Watteau, Jean-Antoine
Watteau, Jean-Antoine
Watteau, Antoine (1684-1721). A French rococo artist
whose charming and graceful paintings show his interest in theater and ballet,
Antoine Watteau is probably best known for his fetes galantes. These romantic
and idealized scenes depict elaborately costumed ladies and gentlemen at play
in fanciful outdoor settings.
Jean-Antoine
Watteau was born on Oct. 10, 1684, in Valenciennes, France. In 1702 he traveled
to Paris, where he supported himself by turning out religious pictures and
copying the works of popular Dutch artists. In 1704 he began studying with
Claude Gillot. Gillot, who designed and executed scenery for the stage, passed
on to Watteau his love of the Italian theater and the characters from the
commedia dell'arte.
In
1708 Watteau began working with Claude Audran, who had the care of the
treasures at the Luxembourg Palace. This collection included a group of scenes
from the life of Marie de' Medici painted in the early 1600s by the Flemish
master Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens's influence can also be seen in Watteau's
work. In 1709-10 Watteau returned to Valenciennes, where he executed a series
of military scenes. In the years 1710-12 he painted the first of three versions
of the myth of Cythera, the island of love for which pilgrims embark but never
arrive. The paintings represented impossible dreams, the revenge of madness on
reason and of freedom on moral rules.
Watteau
returned to Paris and in 1715 was befriended by Pierre Crozat, a rich financier
and art collector who owned a splendid collection of Flemish and Italian
paintings and who admired Watteau's paintings. Watteau lived for a time in the
residence of Crozat, but after a while he left to live in seclusion. This began
the period of his major paintings, including the fetes galantes.
Gersaint's Shopsign (detail)
By
1719 Watteau was suffering from tuberculosis. That year he traveled to London
to see a noted physician, Richard Mead, for whom he painted The Italian Comedians. In 1720 he
returned to Paris and stayed with his friend E.F. Gersaint, an art dealer. For
him he did Enseigne de Gersaint,
a painting of the interior of Gersaint's shop intended for use as a signboard.
Watteau's health continued to fail, and he moved to Nogent-sur-Marne just east
of Paris, where he died on July 18, 1721.
The
paintings of Watteau and his fellow rococo painters Francois Boucher and
Jean-Honore Fragonard fell from favor in the late 1700s. His work was not fully
appreciated again until the mid-1800s.
Pierrot (also known as Gilles)
One
of the few things we can be sure about, in this famous but enigmatic work, is
the fact that Gilles is a Pierrot. Watteau may have painted it as a sign for
the cafй run by the former actor, Belloni, who made his name as a Pierrot. The
model, a friend or another actor, is unknown. Standing with his arms dangling
at his sides, with a dreamy, naive look on his face, the moonstruck Pierrot
stands out monumentally and idiosyncratically against a leafy Italianate
background. At the foot of the mound, reminiscent of a fairground stage, four
half-hidden figures--the Doctor on his donkey, Lйandre, Isabelle and the
Capitaine--contribute to the singularity of the composition and the poetic
drama.
The Embarkation for Cythera
Genre
painting came back into favour when the Academy admitted Watteau to its ranks
in 1717 on the presentation of this work, the subject of which was so novel
that the term "fкte galante" was coined to describe it. Drawing its
inspiration from the theatre, the picture shows lovers in party dress--some
wearing the pilgrim's hooded cape--coming to seek love on the island of Cythera,
under the statue of its goddess, Venus. In an iridescent landscape which owes
much to Venetian painting, allegory is caught up in the swirl of couples in a
reverie; a new and less didactic interpretation of Titian's elegiac mode.
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