themes relating to myths
of love as well as portraits and idyllic landscapes typify Rococo painting.

Antoine Watteau

Antoine Watteau is considered to be the first great Rococo painter. His influence is
visible in the work of later Rococo painters such as Francois Boucher and Honore
Fragonard. Watteau is known for his soft application of paint, dreamy atmosphere, and
depiction of classical themes that often revolve around youth and love, exemplified in
the painting Pilgrimage to Cythera.

Pilgrimage to Cythera by Antoine Watteau: Watteau’s signature soft application of paint, dreamy atmosphere,
and depiction of classical themes that often revolve around youth and love is evident in his work Pilgrimage to
Cythera.

Francois Boucher

Francois Boucher became a master of Rococo painting somewhat later than Watteau.
His work exemplifies many of the same characteristics, though with a slightly more
mischievous and suggestive tone. Boucher had an illustrious career, and became court
painter to King Louis XV in 1765. There was controversy later in his career as Boucher
received some moral criticism from people such as Diderot for the themes present in his
work. The Blonde Odalisque was particularly controversial, as it supposedly illustrated
the extra marital affairs of the King.

Blond Odalisque by Francois Boucher: Blond Odalisque was a highly controversial work by Francois Boucher
as it was thought to depict an affair of King Louis XV. The work employs serpentine lines, a reasonably pastel
palette and themes of love indicative of Rococo artwork.

Rococo Sculpture

In sculpture, the work of Etienne-Maurice Falconet is widely considered to be the best

representative of Rococo style. Generally, Rococo sculpture makes use of very delicate
porcelain instead of marble or another heavy medium. Falconet was the director of a
famous porcelain factory at Sevres. The prevalent themes in Rococo sculpture echoed
those of the other mediums, with the display of classical themes, cherubs, love,
playfulness, and nature being depicted most often as exemplified in the
sculpture Pygmalion and Galatee.
Pygmalion and Galatee by Etienne-Maurice Falconet: Pygmalion and Galatee is indicative of Etienne Maurica
Falconet’s Rococo style in its depiction of lighthearted love, including a cherub indicating its predisposition to
mythology.

Rococo Architecture

18th century Rococo architecture was a lighter, more graceful, yet also more elaborate
version of Baroque architecture.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Distinguish Rococo architecture from its Baroque predecessor

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

 Rococo architecture was a lighter, more graceful, yet also more elaborate version
of Baroque architecture, which was ornate and austere.
 Rococo emphasized the asymmetry of forms, while Baroque was the opposite.
 The Baroque was more serious, placing an emphasis on religion, and was often
characterized by Christian themes; Rococo was more secular and light-hearted.
 Rococo architecture brought significant changes to the building of edifices, placing
an emphasis on privacy rather than the grand public majesty of Baroque
architecture.

Key Terms

 jocular: Humorous, amusing or joking.

 motif: A recurring or dominant element in a work of art.
 cherub: A statue or other depiction of an angel, typically in the form of a winged
child.

Rococo architecture was a lighter, more graceful, yet also more elaborate version of
Baroque architecture, which was ornate and austere. While the styles were similar,
there are some notable differences between both Rococo and Baroque architecture,
such as symmetry; Rococo emphasized the asymmetry of forms, while Baroque was
the opposite. The styles, despite both being richly decorated, also had different themes;
the Baroque was more serious, placing an emphasis on religion, and was often
characterized by Christian themes (the Baroque began in Rome as a response to the
Protestant Reformation); Rococo architecture was an 18th century, more secular,
adaptation of the Baroque that was characterized by more light-hearted and jocular
themes. Other elements belonging to the architectural style of Rococo include
numerous curves and decorations, as well as the use of pale colors.

There are numerous examples of Rococo buildings as well as architects. Among the
most famous include the Catherine Palace in Russia, the Queluz National Palace in
Portugal, the Augustusburg and Falkenlust Palaces in Brühl, the Chinese House in
Potsdam, the Charlottenburg Palace in Germany, as well as elements of the Château
de Versailles in France. Architects who were renowned for their constructions using the
style include Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, an Italian architect who worked in Russia
and who was noted for his lavish and opulent works, Philip de Lange, who worked in
both Danish and Dutch Rococo architecture, or Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, who
worked in the late Baroque style and who contributed to the reconstruction of the city of
Dresden in Germany.

Rococo architecture also brought significant changes to the building of edifices, placing
an emphasis on privacy rather than the grand public majesty of Baroque architecture,
as well as improving the structure of buildings in order to create a more healthy
environment.

Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, Saint Petersburg: The residence originated in 1717, when Catherine I of
Russia hired German architect Johann-Friedrich Braunstein to construct a summer palace for her pleasure. In
1733, Empress Elizabeth commissioned Mikhail Zemtsov and Andrei Kvasov to expand the Catherine Palace.
Empress Elizabeth, however, found her mother’s residence outdated and incommodious and in May 1752 asked
her court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli to demolish the old structure and replace it with a much grander edifice
in a flamboyant Rococo style. Construction lasted for four years, and on July 30, 1756 the architect presented
the brand-new 325-meter-long palace to the Empress, her dazed courtiers, and stupefied foreign ambassadors.

A Brief History of Rococo Art

Roccoco art: its history, as well as key figures in the movement.
Erica Trapasso, July 15, 2013

Pair of Louis XV chairs, sold at Koller Auktionen Zürich on Thursday, March 21, 2013
Rococo painting, which originated in early 18th century Paris, is characterized by soft
colors and curvy lines, and depicts scenes of love, nature, amorous encounters, light -
hearted entertainment, and youth. The word “ro coco” derives from rocaille, which is
French for rubble or rock. Rocaille refers to the shell-work in garden grottoes and is
used as a descriptive word for the serpentine patterns seen in the Decorative Arts of
the Rococo period.

Pair of Louis XV chairs, sold at Koller Auktionen Zürich on Thursday, March 21, 2013

After the death of Louis XIV, the French court moved from Versailles back to their old
Parisian mansions, redecorating their homes using softer designs and more modest
materials than that of the King’s grand baroque style. Instead of surrounding
themselves with precious metals and rich colors, the French aristocracy now lived in
intimate interiors made with stucco adornments, boiserie, and mirrored glass. This new
style is characterized by its asymmetry, graceful curves, elegance, and the delightful
new paintings of daily life and courtly love, which decorated the walls within these
spaces.
Jean Antoine W atteau, La Surprise – A couple embracing while a figure dressed as Mezzetin tunes
a guitar, sold at Christie’s London on Tuesday, July 8, 2008

The father of Rococo painting was Jean Antoine Watteau (French, 1684–1721), who
invented a new genre called fêtes galantes, which were scenes of courtship parties.
Born close to the Flemish border, Watteau was influenced by genre scenes of
everyday life that were quite popular in Flanders and the Netherlands. He is best
known for his depictions of elegantly dressed figures gathered in outdoor spaces,
exchanging pleasantries and enjoying music.

Though educated thought was cultivated throughout the 18th century, a new kind of
intellectual exchange began to develop, which became known as the Enlightenment.
Out of this new cultural movement, ideas about art changed, and Rococo ideals of
frivolity and elegant eroticism became less and less relevant. Art critics like Diderot
sought for a “nobler art,” and enlightened philosophers like Voltai re criticized its
triviality. W hile some Rococo artists continued to paint in their own provocative style,
others developed a new kind of art, known as Neoclassicism, which appealed to the art
critics of the time.
Jean Honoré Fragonard, La coquette fixée (The Fascinated Coquette), sold at Christie’s New York
on Thursday, April 6, 2006

Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806) was one such painter who attempted to
adapt his style to the artistic changes of the period; unlike Watteau, Fragonard’s skill
wasn’t recognized until well after his death. Today, Fragonard is best known for his
Rococo-style paintings like La coquette fixée (The Fascinated Coquette), which
depicts an amorous encounter between a female and two males. The lustful male
gazes establish the female figure as the focal point of the painting. As a work of light -
hearted entertainment, there is no complex meaning or story behind the piece. It is a
bright, cheerful scene meant for amusement and delight.

Erica Trapasso is a senior editor for the artnet Price Database.

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Auctions

Q1–Q2 Auction Performance in 2013

An in-depth look at first and second quarter performance in 2013.
Katherine Markley, July 12, 2013

Total sales volume of Fine Art in the United States is up 7 percent in the first half of
2013, even though overall global sales lagg ed behind last year’s performance. While
global growth in the first quarter of 2013 was down 7% from the same period in 2012,
strong sales in Q2 have helped the global art market slowly close the gap, with this
year’s performance only trailing last year’s by 3% at the end of Q2.

With sales volume down in China ( -14%) and the United Kingdom (-7%) in the first half
of 2013, strong spring sales in the rest of the world were left to bolster the global art
market, enabling it to top US$7 billion by the end of th e second quarter. France,
Germany, and Hong Kong all witnessed 5 -7% growth in total volume sold so far in
2013, representing a combined market share of 10% of the global market.

Sales in the United States in Q1 -Q2 of 2013 were responsible for almost one th ird of
all art sold globally this year, gaining market shares as the Chinese market contracted.
Supported in part by the unprecedented success of Post -War and Contemporary sales,
the United States sold 11% more Fine Art by value and 9% more by volume this May
than in 2012. At Christies New York, the Post -War and Contemporary sales fetched
US$640 million in a single week, setting a new auction record for value sold at auction
for any collecting category. The sale was led by the three most expensive works sol d
so far in 2013, each selling for over US$45 million and setting a new record for the
respective artist: Jackson Pollock’s Number 19, selling for US$58.3 million; Roy
Lichtenstein’s Woman with Flowered Hat, selling for US$56.1 million; and Jean-Michel
Basquiat’s Dustheads, selling for US$48.8 million.

Jackson Pollock, Number 19, 1948, oil and enamel on paper laid on canvas, sold for
US$58,363,750 at Christie’s New York
Roy Lichtenstein, Woman with Flowered Hat , 1963, magna on canvas, sold for US$56,123,750 at
Christie’s New York