Louis XVI style

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From 1775 to 1790.

With the return of Neoclassicism in the arts, a transition style emerged between the Louis XV and the Louis XVI styles called simply the Transition style. Short lived, it was a compromise between the Louis XV and the Greek style with more rigid shapes and the rediscovery of fluting, acanthus leaves and garlands.

After the Transition style, the new style marks the return to the “purity” of the arts of Antiquity. Artists created a neo-Classical style based on fanciful ideas of Ancient Greece, because at the time, Greece was an inaccessible Turkish territory, and only a few European archaeologists travelled there. However their surveys fired the high society’s imagination: people dined “à la grecque” (Greek style), dressed “à la grecque” (the portraits of Mme Vigée-Lebrun are a great example) and built gardens with ruins “à la grecque”. The dominant traits of the style are straight lines and the use of an Antique repertoire of forms, but here through the influence of philosophers Rousseau and Diderot, nature and sensitivity became central to the style. Antique motifs were mixed with flowers and baskets of fruits, palmettes, garlands, bows and ribbons inspired by the “taste for Nature” much appreciated by Marie-Antoinette. Also trophies, warrior, musical and scientific themes were appreciated.

In parallel a certain « Turkish mania » developed with an idealised vision of the Orient.

In the later years the ornaments became more sober only the Greek antique elements remained.

The archaeologist Winckelmann, great defender of Greek art, which he defined as "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" inspired generations of artists, architects and  theorists of art like Jacques-Louis David, Benjamin West, Lessing, Goeth and Schiller.

Mahogany was the favoured wood of the Louis XVI style, massive or not, appreciated for its uniform colour and the variations in lines enhanced in the works of Georges Jacob. Among the most talented designers and cabinet makers: Jean Delafosse, Riesener, Weisweiler, Carlin, Leleu, Saunier and Benneman...

 

 

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