Written by Tom | 3rd December 2020
Art is a world of multitudes as its history shows. Its evolution mirrors the worlds of the artists that created it and gives us insight into a past that would otherwise be lost. Covering the entirety of art history is a mammoth task, so we honed in on European art from the 17th century up until the 20th. Our classical and modern art experts talk us through the defining art movements of these eras.
17th-century art – Baroque style
Buoyed by the religious reformation of the Catholic Church, baroque style dominated the 17th century. “The period of Baroque painting began around 1600 and it continued throughout the 17th century, and into the early 18th century”, says classical art expert Caterina Maffeis. “It encompasses a range of styles, but is characterised by great drama, richness, deep colours, and intense light and dark shadows.”
Baroque art was notable for invoking religious imagery with its focus on realism and the emotional appeal of its subjects. At a time when the Catholic Church sought to connect with people and reaffirm its piety, baroque art played a central role at cultivating this connection. Much of its focus on light and dark—often represented through paintings involving a central dome where light would creep through and illuminate what was below—helped illustrate the connection between heaven and earth.
As for some of the most celebrated artists, Caterina says one man’s work encapsulates baroque. “Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and he influenced styles of painting across Europe. His Adoration of the Shepherds canvas painting touches on the various tenets of baroque style,” she explains. “These include a great number of characters acting with "pathos", the massive architecture embracing the scene as if the episode had been represented in a theatre. The putti flying above the Nativity, the variety of the shepherds in the choral scene, the still life represented by goats, pigeons and the bucket in the foreground. And above all, the clever use of light to inject each element with drama”.
18th-century art – Rococo style
While baroque art rose from Renaissance-era Italy, rococo art originated in France a century later. A Parisian style that wanted to combat the stiff lines and seriousness of French classicism, rococo art was decorative, light-hearted and extravagant. It takes its name from the French word rocaille, a nod to the Italian Renaissance-era trend for using shells and rocks to decorate fountains and grottoes. Rococo artists used seashells and rocks in sculpture and architecture, but for paintings, the sea-motif was more subtle. Here, curved lines, pastel tones and whimsy reflected the boundless exuberance of the sea. “At the centre of all rococo art is grace and beauty”, says Caterina. “Rococo artists focused on lavishly dressed subjects, courtly romance and joy. Real life and fantastical figures were painted, blurring fact and fiction, but remaining true to rococo’s whimsy”.
One artist that embodied the style was Allan Ramsay. “Ramsay’s portraitures are an excellent example of rococo art. They’re detailed, elegant and centred on capturing the subject at their most beautiful.” This, Caterina explains, is why rococo art was so popular with aristocracy. “For its aspect of lightness, brightness and elegance, rococo became the favourite style of the "elite" who were keen on being portrayed in the same bright, sophisticated, detailed taste”.
19th-century art – Romanticism
If 18th century art touched on fantasy, then the Romantic art of the 19th century committed to it completely. It was the dominant art form of the era — a rejection of the rational and an embrace of wonder and feeling. “At its core, Romanticism was the idea that reason cannot explain everything”, says art expert Gianna Furia. “In reaction to the cult of rationality which brought people away from religion, traditional beliefs and rituals, the Romantics searched for deeper, often subconscious appeals. When science, by trying to explain all the mysteries of life, disenchanted the world, Romanticism tried to instil new mystery, wonder, and beauty into it”.
What did this look like? Gianna says it was about illustrating nature’s power and man’s awe in the face of it. “Nature plays a major role in romantic art, much like it did in the literary works of the time like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Its infinite power compared with the relative insignificance of man is often described in sublime scenes of confrontation, where the world exhibits both its wonders of beauty and its dreadful dangers”.
One prominent Romantic artist was Carlo Bossoli. “Of Swiss origins, he drew inspiration from his time in Italy,” Gianna explains. “He became famous for his vedute, the ‘Romantic’ views of the Italian countryside and cities, depicting the lives of their inhabitants”. However, some might say, the most emblematic Romantic painting is Wanderer above the Sea Fog by Caspar David Friedrich which displays the duality of nature the Romantics were fascinated with – its power to enrapture and our insignificance in the face of it.
19th-20th century art – Impressionism
Irreverence and spontaneity both found a home in Impressionism. A key art movement of 19th century Europe, its influence endured into the early 20th century. “The word Impressionism emerged in France in 1874, when an art critic saw Claude Monet’s masterpiece Impression, soleil levant and invented the term to refer to this new way of painting”, says Gianna. “Impressionism was largely represented by a group of painters who exhibited together from 1874 to 1886, among of which were Monet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne”.
All Impressionist paintings had a strong natural element to them and, as a nod to art movements that came before them, played with light, bourgeois leisure scenes and landscape. “Impressionism is based on the practice of painting spontaneously, outdoors and in front of the subject instead of sketching outside and then returning to paint in the studio,” says Gianna. “Thus, most impressionist paintings represent landscapes and scenes of family life. Impressionist painters were mostly interested in translating the feeling of light into the thick matter of paint, a seemingly contradictory endeavour, yet one which they succeeded in doing. To do so, they worked at a quick pace, capturing the light, natural effects and colours through small, twinkling dabs of paint”.
Impressionism was about capturing the fleeting moments of life and like, and more about perspective than perfection. “The Impressionists’ quick way of painting replaced the posed, highly finished aspect of classical paintings is visible in Edgar Degas’s drawing of a spectator at the opera Au théatre: Spectatrice et Saint George. The young woman is sketched on the spot, from the viewpoint of another spectator, the artist, with rapid, summary lines.” And while it wasn’t well-received when it first came to mainstream attention, the public and critics were eventually won over. “It was so different from academic painting in that these paintings tried to capture what the eye sees versus preconceived notions of how something should look. This emancipation from that thinking allowed the viewers to move away from cliches and reach a truer vision of their environment and selves”.
20th-century art – Cubism
Perhaps the most drastic break for art movements past was the rise of Cubism. Spearheaded by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, cubist style used geometric lines and shapes to simplify form and remove any sense of perspective. “It stands out as a rejection of the figurative image and offers a new artistic vision based on abstract forms”, says modern art expert Caroline Bokobza. “Many 20th-century movements such as Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, Vorticism, De Stijl and Art Deco have been developed in many countries in response to Cubism”.
Where previous art movements made the idea of art imitating nature, cubist artists created a new reality on canvas that presented a newly constructed and fragmented reality, bound by straight lines and structured form. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is cited as the first example of proto-cubism — a painting that depicts five women as hard-edged, pointed figures.
Cubism would later separate into two broad movements: Analytical Cubism which focused on these hard lines and serious structures, and Synthetic Cubism which instead brought in colour and real life objects such as tobacco wrappers and newspapers. This introduction of foreign objects into art that we now know as ‘collage’ would become one of the foundational elements of modern art.
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