During the eighteenth century, the audience for art widened considerably, with the middle class joining, and ultimately supplanting, the aristocracy as the principal market for art.  This chapter surveys the arts of the Enlightenment and discusses how the rise of middle-class audiences encouraged a proliferation of new styles and forms.

 During this period, established literary forms persisted but had to compete with new, increasingly popular prose genres.  In England, Addison and Steele satisfied the growing middle-class taste for witty journalism with their Tatler and Spectator essays.  Defoe pioneered the modern popular novel with Robinson Crusoe, while Swift critically examined Enlightenment optimism about human nature in his parodic, satiric Gulliver's Travels.  The novel developed further in the hands of Richardson, whose epistolary tales cast feminine virtue against masculine vice, and Fielding, whose fiction embraced the full range of human society and appetite.  In the tradition of Dryden, Pope wrote poems of social and political satire, composing pastoral and philosophical poetry as well.  Johnson wrote in forms ranging from meditative poetry to periodical essays and created the first English dictionary to illustrate proper usage.  He also set a new standard of accuracy in his biographical portraits of English poets, a standard to which Boswell aspired in his huge biography of Johnson.

In France, the philosophes used literary means articulate Enlightenment values.  In Candide, Voltaire adapted the travelogue form to satirize what he viewed as the excessive optimism of Pope and Leibnitz.  Through his epistolary novel, La Nouvelle Heloļse, Rousseau espoused his ideas concerning individual personality and the freedom of expression.  Montesquieu also adapted the epistolary form to philosophical purposes, using his Persian Letters to advance his political and social ideas.  Finally, in Supplement to the Voyage of Bouganville, Diderot used the travelogue form to subject European customs to intense critical scrutiny.

Two major styles developed in the visual arts: Rococo and Neoclassicism. Rococo emerged as a style of painting and interior design that rejected Baroque grandeur.  In France, Rococo painting style reacted against the formal magnificence favored by Louis XIV and his court.  Watteu pioneered the style with fanciful scenes containing graceful figures painted in luminescent colors.  Boucher and Fragonard created sensuous, richly colored, nostalgic works for aristocratic and royal patrons.  Outraged by what they saw as the frivolity of Rococo art, the philosophes denounced it, favoring instead moral genre paintings.  The leading French practitioner of this form was Chardin, whose serene works reflected middle-class rather than aristocratic values.  The light, sensuous Rococo style never gained wide popularity in England, where audiences preferred the satirical genre works of Hogarth, and Gainsborough's portraits, which integrated their subjects into richly rendered landscapes.  Further, as head of the Royal Academy of the Arts, Reynolds promoted classical values and applied them in his own paintings, thus laying the groundwork for the Neoclassical style.  A follower of Reynolds, Kaufmann produced portraits and history paintings that earned her commissions from aristocratic patrons.

During this period, Rococo architecture thrived in France and Germany, where architects designed elaborate interiors for Baroque structures.  Boffrand's oval Salon, for example, employed gold, intricately carved wood and plaster, pastels, and mirrors to create a dreamy, ethereal space.  Neumann's Pilgrimage Church used similar elements, along with fancifully decorated columns and pilasters, to fill the space with light and undulating motion.  Under the influence of new Roman archeological finds, British architects pioneered the Palladian style, a precursor of later Neoclassicism.

During this period, music theory turned from its long-held Pythagorean emphasis on the intellect.  In England, Avison advocated the power of music to express feeling, and Burney proposed that music should be appreciated for its own aesthetic merits.  He also extolled the beauties of instrumental music, as did the French composer Rameau.  Rameau overturned traditional theory by emphasizing harmony over melody, arguing that instrumental music should be valued for its ability to achieve harmonies that express human emotion.  In doing so, Rameau set the standard for modern composition.

Enlightenment values found ample expression in the arts of this period.  Through forms ranging from philosophical essays to epistolary novels, the philosophes attacked oppressive traditions and promoted their humanitarian ideals.  Denouncing Rococo art as aristocratic and frivolous, these thinkers praised art that represented middle-class values, thus encouraging members of that class to exercise their new power as shapers of taste.  Philosophe ideals and middle-class values eventually combined with Winckelmann's scholarship on classical art to support the rise of Neoclassicism.  This style came to dominate late-eighteenth-century art, its values of restraint, discipline, and balance shaping works in every medium.