a-l-ancien-regime:
The Swing, c. 1775/1780
Jean-Honoré Fragonard
French, 1732 - 1806
oil on canvas
With children’s games glimpsed from above in an immense expanse of earth and sky, Fragonard presents a vision of nature, imposing yet tamed by civilization. These are not forests, but gardens resembling the magical Villa d’Este, where Fragonard sketched in Italy. Light creates volume in the towering clouds and breaks through in patches on the ground to illuminate the small figures as if they were on a distant stage.
The Swing and Blindman’s Buff, designed together, trace the progress of love. In one, a blindfolded young woman reaches out to tag and identify another player in a game that since the Middle Ages had symbolized the folly of love. In the 1700s this meaning was viewed with indulgence: youths were meant to grasp at love. In the companion painting another young woman sits on a swing pulled by a youth who is barely visible in the shadows between the lion fountains. The swinging motion, which brings her skirts and legs into view, suggested erotic abandon. The two are lovers, who have “found” each other, as the players in Blindman’s Buff are attempting to do.
Fragonard automatic reblog.
(via 18thcenturylove)
missfolly:
Construction of the Château de Versailles, by Adam Frans van der Meulen, 1669
navigus:
Once upon a time, there was a wizard who knew what Heaven and Hell looked like. In fact, he designed them. He also drew the greatest royal palaces that Britain has ever dreamed of, and a massive new Parliament building. He assembled complete, monumental cities and prototype skyscrapers. The name of this magician was Joseph Michael Gandy, and he did all this in the first few decades of the 19th century. Gandy was doomed to disappointment - he built very little in the real world, and was destined to be comprehensively eclipsed by another architect. He died a mad, penniless, abandoned old man. But he was no failure, because his extraordinary visions survive.
missfolly:
Scene from the Apocalypse, ca. 1829, by Francis Danby
missfolly:
Coalbrookdale at Night, 1801, by Philipp Jakob Loutherbourg
fuckyeah-arthistory:
White and Greens in Blue - Mark Rothko, 1957
(via everythingistouchable)
missfolly:
Southeast View of ‘Sedgeley Park,’ the Country Seat of James Cowles Fisher, Esq. by Thomas Birch, ca. 1819
missfolly:
Italianate Landscape with Travelers on Horseback, 1675, by Karel Dujardin
(via my-ear-trumpet)
18thcenturylove:
Landscape Near Beauvais by Francois Boucher, 1740s
welovepaintings:
Paul Delaroche (1797-1856)
The Children of King Edward Imprisoned in the Tower
Oil on canvas
1830
(via my-ear-trumpet)
