Pt Two

UNIT NINE: Late Baroque and Rococo STUDY GUIDE
P On Educating Children
1. “Although he never married and he
placed his own children in orphanages,
the French-Swiss philosopher Jean-
Jacques Rousseau formulated a
behavioral program of childhood
education that affected all French schools
after the Revolution of 1789” (Stokstad,
Art History 935).
2. “Believing that children were inherently
good until society corrupted them and
broke their naturally independent,
inquisitive spirits, Rousseau advised
mothers to breast-feed their babies
themselves, dress them in loose clothing
with no bonnet, wash them in unheated
water, give them freedom to crawl about,
and never rock them, which Rousseau
considered harmful. As boys grew, they
were to be taught to value nature, human
liberty, and personal valor and virtue.
This environment would inevitably
produce a citizen committed to political
freedom and civic duty. Girls were to be
educated only as needed for their futures
as wives and mothers. Once married,
women were to stay at home, out of the
public eye, caring for their households
and children, which Rousseau saw as „the
manner of living that nature and reason
prescribe for the sex‟” (935).
R The French Salon
1. “In the eighteenth century, the
salon became the center of Parisian
society and taste. The typical salon
was the creation of a charming,
financially comfortable, welleducated,
and witty hostess (the
salonniere) in her forties. She
provided good food, a well-set table, and
music for people of achievement in
different fields who visited her hotel. The
guests engaged in the arts of
conversation, and in social and
intellectual interchange” (Adams, Art
Across Time 675).
2. “In the seventeenth century, the most
important salon had been that of
Madame de Rambouillet, who wished to
exert a „civilizing‟ influence on society. By
the next century, the salon was a fact of
Paris social life, and one in which women
played the dominant role. Among the
salonnieres were women of significant
accomplishments in addition to
hostessing. These included writers
(Madames de LaFayette, de Sevigne, and
de Stael, and Mademoiselle de Scudery), a
scientist (Madame de Chatelet), and the
painter Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun” (675).
Q William Hogarth. Breakfast Party, from the Marriage a la Mode
series, c. 1745, oil on canvas
William Hogarth/ satire of arranged marriages/ suggestion of erotic
activities/ steward with unpaid bills/ part of a series of moralizing
narratives
1. “A different expression of English Rococo is found in the witty, biting commentary of
William Hogarth (1697-1764). Influenced in part by Flemish and Dutch genre paintings,
he took contemporary manners and social conventions as the subjects of his satire. His
series of six paintings entitled Marriage a la Mode from the 1740s pokes fun at
hypocritical commitments to the marriage contract” (Adams, Art Across Time 686). “The
architecture reflects the Neoclassical Palladian style of eighteenth-century England, but
Rococo details fill the interior. The costume frills, for example, echo the French version of
the style. The elaborate chandelier and the wall designs are characteristic of Rococo
fussiness. On the mantelpiece, the bric-a-brac of chinoiserie reflects the eighteenthcentury
interest in Far Eastern exotic objects, as well as referring to a frivolous lifestyle.
They are contrasted with the august pictures of saints in the next room.” (687). “Cupid,
on the other hand, is depicted blowing the bagpipes, which, as in Bruegel‟s Peasant
Dance, signify lust. The dangers of sexual excess, which Hogarth satirizes, are
underscored by locating Cupid among ruins, foreshadowing the inevitable ruin of the
marriage” (687). “Hogarth‟s father was a teacher, from whom his son learned Latin and
Greek. He also opened a Latin-speaking coffee house that went bankrupt. As a result, he
spent three years in debtors‟ prison, until Parliament passed an Act freeing all debtors.
This experience contributed to the artist‟s fierce opposition to social injustice and
hypocrisy. In 1752, Hogarth published his view on art in Analysis of Beauty, which, like
the etching, states his anti-Academic position… He urges people to look at nature and to
themselves, rather than to the plaster casts of traditional art schools, for „what we feel‟”
(687).
2. “In 1751 Hogarth announced that he would sell at auction, at a given hour in his
studio, the oil paintings that he had made for Marriage a la Mode; but he warned picture
dealers to stay away. Only one person appeared, who bid £126 for the pictures and their
frames. Hogarth let them go at this price, but privately raged at what he rated a shameful
failure. In 1797 these paintings bought £1,381; today they are among the most highly
prized possessions of London‟s National Gallery” (Durant, Age of Voltaire 221). “Like most
moralists he was not himself immaculate; he had borne without horror the company of
drunkards and prostitutes…The art critics, collectors, and dealers of the time
acknowledged neither Hogarth‟s ability as an artist nor his truth as a satirist. They
charged him with picturing only the dregs of English life. They taunted him with having
turned to popular prints through inability to paint successful portraits or historical
scenes; and they condemned his drawing as careless and inaccurate” (219, 222).
3. “Hogarth‟s favorite device was to make a
series of narrative paintings and prints, in a
sequence like chapters in a book or scenes
in a play, that followed a character or group
of characters in their encounters with some
social evil” (Kleiner, Mamiya, and Tansey
843). In his Breakfast Scene, “the moment
portrayed is just past noon; husband and
wife are tired after a long night spent in
separate pursuits. The music and the
musical instrument on the overturned chair
in the foreground and the disheveled
servant straightening the chairs and tables
in the room at the back indicate that the
wife had stayed at home for an evening of cards and music making. She stretches with a
mixture of sleepiness and coquettishness, casting a glance toward her young husband,
who clearly had been away from the house for a night of suspicious business. Still
dressed in hat and social finery, he slumps in discouraged boredom on a chair near the
fire. His hands are thrust deep into the empty money-pockets of his breeches, while his
wife‟s small dog sniffs inquiringly at a lacy woman‟s cap protruding from his coat pocket.
A steward, his hand full of unpaid bills, raises his eye to Heaven in despair” (843).
“Paintings of religious figures hang on the upper wall of the distant room. This
demonstration of piety is countered by the curtained canvas at the end of the row that,
undoubtedly, depicts an erotic subject” (843).
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