Jean-Antoine Watteau (UK:/ˈwɒtoʊ/,US:/wɒˈtoʊ/,[2][3]French:[ʒɑ̃ɑ̃twanvato]; baptised 10 October 1684 – died 18 July 1721)[4] was a Frenchpainter anddraughtsman whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement, as seen in the tradition ofCorreggio andRubens. He revitalized the waningBaroque style, shifting it to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical,Rococo. Watteau is credited with inventing the genre offêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world ofItalian comedy andballet.
Jean-Antoine Watteau[n. 1] was born in October 1684[n. 2] inValenciennes,[1] once an important town in theCounty of Hainaut which became sequently part of theBurgundian andHabsburg Netherlands until its secession to France following theFranco-Dutch War. He was the second of four sons born to Jean-Philippe Watteau (1660–1720) and Michelle Lardenois (1653–1727),[n. 3] and was presumed to be ofWalloon descent.[n. 4] The Watteaus were a quite well-to-do family, although Jean-Philippe, a roofer in second generation, was said to be given to brawling.[n. 5] Showing an early interest inpainting, Jean-Antoine may have been apprenticed toJacques-Albert Gérin,[19] a local painter, and his first artistic subjects were charlatans selling quack remedies on the streets of Valenciennes.[1] Watteau left for Paris in 1702.[20] After a period spent as a scene-painter, and in poor health, he found employment in a workshop atPont Notre-Dame, making copies of populargenre paintings in the Flemish and Dutch tradition;[n. 6] it was in that period that he developed his characteristic sketchlike technique.[21]
His drawings attracted the attention of the painterClaude Gillot, and by 1705 he was employed as an assistant to Gillot, whose work, influenced by those ofFrancesco Primaticcio and theschool of Fontainebleau, represented a reaction against the turgid official art ofLouis XIV's reign.[22][23][24] In Gillot's studio, Watteau became acquainted with the characters of thecommedia dell'arte (which moved onto thethéâtre de la foire following theComédie-Italienne's departure in 1697), a favorite subject of Gillot's that would become one of Watteau's lifelong passions.[25][4]
After a quarrel with Gillot, Watteau moved to the workshop ofClaude Audran III, aninterior decorator, under whose influence he began to make drawings admired for their consummate elegance. Audran was the curator of thePalais du Luxembourg, and from him Watteau acquired his knowledge of decorative art and ornamental design.[21] At the palace, Watteau was able to see themagnificent series of canvases painted byPeter Paul Rubens for QueenMarie de Medici. The Flemish painter would become one of his major influences, together with theVenetian masters that he would later study in the collection of his patron and friend, the bankerPierre Crozat.[4]
During this period Watteau paintedThe Departing Regiment, the first picture in his second and more personal manner, showing influence of Rubens, and the first of a long series of camp pictures. He showed the painting to Audran, who made light of it, and advised him not to waste his time and gifts on such subjects. Watteau determined to leave him, advancing as excuse his desire to return to Valenciennes. He found a purchaser, at the modest price of 60livres, in a man called Sirois, the father-in-law of his later friend and patronEdme-François Gersaint, and was thus enabled to return to the home of his childhood. In Valenciennes he painted a number of the small camp-pieces, notably theCamp-Fire, which was again bought by Sirois, the price this time being raised to 200 livres.[21]
Pleasures of Love (1718–1719)The Feast (or Festival) of Love (1718–1719)The Embarkation for Cythera, 1717,Louvre. Many commentators note that it depicts adeparture from the island ofCythera, the birthplace ofVenus, thus symbolizing the brevity of love.
In 1709, Watteau tried to obtain a one-year stay inRome by winning thePrix de Rome from theAcademy, but managed only to get awarded with the second prize.[26] In 1712 he tried again and was persuaded byCharles de La Fosse that he had nothing to learn from going to Rome; thanks to Fosse he was accepted as an associate member of the Academy in 1712 and a full member in 1717.[21][27] He took those five years to deliver the required "reception piece", one of his masterpieces: thePilgrimage to Cythera, also called theEmbarkation for Cythera.[28]
Watteau then went to live with the collectorPierre Crozat, who eventually on his death in 1740 left around 400 paintings and 19,000 drawings by the masters. Thus Watteau was able to spend even more time becoming familiar with the works of Rubens and the Venetian masters.[29]He lacked aristocraticpatrons; his buyers werebourgeois such as bankers and dealers. Among his most famous paintings, beside the two versions of thePilgrimage to Cythera, one in theLouvre, the other in theSchloss Charlottenburg,Berlin, arePierrot (long identified as"Gilles"),Fêtes venitiennes,Love in the Italian Theater,Love in the French Theater,"Voulez-vous triompher des belles?" andMezzetin. The subject of his hallmark painting,Pierrot (Gilles), is an actor in a white satin costume who stands isolated from his four companions, staring ahead with an enigmatic expression on his face.[30]
Watteau's final masterpiece, theShop-sign of Gersaint, exits the pastoral forest locale for a mundane urban set of encounters. Painted at Watteau's own insistence, "in eight days, working only in the mornings ... in order to warm up his fingers",[31] this sign for the shop in Paris of the paintings dealerEdme François Gersaint is effectively the final curtain of Watteau's theatre. It has been compared withLas Meninas as a meditation on art and illusion.[31] The scene is an art gallery where the façade has magically vanished, and the gallery and street in the canvas are fused into one contiguous drama.[32]
Watteau alarmed his friends by a carelessness about his future and financial security, as if foreseeing he would not live for long. In fact he had been sickly and physically fragile since childhood. In 1720, he travelled to London, England, to consult Dr.Richard Mead, one of the most fashionable physicians of his time and an admirer of Watteau's work. However, London's damp and smoky air offset any benefits of Dr. Mead's wholesome food and medicines. Watteau returned to France, spending six months with Gersaint,[29] and then spent his last few months on the estate of his patron, Abbé Haranger, where he died in 1721, perhaps fromtuberculous laryngitis, at the age of 36. The Abbé said Watteau was semi-conscious and mute during his final days, clutching a paint brush and painting imaginary paintings in the air.[33]
Little known during his lifetime beyond a small circle of his devotees, Watteau "was mentioned but seldom in contemporary art criticism and then usually reprovingly".[34] SirMichael Levey once noted that Watteau "created, unwittingly, the concept of the individualistic artist loyal to himself, and himself alone".[35] If his immediate followers, Lancret and Pater, would depict the unabashed frillery of aristocratic romantic pursuits, Watteau in a few masterpieces anticipates an artabout art, the world of art as seen through the eyes of an artist. In contrast to the Rococo whimsicality and licentiousness cultivated byBoucher andFragonard in the later part ofLouis XV's reign, Watteau's theatrical panache is usually tinged with a note of sympathy, wistfulness, and sadness at the transience of love and other earthly delights.[36] Famously, theVictorian essayistWalter Pater wrote of Watteau: "He was always a seeker after something in the world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all."[37]: 414
Watteau was a prolific draftsman. His drawings, typically executed introis crayons technique, were collected and admired even by those, such ascount de Caylus or Gersaint, who found fault with his paintings.[4] In 1726 and 1728,Jean de Jullienne published suites of etchings after Watteau's drawings, and in 1735 he published a series of engravings after his paintings,The Recueil Jullienne.[4] The quality of the reproductions, using a mixture of engraving and etching following the practice of the Rubens engravers, varied according to the skill of the people employed by Jullienne, but was often very high. Such a comprehensive record was hitherto unparalleled.[4] This helped disseminate his influence round Europe and into the decorative arts.
Watteau's influence on the arts (not only painting, but thedecorative arts,costume,film,poetry,music) was more extensive than that of almost any other 18th-century artist. TheWatteau dress, a long, sacklike dress with loosepleats hanging from the shoulder at the back, similar to those worn by many of the women in his paintings, is named after him. According to Konody's critical assessment in theEncyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, in part, "in his treatment of the landscape background and of the atmospheric surroundings of the figures can be found the germs ofImpressionism".[29] His influence on later generations of painters may have been less apparent in France than in England, whereJ. M. W. Turner was among his admirers.[38] A revived vogue for Watteau began in England during theBritish Regency, and was later encapsulated by theGoncourt brothers in France (Edmond de Goncourt having published acatalogue raisonné in 1875) and theWorld of Art union in Russia.
In 1984 Watteau societies were created in Paris, byJean Ferré, and London, by Dr. Selby Whittingham. A major exhibition in Paris, Washington and Berlin commemorated the 1984 tercentenary of his birth. Since 2000 a Watteau centre has been established at Valenciennes by Professor Chris Rauseo. A catalogue raisonné of Watteau's drawings has been compiled byPierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat, replacing the one by SirKarl Parker and Jacques Mathey;[39] similar projects on his paintings are undertaken by Alan Wintermute[40] andMartin Eidelberg,[41] respectively.[citation needed]
^It is generally agreed that Watteau was the Jean-Antoine Watteau baptised on 10 October 1684, in Valenciennes at the Eglise de Saint-Jacques.[10] However, it has been suggested by Michel Vangheluwe in 1984 that the painter could be the Antoine Watteau born on 6 May 1676, eight years before the traditional date.[11][12]
^Contemporary authors disputed if Watteau could be considered as a Frenchman, given his origin from a recently seized region. InThe Temple of Taste,Voltaire described Watteau as a Flemish artist;[14] similarly,Frederick the Great labeled Watteau and Nicolas Lancret as "French painters of the school of Brabant" in a letter to his sister, theMargravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth.[15][16] Nonetheless, later authors, such asKarl Woermann[17] andRené Huyghe,[18] define Watteau as a Walloon.
^At least one case of such behavior was documented; in 1690, Jean-Philippe Watteau was charged of having broken the leg to Abraham Lesne, burgher.[13]
^For further discussion of Watteau's early years in Paris, seeGlorieux, Guillaume (2002). "Les débuts de Watteau à Paris: le pont Notre-Dame en 1702".Gazette des Beaux-Arts.139:251–262.OCLC887046528.
^Pohl, Jacques (1983). "Quelques caractéristiques de la phonologie du français parlé en Belgique".Langue française.60 (6):30–41.doi:10.3406/lfr.1983.5173.
^Vangheluwe, Michel (1987). "Watteau à Valenciennes". In Moureau, François; Grasselli, Margaret (eds.).Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721: le peintre, son temps et sa légende. Paris, Genève: Champion — Slatkin. pp. 7–9.ISBN2852030381.
^Voltaire (1784). "Le Temple du Goût".Oeuvres completes de Voltaire (in French). Vol. 12. Paris: Impr. de la Société littéraire-typographique. pp. 171 n. 6.OCLC83543415 – via the Internet Archive.Vateau eft un peintre flamand qui a travaillé à Paris, où il est mort il y a quelques années. Il a réussi dans les petites figures qu'il a dessinées & qu'il a très-bien grouppées; mais il n'a jamais rien fait de grand, il en était incapable.
^Frederick II of Prussia (1856). "72. A La Margrave de Baireuth (Ruppin, 9 novembre 1739)".Oeuvres de Frédéric Le Grand (in French). Vol. 27. Berlin: R. Decker. p. 75 – via the Internet Archive.La plupart de mes tableaux sont de Watteau ou de Laucret, a tous deux peintres français de l'éeole de Brabant.
^Huyghe, René (1962)."Watteau: Song of the Soul".Art and the Spirit of Man. Translated from the French by Norbert Guterman. New York: H. N. Abrams. p. 413.OCLC1147729820 – via the Internet Archive.Watteau was a Frenchman, but a Frenchman of recent vintage, for it was only in 1678, six years before he was born, that Valenciennes became French under the Treaty of Nijmegen. He was thoroughly French, for the province of Hainaut had always been French-speaking and culturally oriented to France. Watteau was not a Fleming, as his contemporaries liked to call him; he was a Walloon.
^For further reading on Jacques-Albert Gérin, see the following:
Zimmermann, Michael F. (1989). "Gérin (Jacques-Albert)". In Roman d'Amat, Jean-Charles; Prevost, Michel & Tribout de Morembert, Henri (eds.).Dictionnaire de biographie française. Vol. 15. Paris: Letouzey et Ané. col. 1295.
^Huyghe 1970, p. 13: "The standards Gillot used for his figures had nothing in common with those of the Royal French Academy. His were fine, slight, and mannered: much closer, in fact, to these of Francesco Primaticcio and the School of Fontainbleau."
^Roland Michel, Marianne (1996)."Gillot, Claude". In Turner, Jane (ed.).The Dictionary of Art. Vol. 12. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. pp. 637–638.ISBN1-884446-00-0 – via the Internet Archive. Alsoavailable via Oxford Art Online.
^Eidelberg, Martin (1987). "Watteau in the Atelier of Gillot". In Moureau, François; Grasselli, Margaret (eds.).Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721: le peintre, son temps et sa légende. Paris, Genève: Champion — Slatkin. pp. 45–57.ISBN2852030381.OCLC468860156.
^abBaetjer, Katharine, ed. (2009).Watteau, Music, and Theater. Rosenberg, Pierre (an introduction by); Cowart, Georgia J. (an essay by). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 6.ISBN978-1-58839-335-7..
^Cunningham, Lawrence & Reich, John J. (2010).Culture and Values: A Survey of the Western Humanities. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. p. 399.ISBN9780495568773.
^Pater, Walter (October 1885)."A Prince of Court Painters".Macmillan's Magazine. Vol. 52, no. 312. pp. 401–414 – via the Internet Archive.
^Gowing, Lawrence, andMichel Laclotte. 1987.Paintings in the Louvre. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. p. 506.ISBN1556700075.
^Roland Michel, Marianne (November 1998). "The Rosenberg-Prat Catalogue of Watteau's Drawings".The Burlington Magazine.140 (1148):749–754.JSTOR888091.
^Melikian, Souren (10 July 2008)."A Watteau sets record at £12.36 million in an uneven Old Masters sale".The New York Times. Retrieved29 October 2020.Alan Wintermute, a Christie's specialist based in New York who is currently writing the catalogue raisonné of Watteau's paintings, was able to retrace its history from the beginning down to the middle of the 19th century.
Dacier, Émile; Vuaflart, Albert; Herold, Jacques (1921–1929).Jean de Julienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIII-e siècle (in French). Paris: M. Rousseau. Volumes1,2,3, and4 available via theHeidelberg University Library repository
Mollett, John William (1883).Watteau. Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.OCLC557720162 – via the Internet Archive.
Plax, Julie Anne (2000).Watteau and the Cultural Politics of Eighteenth-Century France. Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-521-64268-X.OCLC803847893.
Plomp, Michiel; Sonnabend, Martin (2016).Watteau: Der Zeichner (exhibition catalogue) (in German). München: Hirmer.ISBN978-3-941399-66-2.
Roseberg, Pierre, ed. (1984).Vies anciennes de Watteau. Paris: Hermann.ISBN2-7056-5985-4.
Rosenberg, Pierre & Prat, Louis-Antoine (1996).Antoine Watteau: catalogue raisonné des dessins (in French). Paris: Gallimard-Electa.ISBN2-07-015043-7.OCLC463981169.
Rosenberg, Pierre; Prat, Louis-Antoine & Eidelberg, Martin (2011).Watteau: The Drawings (exhibition catalogue). London: Royal Academy of Arts.ISBN9781905711703.OCLC740683643.
Sheriff, Mary D., ed. (2006).Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time. Newark: University of Delaware.ISBN978-0-87413-934-1.OCLC185456942.
Staley, Edgcumbe (1902).Watteau and His School. London: George Bell and Sons – via the Internet Archive.
Stein, Perrin (October 2003)."Antoine Watteau (1684–1721)"(essay).Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved18 September 2020.
Vidal, Mary (1992).Watteau's Painted Conversations: Art, Literature, and Talk in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.ISBN0-300-05480-7.OCLC260176725.
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![Pierrot Content, c. 1711–1712, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.[42]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aAntoine_Watteau_-_Pierrot_Content_-_WGA25440.jpg)
![Marriage Contract and Country Dancing, c. 1711, Prado Museum, Madrid.[43]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aCapitulaciones_de_boda_y_baile_campestre_(Watteau).jpg)
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![La Boudeuse, c. 1715–1718, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg[44]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aAntoine_Watteau_030.jpg)
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