The Influence of Dutch Painting on French Painting of the 18 Century

In 18th century in France, art was developing very fast. In search for their own style, many artists were copying the works of great masters of previous years, such as Leonardo and Titian. However, in the middle of 18th century, not all French artists looked up to the Italian examples. There were artists who enjoyed painting in the northern manner. Due to this, very soon the art influences of Netherlands spread in France. This paper considers the works of Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Louis-Leopold Boilly, Martin Drolling and Marguerite Gerard — artists of the 18th century who mostly created their paintings in the ‘‘Holland manner’’. This paper will examine the interpretations of Dutch genre paintings motives in the paintings of French artists. Recent research has argued that the creative methods of those masters was more French than Dutch; however, such position is very controversial and not so simple. In this paper, it is argued that there were many historical processes which influenced the development of art market and especially the creative methods of French artists. This paper concludes that Dutch influences in French art of 18th century were very strong, which is proven by works of many French masters. The study will use the comparative method, formal stylistic analyses and the method of analyzing the historical context.