The Louis XV style or Louis Quinze was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 Rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 style in the decorative arts, and, to a lesser degree, architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

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Datable to the personal reign of Louis XV

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

 (1723–1774), the style was characterised by supreme craftsmanship and the integration of the arts of cabinetmaking, painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, and sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

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Decorative arts

French furniture

French furniture

French furniture comprises both the most sophisticated furniture made in Paris for king and court, aristocrats and rich upper bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and French provincial furniture made in the provincial cities and towns many of which, like Lyon and Liège, retained cultural identities...

 of the period—which typically came in two sets, a summer and a winter—was highly ornamental, yet elegant, and designed to mesh with the rest of the home decor. Orientalia—themes from the Far East

Far East

The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...

—and the fabulous were the principle thematic expressions, and exotic woods and marbles were employed to further the effect.

Among the ébéniste

Ébéniste

Ébéniste is the French word for a cabinetmaker, whereas in French menuisier denotes a woodcarver or chairmaker. The English equivalent for "ébéniste," "ebonist," is never commonly used. Originally, an ébéniste was one who worked with ebony, a favoured luxury wood for mid-seventeenth century...

s who served under Louis XV were Jean-François Oeben

Jean-François Oeben

Jean-François Oeben, or Johann Franz Oeben was a French cabinetmaker whose career was spent in Paris. He is the maternal grandfather of the painter Eugène Delacroix....

, Roger Vandercruse Lacroix

Roger Vandercruse Lacroix

Roger Vandercruse Lacroix , often known as Roger Vandercruse, was a Parisian ébéniste whose highly refined furniture spans the rococo and the early neoclassical styles....

, Gilles Joubert

Gilles Joubert

Gilles Joubert was a Parisian ébéniste who worked for the Garde-Meuble of Louis XV for two and a half decades, beginning in 1748, earning the title ébéniste ordinaire du Garde-Meuble in 1758, and finally that of ébéniste du roi on the death of Jean-François Oeben in 1763...

, Antoine Gaudreau

Antoine Gaudreau

Antoine-Robert Gaudreau was a Parisian ébéniste who was appointed Ébéniste du Roi and was the principal supplier of furniture for the royal châteaux during the early years of Louis XV's reign. He is largely known through the copious documentation of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne; he entered the...

, and Martin Carlin

Martin Carlin

Martin Carlin was a Parisian ébéniste, born at Freiburg, who was received master at Paris in 1766.Carlin worked at first in the shop of Jean-François Oeben, whose sister he married. He set up independently in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, an unfashionable quarter of Paris, where few of his wealthy...

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Art

The most outstanding painters of the period were Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, François Boucher

François Boucher

François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...

, Jean-Baptiste Huet

Jean-Baptiste Huet

Jean-Baptiste Marie Huet was a French painter, engraver and designer associated with pastoral and genre scenes of animals in the Rococo manner, influenced by François Boucher....

, Jean-Baptiste Le Prince

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince

Jean-Baptiste Le Prince was an important French etcher and painter. Le Prince first studied painting techniques in his native Metz. He then travelled to Paris around 1750 and became a leading student of the great painter, François Boucher...

, Pierre Migeon, and the van Loo family: Jean-Baptiste van Loo

Jean-Baptiste van Loo

Jean-Baptiste van Loo was a French subject and portrait painter.-Biography:He was born in Aix-en-Provence, and was instructed in art by his father Louis-Abraham van Loo, son of Jacob van Loo...

, Louis Michel van Loo, Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo

Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo

Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo was a French painter of allegorical scenes and portraits.He studied under his father, the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, at Turin and Rome, where in 1738 he won the Prix de Rome, then at Aix-en-Provence, before returning to Paris in 1745...

, and Charles André van Loo. No mention of the artists of the period would be complete without mention of one of their chief patrons, the king's mistress: Madame de Pompadour

Madame de Pompadour

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...

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