The beginning of the end for Rococo…

The beginning of the end for Rococo had come in the early 1760s as figures like Voltaire and Jacques-François Blondel began to voice their criticism of the superficiality and degeneracy of the art.

Blondel had decried the "ridiculous jumble of shells, dragons, reeds, palm-trees and plants" in contemporary interiors.

By 1785, Rococo has passed out of fashion in France, replaced by the order and seriousness of Neoclassical artists like Jacques-Louis David.