PAIGE O'HARA:
A young woman in a billowing pink frock swings with abandon. The artist Hubert Robert painted this work as part of a commission to decorate the Château de Bagatelle, located on the outskirts of Paris. This small château was essentially a playground for French aristocrats, where they engaged in the kinds of flirtatious games and activities Robert depicts here.

Robert was one of several 18th century French artists to interpret the motif of a girl in a pink dress on a swing. They include Jean-Honoré Fragonard, whose works inspired the atmosphere of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

WOLF BURCHARD:
What is important about the image of The Swing is the idea of creating the illusion of movement. And this idea /of movement and life was something that was central to Rococo art.

PAIGE O'HARA:
It also served as inspiration to Disney animation artists over the years. The image of a swinging girl played an important role in the early production stages of several films, finally making it to the big screen in Frozen in 2013.

Animator Glen Keane talks about what he learned from The Swing:

GLEN KEANE:
There are three things that I would constantly emphasize to our team in animating, and I learned these through the Rococo style. It's tilt, rhythm and twist. The Fragonard painting of the woman on the swing, there's a rhythm, a curve that runs through the line of her foot all the way up to her head. There's a twist in her torso. There's a tilt in her shoulders, and her head plays against it. These are the elements of animation that bring a character and a scene to life, that have this natural appeal and rhythm to it.

So there was no movies back in the 1700s, but if a king could have had someone make him a movie, he would have. So instead, he had somebody paint these fantasy, appealing, wonderful rhythmic scenes, that was the French Rococo. That was Disney animation for the French kings.