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Early life
Reynolds attended the Plympton grammar school of which his father, a
clergyman, was master. The young Reynolds became well read in the
writings of classical antiquity and throughout his life was to be
much interested in literature, counting many of the finest British
authors of the 18th century among his closest friends. Reynolds
early aspired to become an artist, and in 1740 he was apprenticed
for four years in London to Thomas Hudson, a conventional
portraitist and the pupil and son-in-law of Jonathan Richardson. In
1743 he returned to Devon and began painting at Plymouth naval
portraits that reveal his inexperience. Returning to London for two
years in 1744, he began to acquire a knowledge of the old masters
and an independent style marked by bold brushwork and the use of
impasto, a thick surface texture of paint, such as in his portrait
of “Captain the Honourable John Hamilton” (1746).
Back in Devon in 1746, he painted a large group portrait of the
“Eliot Family” (c. 1746/47), which clearly indicates that he had
studied the large-scale portrait of the “Pembroke Family” (1634–35)
by the Flemish Baroque painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck, whose style of
portrait painting influenced English portraiture throughout the 18th
century. In 1749 Reynolds sailed with his friend Augustus Keppel to
Minorca, one of the Balearic Islands off the Mediterranean coast of
Spain. A fall from a horse detained him for five months and
permanently scarred his lip—the scar being a prominent feature in
his subsequent self-portraits. From Minorca he went to Rome, where
he remained for two years, devoting himself to studying the great
masterpieces of ancient Greco-Roman sculpture and of Italian
painting. The impressions that he retained from this visit were to
inspire his paintings and his Discourses for the rest of his life,
for he felt that it was by allying painting with scholarship that he
could best achieve his ambition of raising the status of his
profession back in England. While returning home via Florence,
Bologna, and Venice, he became absorbed by the compositions and
colour of the great Renaissance Venetian painters of the 16th
century: Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese. The Venetian
tradition's emphasis on colourand the effect of light and shading
had a lasting influence on Reynolds, and, although all his life he
preached the need for young artists to study the sculptural
definition of form characteristic of Florentine and Roman painters,
his own works are redolent of the Venetian style.
Later years
In 1753 Reynolds settled in London, where he was to live for the
rest of his life. His success was assured from the first, and by
1755 he was employing studio assistants to help him execute the
numerous portrait commissions he received. The early London
portraits have a vigour and naturalness about them that is perhaps
best exemplified in a likeness of “Honourable Augustus Keppel”
(1753–54; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London). The pose is
not original, being a reversal of the “Apollo Belvedere,” an ancient
Roman copy of a mid-4th-century-BC Hellenistic statue Reynolds had
seen in the Vatican. But the fact that the subject (who was a
British naval officer) is shown striding along the seashore
introduced a new kind of vigour into the tradition of English
portraiture. In these first years in London, Reynolds' knowledge of
Venetian painting is very apparent in such works as the portraits of
“Lord Cathcart” (1753/54) and “LordLudlow” (1755). Of his domestic
portraits, those of “Nelly O'Brien” (1760–62) and of “Georgiana,
Countess Spencer, and Her Daughter” (1761) are especially notable
for their tender charm and careful observation.
After 1760 Reynolds' style became increasingly classical and
self-conscious. As he fell under the influence of the classical
Baroque painters of the Bolognese school of the 17th century and the
archaeological interest in Greco-Roman antiquity that was sweeping
Europe at the time, the pose and clothes of his sitters took on a
more rigidly antique pattern, in consequence losing much of the
sympathy and understanding of his earlier works.
There were no public exhibitions of contemporary artists in London
before 1760, when Reynolds helped found the Society of Artists and
the first of many successful exhibitions was held. The patronage of
George III was sought, and in 1768 the Royal Academy was founded.
Although Reynolds' painting had found no favour at court, he was the
obvious candidate for the presidency, and the king confirmed his
election and knighted him. Reynolds guided the policy of the academy
with such skill that the pattern he set has been followed with
little variation ever since. The yearly Discourses that he delivered
at the academy clearly mirrored many of his own thoughts and
aspirations, as well as his own problems of line versus colourand
public and private portraiture, and gave advice to those beginning
their artistic careers.
From 1769 nearly all of Reynolds' most important works appeared in
the academy. In certain exhibitions he included historical pieces,
such as “Ugolino” (1773), which were perhaps his least successful
works. Many of his child studies are tender and even amusing, though
now and again the sentiment tends to be excessive. Two of the most
enchanting are “Master Crewe as Henry VIII” (1775–76) and “Lady
Caroline Scott as ‘Winter' ” (1778). His most ambitious portrait
commission was the “Family of the Duke of Marlborough” (1777).
In 1781 Reynolds visited Flanders and Holland, where he studied the
work of the great Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. This
seems to have affected his own style, for in the manner of Rubens'
later works the texture of his picture surface becomes far richer.
This is particularly true of his portrait of the “Duchess of
Devonshire and Her Daughter” (1786). Reynolds was never a mere
society painter or flatterer. It has been suggested that his
deafness gave him a clearer insight into the character of his
sitters, the lack of one faculty sharpening the use of his eyes. His
vast learning allowed him to vary his poses and style so often that
the well-known remark of Thomas Gainsborough, “Damn him, how various
he is!” is entirely understandable. In 1782 Reynolds had a paralytic
stroke, and about the same time he was saddened by bickerings within
the Royal Academy. Seven years later his eyesight began to fail, and
he delivered his last Discourse at the academy in 1790. He died in
1792 and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.
Personality and criticism
Reynolds preferred the company of men of letters to that of his
fellow artists and was friends with Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke,
and Oliver Goldsmith, among others. He never married, and his house
was kept for him by his sister Frances.
Reynolds' state portraits of the king and queen were never
considered a success, and he seldom painted for them; but the Prince
of Wales patronized him extensively, and there were few
distinguished families or individuals who did not sit for him.
Nonetheless, some of his finest portraits are those of his intimate
friends and of fashionable women of questionable reputation.
Unfortunately, Reynolds' technique was not always entirely sound,
and many of his paintings have suffered as a result. After his visit
to Italy, he tried to produce the effects of Tintoretto and Titian
by using transparent glazes over a monochrome under painting, but
the pigment he used for his flesh tones was not permanent and even
in his lifetime began to fade, causing the over pale faces of many
surviving portraits. In the 1760s Reynolds began to use more
extensively bitumen or coal substances added to pigments. This
practice proved to be detrimental to the paint surface. Though a
keen collector of old-master drawings, Reynolds himself was never a
draftsman, and indeed few of his drawings have any merit whatsoever.
Reynolds' Discourses Delivered at the Royal Academy (1769–91) is
among the most important art criticism of the time. In it he
outlined the essence of grandeur in art and suggested the means of
achieving it through rigorous academic training and study of the old
masters of art.
John Woodward
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Sir Joshua Reynolds
General Sir Banastre Tarleton
1782
Oil on canvas, 236 x 145 cm
National Gallery, London
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Sir Joshua Reynolds
Cupid Unfastens the Belt of Venus
oil on canvas
1788
The Hermitage at St. Petersburg
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Sir Joshua Reynolds
Sisters Waldegrave
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_____________
_____________
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Sir Thomas
Gainsborough
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
baptized May 14, 1727, Sudbury, Suffolk, England
died August 2, 1788, London
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Thomas Gainsborough
Self-Portrait
1787
Oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London
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portrait and landscape painter, the most versatile English painter of the 18th
century. Some of his early portraits show the sitters grouped in a landscape
(“Mr. and Mrs. Andrews,” c. 1750). As he became famous and his sitters
fashionable, he adopted a more formal manner that owed something to Anthony Van
Dyck (“The Blue Boy,” c. 1770). His landscapes are of idyllic scenes. During his
last years he also painted seascapes and idealized full-size pictures of rustics
and country children.
Early life and Suffolk period
Gainsborough was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a maker of
woolen goods. When he was 13, he persuaded his father to send him to
London to study on the strength of his promise at landscape. He
worked as an assistant to Hubert Gravelot, a French painter and
engraver and an important figure in London art circles at the time.
From him Gainsborough learned something of the French Rococo idiom,
which had a considerable influence on the development of his style.
In 1746 in London he married Margaret Burr, the illegitimate
daughter of the Duke of Beaufort. Soon afterward he returned to
Suffolk and settled in Ipswich in 1752; his daughters Mary and
Margaret were born in 1748 and 1752, respectively. In Ipswich
Gainsborough met his first biographer, Philip Thicknesse. He early
acquired some reputation as a portrait and landscape painter and
made an adequate living.
Gainsborough declared that his first love was landscape and began to
learn the language of this art from the Dutch 17th-century
landscapists, who by 1740 were becoming popular with English
collectors; his first landscapes were influenced by Jan Wynants. The
earliest dated picture with a landscape background is a study of a
bull terrier—“Bumper—A Bull Terrier” (1745; Sir Edward Bacon
Collection, Raveningham, Norfolk), in which many of the details are
taken straight from Wynants. But by 1748, when he painted “Cornard
Wood,” Jacob van Ruisdael had become the predominant influence;
although it is full of naturalistic detail, Gainsborough probably
never painted directly from nature. “The Charterhouse,” one of his
few topographical views, dates from the same year as “Cornard Wood”
and in the subtle effect of light on various surfaces proclaims
Dutchinfluence. In the background to “Mr. and Mrs. Andrews,” he
anticipates the realism of the great English landscapist of the next
century, John Constable, but for the most part fancy held sway. In
many of the early landscapes the influence of Rococo design learned
from Gravelot is evident, together with a feeling for the French
pastoral tradition. “The Woodcutter Courting a Milkmaid” is an
Anglicized version of a French theme, which recalls compositions by
Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Although Gainsborough preferred landscape, he
knew he must paint portraits for economic reasons. The small heads
painted in Suffolk, although sometimes rather stiff, are penetrating
character studies delicately and freely pencilled, particularly the
jaunty self-portrait in a cocked hat at Houghton. Gainsborough
painted few full-length portraits in Suffolk. “Mr. William
Woollaston,” although an ambitious composition, is intimate and
informal. The “Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly,” composed in
the last years at Ipswich, is, in its easy naturalism and
sympathetic understanding, one of the best English portraits of
children.
As well as straight portraits, he painted in Suffolk a number of
delightful spontaneous groups of small figures in landscapes closely
related to conversation pieces. “Mr. and Mrs. Andrews,” which has
been described as the most English of English pictures, is set in a
typical Suffolk landscape. “Lady and Gentleman in Landscape” is more
Frenchified, with its vivacious Rococo rhythms, but “Heneage Lloyd
and His Sister” is more stylized, the charming little figures being
posed against a conventional background of steps and decorative
urns.
Bath period
To obtain a wider public, Gainsborough moved in 1759 to Bath, where
his studio was soon thronged with fashionable sitters. He moved in
musical and theatrical circles, and among his friends were members
of the Linley family, whose portraits he painted. At Bath he also
met the actor David Garrick, for whom he had a profound admiration
and whom he painted on many occasions. His passion for music and
the stage continued throughout his life. In the west country he
visited many of the great houses and at Wilton fell under the spell
of Anthony Van Dyck, the predominating influence in his later work.
In spite of the demand for portraits, he continued to paint
landscapes.
In 1761 he sent a portrait of Earl Nugent to the Society of Artists,
and in the following year the first notice of his work appeared in
the London press. Throughout the 1760s he exhibited regularly in
London and in 1768 was elected a foundation member of the Royal
Academy. Characteristically he never took much part in the
deliberations.
After he moved to Bath, Gainsborough had less time for landscape and
worked a good deal from memory, often drawing by candlelight from
little model landscapes set up in his studio. About 1760 Peter Paul
Rubens supplanted the Dutch painters as Gainsborough's chief love.
This is particularly noticeable in “Peasants Returning from Market,”
with its rich colour and beautiful creamy pastel shades. The
influence of Rubens is also apparent in “The Harvest Wagon” in the
fluency of the drawing and the scale of the great beech trees so
different from the stubby oaks of Suffolk. The idyllic scene is a
perfect blend of the real and the ideal. The group in the cart is
based on Rubens' “Descentfrom the Cross” (1611–14) in Antwerp
cathedral, which Gainsborough copied.
In Bath, Gainsborough had to satisfy a more sophisticated clientele
and adopted a more formal and elegant portrait style based largely
on a study of Van Dyck at Wilton, where he made a free copy of Van
Dyck's painting of the Pembroke family. By 1769, when he painted
“Isabella Countess of Sefton,” it is easy to see the refining
influence of Van Dyck in the dignified simplicity of the design and
the subtle mutedcolouring. One of Gainsborough's most famous
pictures, “The Blue Boy,” was probably painted in 1770. In painting
this subject in Van Dyck dress, he was following an 18th-century
fashion in painting, as well as doing homage to his hero. The
influence of Van Dyck is most clearly seen in the more official
portraits. “John, 4th Duke of Argyll” in his splendid robes is
composed in the grand manner, and “Augustus John, Third Earl of
Bristol” rivals Reynolds' portraits of the kind. Gainsborough
preferred to paint his friends rather than public figures, and a
group of portraits of the 1760s—Uvedale Price, Sir William St.
Quinton, and Thomas Coward, all oldish men of strong
character—illustrate Gainsborough's sense of humour and his
individual approach to sympathetic sitters.
London period
In 1774 he moved to London and settled in part of Schomberg House in
Pall Mall. Fairly soon he began to be noticed by the royal family
and partly because of his informality and Tory politics was
preferred by George III above the official court painter, Sir Joshua
Reynolds. In 1781 he was commissioned to paint the King and Queen.
Gainsborough continued his landscape work. “The Watering Place” was
described by Horace Walpole, the English man of letters, as in the
style of Rubens, but it also has much of the classic calm of Claude
Lorrain, whose etchings Gainsborough owned. In 1783 he made an
expedition to the Lake District to see for himself the “wild”
scenery extolled by the devotees of the picturesque. On his return
he painted a number of mountain scenes that have analogies with the
work of Gaspard Dughet, whose works were widely distributed in
English country houses. Some sea pieces dating from the 1780s show a
new kind of realism, harking back to the Dutch seascape tradition.
During his last years Gainsborough was haunted by his nostalgia for
Arcadia in the English countryside and painted a series of pictures
of peasant life more ideal than real, for example, “The Cottage
Door.” But one of the latest landscapes, “The Market Cart,” is less
idealized and more true to nature and looks forward to Constable in
its treatment of the light breaking through the massive foliage.
Gainsborough was the only important English portrait painter to
devote much time to landscape drawing. He composed a great many
drawings in a variety of mediums including chalk, pen and wash, and
watercolour, some of them varnished. He was always eager to find new
papers and new techniques. He produced a magic lantern to give
striking lighting effects; the box is still in the Victoria and
Albert Museum, together with some of the slides. In addition
Gainsborough made a series of soft-ground etchings and aquatints. He
never sold his drawings and, although many of them are closely
related to pictures, they are not studies in the ordinary sense but
works of art in their own right.
Gainsborough was not methodical in keeping sitter books, and
comparatively few of the portraits in the early years in London are
dated. In 1777 he exhibited at the Royal Academy the well-known
“Mrs. Graham,” “C.F. Abel,” “William Henry, Duke of Gloucester,” and
“Maria, Duchess of Gloucester,” all deliberately glamorous and
painted in richly heightened colour. “Queen Charlotte” is more
restrained; the painting of the flounced white dress decorated with
ribbons and laces makes her look every inch a queen. It is
significant that Gainsborough, unlike most of his contemporaries,
did not generally use drapery painters. In 1784 he quarrelled with
the Academy because they insisted on hanging the “Three Eldest
Princesses” at the normal height from the floor, which Gainsborough
maintained was too high to appreciate his lightness of touch and
delicate pencilling. In protest he withdrew the pictures he had
intended for the exhibition and never showed again at the Academy.
In some of Gainsborough's later portraits of women, he dispensed
with precise finish, and, without sacrificing the likeness, he
concentrated on the general effect. “Mrs. Sheridan” melts into the
landscape, while “Lady Bate Dudley,” a symphony in blue and green,
is an insubstantial form, almost an abstract. “Mrs. Siddons,” on the
other hand, shows that Gainsborough could still paint a splendid
objective study. Few of the later male portraits are of a pronounced
character, but exceptions are two particularly good pictures of
musicians, “Johann Christian Fischer” and the unfinished “Lord
Abingdon” (private collection).
A new venture in 1783 was “The Mall in St. James' Park,” a park
scene described by Horace Walpole as “all a flutter like alady's
fan.” “The Morning Walk,” with romanticized figures strolling in a
landscape, is painted in the same spirit (see photograph). The
“fancy pictures” painted in the 1780s gave Gainsborough particular
pleasure. They are full-sized, idealized portraits of country
children and peasants painted from models—for example, “The Cottage
Girl with a Bowl of Milk.” The idea appeared in immature form in the
little rustic Suffolk figures, and he may have been fired to exploit
it further by seeing the 17th-century Spanish painter Bartolomé
Murillo's “St. John,” which he copied.
He died in 1788 and was buried in Kew churchyard.
Assessment
Of all the 18th-century English painters, Thomas Gainsborough was
the most inventive and original, always prepared to experiment with
new ideas and techniques, and yet he complained of his contemporary
Sir Joshua Reynolds, “Damn him, how various he is.” Gainsborough
alone among the great portrait painters of the era also devoted
serious attention to landscapes. Unlike Reynolds, he was no great
believer in an academic tradition and laughed at the fashion for
history painting; an instinctive painter, he delighted in the poetry
of paint. In his racy letters Gainsborough shows a warm-hearted and
generous character and an independent mind. His comments on his own
work and methods, as well as on some of the old masters, are very
revealing and throw considerable light on contemporary views of art.
Mary Woodall
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Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of a Lady in Blue
1777-79
Oil on canvas
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
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THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH:
"MR AND MRS
ROBERT ANDREWS"
1749-50; oil on canvas: 70 x 118 cm (28 x 48 in); National Gallery,
London.
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 Thomas Gainsborough
Mr and Mrs Andrews
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This painting celebrates and commemorates the marriage of the young
Robert and Frances Andrews in November 1748. The couple are shown
beneath an oak tree on their estate near Sudbury, where Gainsborough
was born. The setting enables him to express his gift as a landscape
painter, while displaying some of the vast grounds of the house
-confirming the couple's social status. During the reign of George
II. Britain was already a great world power. The ruling class had
grown rich from the products of their lands (in the foreground of
this painting, the artist includes a few sheaves of newly scythed
wheat), colonial trade, and financial speculation. The lesser
gentry, or squirearchy, was also sharing in this prosperity and felt
secure because of its growing influence in Parliament. This
portrait, which remained in the Andrews family until I960, perfectly
documents the style of the young Gainsborough. He was influenced by
the work of the great 17th-century Dutch landscape artist Jacob van
Ruysdael. while already moving towards a Romantic style. English
painters were not disposed to the extravagant and frivolous rocaille
fashions that held sway in Continental Europe. Instead, they assumed
a preference for formality and an emphasis on tradition that led to
an early espousal of Neoclassicism (incorporating some
characteristics of Rococo), which, in turn evolved into a form of
Romanticism.
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1. The painting's dimensions conform to the rules of the Golden
Section. The canvas can be split into two overlapping squares: their
division runs just below the horizon and slightly higher than the
upper bodies of the subjects. At first glance, the left-hand square
appears to be a double portrait and the right-hand square a
landscape. These two sides are fused by the artist's harmonious use
of colour and the continuity provided by the background. The
positive" element of the great oak tree behind the couple has a
symmetrical relationship lo the "negative" emptiness centred in the
right-hand square.
2. The "empty" half of the picture, the landscape, enabled the
artist to construct a perspectival view of the composition without
resorting to the use of distortion. The viewer's gaze is led to the
couple on the left-hand side, the natural central point of interest
in the composition, linking various important elements, diagonal
alignments lead us towards the unusual placing of the focal point in
the distance. The painting displays a deep love of nature in all its
freedom and beauty that is typical of English sensibility: in this,
the work prefigures the Romantic movement.
3. The amount of space devoted to the landscape paradoxically
serves to emphasize the two figures. Frances Andrews is the more
prominent of the two. the fullness of her pale blue skirl
corresponding to the shape of the clouds in the background. The
meticulously drawn sheaves of wheat are symbolic inferences to
fertility- highly appropriate in a portrait of a newly-wed couple.
4. The indications of social status are more evident in the male
figure. His magnificent gun — a country gentleman s sporting weapon
- indicates prestige and distinction. A whimsical but coherent
inter-weaving of lines combines the shape of the tree roots, the
legs, the gun. and the dog. The painter creates a naturalistic
portrait full of light. His brushwork is deft, with a delicacy of
glazing and a transparency rarely seen in oil colours. He used long
brushes and well-diluted colour to achieve these effects, most
evident in the highlights of the fabrics and the texture of the
skin.
5. The contrast between the crisp outlines of the tricorne bat,
the comfortable cut of the jacket, and the neatly tied stock around
his long neck, provide examples of English elegance that even the
French Court emulated in this era. While the bark of the tree is
painted with light brushwork. the woman's bauds remain enigmatically
unfinished. The subject's represent the English upper class, in
their country home, with its distinctions of rank and wealth. They
bare delicate hut clear-cut features, elongated faces, unsmiling
mouths, and a composed, slightly superior air.
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 Thomas Gainsborough
Mr and Mrs Andrews
(detail)
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see also collection:
Thomas
Gainsborough
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A Question of Class
English society in the eighteenth
century
(K.Reichold, B.Graf)
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A Youth to Fortune
and to Fame unknown...
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, 1751
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Thomas Gainsborough
The Blue Boy
Oil on canvas 177.8 x 121.98 cm
Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, CA
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Who was the young man who sat for Thomas Gainsborough's
The Blue Boy? His
identity was unknown for nearly two centuries. Recent research suggests that he
was Jonathan Buttall, the teenage son of a rich London ironmonger. Gainsborough
is thought to have made the family's acquaintance in Bath. The city in
south-west England was renowned throughout the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries as a fashionable spa where affluent English
families went to drink the healing waters of its springs.
The ultimate in elegant watering-places, Bath was even frequented by
members of the royal family when they felt jaded. Visitors to the
baths were subjected to a severe regimen. Forced to get up at six in
the morning, women spent an hour in the warm water of the baths
dressed in long garments made of heavy material that could not cling
to their bodies and reveal their contours. Men, too, bathed fully
dressed. Outside the baths, the city was the place for flirtations,
balls and evening card parties. There were many official functions
like the Assembly-Rooms Balls and places both indoors and out where
people promenaded for the purpose of meeting and keeping up with the
latest goings-on. Gambling was rife and the city boasted the dubious
attractions of a bevy of demi-mondaines to charm away the
boredom of gentlemen who were not m Bath with their families. Women
had to content themselves with gossip over the tea table.
The city seethed with intrigue, which is why Horace Walpole remarked
it was ten times better to leave the city than to enter it. The rich
visitors tended to be vain and ostentatious. This was probably the
reason why the young Thomas Gainsborough left Ipswich in the east of
England to settle in Bath in 1759-The move paid off. Showered with
portrait commissions from wealthy patrons, the painter was soon able
to afford luxurious apartments in the beautiful and elegant Royal
Circus.
However, the resort was not merely the haunt of the aristocracy. It
was just as popular with rich tradesmen's and manufacturers'
families. From 1750 English iron foundries and cotton mills had been
flourishing and their owners could well afford to take the waters at
Bath. One can imagine Gainsborough meeting Mr Buttall, the
ironmonger, and his family at the Pump Room. Gainsborough had begun
his career by copying and restoring Flemish paintings. It is
therefore not surprising that he borrowed stylistic elements from
the works of Anthony van Dyck to paint Jonathan Buttall, who is
dressed in the fashion of the seventeenth century.
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Thomas Gainsborough
The Painter's
Daughters Chasing a Butterfly
1755-56
The National Gallery, London
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Thomas Gainsborough
Landscape in Suffolk
1750
Oil on canvas, 65 x 95 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
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From Rococo to Neoclassicism
The architectural theorist Francesco Milizia documented his views of
the Baroque style in 1785 in a savage indictment. He viewed it as
already hopelessly old-fashioned. Under his definition of Baroque,
much that belonged to High Baroque was mistakenly included. Rococo
was already past its peak in central European architecture by the
1780s. In terms of domestic interior decoration and furnishings,
best represented in France by the "Louis XV" style. Rococo was going
out of favour in Europe by about 1770. In large European cities.
Neoclassicism grew in popularity, and where taste was more
conservative, there was a return to the academic-traditions of the
Bolognese and Roman schools. The Louis XVI style in furniture, which
became fashionable during the 1770s and 1780s, was characterized by
ornately carved wood or stucco decoration. It was tantamount to a
variation on the Rococo theme but with a preference for straight
lines, a limited range of floral iconography and pattern, a more
measured rhythm, and a new. less luxuriant repertoire of decoration.
In effect, the gregarious, rich Rococo style gave way to a more
austere and serious artistic sensibility. With gradual and various
modifications, Rococo gradually progressed towards Neoclassicism
with no discernible, abrupt break. As these stylistic changes took
place. Francisco Goya exerted great influence on the direction of
art. During his career, the artist witnessed the twilight of the age
of benevolent despotism. His work was to prove pivotal for
contemporary late 18th-century and early 19th-centurv art.
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Filippo Tagliolini sculptor, and Giovanni Battista Polidoro,
painter;
Bench in
the Real Passeggio, Reale Fabrica Ferdinandea, Naples,
c 1790-95.
Capodimonte
Museum, Naples.
This was part of a large set used as table decoration during the
dessert course;
it illustrates the influence of Rococo in the Neoclassical era.
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see collection:
Joshua Reynolds
Thomas
Gainsborough
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