Neoclassical & Rococo Paintings
Jacques-Louis David's revolution and empire, Ingres's line, Fragonard's garden: French painting from the Rococo to the Napoleonic age.
10 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
From the swing to the scaffold
French painting in the eighteenth century moves from Fragonard's Rococo — silk, gardens, a girl on a swing kicking off her shoe — to the severe, sculptural Neoclassicism of Jacques-Louis David, who painted the Roman virtues the Revolution claimed for itself and then painted Napoleon. Ingres, David's pupil, carried the clean line into the next century and bent it into the long back of the Grande Odalisque.
The works in this collection
David's Oath of the Horatii, The Death of Socrates, The Death of Marat, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, The Coronation of Napoleon, Madame Récamier and The Intervention of the Sabine Women; Ingres's Grande Odalisque; Fragonard's The Swing.
Choosing one
Marat and Napoleon Crossing the Alps are uprights with a single figure and read from across a room; the Horatii and Socrates are wide stage-like scenes that want a long wall at 36×24. The Swing is the lightest of them and suits a bedroom or a dressing room.