The notion style may be defined as a set of formal characteristics that express the artistic sensitivity of a certain period. Every style is directly related to the existing historical situation, the mentality, the people’s customs, the interests of the creators and artists, all contribute to the variation of styles through time. The main styles emerge in Europe and were carried to America by way of the colonialism. But to America only got those firmly established in Spain from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. However, they never acquired the characteristics of their European peers, because they were construed with the genuine personality of a large continent.

Rococo is the style that became fashionable after Louis XVI came to the throne of France (1712); its salient features are minute and coquette motifs, such as refined gallantries, jeux d’amour, intimate situations, and erotic and even risqué scenes.

The most prominent representatives were François Boucher and his pupil Jean Honoré Fragonar, whose pictures became famous and shaped the artistic taste of his times. But the Rococo painters suffered disdain from their contemporary counterparts because of the frivolity and glorification of the aristocracy, a rather unfair situation, as these pictures also were an insurrection against the morality of the Church. Their discourse was similar, although more subdued, to that of the Enlightenment supported by philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau. François Boucher was considered the artist in vogue of his times. His artwork ranged from paintings to the ornamentation of numerous buildings, the decoration of porcelain and drawings for such writers as Molière. He painted with light, porcelainous, and cold colors. However, Fragonard was merry and festive. He converted common happenings into aesthetic scenes at the service of beauty and of love. Accused of libertinism he was ousted from the court of Louis XV, but even so he received many private work orders. His most famous painting is “The Happy Accidents of the Swing”, at which he depicts a young lover looking under the dress of his paramour happily swaying on a swing.