“The Swing” or “The Happy Accidents of The Swing” by Jean-Honore Fragonard is an oil painting made in the 18th century and widely considered one of the definitive master works of the Rococo period and Fragonard’s most recognizable work. Jean-Honore Fragonard set a gold standard for western art and in doing so set a standard that artists would try and top for centuries to come. This is evident in his ability to create colorfully saturated, vibrant, photo-realistic and dream like picture quality mixed with themes of the mundane and pompous, his style has been adored for centuries ever since his paintings were created and are second to none especially when you look at art in the centuries before Fragonard’s lifetime; stale, religious brown-on-yellow
…show more content…
The boughs of the trees are at full foliage and overgrown, this puffiness creates a colorfully saturated dream like environment around the main characters of the stage that is the canvas. Some of the branches are bare and are jagged like a lightning bolt which was a common symbol for love, this blast of life adds to the sensualism and apologetics of the painting and it’s themes. The color palette is one of the most beautiful aspects of this painting and the rococo period as well, faded blues and greens inter mingle with this gargantuan transcendent beam of yellow light that all blends together into one ghostly mesh that creates such a huge visual sight in the same way that using a lot of instruments together in a classical music piece creates a huge wall of sound. It should be also noted that this tint of yellow light can be modified now with modern, accessible technology and if the yellow tint is enhanced to be more reddish it creates this frenzy of liveliness and fantasy where everything in the painting seems seems sharper and pop out towards you like a pop up book for …show more content…
Before his lifetime the elite class of a society would be known to commision artwork of themselves where they are seen next to religious figures or important events even though these people and places existed centuries before because the elite wanted everyone to know that they were important and absolute. In the rococo period artists like Fragonard would be commissioned to capture frames of what decadent life was like for the powerful elite class. For example in “The Swing” a nobleman who didn’t want to be named asked an artist to paint his mistress on a swing, his mistress however didn’t wanted Fragonard to paint her instead of the asked artist, and so “The Swing” came into being. The very nature of “The Swing” is decadence, honesty and the sin of pleasure, which is interesting because the powerful elite are commissioning this work to interpret their lives when in the past centuries they were expected to be the shining example of Christian authority and ethics. It is a very universally known interpretation that because there are knocked over pieces of a fence next to some overgrown bushes that the younger man hiding in the bushes is actually the swinging ladies lover and is trying not to be seen by the older man who could be her aging husband or father, he is hiding and giggling with joy perhaps because of his view, his head position and line of sight seems to
The boughs of the trees are at full foliage and overgrown, this puffiness creates a colorfully saturated dream like environment around the main characters of the stage that is the canvas. Some of the branches are bare and are jagged like a lightning bolt which was a common symbol for love, this blast of life adds to the sensualism and apologetics of the painting and it’s themes. The color palette is one of the most beautiful aspects of this painting and the rococo period as well, faded blues and greens inter mingle with this gargantuan transcendent beam of yellow light that all blends together into one ghostly mesh that creates such a huge visual sight in the same way that using a lot of instruments together in a classical music piece creates a huge wall of sound. It should be also noted that this tint of yellow light can be modified now with modern, accessible technology and if the yellow tint is enhanced to be more reddish it creates this frenzy of liveliness and fantasy where everything in the painting seems seems sharper and pop out towards you like a pop up book for …show more content…
Before his lifetime the elite class of a society would be known to commision artwork of themselves where they are seen next to religious figures or important events even though these people and places existed centuries before because the elite wanted everyone to know that they were important and absolute. In the rococo period artists like Fragonard would be commissioned to capture frames of what decadent life was like for the powerful elite class. For example in “The Swing” a nobleman who didn’t want to be named asked an artist to paint his mistress on a swing, his mistress however didn’t wanted Fragonard to paint her instead of the asked artist, and so “The Swing” came into being. The very nature of “The Swing” is decadence, honesty and the sin of pleasure, which is interesting because the powerful elite are commissioning this work to interpret their lives when in the past centuries they were expected to be the shining example of Christian authority and ethics. It is a very universally known interpretation that because there are knocked over pieces of a fence next to some overgrown bushes that the younger man hiding in the bushes is actually the swinging ladies lover and is trying not to be seen by the older man who could be her aging husband or father, he is hiding and giggling with joy perhaps because of his view, his head position and line of sight seems to