Japoco Amigoni, Venus and Adonis, c.1740

Rosalba Carriera, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, c.1725

Giuseppe Nogari, Peter the Apostle, 1743

François Boucher, The Rape of Europa, 1732-34 and 1747

Jean-Honore Fragonard, The Stolen Kiss, 1787-89

Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Festival of Love, c.1717

From the Web Gallery of Art:

Set in a curiously weightless landscape, an irregular row of trees enters the picture at an angle, affording us glimpses of meadows, stretches of water and buildings, with beyond a distant hill and a plane that vanishes into the depths. We see a number of couples, some reclining, some out walking, and a child and a small dog, both at the centre of the picture if not immediately visible. Opposite the soft, hazy trees that dominate the left half of the picture, the right-hand side is commanded by a statue of Venus, who has confiscated a quiver full of arrows from her son, Cupid.

A happy moment has been caught here by the painter’s art, like a snapshot that captures a fleeting moment from the past — a gaze over a shoulder, a spontaneous gesture — and lends it permanence. Yet it would be absurd to assume that this scene was based on a real occurrence: the picture is a poetic invention by a painter, is itself the experience, and not a depiction.

Francois Boucher, 1742, La Toilette

Jean-Marc Nattier, 1745, Madame Bouret as Diana

Jean-Honore Fragonard, 1753, Psyche Showing her Sisters her Gifts from Cupid

Jean-Antoine Watteau, c.1716, Two Cousins

Francois Boucher, 1751, Venus Consoling Love

ART TIMELINE: 1776

William Hodges, 1776, A View of Matavai Bay in the Island of Otaheite: expeditionary art, landscapes

Benjamin West, 1776, Self Portrait: Academy painting, history painting, portraiture

Jean-Honore Fragonard, c.1776-78, The Souvenir: Rococo

Jean-Honore Fragonard, n.d, The Bathers

ART TIMELINE: 1767

Jean-Honore Fragonard, 1767, The Swing: Rococo

Johann Zoffany, 1767-68, The Family of Sir William Young: Neoclassicism

Jean-Baptise Greuze, 1767, Votive Offering to Cupid: Rococo

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1770s, The Complain of the Watch

From the Web Gallery of Art: In contrast with Chardin Greuze increased his popularity by taking his scenes out into villages and emphasizing the humble rank of his actors. The rustic fallacy was only one chord of falseness played on by Greuze. Anything that might have been a hint in Chardin becomes in Greuze an over-stated illustration: we must now witness those countless anecdotes with doves and broken mirrors in all of which there is a confused appeal to sentimentality and a lack of confidence in art that is unsupported by narrative. Greuze made the naive mistake that a moving anecdote will make a moving work of art. He begot a fearful progeny of nineteenth-century academic work throughout Europe from which came nothing except the problem picture. That he was quite capable of apprehending and conveying reality is shown by his often excellent portraits, but he wished to make some more striking contribution to art. He did indeed succeed in expressing something of the spirit of his age; he spoke the new language, as foreign to Chardin as to Boucher, of the heart.