Rococo to realism – France has long been home to an abundance of influential artists that crafted styles distinctly French, from Rococo and Rococo-influenced Rococo artists like Louis Rococo to Gustave Courbet and Eugene Delacroix, who depicted naturalistic subjects. These artists include Jacques-Louis David who pioneered Neoclassicism and Eugene Delacroix who depicted a naturalistic universe.
At the height of France’s industrialization in the 19th century, art took a dramatic turn with Impressionism becoming an emerging genre. This form favored loose brushstrokes while exploring light and color effects.
Romanesque
At the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, Europe experienced its initial sense of stability. Monastic orders proliferated and expanded across Europe; churches were constructed. Church portal sculptures illustrated scenes depicting Last Judgment and salvation themes.
Painting of this period often focused on lighter subjects such as theater settings, mythological narratives or the female nude. At this time, several celebrated French painters such as Antoine Watteau – who originated the fete galante genre – and Jean-Simeon Chardin were active.
At this time, France witnessed the establishment of The Academie, as an alternative to guilds for art advancement. This marked an important landmark in France’s artistic progression.
Gothic
Gothic art and architecture first emerged in France during the Middle Ages, quickly spreading throughout different regions as it expanded and took on different forms.
Sculpture flourished under this new style, particularly within churches. Religious scenes were often depicted on carvings adorning doorframe tympanums or surrounding archivolts and lintels.
Stained glass windows were widely used in Gothic art to represent divinity, with large stained glass windows providing tinted light that symbolized divinity. Soaring vaulted ceilings also highlighted this style. Classical art represented completion and perfection while Gothic art represented aspiration and aspirations.
Renaissance
The Renaissance (1400-1600) was an age in which art, music, and literature advanced away from medieval influences and revived classical culture. Historians refer to this time as the “Revival”.
Renaissance people were known for being multi-talented individuals with various talents, much like Renaissance artists who used a technique called chiaroscuro to portray realistic forms.
Renaissance composers began reading classical treatises on composition and emphasizing its emotional effects – an evolution away from religious themes prevalent during medieval music.
Rococo
After Louis XIV died, there was a shift away from classicism and Versailles-based monarchy towards an irreverent, light Rococo style characterized by genre paintings depicting outdoor pastimes, erotic works that portray whimsical hedonism and Arcadian landscapes as key focal points of this French art movement.
Honore Fragonard and Antoine Watteau used pastels to capture a sense of frivolity for 18th century aristocracy who were tired of Baroque’s serious atmosphere, craving pastoral scenes with small figures like cherubs or scenes depicting drunken revelries instead.
Enlightenment
This period was defined by an emphasis on reason, individualism and skepticism over faith, groupthink and oppression – most visibly through American Revolution and French Revolution which brought down old regimes.
Philosophers like Rousseau and Diderot advocated a moral and educational art form. According to these philosophers, the purpose of art should be to make virtue attractive while vice seems repugnant – leading artists towards more realistic or naturalistic work.
Romanticism
As Romanticism flourished, artists turned toward subjects that seemed irrational or spontaneous instead of meticulously studied – for instance Eugene Delacroix’s free brushwork, adventurous subject matter and dynamic compositions quickly rose in popularity.
Romantic art also encompasses other genres, such as Lord Byron’s Childe Harold (1812) or Dennis Malone Carter’s Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat (1978). These examples demonstrate the misunderstood emotional hero as depicted by Lord Byron; or nationalism and patriotism through paintings by Dennis Malone Carter of Decatur Boarding Tripolitan Gunboat (1978).
Romanticism had an important place in history writing, inspiring an appreciation for heroic historical figures who inspired such belief.
Realism
Realism emerged as a reaction to the 19th century’s wide-ranging social changes, propelled by objective journalism and photography’s arrival. Being able to accurately recreate visual appearances greatly changed how painters could depict subjects on canvas.
Gustave Courbet led an artistic assault against French political power and bourgeois social mores, such as The Stone Breakers (1849-50) that depicts two lower-class workers engaged in hard labor. Meanwhile, Jean-Francois Millet’s paintings depicting peasant life had less confrontational content.
Impressionism
Impressionists took advantage of Louis Daguerre’s invention of photography in Paris to capture life around them and record its changing colors.
Their innovative techniques allowed them to depict subjects such as haystacks, railway stations and urban street scenes – challenging the official art world’s traditional subjects and methods.
Louis Leroy coined the initial disparaging term Impressionists after witnessing Claude Monet’s Impression Sunrise inspired by Louis Leroy. However, these artists’ dynamic diversity (merchant family roots, economic circumstances and political views) proved instrumental in fuelling their creativity and fueling its expression.