Two Works by French Rococo Masters

In 1765, Boucher provided advice to his pupil, Johann Christian Manlich, on how to ideally render the female body, by advising that one should hardly be able to imagine that a woman's body contains any bones. Without being fat, they must be rounded, yet delicate and slim-waisted, without being skinny. The Rococo is a style of art that was characterized by a sort of light-hearted playfulness, beautiful sense of color, and emerged in France around 1700 and became the predominant style. Fragonard and Boucher were the leading exponents of this movement. In the Rococo, painters' palettes began to change, and there was this love of color and sensuality, and a move away from the more classical subject matter, and a focus on pastoral scenes of often amorous moments or images of love of the gods, as we see here. Painted circa 1755-56, Fragonard chooses to depict an image of Aurora, the goddess of dawn. She wears her crown with a star on it to represent the image of dawn, and beneath her sleeps the figure of night, draped under a beautiful blue satin coverlet. Here you see how he works so beautifully with colors. The pastel palette, these lovely blues and pinks, and the wonderful luminous light that comes under the figure of night at the bottom of the picture. But what's exciting here is this is Fragonard's own interpretation. He's a young artist at this moment. He's taken the skills that he's learned from his creating his own language, a language that he continues to develop throughout his career. This erotic sensual work was painted by François Boucher in 1760. It epitomizes his love of the female form and the glorification of the nude. Here he indulges himself in this image of the pastoral satyrs observing the nymphs lying in the field. It's at the height of the Rococo. Boucher at this point is quite elderly and he's really developed his voice as the key arbiter of the Rococo style. Boucher and Fragonard are the painters who most completely represent the spirit of the Rococo in France.