The Rococo in Sweden

The royal curators Carl Hårleman and Jean Eric Rehn were the foremost representatives of the Rococo in Sweden. The style took root through French artists who had been brought in by Hårleman for interior works at the Royal Palace.

Other important advocates and inspirers were Swedish artists who had worked in Paris, such as Johan Pasch, Gustaf Lundberg and Alexander Roslin.

The influential superintendent and ambassador Carl Gustaf Tessin’s collecting of French art was also instrumental to the style’s popularity. Even so the Rococo did not spread significantly beyond the court and the aristocracy.

Roslin painted this portrait in 1756 in Paris, when the architect Jean Eric Rehn stopped over on his way home from studies in Italy. Rehn eyes us pensively. Nothing signals that this is an artist. His patterned coat was originally the only marker of rank. Much later, in 1774, the artist had to supplement his attributes with the Order of Vasa. By then Rehn was fully engaged in transforming Swedish Rococo architecture into the Gustavian style.

Public Collecting – Stockholm’s Royal Palace

When interior works at the Royal Palace had reached the stage of acquiring easel paintings, the Swedish art market was initially explored, in the spring of 1739. But results were meagre.

Carl Gustaf Tessin therefore decided to turn to French artists. He had done much negotiating with Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and when he became ambassador in Paris in the autumn of 1739 he acquired eleven of the artist’s paintings on behalf of the state. This was roundly criticised by his political opponents. Purchases from France nevertheless resumed a few years later, with works by Boucher, Restout and Van Loo.

Carle Vanloo studied under his brother, Jean-Baptiste Vanloo. The paintings were acquired for the Royal Palace and are listed as Lake Mälaren and The Sea in the 1745-1747 inventory. But they had been shown at the Paris Salon already in 1740, there called A RIver and A Naiad. Other names given to copies of the works are Le Rhône and Le Saône. Possibly the inspiration for the figures came from Rubens’ Maria de’ Medici cycle in the Louvre.

Four Art Collectors

Following his failed attempt to buy contemporary French art for the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Carl Gustaf Tessin instead began collecting for himself. Unfortunately he lacked financial resources and was therefore soon forced to sell his collection to Fredrik I. The king in turn gifted it to Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrika.

The talented future queen shared a great interest in art with her husband Adolf Fredrik. Together they made several important acquisitions of both older and contemporary paintings. Their son, Gustav III, shared this passion and was also influenced by his tutor Carl Gustaf Tessin.

This painting shows how Venus, who has fallen in love with the beautiful young Adonis, fails to convince him not to go hunting. The jealous god Mars, who has transformed himself into a wild boar. kills his rival Adonis. The painting was commissioned by Carl Gustaf Tessin in Paris in 1729. The artist informed his patron that he had consciously chosen a vertical format, as this made the figures more impressive in “the grand style”.

Portraits

Portraiture had evolved as the strongest genre of visual arts in Sweden. It was long dominated by the Caroline late Baroque style of realistic but pompous representation of subjects, with the clay-toned canvas primer giving colours a saturated character.

Influences from French Rococo, with its psychological aspect, playful use of dress and pastel-like range of colours became more apparent after the 1750s. Carl Gustaf Tessin and the artist Gustaf Lundberg were both instrumental in introducing French portrait fashion, and several Swedish portraitists pursued successful international careers.

Roslin’s portrait of a pretty young woman with dark eyes and rounded face is a feast of Rococo shades of pale pink and silver grey, as well as in its tactile brushwork reminiscent of pastel works. The artist has masterfully defined highlights and reflecting points in the salmon dress trimmed with silver lace. It has not been possible to determine the model’s identity; no baroness of the name Neubourg-Cromière lived in Paris at the time.

Interiors: Rococo

The Rococo is characterised by organic forms and a sense of movement, playfulness, and elegance. The style emerged in France during the 1720s.

Its name comes from the French rocaille, rock formation. The Rococo dominated European painting, sculpture and crafts around the middle of the 18th century.

Its expression and popularity have been linked to contemporary advances in the natural sciences, which also nourished ideas about greater individual freedom in relation to religion and society. The Rococo’s freer expression compared to styles such as the Baroque and Classicism can be seen to reflect this too.

Nils Dahlin was a master in Stockholm 1761–1787. He received many royal commissions and made furniture in both Rococo and neo-classicist styles. All the contours of this Rococo escritoire are curved. It is decorated with trellis patterned veneers of amaranth and rosewood. This item originally belonged to Lovisa Ulrika. Dahlin made other escritoires with the same basic design but different ornamentation, for instance chinoiserie in black lacquer and gold.

Interiors: Children

Scientific advances in the 18th century led to an increased faith in the future. Children, seen as representatives of natural and unspoilt humanity and thus of the shapeable future, became a new focus. Ideas were developed about the importance of fostering upright citizens.

Child portraits also changed, their subjects now treated with greater psychological insight into their particular condition.

As in portraiture overall, artists continued to indicate children’s social position by means of setting and attributes. This of course emphasised what was expected of them in adulthood.

Amorosi is known for his distinctive portraits of smiling children. He usually portrayed them in intimate settings, but in this case a column can be seen in the background, so it is likely to be larger, more formal hall. This, and the girl’s precious jewellery, show she is from the upper classes. The gem-encrusted amulet she proudly exhibits may possibly also have served as a talisman against illness and misfortune.

Rococo, from Royal to Domestic

Artists who had studied in Paris and worked on the interior of the Stockholm Royal Palace around the middle of the 18th century, played the most significant role in the adoption of Rococo in Sweden. In the reception apartments, the style was applied on a large scale, but its playful features also made it suitable for intimate and domestic settings, in both royal palaces and the homes of the nobility and bourgeoisie. The preference for comfort may have contributed to Rococo’s gentle, organic shapes in interiors and utensils.

Inspiration from Nature

The word rococo comes from the French rocaille – rock formation – a central design element in this style. Rigid decorative schemes were loosened up with playful organic features inspired by nature. Discoveries in the natural sciences stimulated interest in the complexity of natural forms. Botanical and zoological images circulated through engravings, and illustrations by eminent Rococo painters, such as François Boucher. Everything from shells to spiders and ornate foliage was included in the Rococo.

The Shape of Time – Constant Change

In the most lavish interiors around 1700 standing clocks or table clocks took pride of place. They not only measured out the hours but were costly status symbols and therefore designed with studied artistry.

In the early Rococo or Regency period (1715–1730) it became popular to place table clocks on brackets. The white enamelled clock face was subservient to the design of the case in gilt bronze and exclusive hardwoods. During the 1740s and 1750s ornamentation with flowers and porcelain Chinese figures became fashionable. It was not long before some table clocks became veritable sculptures in the shape of elephants or rhinoceroses cast in bronze.

Fêtes Galantes and Masquerades

The term Fêtes galantes, or “courtship parties”, was used to describe subjects first painted by the French artist Antoine Watteau at the end of the 1710s.

Transient pleasure is at the forefront in these compositions. In paradisiacal garden settings, young people – often in fancy dress, sometimes as characters from literature or history – engage in various pursuits: music, dance and theatre, frequently alluding to love and eroticism. Fêtes galantes can be said to epitomise the playfulness and sensualism that characterise the Rococo.

As in The Swing and other fêtes galantes, the characters here are playing a game that can be interpreted romantically or erotically: blind man’s buff may suggest fickle or blind love. Carl Gustaf Tessin bought The Swing and Blind Man’s Buff when he was in Paris 1728-1729. Several preliminary studies for this also survive, including two main studies at Nationalmuseum which also belonged to Tessin.

Masquerade Portraits

Masquerades were a subject in art already during the Baroque, but gained a more playful character in the Rococo. Portraits in disguise (portrait déguisé) and historicising portraits (portrait historié) are related: you could be portrayed as one of the gods on Olympus or don a historical costume. Pictorial considerations often influenced the choice of disguise in portraiture, and it did not have to be directly connected with a specific masquerade.

The veiled beauty in Alexander Roslin’s portrait is his wife, Marie Suzanne Giroust, who was herself a prominent artist. She is dressed for a fancy-dress ball, in the Bolognese style. The attraction of this image builds very much on a play of opposites, such as intimate–inaccessible and seductive–reserved. The Lady with the Veil is one of the Nationalmuseum’s best-known paintings. It was exhibited in Paris in 1769, along with another portrait by Roslin, of a woman in African costume.

Fancy Dress Porcelain

China had been making porcelain for over a thousand years when European factories learnt how to produce the material in the 18th century. Figurines demanded great technical and artistic skills. First a sculptor made a model. This was used to create moulds for the various parts of the body. These were cast, joined to each other and fired in a kiln. Finally the figures were painted and glazed before being fired a second time. At the end of the 18th century white unpainted figurines became popular.

Figurines are so lifelike that they seem to move, tell stories and express feelings. They can depict figures and themes in contemporary literature and drama. They can also represent occupations and trades from different parts of the world. Well known paintings or prints were used as prototypes. Figurines were displayed on shelves and corbels. They could be placed on dinner tables to set the mood and help guests find interesting things to talk about.

The Boudoir

The Rococo saw the introduction of a piece of furniture specifically for the boudoir: the poudreuse. It usually incorporated a fold-up mirror and a quantity of compartments and drawers for personal belongings.

Seated at her poudreuse, a woman would apply makeup and have her hair coiffed. Toilet sets of silver or china included tins and pots in which to keep makeup, powder and mouches.

Europeans in China and Chinese in Europe

Jesuit missionaries had, alongside traders, become established early in China. It was primarily the missionaries’ printed descriptions that spread knowledge about the distant land.

But in the 18th century China was still a closed kingdom, to which foreign travellers had only limited access – mainly to Canton and Macau. And few Chinese visited the surrounding world. Those who came to Europe were mostly linked to the East India companies.

The protagonist in this group portrait is Choi Afock, the first Chinese to visit Sweden. The woman indiscreetly studying his pigtail is Aurora Taube. The furtive observer of the scene is Olof Lindahl, who commissioned the painting. He was a merchant with the Swedish East India Company who had arrived in Gothenburg with Afock in 1786. The Chinese was an interpreter at the company’s offices in Canton, and spoke a very peculiar Swedish.

Chinoiserie

Tea was the great import from China, and with tea drinking came the china. Over twenty years from 1766, eight million porcelain cups were imported to Sweden.

As in the rest of Europe, Chinese culture influenced interior as well as landscape architecture. This became known as chinoiserie.

But imports also awakened ideas of domestic production, in Sweden too. China began to be manufactured at Marieberg in 1758, and silk at about the same time.

This splendid piece of a seated man bearing two candle holders is an example of Swedish luxury manufacturing around the mid-18th century. The edition would have been limited. Still, it survives in both painted and white-glazed versions. The closest model was probably German, taken either from the Bavaria china factory in Nymphenburg or the Dresden one in Meissen.

Royal Gifts of Chinoiserie

After manufacture of porcelain began in Europe at Meissen in 1709, Chinese designs and patterns were the most important source of inspiration, often combined with Japanese models.

Porcelain chinoiserie objects from Meissen were among the most exclusive royal gifts in the first half of the 18th century. Later, when Saxon porcelain met competition from French products from Sèvres, for instance, Chinese motifs were still often found on royal gifts.

In May 1734 a large gift was dispatched from Saxony to Stockholm, intended for the Swedish royal couple. It included a vase set, a toilet set, a travel set, tea and chocolate sets etc. The pieces were decorated with the greater Swedish coat of arms and delicate painted and gilded arabesques.