French Arts & Music
Explore the art history of France from prehistoric times to the modern day.
Traditional Arts of France
France is home to a celebrated art history. Before French culture existed, the people of the land had already been producing works of art for tens of thousands of years. The nation, particularly along its border with Spain, is home to some of the oldest cave paintings ever discovered. Rock art at central sites like the Chauvet and Lascaux caves date as far back as 30,000 BCE. These early artists settled France toward the end of the last Ice Age, when cave lions, reindeer, hyenas, and rhinoceroses roamed its landscapes. Over the thousands of years that followed, many cultures grew, moved into, and declined within the region.
By the time written history reached France, it was mostly peopled by Celts, whom the Romans called Gauls. They were part of a broader, Iron-Age La Tène culture. The La Tène people are now remembered for their elegant metalworking, characterized by spiral designs and animal figures. When Romans conquered Gaul in the 1st century BCE, their art blended with those of local tribes. This led to the development of a unique mix of styles and techniques, most notably in metalworking, architecture, and sculpture. The Frankish Merovingians adopted some elements of Gallo-Roman art. They specialized primarily in illuminated manuscripts and metals.
These artistic roots persisted through the Middle Ages, growing grander and more refined as the centuries passed. Much of French art from this time was dedicated to religion. Churches grew taller and more ornate, following Romanesque and Gothic styles. The most famous Cathedral of France, Notre-Dame de Paris, was finished in the 13th century in the Gothic style. These trends were supplanted by the Italian Renaissance, which introduced new techniques and themes to both secular and religious art. From this point, France entered an artistic golden age. Classicism, which emphasized form and precision, gave way to Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism. Artists began to play with shape, color, and concepts like never before. This evolution has continued to the modern day, producing many famous artists and works in the process.
Painting in French Culture
Painting as a profession moved from religious themes and portraits of the powerful to the depiction of daily life and more abstract concepts. French classicism developed in the 17th century, represented by painters such as Georges de la Tour, Nicolas Poussin, and Claude Lorrain. Their work looked to antiquity, both in subject matter and the painstaking realism once practiced by Greek and Roman sculptors. By the 18th century, however, French artists began to reject the formality and limitations of this style. They began to use more playful imagery, vivid colors, and dynamic subjects, known as the Rococo movement. This style, associated with the wealthy upper classes, fell out of favor during the Revolution. Neoclassicism, returning to realistic portraiture and mythic symbolism, largely replaced it.
The 19th century, beginning with the rise and fall of Napoleon, returned to the expression of feeling and natural connection through the Romanticists. Artists like Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault responded to the strict rationality of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution with strong emotion and romantic, medieval imagery. Realism, in turn, rejected the fancifulness of the early 19th century. French painters like Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier, and Édouard Manet instead focused on what they could see and nothing more. Manet in particular bridged the gap between Realism and Impressionism.
The Impressionist era in France perhaps marked the high-point of its artistic influence. While Paris was transformed by technologies like the railroad, electricity, and photography, its artists looked to keep painting relevant. Painters from this era, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissaro, sought to convey the experience of the moment captured in their works. Like the realists, they did not shy away from depicting common people and their daily lives. Post-Impressionists like Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat moved farther still from realism, leading into the Fauvism of Henri Matisse and others. Their work led to 20th-century movements like cubism, surrealism, art deco, and pop art. Pablo Picasso, a Spanish cubist, spent most of his life in France.
French Poetry and Literature
Literature and poetry have also played a significant role in France’s cultural history. During the Middle Ages, medieval romances grew very popular among the literate classes. They depicted courtly knights, fair maidens, and the villains attempting to keep them apart. One of the most enduring works from this period is the Song of Roland, composed around the 12th century. The tales of Tristan and Iseult met similar widespread acclaim.
The Renaissance inspired new themes in French literature, fueled by the ability to print books in mass quantities. Philosophers such as Voltaire infused their ideas into fiction through novels like Candide. Other philosophers, including René Descartes and Jean Jacques Rousseau, published more formal essays.
The 19th century saw a golden age among French writers. Alexandre Dumas authored a string of famous adventure novels like The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Victor Hugo looked to Paris’s past when he wrote the modern classics Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Human Comedy of Honoré de Balzac brought realism to the literary world through its frank portrayal of contemporary French society. Philosophy continued to influence and define French literature in the 20th century. Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre published novels and plays as well as philosophical works.
Music and Dance of France
French music, in a broad sense, developed from both folk and religious traditions in the medieval era. Troubadours traveled from town to town reciting courtly poems, stories, and ballads, as well as fables and more bawdy folk music. Chansons, exemplified by the Song of Roland, were performed by three or four singers. As music began to grow through formal schools, France generally followed the trends of Europe as a whole. Operas and orchestra pieces dominated among composers. The nation’s most famous composers include Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Georges Bizet, and Hector Berlioz.
The surviving folk music of France is highly regional in character. Northern regions tend to show more Celtic influence, including the use of harps and bagpipes. Other common folk instruments of France are the fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, bombard, lute, accordion, and tambourine.
Modern French Arts and Music
Like many other modern nations, the arts of France have diversified into countless styles and media. Photography and cinema have proven especially popular. Paris remains a major global art hub through its many museums, galleries, and auction houses.
References
Haine, W. Scott. Culture and Customs of France. Greenwood Publishing. 2006.
Haine, W. Scott. The History of France. Greenwood Press. 2000.
Hewitt, Nicholas. The Cambridge Companion to Modern French Culture. Cambridge University Press. 2003.
Kingsley, Rose Georgina. A History of French Art, 1100-1899. Longmans, Green, and Company. 1899.
Lyons, John D. French Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2010.
Small, Graeme. Late Medieval France. Palgrave Macmillan. 2009.
“The World Factbook: France.” Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 4 June 2018, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fr.html.
Woolf, Greg. Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. Cambridge University Press. 2000.
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