| Description |  |
Although grand narrative paintings continued to be made, the increasing informality of daily life was reflected in pictures of greater intimacy. The participants in Jean-Antoine Watteau's pictures express feelings by suggestive glances rather than gestures, while Jean-Siméon Chardin's children are sympathetically portrayed as individuals, rather than standardized images of childhood. Erotic art broke beyond the mythological or low-life to include subjects that were recognizably contemporary.
Many painters adopted a lighter palette, frothier brushwork and swirling compositions but the 1780s saw a reaction to this. A new generation of painters, including Jacques-Louis David and Jean-François-Pierre Peyron, looked back to the classical compositions and more controlled brushwork of Raphael and Poussin. |
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