Neoclassicism Timeline

The Federal style developed completely during the 18th and early 19th centuries in the United States, flourishing under the influence of British taste.

Image source: Federal architecture

Neoclassicism developed in opposition to the Baroque style around 1750 and lasted until approximately 1850. Its emphasis on simplicity and symmetry contrasted with Rococo ornamentation and asymmetry.

Josiah Wedgwood, an important figure in English decorative arts, established the Etruria pottery works. His ceramics reflected the period's interest in classical forms and antiquity.

Image source: Josiah Wedgwood

When Louis XVI acceded to the throne in 1774, Marie Antoinette brought the fashion-oriented Louis XVI style to the French court.

Image source: Louis XVI style

The Adam style was created by brothers Adam and James Adam, who published a volume of etchings on interior ornamentation in 1777.

In 1788, court portraitist Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun held a Greek supper at which the women wore plain white Grecian tunics, reflecting the period's fascination with antiquity.

In 1792, Jacques-Louis David designed a new French national costume at the government's request. Even amid revolutionary efforts to change clothing, the design included tight leggings beneath a coat ending above the knee.

Image source: Jacques-Louis David

During the 19th century, Classicism was the predominant architectural style in Wallachia and Moldavia, later the Kingdom of Romania. It endured for a long time, into the 20th century, while coexisting periodically with other styles.

From about 1800, a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples conveyed through etchings and engravings gave Neoclassicism new impetus in the form of the Greek Revival.

Image source: Greek Revival architecture

By the start of the 19th century, Neoclassical styles had spread widely across Europe.

Teatralna Street in Kropyvnytskyi became a vivid example of 19th-century Neoclassical urban architecture, with its buildings constructed by invited European architects.

Foreign architects and engineers were invited to Romania from the first decade of the 19th century. Most early-century architects were foreigners because Romanian designers had not yet received the necessary training.

The Știrbei Palace on Calea Victoriei in Bucharest was built around 1835 according to plans by French architect Michel Sanjouand, providing an example of secular Neoclassical architecture.

After the middle of the 19th century, Neoclassicism was no longer the main style in many contexts and was increasingly replaced by eclectic combinations of Classical styles.

20th-century Neoclassical music revived elements of the Classical and Baroque styles rather than ancient music itself. It reacted against the chromaticism of late Romanticism and Impressionism while developing alongside musical Modernism.

In Russia, a 20th-century non-visual movement associated with Neoclassicism crystallized as Acmeism around 1910, with Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelshtam as leading representatives.

Ottorino Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, begun in 1917, helped establish the sound world to which musical Neoclassicists aspired.

Igor Stravinsky's Octet for Wind Instruments, completed in 1923, was a landmark of musical Neoclassicism and used Bach-like procedures as part of a broader musical revolution.

Russian architecture underwent a brief but influential Neoclassical revival from 1905 to 1914. It moved from recreations of Alexandrine Empire style toward neo-Renaissance, Palladian, and modernized classical approaches.

After the Soviet crackdown on architects' independence and official rejection of Modernism in 1932, Neoclassicism became one of the choices promoted in Stalinist architecture.

The Palais de Tokyo in Paris, completed in 1937 by André Aubert and Marcel Dastugue, exemplifies the period's continued use of monumental classical design.

Neoclassical and neo-Renaissance approaches persisted in less demanding Soviet residential and office projects until 1955, when Nikita Khrushchev ended expensive Stalinist architecture.

Architect Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, published in 1966, questioned Modernism and recommended reviving the presence of the past in architectural design.

Image source: Vanna Venturi House

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, built from 1970 to 1975, was inspired by the ancient Roman Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum and represented a modern revival of classical architecture.

Ricardo Bofill's Les Arcades du Lac housing project near Paris was developed from 1975 to 1981 and used monumental classical references in a late 20th-century revivalist approach.

Les Espaces d'Abraxas, a monumental housing project near Paris, was built from 1978 to 1983 and extended the revival of classical architectural imagery.

By the first decade of the 21st century, contemporary Neoclassical architecture was commonly grouped under the broader umbrella term New Classical Architecture.

The Driehaus Architecture Prize began recognizing major contributors to 21st-century traditional or classical architecture, with prize money twice as high as that of the modernist Pritzker Prize.

The 2006 Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville exemplifies the construction of contemporary public buildings in a Neoclassical style in the United States.