The Swing (Fragonard)

Movement: Rococo Rococo is art as a private joke among the rich, and The Swing is the one everybody knows. A young woman in a frothy pink dress swings high in a leafy garden while a smiling young man hidden in the bushes below looks up at her billowing skirts. Soft pastels, feathery brushwork, playful romance and no moral message at all: that is the whole style. Fragonard painted it around 1767 to 1768, and it now hangs in the Wallace Collection in London. What came next: critics and a restless public grew tired of frivolity and wanted art with a stern moral spine.