France has long been known as an epicenter for arts. From Lascaux’s ancient cave art to Impressionist artists’ dreamlike paintings, France is considered an epicenter for creative endeavors.
French art was still dominated by rules set down by the Academy of Fine Arts until Eugene Delacroix’s bold, provocative paintings infuriated it.
Gustave Courbet’s realistic paintings challenged the status quo, as did Jean-Simeon Chardin’s expressive figures.
Romanticism
Romanticism refers to a worldview characterized by individualism and intense emotions. Additionally, romanticism emphasized recognizing ordinary people as worthy of celebration, characterizing nature as powerful forces, and advocating isolation as essential for spiritual growth.
Ideals that challenged the Academy were an immediate threat to its rules, rebuking their predecessors’ ambitions for comprehensive representations of reality. Ingres embodied ordered classicism while trying to contain Eugene Delacroix’s rebellious nature; yet both artists managed to push stylistic boundaries by employing expressive distortions.
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism was an artistic movement which emerged in England and France to represent a return to Classical ideals, initially popular among aristocracy. Neoclassical art sought to convey an idealized self-image while Neoclassical architecture stressed restraint and symmetry while favoring Classical motifs such as columns, arches and domes.
Painters such as Jacques-Louis David and Angelika Kauffmann employed classic themes. Kauffmann produced many paintings depicting Spartan heroes at Thermopylae (Louvre). Additionally, fashion for men took on Neoclassical designs, including trousers replacing wigs as the predominant style.
Baroque
Baroque art amplified the naturalistic achievements of Renaissance painting to heighten theatricality and drama, epitomized by Gianlorenzo Bernini’s curving architecture and the use of chiaroscuro (using light and shadow to highlight specific components) techniques.
This style saw an explosion of physical materials such as precious stones used for jewelry. Virtuoso craftsmen created marquetry techniques – where thin veneers of different colored wood were laid over furniture surfaces – as part of this movement.
Baroque was first coined during the 17th century by critics who preferred Neoclassicism’s restrained classicism, initially having negative connotations. By mid 19th century however, its meaning had become neutralised as it simply described 17th-century art and music’s ornate and complex features.
Rococo
Rococo style came to prominence after Louis XIV died, dominating French arts and culture. This lighter approach could be found in paintings, sculpture and decorative arts pieces using sinuous, asymmetrical curves as well as floral motifs made popular during this era.
Jean-Antoine Watteau is widely credited with pioneering Rococo painting. He combined influences from Flemish masters such as Peter Paul Rubens with Venetian Renaissance giants Titian and Paolo Veronese to produce dramatic results.
His students, such as Francois Boucher and Jean-Honore Fragonard, followed suit. Their paintings often included outdoor scenes featuring graceful lovers with subtle sexual overtones.
Neo-Renaissance
In the 19th century, revival styles drew on Renaissance influences to produce various revival styles that we would now identify as Neo-Renaissance (or Second Empire). This term often encompassed all styles which neither met Grecian or Gothic criteria (Greek Revival), nor those we would now categorize as Mannerist or Baroque (Second Empire).
Architecture was affected significantly, as architects increasingly turned back towards original Renaissance principles with square, symmetrical designs more suitable to human scale and proportion than medieval and Gothic forms. Reformed churches built in this style such as Haarlem’s Nieuwe Kerk are notable examples.
Impressionism
Impressionist artists challenged the monopoly of Parisian art establishment with independent, jury-free exhibitions beginning with 1874 Impressionist Exhibition. Artists such as Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro took part.
These artists grew disenchanted with academic painting’s emphasis on historical subjects with literary or anecdotal overtones and its pursuit of artistic perfection, preferring plein air painting instead.
Impressionists adopted techniques from photography to capture fleeting effects of light and color, particularly important to Claude Monet who painted many fleeting landscapes as well as urban scenes such as railway stations and streetscapes.
Fauvism
Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck founded the Fauves (or ‘wild beasts’) art movement during the 20th century; their artists used vivid, non-naturalistic colors with aggressive brushstrokes and loose splashes of paint.
They favored an expressive interpretation of nature instead of using color to produce its optical effects in an impressionist fashion.
The Fauves were deeply inspired by African art, yet often neglected its cultural significance. Instead, they appreciated its visual qualities as a contrast to European painting styles with more refined approaches.