1. Eighteenth-Century Art, Music, and Society (ca. 1700–1820)
Chapter 26
Eighteenth-Century Art,
Music, and Society
(ca. 1700–1820)

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The Rococo Style
The fashionable Rococo style reflected the tastes of the European aristocracy. Notable for ornamental delicacy, intimacy, and playful elegance, this style dominated the salons of Paris and the courts and churches of Austria and Germany.
In France, Watteau, Boucher, Vigée-Lebrun, Fragonard, and Clodion produced art that evoked a world of physical pleasure and sensuous delight.
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3. Eighteenth-Century French Genre Painting
Encouraged by the philosophes’ demand for an art of moral virtue, Greuze and Chardin produced genre paintings that gave dignity to the life and work of ordinary individuals.
Genre paintings, especially those of Greuze and Chardin, were among the most popular images of the eighteenth century, collected mainly by middle-class patrons.
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4. Eighteenth-Century Neoclassicism
Archeological investigations in Greece and Southern Italy encouraged new interest in Greco-Roman artifacts and produced a more accurate picture of Classical culture than had been available previously.
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5. Eighteenth-Century Neoclassicism (continued)
Just as the French Revolution swept away the Old Regime, so Neoclassicism replaced the Rococo style. As Jean-Louis David’s stirring pictorial recreations of Greek and Roman history invoked a message of self-sacrifice and moral purpose, Neoclassicism came to symbolize the ideals of reason and liberty.
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6. Eighteenth-Century Neoclassicism (continued)
In America Neoclassicism was best expressed in the architectural achievements of Thomas Jefferson.
In Europe Neoclassicism influenced all the arts, from Adam’s English country houses and Soufflot’s “Pantheon” to the portraits of Houdon and Canova, and the ceramics of Wedgwood.
During the reign of Napoleon, Neoclassicists drew on the arts of imperial Rome to glorify the French capital, Paris, and the emperor himself.
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7. Eighteenth-Century Western Music
The period between 1760 and approximately 1820 witnessed the birth of the orchestra and the development of the classical forms of Western instrumental music.
Classical music was characterized by order, symmetry, and intellectual control—features similar to those admired by Neoclassical writers, painters, sculptors, and architects
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8. Eighteenth-Century Western Music (continued)
Composers used the sonata form to govern the composition of the symphony, the string quartet, the sonata, and the concerto.
Franz Josef Haydn shaped the character of the classical symphony and the string quartet; Mozart moved easily between Rococo and classical styles, investing both with extraordinary melodic grace.
In his operas as well as his symphonies, Mozart achieved a balance between lyrical invention and formal clarity that brought the classical style to its peak.
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