What is Neoclassicism? The art that rediscovered antiquity

Neoclassicism is the movement in art, architecture and design that took over from Rococo around 1760–1770 and dominated until the early 19th century. It took its forms and ideals from ancient Greece and Rome: clear outlines, stillness, symmetry and serious subjects of duty and virtue.

Facts

Antiquity is excavated

When the excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii began in the middle of the 18th century, wall paintings, furniture and everyday objects from antiquity came to light. Young aristocrats and artists travelled to Italy on the Grand Tour to see the ruins with their own eyes, and books of engraved illustrations spread across Europe.

The German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann praised the “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” of Greek art in 1755. For him and his readers antiquity was not only beautiful but morally exemplary. After Rococo's playful boudoir art, people wanted an art with gravity.

David and virtue

Jacques-Louis David became the movement's leading painter. In The Oath of the Horatii, which he painted in Rome and showed at the Salon in Paris in 1785, three brothers swear to sacrifice their lives for Rome while the women mourn in the background. Everything is strictly ordered: three arches, three groups, straight arms pointing towards the swords.

David himself took an active part in the French Revolution and later became Napoleon's court painter. His pupil Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres carried on the pure line and the smooth, almost enamel-like surface well into the 19th century.

The movement was international. The Swiss-born Angelica Kauffman, who had studied in Rome, was one of two women among the founders of the Royal Academy in London in 1768. She painted ancient and historical subjects for patrons all over Europe and showed that history painting, the most prestigious genre, was not reserved for men.

Sculpture in marble

Neoclassicism was the great age of sculpture. The Italian Antonio Canova and the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen both worked in Rome and carved gods and heroes in white marble with soft, idealised bodies. People then believed that ancient sculptures had always been white; today we know that many were painted.

The Swede Johan Tobias Sergel lived in Rome for more than ten years and created his Faun there, a reclining figure that unites ancient form with a new sensuality. He was called home by Gustav III and became the leading sculptor of the Gustavian period.

The Gustavian period

In Sweden Neoclassicism is often called the Gustavian period, after Gustav III, who reigned 1771–1792. The king had seen Italy and wanted to make Stockholm a city of culture with an opera, academies and museums. Painting, interiors and furniture took on straight lines, classical motifs and light colours.

The style is just as clear in Gustavian design and in Neoclassical architecture, such as Gustav III's Pavilion at Haga. Do read the guides to the Gustavian style and to Neoclassicism in architecture.

Neoclassicism or Romanticism?

Around 1800 Neoclassicism and Romanticism existed side by side, and the same artist could work in both. The difference is clearest in attitude: Neoclassicism seeks the universal, eternal and rational, Romanticism the personal, dramatic and emotional.

You can see it in the form. Neoclassical pictures have clear outlines, even light and figures arranged as on an ancient relief. Romantic pictures have movement, strong contrasts and colours that merge. The classical ideal nevertheless lived on through the academies throughout the 19th century.

How to recognise it

Exercise

Who painted The Oath of the Horatii?