Course
Schedule. Coffee and tea are served at
gallery sessions between 1:30 and 2pm.
Mo. 14
Jan. 2pm – 3:30 pm – Gallery slide lecture – Watteau and the Birth of the
“Fête Galante” – Paris under the
Regency.
Mo. 21
Jan. 12 noon – 1:30 pm – Visit to Musée du Louvre – Watteau, Boucher and
Quentin Latour – Art in the Rococo period. Meet by information desk under Pyramid with ticket in
hand at 10:15.
Mo. 28
Jan. 2pm – 3:30 pm – Gallery slide lecture – Women of the Court, women of Paris – Love, Marriage and the
intellectual Salon in the Age of Enlightenment.
Mo.
4 Feb. 2pm – 3:30 pm – Visit to
the Hôtel de Soubise – Apartments of the
Princesse de Soubise - paintings by Boucher, Tremolières, and Natoire’s cycle
of “Psyche and Love”.
Meet courtyard of the Archives Nationales, 60 rue des
Francs-Bourgeois 75003 (Metros: Hôtel de Ville and Rambuteau)
The Régence 1715
- 1723.
1715 - At
his great grandfather's death Louis XV is only five years old. Louis XIV's
nephew Philippe Duke of Orléans is proclaimed Regent and takes over the
government. The court moves from Versailles to the Tuileries palace in Paris
close to the Regent's official residence at the Palais -Royal. The great noble
families settle across the river in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
1716 - Founding
of the first bank in France by the Scottish banker John Law.
1718 - Foundation
of New Orleans in Louisiana named in honor of the Regent by Jean-Baptiste
Lemoyne de Bienville. Law's bank becomes the official state bank, emits notes,
credit and sells stocks in colonial trade. It meets with huge popular success
and encourages a frenetic speculation at the newly founded stock market
(Bourse).
1720 - Resounding
stock market crash and bankruptcy of Law's bank.
1722 - Sacre of the young Louis XV. The court
returns to Versailles.
1723 - Louis
XV is declared majeur at 13. The
Regent become Prime Minister but dies suddenly on 2 December.
The Arts: An immense relief results from the end of the very long
(72 years) reign of the Sun King. The tolerant even dissolute lifestyle of the
Regent and his entourage, and the new possibilities for quick enrichment
offered by the stock market, mark this period as one devoted to the fast life,
luxury and pleasure. The grand aristocratic portrait in a baroque style remains
the province of Nicolas Largillière (1656-1746).
Aristocratic hunt and still lives are the specialty of the animal painter
Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755).
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) is the first
painter to break completely with the Grand
Style of the previous period to create an intimate, decorative art mixing
"vulgar" subjects drawn from street theatre with aristocratic scenes
from château life. The "fête
galante" is born, consecrating love and sentiment as the chief
pre-occupations of a society increasingly drawn to the private side of life and
its pleasures. Color and movement operate a great return in French
painting. The "Rubénistes" overthrow the "Poussinistes" of the old academic tradition. After
Watteau’s death in 1721 the fête galante
continues be very popular and becomes the key subject of his former assistants,
Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743) and Jean
Baptiste Pater (1695-1756). The
older painter Jean François de Troy
(1679-1752) who specializes in mythological and religious compositions also
takes up the subject with success. Love, nature, courtship and femininity
become the foundations of the style that will in the 1720’s be labeled “le style rocaille” or the Rococo style.
Architecture and
principally decoration become light and refined favoring undulating curves and
floral motifs over the vocabulary of classicism and geometry. This is the great
period of private and aristocratic rather than royal architecture and notably
the hôtels particuliers of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris.
