Rococo painting represents the expression in painting of an aesthetic movement that flourished in Europe between the early and late 18th century, migrating to America and surviving in some regions until the mid-19th century. The painting of this movement is divided into two sharply differentiated camps. One forms an intimate, carefree visual document of the way of life and worldview of the eighteenth-century European elites, and the other, adapting constituent elements of the style to the monumental decoration of churches and palaces, served as a means of glorifying faith and civil power.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard: The swing, 1766
Master Ataíde: Ascension of Jesus, 1827
Maurice-Quentin de La Tour: Madame de Pompadour in her Study, 1755
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin: The Laundress, 1735. An example of the coetaneous but opposed Rococo current
Jean Siméon Chardin was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life, and is also noted for his genre paintings which depict kitchen maids, children, and domestic activities. Carefully balanced composition, soft diffusion of light, and granular impasto characterize his work.
Self-portrait, 1771, pastel, Louvre
Self Portrait at an Easel (ca. 1779), pastel, 40.5 x 32.5 cm., Louvre
Françoise-Marguerite Pouget (1707–1791), 2nd wife of Chardin (1775), pastel, 46 x 38 cm., Louvre
Jar of Apricots (1758), oil on canvas, 57 x 51 cm., Art Gallery of Ontario