04 / 10 · 1720–1780
Pastels, silks and flirtation in the garden: the lighthearted hours of the aristocratic salon.
The Swing · Read more →After the death of Louis XIV, the French aristocracy left the solemn grandeur of Versailles for private town houses in Paris. Art followed, turning from the monumental to the intimate: canvases grew light and airy, filled with courtship, garden parties and leisure.
Watteau invented the ; Boucher and Fragonard pushed pink, powder blue and gold to their limits. On the eve of the Enlightenment's triumph and the Revolution, critics condemned the style as frivolous and decadent, and it soon gave way to Neoclassicism.
