Under the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans in France (1715-1723) decoration and ornament assumed a light and fanciful character, very naturalistic, but still having some classic details; of this style Claude Gillot is the chief exponent. Watteau, his pupil, made a great name as a painter of pastoral scenes, fêtes galantes, and all kinds of light and daintily-treated subjects of a theatrical and artificial kind of composition. His colour was silvery and harmonious, and sometimes he decorated furniture with pastoral scenes.
Fig. 247.—Holy Water Vessel; English; Seventeenth Century. (P.)
The Rococo style had begun under the Regency, if not earlier, and such men as Oppenort, the De Cottes, father and son, François de Cuvilliés, the Italians Bernini and Borromini, and lastly the great apostle of the Rococo, Meissonier, were all designers of furniture or architects who belonged to the period of Louis XV., and who executed works that reflected the loose and unrestrained character of the times (1723-1774). Chinese and naturalistic elements were grafted on, or mixed with, the former Louis Quatorze, with an addition of still life that did duty for architectural form in objects of pottery and metal work, and a combination of shell work; all these elements made up the style known under the different names of rococo, rocaille, baroque, or Louis Quinze.
Furniture was made with curved and swelling panels to show to more advantage the marquetry, or paintings on gold grounds: these kinds of panels and friezes were known as “bombé.”
It is said that the Italian architects, Bernini and Borromini, were the first to introduce the rococo style into France, but no designer went so far in the wildness of its vagaries as the French Meissonier. His ornament furnishes a perfect example of the want of balance and symmetry. He designed for furniture, woodwork, silver-smithery, and modelled decoration, all of which work illustrated the broken shell-shaped panels with frilled and scalloped edgings and curved mouldings.
Rooms were lined with looking-glasses having these rocaille mouldings, which were well adapted to show to the best advantage the glitter of the gold leaf that was used inordinately on the furniture and decoration of the Louis-Quinze period.
Pierre Germain, Jean Restout, and Jean Pillement are well-known names of other designers of the rocaille style.
Painted panels of pastoral scenes and flower groups were the usual colour decorations of ceilings, furniture, carriages, and a host of minor articles such as fans, étuis, snuff-boxes, &c. The latter smaller articles, as well as the state carriages, were decorated with paintings in what was known as the Vernis-Martin style. Martin was a decorator of carriages and an heraldic painter, who invented the particular hard varnish or lacquer which bears his name. It was quite likely that this was as near as possible a successful imitation of the Japanese gold lacquer that decorated the articles which were at this period imported from Japan by the Dutch and Portuguese traders into Europe. Carriages, tables, cabinets, and especially smaller articles like snuff-boxes and needle-cases, were painted and decorated in “Vernis-Martin.” Some of the smaller objects were beautifully mounted in chased gold.
