Artistic Symbolism: Women on Swings in the 18th Century

“The swinging women of Watteau and Fragonard” by Donald Posner talks about the characterization of woman on swing. The author goes through with a timeline where he starts with early use of a swing in drawings with changes during the 18th century. Woman on swing in the early the 18th century was represented as feminine, the ambition of love from a man. Another statement author gives was the effect of rococo artists representing the feminine with the idea in 18th century. Lastly, the representation of love created some erotic metaphors in the paintings. Women on the swings are represented in different style in different art. First, in “The Shepherds” the woman on the swing symbolizes feminine. In the picture she shows her back from the joy of man and woman bonding with each other and giving no attention to the boy beside where he tries to get her attention. Rather in “The Pleasure of Summer”, “The swinger”, and “The Swing”, “The swinger” seems to show the greed of the women. In late days’ swings had a string where a person can push and pull for you. In the “The Pleasures of Summer” one of the man is holding the rope, however the other rope is near by the man who is with another girl. This could be defined where the woman is not only wanting the

Rococo arts had a different perspective and overall different kind of art, then the majority 18th century arts. Rococo artists express feminine by the drawing and the characters shown in the painting. This can be seen easily in the “The Swing” by Fragonard. In the painting the curves of the line are smooth, the bright pink color dress, and the action of each character haves. Normal drawing with women, they are mostly drawn in a sitting or standing upright position with less diverse color clothes. However, in the painting the lady is on a swing showing her ankle and part of her leg, which was abnormal with other painting of that