Rococo Fragonard

Rococo: Fragonard

Rococo is the final expression of Baroque energy transmuted into something lighter, sweeter, and more intimate: a style of asymmetric curves, pastel confections, and aristocratic leisure developed in France in the early 18th century and reaching its peak of refinement in the paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806).

The French Court Context

Rococo (from the French rocaille, decorative shellwork) emerged at the court of Louis XV as a deliberate move away from the formal grandeur of Louis XIV's Versailles. Where Baroque painting aimed at overwhelming scale and religious or dynastic authority, Rococo aimed at charm, wit, and amorous pleasure. Watteau's Fêtes galantes paintings (Embarkation for Cythera, 1717, Louvre) established the genre: elegantly dressed figures in parkland settings, engaged in courtly love rituals. François Boucher, Fragonard's teacher, developed the erotic and pastoral dimensions: plump, pink goddesses in improbable landscapes (Reclining Girl, 1751).

Fragonard (1732-1806)

Fragonard is Rococo's supreme technician. The Swing (L'Escarpolette, 1767, Wallace Collection, London) is the defining image: a young woman in a pink silk dress, swinging in a garden, her shoe flying off toward a hidden lover -- who, lying in the shrubbery below, looks up her skirts. The baron who commissioned it specified this exact scenario. The painting is pure Rococo: a conspiracy of pleasure, lush with garden greens and dress pinks, the whole scene rendered in Fragonard's characteristic feathery, swift impasto.

The Progress of Love series (1771-1773 and 1790-91, Frick Collection, New York) -- four large panels depicting courtship: The Meeting, The Pursuit, The Lover Crowned, Love Letters -- was commissioned for Madame du Barry's pavilion at Louveciennes but rejected, reportedly for being too old-fashioned. They remain the most sustained expression of Rococo's subject matter.