House no. 25 Strada Ernest Broșteanu in Bucharest (Romania), an example of Rococo Revival architecture
The Rococo Revival style emerged in Britain and France in the 19th century. Revival of the rococo style was seen all throughout Europe during the 19th century within a variety of artistic modes and expression including decorative objects of art, paintings, art prints, furniture, and interior design. In much of Europe and particularly in France, the original rococo was regarded as a national style, and to many, its reemergence recalled national tradition. Rococo revival epitomized grandeur and luxury in European style and was another expression of 19th century romanticism and the growing interest and fascination with natural landscape.
During the later half of the nineteenth century, Rococo Revival was also fashionable in American furniture and interior design. John Henry Belter was considered the most prominent figure of rococo revival furniture making. Revival of the rococo style was not restricted to a specific time period or place, but occurred in several waves throughout the 19th century.
Origins
Rococo Revival sofa by Blake and Davenport purchased for the Vermont State House in 1859
Early Rococo
The term Rococo was widely used to designate artistic style of the early 18th century in Europe and especially France. Rococo emerged during the early 18th century as a French mode of interior design and was considered the predominant artistic style in Europe at the time. However, there was no "rococo" art—the word "rococo" only emerged following the French Revolution and not commonly used until the early 19th century.
Sinuous lines, intricate decoration, and both fanciful and naturalistic motifs characterized the rococo style. As stated in a publication by Nóra Veszprémi, the style was "characterized by intricate and refined ornament" and "associated with luxury, aristocracy, refinement, and wealth." Towards the end of the century with the arrival of neoclassicism, the term rococo was used to criticize any neo-classical art in including the Gothic, the Baroque, and any earlier styles of the century.[1]
Louis XV Style in France
In the mid-nineteenth century, the term rococo referred to a style recalling the ornament and design aesthetics of the Louis XV style and early Louis XVI style.[2] The period between 1715-1745, encompassing the reign of Louis XV, is generally accepted as the high point of the Rococo style in French art.
Rococo was thought to derive from a combination of the French words rocaille, which characterizes a form of colorful and irregular rockwork used to embellish grottoes and fountains, and coquillage, shell motifs that accompanied the rocaille.[3] Another possibility is that the expression combined rocaille with the Italian adjective barocco, meaning misshaped, malformed, or convoluted.
Rococo Revival in England (1811-1830)
Gilt Charger, Paul Storr, British, 1810-1811, silver, Huntington Museum of ArtTeapot, Paul Storr, British, 1814-1815, silver, Huntington Museum of Art
During the Regency era, the Prince Regent (who later became King eorge IV) patronized makers of high-quality works of rococo silver.[4] The Prince Regent favored neoclassical elements of more luxurious interpretations of the late Louis XV and Louis XVI periods. The tastes of the Prince Regent helped fuel interest in the rococo revival spirit in England.[5]
Paul Storr was recognized as one of the most important and well-renowned English silversmiths. His quality of workmanship and versatility enabled him to create works that suited a wide range of tastes and preferences. Many rococo themes and motifs can be found in his works. An example of his work is a salver featuring signs of the Zodiac, a border cast chased with rococo scrolls, rococo decoration of the surface, and feet in rococo-cartouche form. One of the most monumental works created in rococo expression was Storr’s large candelabrum, created during the reign of William IV. The piece featured flowing branches and rolling, curved surfaces.
During the late 1820s, the aristocracy commissioned anti-classical styles, producing a much different expression of rococo in England.[6] Manufacturers in Birmingham and Sheffield became mass-producers of Sheffield plate, a layered combination of silver and copper. Mass-production also enabled silver embossed with scrolls, flowers, and foliage, which were produced cheaply by steam-presses on thin silver. These wares were made to imply luxury, not previously available on thin-sheeted silver, while mass-production allowed for mass-distribution and export. Historically reserved for royalty and aristocrats, industrialization and technological advances in machinery made rococo silver accessible to a broader audience.
Metal works based on Parisian design that were truly rococo were in ormolu, or bronze cover in finely-ground gold.[7] Parisian designers responded to the desire and tastes of Napoleon III and his wife Eugénie. They sought legitimacy of their court through stylistic references to the ancien régime style of Louis XV.
Rococo Revival in France
Louis Philippe (1830-1848)
The rising bourgeoisie in France demanded rococo decorative-art objects as a reflection of status, wealth, and material possession.[8] The bourgeois consumer purchased objects and furnishings from a variety of revival styles, including rococo, for its significance in historicizing opulence and grandeur.
Modern French Rococo furniture was characterized by its lightness, elegance and grace.[9] Its ornamentation consisted of delicate foliage and intricate details. Other characteristics included: embellished and elaborate carving, rich carving of floral and fruit motifs, curved frames, and tufted upholstery.
Second Empire (1852-1870)
Mariano Fortuny - Self-portrait - MNACMariano Fortuny, The Choice of a Model, 1874. Oil on canvas
According to a publication by Caroline Ingra,[10] Italian artists came to Paris during the Second Empire in search for artistic opportunities. Rome remained the center for young artists wanting to study classical tradition but not for artists who wanted to study contemporary art. They adapted the fashionable revival of eighteenth-century rococo genre painting. The fame and recognition of these Italian artists of Spanish origin and based primarily on the work of Mariano Fortuny.
Paris represented the latest in modern artistic development and attracted many artists. Fortuny attracted an audience in Paris upon first appearance in 1860. His work had a resemblance to 18th century paintings by Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The late Second Empire patrons were most interested in Fortuny’s revival of 18th century genre painting.[11]
Fortuny’s rococo-revival imagery was especially appealing to the French audience during the last years of the Second Empire.[12] During this period, a major revival interest was seen in 18th century Paris and genre painting that was practiced by academic artists. For the increasing bourgeois audience, the rococo-revival paintings presented an optimistic outlook on life and were appropriate to the new Parisian ‘nobility’ of the late Second Empire.
Ingra notes that, "The vogue for rococo imagery [during the Second Empire] however, represented more than a shift in patronage and, consequently, taste. The interest in prerevolutionary art was part of the efforts of Second Empire officialdom to establish legitimacy for itself by connecting with a period when royalty was as yet unchallenged."[13] She continues by asserting, "Reviving this early regime was a means of flattering themselves and emphasizing their own imperialist claims, in hope of achieving the awe and respect of the populace supposedly enjoyed by the former regime."[14]
The Second Empire was interested in reviving rococo art as a means to regenerate the ideals and values of the old regime. It was a means to emphasize pride, power, and respect in hopes of achieving admiration and devotion enjoyed by the former regime. However, some contemporary figures were appalled and considered that the exploitation of rococo revival by Italian artists was an inferior body of work. Critics saw this new manner of painting as vapid and without style.
Third Republic (1870-1940)
The French State sought to promote patrimony following its defeat in Franco-Prussian War. Late 19th-century France heavily invested in rococo style as a means to regenerate national pride and heritage.
The Second Rococo in Austria and Hungary (1830s)
In Austria and Hungary, revival of the Rococo style came to be known as the "second Rococo" and was seen in the visual arts and interior furnishings, but most prominently seen in painting. As demonstrated in a publication by Nora Veszprémi,[15] Rococo reemerged at the 1845 industrial exhibition, where an entire salon was furnished in Rococo style. The opulent room was known as "Kaiser Salon" and many critics regarded the display as "an exciting, new, and modern trend in fashion." Interior design and furnishings at the time were generally modest in ornamentation, recalling neoclassical forms of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.[citation needed]
The second Rococo was "a product of modern, industrialized Austria and its new middle class of prosperous manufacturers."[16] It appeared within the first decades of nineteenth-century Austria during a period economic and industrial upsurge and was largely a product of industrialization. It had emerged at two industrial exhibitions that promoted Austrian industry, where critics and the general population were largely receptive.[citation needed]
With the commodification of art in the modern world, the style resurfaced in painting.[17] Rococo aspects in painting, both its values and stylistic ornamentation, were considered objects of the past. In opposition to an "intrinsic higher meaning of art," its association with modernity depicts a contrasting former mode of artistic expression as a means of historicizing the visual arts.[citation needed]
John Henry Belter and Rococo Revival furniture in America
Dresser by John Henry Belter, New York, c. 1855, rosewood, other woods, mirrored glass (Brooklyn Museum).Bed by John Henry Belter, New York, patented 19 August 1856, rosewood and other woods (Brooklyn Museum).Etagere, by John Henry Belter, New York City, 1840-1860, rosewood, modern faux marble (Winterthur Museum).
John Henry Belter (1804-1863) was a famous American cabinetmaker of the Rococo Revival era. His name was commonly used as a generic term for all Rococo Revival furniture. Rosewood from Brazil and East India were favored by mid 19th-century patrons of formal furniture. Rosewood is very dense and brittle, and so rosewood furniture is very fragile and known to break under pressure. Laminated woods were a solution to this problem in manufacturing furniture with complicated designs.[18]
As a result, Belter patented a process for making laminated furniture. Laminated wood consisted of a number of veneer sheets bound together with hot glue. The bounded sheets were then bent under steam pressure, pressed into molds, and then carved. The process produced stronger pieces of furniture that was less costly than traditional carving and allowed for mass production.
Furniture made using this process was thinner and lighter than of made of solid wood and has the same resistance to breaking. Belter produced intricate designs without use of pierced carvings (which were traditionally used at the time).[19]
Belter’s approach to Rococo includes 17th-century motifs for decoration.[20] Carvings on 18th-century Rococo furniture pieces were simpler than the revival pieces. Carvings on 19th-century revival pieces were distinguished by defined details and clarity of the carvings.
Image Gallery
Centripetal Spring Armchair (1849) by Thomas E. Warren. Exhibited at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exposition in London.
The Baroque is a Western style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art, and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well.
Rococo, less commonly Roccoco, also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, and trompe-l'œil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It is often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement.
Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome, largely due to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann during the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Its popularity expanded throughout Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, eventually competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style endured throughout the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st century.
The art of Europe, also known as Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleolithic and the Iron Age. Written histories of European art often begin with the Aegean civilizations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. However a consistent pattern of artistic development within Europe becomes clear only with Ancient Greek art, which was adopted and transformed by Rome and carried; with the Roman Empire, across much of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.
Néo-Grec was a Neoclassical Revival style of the mid-to-late 19th century that was popularized in architecture, the decorative arts, and in painting during France's Second Empire, the reign of Napoleon III (1852–1870). The Néo-Grec vogue took as its starting point the earlier expressions of the Neoclassical style inspired by 18th-century excavations at Pompeii, which resumed in earnest in 1848, and similar excavations at Herculaneum. The style mixed elements of the Graeco-Roman, Pompeian, Adam and Egyptian Revival styles into "a richly eclectic polychrome mélange." "The style enjoyed a vogue in the United States, and had a short-lived impact on interior design in England and elsewhere."
Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery, or sculpture in multiple colors.
Chinoiserie is the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and other Sinosphere artistic traditions, especially in the decorative arts, garden design, architecture, literature, theatre, and music. The aesthetic of chinoiserie has been expressed in different ways depending on the region. It is related to the broader current of Orientalism, which studied Far East cultures from a historical, philological, anthropological, philosophical, and religious point of view. First appearing in the 17th century, this trend was popularized in the 18th century due to the rise in trade with China and the rest of East Asia.
The culture of Europe is diverse, and rooted in its art, architecture, traditions, cuisines, music, folklore, embroidery, film, literature, economics, philosophy and religious customs.
French art consists of the visual and plastic arts originating from the geographical area of France. Modern France was the main centre for the European art of the Upper Paleolithic, then left many megalithic monuments, and in the Iron Age many of the most impressive finds of early Celtic art. The Gallo-Roman period left a distinctive provincial style of sculpture, and the region around the modern Franco-German border led the empire in the mass production of finely decorated Ancient Roman pottery, which was exported to Italy and elsewhere on a large scale. With Merovingian art the story of French styles as a distinct and influential element in the wider development of the art of Christian Europe begins.
A putto is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and very often winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism, the putto came to represent a sort of baby angel in religious art, often called a cherub, though in traditional Christian theology a cherub is actually one of the most senior types of angel.
Rocaille was a French style of exuberant decoration, with an abundance of curves, counter-curves, undulations and elements modeled on nature, that appeared in furniture and interior decoration during the early reign of Louis XV of France. It was a reaction against the heaviness and formality of the Louis XIV style. It began in about 1710, reached its peak in the 1730s, and came to an end in the late 1750s, replaced by Neoclassicism. It was the beginning of the French Baroque movement in furniture and design, and also marked the beginning of the Rococo movement, which spread to Italy, Bavaria and Austria by the mid-18th century.
The history of art stretches back centuries to ancient times, but the most famous period is undoubtedly the Khmer art of the Khmer Empire (802–1431), especially in the area around Angkor and the 12th-century temple-complex of Angkor Wat, initially Hindu and subsequently Buddhist. After the collapse of the empire, these and other sites were abandoned and overgrown, allowing much of the era's stone carving and architecture to survive to the present day. Traditional Cambodian arts and crafts include textiles, non-textile weaving, silversmithing, stone carving, lacquerware, ceramics, wat murals, and kite-making.
The Louis XV style or Louis Quinze is a style of architecture and decorative arts which appeared during the reign of Louis XV. From 1710 until about 1730, a period known as the Régence, it was largely an extension of the Louis XIV style of his great-grandfather and predecessor, Louis XIV. From about 1730 until about 1750, it became more original, decorative and exuberant, in what was known as the Rocaille style, under the influence of the King's mistress, Madame de Pompadour. It marked the beginning of the European Rococo movement. From 1750 until the King's death in 1774, it became more sober, ordered, and began to show the influences of Neoclassicism.
Swedish art refers to the visual arts produced in Sweden or by Swedish artists. Sweden has existed as a country for over 1,000 years, and for times before this, as well as many subsequent periods, Swedish art is usually considered as part of the wider Nordic art of Scandinavia. It has, especially since about 1100, been strongly influenced by wider trends in European art. After World War II, the influence of the United States strengthened substantially. Due to generous art subsidies, contemporary Swedish art has a big production per capita.
Taking its name from medieval troubadours, the Troubadour Style is a rather derisive term, in English usually applied to French historical painting of the early 19th century with idealised depictions of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In French it also refers to the equivalent architectural styles. It can be seen as an aspect of Romanticism and a reaction against Neoclassicism, which was coming to an end at the end of the Consulate, and became particularly associated with Josephine Bonaparte and Caroline Ferdinande Louise, duchesse de Berry. In architecture the style was an exuberant French equivalent to the Gothic Revival of the Germanic and Anglophone countries. The style related to contemporary developments in French literature, and music, but the term is usually restricted to painting and architecture.
The Hermann–Grima House is a historic house museum in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The meticulously restored home reflects 19th century New Orleans. It is a Federal-style mansion with courtyard garden, built in 1831. It has the only extant horse stable and 1830s open-hearth kitchen in the French Quarter.
Gilded woodcarving in Portugal is, along with azulejos, one of the country's most original and rich artistic expressions. It is usually used in the interior decoration of churches and cathedrals and of noble halls in palaces and large public buildings. An impressive collection of altarpieces are found in Portuguese churches. Originating in the Gothic era, Portuguese gilded woodcarving assumed a nationalist character during the 17th century and reached its height in the reign of King D. João V. In the 19th century it lost its originality and began to disappear with the end of the revival era.
The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetic visual form. Visual art can be classified in diverse ways, such as separating fine arts from applied arts; inclusively focusing on human creativity; or focusing on different media such as architecture, sculpture, painting, film, photography, and graphic arts. In recent years, technological advances have led to video art, computer art, performance art, animation, television, and videogames.
A French Empire-style mantel clock is a type of elaborately decorated mantel clock that was made in France during the Napoleonic Empire (1804–1814/15). Timekeepers manufacturing during the Bourbon Restoration (1814/1815–1830) are also included within this art movement as they share similar subjects, decorative elements, shapes, and style.
The whiplash or whiplash line is a motif of decorative art and design that was particularly popular in Art Nouveau. It is an asymmetrical, sinuous line, often in an ornamental S curve, usually inspired by natural forms such as plants and flowers, which suggests dynamism and movement. It took its name from a woven fabric panel called Coup de Fouet ('whiplash') by the German artist Hermann Obrist (1895) which depicted the stems and roots of the cyclamen flower. The panel was later reproduced by the textile workshop of the Darmstadt Artists Colony.
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