Neoclassical Art is a severe and unemotional form of art harkening back to the grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome. Its rigidity was a reaction to the overbred Rococo style and the emotional charged Baroque style. The rise of Neoclassical Art was part of a general revival of interest in classical thought, which was of some importance in the American and French revolutions.

Important Neoclassicists include the architects Robert Smirke and Robert Adam, the sculptors Antonio Canova,Jean-Antoine Houdon and Bertel Thorvaldsen, and painters J.A.D. Ingres, Jacques-Louis David and Anton Raphael Mengs.

Around 1800, Romanticism emerged as a reaction against Neoclassicism. It did not really replace the Neoclassical style so much as act as a counterbalancing influence, and many artists were influenced by both styles to a certain degree.

Neoclassical Art was also a primary influence on 19th-century Academic Art

Jean-Francois de Troy  1679-1752  French Painter

Biography

Jean François de Troy was born on January 27, 1679 in Paris. The successful career of Jean François de Troy was based initially on large historical and allegorical compositions, such as Time Unveiling Truth (1733) in the National Gallery, London, but he is now most highly regarded for his smaller and more spirited scenes of elegant social life. They are among the best of those that rode on the wave of Watteau's success—indeed The Alarm, or the Gouvernante Fidèle (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1723) was attributed to Watteau in the 19th century. A versatile artist, he made tableaux de modes famous, painting histories and mythologies in a colourful and fluent

manner which owed something to both Veronese and Peter Paul Rubens

He undertook commissions for Versailles and Fontainebleau between 1724 and 1737, and designed two sets of tapestries for the Gobelins, each of seven subjects, the Histoire d'Esther (1737-40) and the Histoire de Jason (1743-6)

In 1738 he was appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome, and spent the rest of his life there. De Troy's wife died prematurely, and he lost of all his seven children. Jean François de Troy died on January 26, 1752 in Rome.

Giovanni Paolo Pannini  1691-1765  Italian Painter

Giovanni Paolo Pannini or Panini (June 17, 1691 – Rome, October 21, 1765) was an Italian painter and architect, mainly known as one of the vedutisti or (veduta, or "view painters").

As a young man, Pannini trained in his native town of Piacenza as a stage designer. In 1711, he moved to Rome, where he studied drawing with Benedetto Luti and became famous as a decorator of palaces, including the Villa Patrizi (1718–1725) and the Palazzo de Carolis (1720). As a painter, Pannini is best known for his vistas of Rome, in which he took a particular interest in the city's antiquities. Among his most famous works are the interior of the Pantheon, and his vedute — paintings of picture galleries containing views of Rome. Most of his works, specially those of ruins have a substantial fanciful and unreal embellishment characteristic of capriccio themes.

In 1719, Pannini was admitted to the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon. He taught in Rome at the Accademia di San Luca and the Académie de France, where he influenced Jean-Honoré Fragonard. His studio included Hubert Robert and his son Francesco Panini. His style would influence a number of other vedutisti, such as his pupil Antonio Joli, as well as Canaletto and Bernardo Bellotto, who sought to appease the need by visitors for painted "postcards" depicting the Italian environs.

Jean Restout  1692-1768  French Painter

Biography

Jean Restout was born in Rouen, the son of Jean I Restout, the first of that name, and of Marie M. Jouvenet, sister and pupil of the then well-known Jean Jouvenet.

In 1717, the Royal Academy having elected him a member on his work for the Grand Prix, he remained in Paris, instead of proceeding to Italy, exhibited at all the salons, and filled successively every post of academical distinction. His works, chiefly altar-pieces (Louvre Museum), ceilings and designs for Gobelin tapestries, were engraved by Cochin, Drevet and others; his diploma picture may still be seen at St Cloud.

His son, Jean Bernard Restout (1732 - 1797), won the Grand Prix in 1758, and on his return from Italy was received into the Academy; but his refusal to comply with rules led to a quarrel with that body. Roland appointed him keeper of the Garde Meuble, but this piece of favor nearly cost him his life during the Terror.

Joseph Marie Vien  1716-1809  French Painter
Joseph-Marie Vien (June 18, 1716 – March 27, 1809), French painter, was born at Montpellier. He was the last holder of the post of Premier peintre du Roi, serving from 1789 to 1791
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Protected by Comte de Caylus, he entered at an early age the studio of Natoire, and obtained the grand prix in 1745. He used his time at Rome in applying to the study of nature and the development of his own powers all that he gleaned from the masterpieces around him; but his tendencies were so foreign to the reigning taste that on his return to Paris he owed his admission to the academy for his picture "Daedalus and Icarus" (Louvre) solely to the indignant protests of François Boucher.

When in 1776, at the height of his established reputation, he became director of the school of France at Rome, he took Jacques-Louis David with him amongst his pupils. After his return, five years later, his fortunes were wrecked by the French Revolution; but he undauntedly set to work, and at the age of eighty (1796) carried off the prize in an open government competition. Napoleon Bonaparte acknowledged his merit by making him a senator.

Joseph-Marie Vien died in Paris, and was buried in the crypt of the Panthéon ( to date, the only painter so honored). He left behind him many other brilliant pupils, amongst whom were François-André Vincent, Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Joseph-Benoît Suvée, Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours, François Guillaume Menageot, Jean-Joseph Taillasson and others of high merit; nor should the name of his wife, Marie-Thérèse Reboul (1728-1805), herself a member of the academy, be omitted from this list. Their son, Marie Joseph, born in 1761, also distinguished himself as a painter.