If we glance intently on the time we’re residing in, a number of unsettling parallels emerge with the Rococo interval, each artistically and socially. Lengthy dismissed as frivolous, Rococo finally revealed itself as an aesthetic solid within the crucible of instability—a language of resistance formed by ongoing cultural and societal disaster. Its signature deflections, its magnificence, attraction, sensuality and obvious naïveté had been by no means merely ornamental however slightly deliberate methods. In an age marked by political fragility, financial imbalance and the sluggish unraveling of ancien régime certainties, Rococo soothed collective anxiousness with out pretending it didn’t exist.
That anxiousness was usually exorcised via depictions of consolation, richness, cuteness and the idealized—qualities that got here to outline the period’s visible tradition simply as insistently as the pictures favored and shared throughout digital platforms immediately. Quick ahead to trendy instances, and intergenerational curiosity in Outdated Masters has propelled the class to a few of its strongest outcomes in recent times. In 2025, gross sales rose 68.7 % to $282.5 million, and the variety of tons bought elevated by 7.9 %, in keeping with ArtTactic.
I drew these parallels after the Frick Assortment launched New York to the feathery, dreamlike brushstrokes of Flora Yukhnovich through a recent artwork fee for what was as soon as often known as the Boucher Room. After studying that Christie’s Paris, with the Cooks-d’oeuvre de la assortment Veil-Picard sale, is bringing to public sale a bunch of 30 masterpieces from the gathering of Arthur Georges Veil-Picard—together with some true Rococo highlights—I discovered myself questioning how the Rococo interval is performing out there.
A current Artsy report confirmed that collectors in 2025 have gravitated towards idyllic up to date bucolic landscapes, comforting and acquainted desk gatherings and nonetheless lifes—soothing tableaus that Rococo usually mixed with outstanding fluency. Rococo artists had been additionally the primary to create tailor-made imagery to satisfy a brand new demand for style, depictions of intimacy and domestic-scale work—qualities many collectors nonetheless search for in artworks immediately. Their method to the connection between inventive manufacturing, viewers and market was certainly so trendy that we would query whether or not they need to really be thought-about Outdated Masters or slightly painters standing on the threshold of modernity.
A set for the artwork historical past books
It’s price contemplating what the Veil-Picard assortment really represents, because it has lengthy been identified primarily via black-and-white reproductions of works that stay among the many most mysterious and coveted from this golden age of French artwork. Shaped over a number of a long time by collectors working intentionally exterior the realm of spectacle, the gathering prioritized connoisseurship, situation, provenance and scholarly significance. Its core emphasis lies in works that reveal course of, social life and visible intelligence—qualities intently aligned with Rococo’s unique cultural operate.
Arthur Georges Veil-Picard, a banker and good entrepreneur on the helm of the famend Pernod distillery, was behind it. He started constructing the gathering within the early twentieth Century, first as a free-spirited beginner—self-taught, instinctive and deeply obsessed with works from the 18th Century—earlier than evolving right into a discerning collector who, over time, assembled really vital museum-grade treasures in his non-public mansion in Paris’s Plaine Monceau district.
Highlights from the gathering embrace prime work and drawings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hubert Robert, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Marie-Suzanne Roslin. The highest lot within the sale is a piece by Fragonard, Veil-Picard’s favourite artist and a grasp of the Rococo type, titled Completely happy Household and estimated at €1,500,000-2,000,000. It’s a quintessential instance of the artist’s hand, with comfortable, virtuosic brushstrokes capturing a spontaneous and playful second of familial affection and change—suspended between flirtation and pleasure with a sometimes Rococo erotic cost, subtly insinuated behind sliding silks, sprawled limbs and glowing flesh. These scenes are sometimes tinged with melancholy slightly than ethical gravity. Of the varied variations of the work, the one supplied right here is taken into account by students to be the primary and most consultant of Fragonard’s palette. Two different variations are held in non-public collections, and a preparatory examine is housed on the André Malraux Museum in Le Havre.
Additionally coming to public sale with a rare provenance is one other signature Fragonard, The Little Coquette, often known as The Peeping Lady (estimate: €400,000-600,000). The portray was beforehand owned by Hippolyte Walferdin, an awesome admirer of 18th-century artwork, and later by Depend de Pourtalès. One in all Fragonard’s seductive giant wash drawings, Lady with a Dove, additionally got here from Walferdin’s assortment earlier than being acquired by the Rothschild household (estimate: €200,000-300,000).
Standing among the many most notable rediscoveries within the assortment—and inside the artist’s total corpus—is a big sheet in purple chalk and black stone by Antoine Watteau, described in his catalogue raisonné as coming “from an inaccessible non-public assortment.” Harking back to the celebrated Pierrot within the Louvre, this picture of a proud, delicately traced actor impersonating a hero or soldier of purely Rococo theatrical grace—Watteau cherished to discover meditations disguised as leisure—is re-emerging for the primary time not solely at public sale but in addition to the general public, with an estimate of €600,000-800,000. One other playfully allusive and seductive drawing by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin affords a vivid glimpse into Parisian life, charged with refined erotic pressure; the artist depicts a painter and his mannequin within the intimacy of the studio at a time when feminine nudes had been forbidden on the Academy (The Personal Academy, estimate: €150,000-200,000).
A market divided between vital works and second-tier ornamental materials
The present public sale document for a Rococo artist was set by Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Portrait of François-Henri, fifth duc d’Harcourt, which fetched £17,106,500 (about $27.9 million) at Bonhams in London in December 2013. Extra not too long ago, a rediscovered Fragonard portray of a girl with a hat bought at Drouot on December 21, 2023, for $3.5 million after charges ($2,746,182 hammer), nearly 4 instances its modest estimate of $440,000-660,000. Earlier, in November 2023, a 72 x 91 cm. oil titled Un sacrifice vintage, dit Le sacrifice au Minotaure bought at Artcurial in November 2024 for $6,216,804 after purchaser’s premium. Since then, solely smaller works—usually with much less dependable attribution—have appeared at public sale, usually promoting within the five-digit vary or going unsold, largely at smaller regional public sale homes. Just one Fragonard oil is arising throughout New York’s February Outdated Masters week: a maybe much less instantly pleasing—however no cheaper—Head of a Bearded Man, supplied by Sotheby’s with an estimate of $600,000-800,000. Against this, Christie’s will current a gem of a drawing from the gathering of Irene Roosevelt Aitken in February that was beforehand proven within the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork’s 2017 exhibition dedicated to Fragonard’s drawings, with a extra modest estimate of $200,000-300,000.
In the meantime, after they do seem available on the market, works by Jean-Antoine Watteau and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun proceed to command vital costs. The public sale document for a portray by Watteau stays the rediscovered La Shock, which achieved £12,361,250 (about $24.3 million) at Christie’s London again in 2008. Extra not too long ago, considered one of his oil-on-canvas works, Le Pèlerinage à l’île de Cythère, bought for about €1.38 million at Christie’s in 2023, although substantial work by Watteau stay extraordinarily uncommon at public sale. In 2025, only a single—and never particularly vital—oil on paper/panel by Watteau, depicting a small panorama devoid of human figures, appeared at Sotheby’s Paris, hammering at its excessive estimate of $206,866 (probably below assure) and reaching $262,720 with charges. In the meantime, works on paper by Watteau proceed to commerce steadily within the mid-five-figure vary, with all examples bought at Sotheby’s in 2024 exceeding their estimates. A really related, although barely smaller, drawing of a pompously standing man bought at Sotheby’s New York in January 2024 for $457,200 together with premium, towards an estimate of $120,000-180,000. Trying forward, a drawing of a person enjoying the guitar by Watteau will likely be supplied by Sotheby’s New York this February with a $700,000-1,000,000 estimate. The valuation is justified not solely by its inclusion within the artist’s 1957 Catalogue complet, but in addition by its distinctive exhibition historical past, notably at The Morgan Library & Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork. The work is among the many highlights of the Diane Nixon Assortment, one of the vital vital drawing collections assembled in current a long time.
Vigée Le Brun’s document was set at Sotheby’s Outdated Masters sale in New York in 2019, when a 1788 portrait bought for $7.18 million—making it the costliest portray by a pre-modern lady artist ever bought at public sale. Nonetheless, the marginally extra classical painter has continued to exceed expectations in current auctions, notably when the attribution is robust. Her oil Allégorie de la Poésie (1774) bought final September at Artcurial Paris for $387,226, surpassing its $94,445-141,668 estimate. Different works have landed inside estimate, although a feminine portrait fetched $91,636 at a regional public sale home (J.P. Osenat Fontainebleau S.A.S.). A double portrait in pastel on paper is arising at Christie’s New York in February with an estimate of $500,000-700,000. It is going to be adopted by an aluminous, idyllic pastoral panorama by François Boucher, supplied with an estimate of $200,000-300,000. Boucher’s document stays $2,405,000 for The Sleep of Venus, bought at Sotheby’s New York on January 30, 2014.
These and different gross sales at public sale counsel that what’s missing shouldn’t be demand for Rococo artwork amongst up to date audiences however slightly the provision of prime-quality works. The Rococo portray market is skinny however extremely delicate to high quality: when a very museum-grade portray by a top-name artist surfaces with sturdy attribution and a compelling narrative, it could possibly nonetheless command multi-million-dollar costs. Against this, the broader subject—much less vital compositions, workshop or circle works, “after” photos and ornamental style scenes—is way much less dependable.
In the present day, the marketplace for Rococo—maybe much more so than for different Outdated Masters—stays divided between vital, iconic works and ornamental second-tier materials. “There’s a actual disconnect between vital works and ornamental ones,” Étienne Bréton, considered one of Paris’s main Outdated Masters advisers, instructed Le Monde. “A big portray by Fragonard stays extremely wanted, whereas 18th-century style scenes will not be price a lot.” The difficulty is that attribution for these works isn’t binary (genuine vs. pretend); slightly, it’s graded—autograph, studio, workshop, circle, follower, after—and many of the works resurfacing immediately fall within the decrease tiers.
As Rococo artists operated inside one of many earliest absolutely articulated artwork markets in Europe, they had been usually in such excessive demand that they actively produced variations of their compositions and inspired replication. Studios and assistants performed a serious function on this course of. Collectors ceaselessly sought “a Fragonard” or “a Watteau-type” picture, not essentially the autograph work. The result’s a market saturated with official historic copies—many relationship from the 18th or early nineteenth Century—not later fakes, however traded immediately via lower-tier public sale homes as ornamental objects slightly than as true masterpieces. In some ways, this dynamic is embedded within the motion itself. Rococo artists had been already navigating an early market financial system formed not solely by royal courts but in addition by an rising class of financiers, retailers, directors and professionals who bought artwork for his or her non-public interiors.
It’s a sample that inevitably remembers any market cycle ending in saturation—when the proliferation of too many forms of work dilutes originality, pleasure and worth. And the sample feels unmistakably acquainted immediately. But we’ve seen how Rococo-inspired artists comparable to Flora Yukhnovich have achieved sturdy secondary-market traction. Her public sale document stands simply above £3 million, set in 2022, with six-figure and high-six-figure outcomes now routine for sought-after works.
The prime materials, coming to public sale at Christie’s Paris on March 25, speaks to a nostalgic need for, and perception in, the illusory promise of attraction and sweetness—pleasing photos able to lifting the spirit amid immediately’s international tumult. A lot as collectors are additionally turning towards extra spiritually charged artworks, each now and previously, Rococo affords entry to alternate realms of instinct, sensuality and reverie. It stands in quiet resistance to a rational, technologically pushed Western mannequin of progress that has struggled to ship the happiness and well-being it as soon as promised. It should even be price watching how the extra esoteric attraction of symbolist painter Jean-Michel Moreau performs, with two work illustrating festivities in honor of the Dauphin’s delivery by the royal couple—respectively on the Hôtel de Ville (€300,000-500,000) and on the Palais Royal (€70,000-100,000).
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