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On the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, MA, see the first post in this series. This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/C-B0LQWFwOg .

This week: paintings of the mid-18th century, a fascinating transitional period.

1756

Francois Boucher (1703-1770) painted at Versailles for Louis XV’s queen and for his mistress, and was the principal designer for the royal porcelain factories and the Gobelins tapestry factory. This painting – a sketch for a tapestry – shows Venus, who has seduced Vulcan into forging weapons for Aeneas, her son by a Trojan prince. Vulcan offers Venus a sword. The putti at his feet romp around with a fancy plumed helmet; a shield and armor rest to the side.

Boucher was a leading French artist of the Rococo style. Because of its energy and exuberance, the Rococo is sometimes considered a late phase of Baroque – but instead of religion, Rococo artists focus on love, gaiety, and elegance, often using allegorical or pastoral subjects.

Circa 1760

The naturalism of Greuze (1725-1805) was an alternative to the elegant, decorative Rococo style: that Boucher painting was done only a few years before this one. This painting is an exercise in showing character and emotion, but Greuze usually painted genre scenes that tell a story, such as The Father’s Curse, 1777. Greuze’s works fell out of popularity long before his death, when the Neoclassical style came into vogue.

Circa 1768

Yet another thread in the artistic mix of the 1760s: this Gainsborough portrait. I found myself returning to this painting several times while I was at the Clark, fascinated by those wonderfully alive eyes and the affection between the two figures. It’s easy to see why Gainsborough was a leading portraitist of his time.

The sister and brother in this portrait came from a family of musicians in Bath. The boy was a precocious violinist, the young woman an acclaimed soprano. Two years after Gainsborough painted them, Elizabeth (1754-1792) broke an engagement to an elderly suitor and eloped to France with playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (author of The School for Scandal, 1777). The two had a tempestuous relationship until her death at age 38 of tuberculosis.

Circa 1770

And finally: a work by another great Rococo painter, Fragonard (1732-1806). The only Fragonard that has ever stuck in my mind is Young Girl Reading, ca. 1776. The “fantasy portrait” at the Clark has the same colors and the same bold brushstrokes, but a very different mood.

Fragonard is third and final great French artist of the Rococo style, following Watteau and Boucher. In part because his work is closely associated with the royal family and in part because many of his patrons were exiled or guillotined, Fragonard gained few commissions after the French Revolution in 1789. But his brushstrokes were influential on the Impressionists, especially Renoir.

Next week: more from the Clark Art Institute.

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