French art

Painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of France. As the birthplace of the Gothic style, France was a centre for sculpture and manuscript illumination in the Middle Ages, and of tapestry from the 15th century. 17th-century French painting is particularly rich, dominated by the Italianate Classicism of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Subsequent light-hearted rococo scenes of upper-class leisure gave way with the French Revolution to the neoclassicism of Jacques-Louis David and Jean Ingres. In the 19th century, Romanticism was superseded first by realism and then by Impressionism, led by such painters as Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, which in turn fragmented, via the work of Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, and others, into the modern art of the 20th century. Georges Braque (cubism) and Henri Matisse (fauvism) were among the pioneers. In sculpture the towering figure was that of Auguste Rodin. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, Paris was the hotbed of Western art.

Among the very earliest artistic remains are the cave paintings of Lascaux in southern France (18,000 BC). The Celtic period (5th century BC to 1st century AD) left many artefacts and from the Roman occupation (1st century to 5th) there are artefacts and fine buildings. During the Ottonian and Carolingian dynasties, the growing power and wealth of the Christian church helped to sow the seeds of a national culture.

Romanesque: 10th–12th centuries

The first distinctively French art was Romanesque. The building of ever larger churches, cathedrals, and monasteries gave new impetus to the ‘minor arts’ that religious buildings and communities require – metalwork, textiles, and manuscript illumination. Sculpture was also one of the outstanding achievements of the period, the expressive, highly stylized forms deriving in part from manuscript illumination, as at the cathedral of Autun and the abbeys of Cluny, Moissac, and Souillac. Enamels achieved a new sophistication, with champlevé enamelling being produced in Limoges.

Gothic: 12th–14th centuries

In both architecture and the other arts, France played a major role in the development of Gothic. New, soaring cathedrals required large areas of stained glass, some of the finest of which was made for Chartres cathedral. Mural paintings (mostly destroyed) often imitated the colouring of the stained glass. Sculpture acquired a greater elegance and realism, with complex programmes being carved at Chartres, in Paris at Notre Dame, and elsewhere. Portrait sculpture (in the form of sepulchral effigies) began in France in the late 14th century. The carvings produced at the Burgundian court by Claus Sluter during this period are the outstanding examples of late Gothic sculpture. Paris became an international centre for illumination and miniature painting.

15th century

As Gothic styles were adapted to the changing needs of society at the end of the Middle Ages, regional schools in painting developed and the first major artists appeared: in Provence, Nicolas Froment; in Burgundy and the north, Simon Marmion (c. 1422–1489); and in the Loire country, Jean Fouquet, Jean Bourdichon (c. 1457–1521), the Maître de Moulins (worked 1480–1500), Jean Perréal (c. 1457–1530). The most important of these is the court portrait painter Jean Fouquet, whose precise realism owes much to Netherlandish painting. His miniatures and those of the Limbourg brothers, creators of the Très Riches Heures illuminated prayer books, show remarkable naturalism and flair for ornamentation. Exquisite tapestries were woven, one of the finest being The Lady with the Unicorn (c. 1480; Musée de Cluny, Paris). With the decline of church commissions, there were few opportunities for sculptors.

Renaissance: 16th century

The desire of Francis I to create a centralized art to rival Italy led to his introducing Italian painters (such as Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolò dell'Abbate) into France, and from this followed the development of the School of Fontainebleau. The art of the court portrait and portrait miniature flourished with Corneille de Lyon (c. 1503–1574) and the two leading artists of the period, Jean and François Clouet. Although increasingly influenced by Italian styles, these artists were still indebted to Netherlandish painting. Sculptors, on the other hand – such as Jean Goujon, Jean Cousin (c. 1522–c. 1594), and Germain Pilon (1535–1590) – were more successful in adopting Italian styles. The Renaissance in France also saw brilliant enamelling work, especially by Léonard (c. 1505–c. 1577) and Jean Limousin (c. 1528–c. 1610); the extraordinary ceramics of Bernard Palissy; and fine work by goldsmiths.

Baroque: 17th century

Under Louis XIV, Poussin's style became ‘official’, being promulgated by the Royal Academy (founded 1648). The minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and the painter Charles Le Brun, painter to the king and director of the academy, controlled all aspects of art production, from state portraits to the furniture and tapestry produced at the Gobelins factory. The painters Georges de La Tour and Louis Le Nain are unusual in that they adopted a realistic style, though they too have a classical sense of order and poise. A ceremonial form of portraiture was practised by Nicola de Largillière (1656–1746) and Hyacinthe Rigaud. The etcher Jacques Callot provided forceful records of the harsher realities of the period, his works frequently anticipating those of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya.

In the earlier part of the 17th century, French sculpture was mainly sepulchral. Notable sculptors in this line were François Anguier (c. 1604–1669), who modelled the duc de Montmorency's tomb in Moulins, northern Auvergne, and Jacques Sarrazin (1588–1660), sculptor of Prince de Condé, Henry II's tomb in Chantilly, north of Paris. A fresh expansion came with the encouragement of a grandiose secular art by Louis XIV. Girardon, whose masterpiece is Cardinal Richelieu's tomb in the Sorbonne church, Paris, was extensively employed on the sculptural decoration of Versailles. Antoine Coysevox carved portraits remarkable for their vitality.

18th century

The grandiose decoration of the Louis XIV style gave way to the lightness and charm of rococo. Jean-Antoine Watteau marks the change of mood, also evident in his followers Jean-Baptiste Pater (1695–1736) and Nicolas Lancret. In Watteau's informal fêtes galantes, graceful figures engage in musical and amatory pursuits in theatrical landscape settings which are tinged with melancholy and a sense of the transitory nature of pleasure. A graceful and highly decorative development of this style is found in the work of François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, both of whom epitomized the gaiety and frivolity of the court immediately before the Revolution. The style declined sharply in the work of Jean Baptiste Greuze, whose moralizing genre subjects extolling simple virtues became mawkishly sentimental. In contrast with the art of court circles, Jean-Baptiste Chardin painted quiet scenes of domestic bourgeois life. In still life he took up and gave new values to the genre practised by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755) and Alexandre-François Desportes (1661–1743) and inspired by Netherlandish models. 18th-century portraiture is represented by the pastellist Maurice Quentin de La Tour and by the elegance of Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766), Jean-Baptiste Perroneau (1715–1783), Hubert Drouais (1699–1767) and François-Hubert Drouais (1727–1775), father and son, and Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun. The sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon stands out in the 18th century particularly for his animated and expressive portrait busts.

The end of the 18th century saw a reaction against rococo and a return to ‘the antique’ advocated by Joseph Marie Vien (1716–1809). The major exponent of this neoclassicism was one of Vien's pupils, David, whose works give dramatic expression to both the Revolution and Napoleon's empire building.

19th century

As a return to the past, however, neoclassicism had a Romantic element, which appears in the work of Girodet-Trioson (1767–1824), Pierre Prud'hon, and Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835). Full-blown Romanticism is strikingly demonstrated in the works of Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, though Ingres remained a determined upholder of classicism (the approved style of the Royal Academy throughout the 19th century).

In landscape the beginnings of a new era came with Camille Corot's low-keyed, poetic landscapes, luminous and misty. Although he worked at Barbizon, he is distinct from the Barbizon School, who were ‘pure’ landscape painters, partly inspired by the Dutch painters Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael. French painters of this group are Jean François Millet, Daubigny (1817–1878), and Theodore Rousseau. By midcentury, realism had become a challenge to both neoclassicism and Romanticism. Gustave Courbet, whose unheroic depictions of everyday life caused a storm of protest, was the main figure of realism, his art closely linked to his political radicalism. More an attitude than a style, realism was advanced by Honoré Daumier, a painter and cartoonist noted for his satirical depictions of French life, and the landscape painter Jean François Millet. Edouard Manet may also be regarded as a realist, his brilliant modern treatment of old-master themes, as in his Olympia (1865) (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), causing a scandal.

By focusing on everyday life, realism prepared the way for the best-known movement of the 19th century, Impressionism. Monet, who began as a member of the group inspired by Manet, is one of Impressionism's central figures. His concentration on the sheer appearance of things, with colours and forms subtly altered by variations of atmosphere and light, was the essence of the movement. Other major Impressionists are Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Berthe Morisot. Edgar Degas brought to Impressionism a classical sense of structure and form. Although aware of Impressionism, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec developed his own highly independent style derived from posters, Japanese prints, and Degas.

The Impressionist use of colour suggested various new departures: the Neo-Impressionism (or pointillismism) of Seurat and Paul Signac; and the forms of post-Impressionism represented by Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, who both had a profound effect on the development of modern art. Their art is the matrix of a succession of brilliant phases of art from the 1890s, beginning with Symbolism (Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and others) and the group les Nabis.

Rodin infused a Romantic intensity of feeling into the cold formulas of 19th-century sculpture. Notable sculptors include François Rude, who executed the sculptural work on the Arc de Triomphe; Antoine-Louis Barye (1795–1875), known for animal sculptures; Albert Bartholomé (1848–1928), known especially for funerary masks; Henri Laurens (1885–1954), and important sculptor and engraver; Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929), who combined classic Greek manner with a style of exaggeration conveying heroic energies; and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Degas also produced some innovative sculptures.

20th century

Among the most important 20th-century innovators were Georges Braque – who, with the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, developed and perfected the cubist style – and Henri Matisse. Matisse, the central figure in fauvism, produced brilliantly coloured works of a highly decorative, rhythmic nature. The new ideas of painting successively launched in Paris made that city the centre of an international school, ‘l'Ecole de Paris’. Some of its representatives, like Picasso, came originally from outside France, but among the notable French painters are Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Pierre Albert Marquet, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Georges Rouault, and Raoul Dufy. Aristide Maillol revitalized traditional sculptural forms.

After World War II Paris ceased to be the centre of the artistic world and was succeeded by the USA as the most universal influence on contemporary art. Leading artists of the post-war period include Yves Klein and Jean Dubuffet.

French art (redirected from Art of France)