Paris in the seventeen hundreds
French Rococo
French painting from the middle of the seventeen hundreds, when a portrait was mostly a study of cloth. Boucher's shepherds asleep under a tree, washerwomen at a stream, Nattier's sitters in blue and grey silk, a girl by Fragonard holding her small sister. Soft light, powdered hair, and a great deal of satin catching it.
As a puzzle
Kind to a slow evening. Faces and hands are small and go last, but the cloth is the whole middle of the picture and it changes tone every few centimetres, so most pieces have somewhere to sit. The backgrounds are the hard part, since a brown studio wall gives you very little. Thirteen of the fifteen stand taller than they are wide.
A good size here: 60–300 pieces.
15 pictures, pick one to build
The Two Sisters Jean Honoré Fragonard, ca. 1769–70 
Study of a Woman’s Head Jean-Baptiste Greuze, ca. 1780 
Jean Marc Nattier (1685–1766) Louis Tocqué, ca. 1740 
Portrait of a Woman, Said to be Madame Charles Simon Favart (Marie Justine Benoîte Duronceray, 1727–1772) François Hubert Drouais, 1757 
The Toilette of Venus François Boucher, 1751 
The French Comedians Antoine Watteau, ca. 1720 
Portrait of a Woman Jean Marc Nattier, 1753 
The Spring (La Source) Jean Marc Nattier, 1738 
Marie Rinteau, called Mademoiselle de Verrières François Hubert Drouais, 1761 
Washerwomen François Boucher, 1768 
Marie Françoise de La Cropte de St. Abre, Marquise d'Argence (born 1714) Jean Marc Nattier, 1744 
Shepherd's Idyll François Boucher, 1768 
The Interrupted Sleep François Boucher, 1750 
Imaginary Landscape with the Palatine Hill from Campo Vaccino François Boucher, early 1730s 
Princess Varvara Nikolaevna Gagarina (1762–1802) Jean-Baptiste Greuze, ca. 1780–82