Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau (
October 10,
1684 -
July 18,
1721) was a
French Rococo painter.
Watteau was born in the
Flemish town of
Valenciennes, which had just been annexed by the French king
Louis XIV. His father was a master tiler. Showing an early interest in
painting, he was apprenticed to
Jacques-Albert Gérin, a local painter. Having little to learn from Gérin, Watteau left for
Paris in about
1702. There he found employment in a workshop at
Pont Notre-Dame, making copies of popular
genre paintings in the Flemish and Dutch tradition.
 |
The Embarkation for Cythera (Louvre version) |
In
1703 he was employed as an assistant by the painter
Claude Gillot. In his studio he became acquainted with the characters of the
commedia dell'arte, a favorite subject of Gillot's that would become one of Watteau's lifelong passions. Afterward he moved to the workshop of
Claude Audran III, an
interior decorator, under whose influence he began to make drawings admired for their consummate elegance. Audran was the curator of the
Palais du Luxembourg, where Watteau was able to see the magnificent series of canvases painted by
Peter Paul Rubens for Queen
Marie de Medici. The Flemish painter would become one of his major influences together with the
Venetian masters he would later study in the collection of his patron and friend, the banker
Pierre Crozat.
In
1709 Watteau tried to obtain the
Prix de Rome and was rejected by the Academy. In
1712 he tried again and was considered so good that, instead of getting the one-year stay in
Rome he was aiming for, he was accepted as a full member of the Academy. He took five years to deliver the required "
reception piece," but it was one of his masterpieces: the
Pilgrimage to Cythera, also called the
Embarkation for Cythera. (Many commentators, however, note that it depicts a
departure from the island of
Cythera, the birthplace of
Venus, thus symbolizing the brevity of love.)
Interestingly, while Watteau's paintings seem to epitomize the aristocratic elegance of the
Régence (though he actually lived most of his short life under the oppressive climate of
Louis XIV's later reign), he never had aristocratic
patrons. His buyers were
bourgeois such as bankers and dealers.
Although his mature paintings seem to be so many depictions of frivolous
fêtes galantes, they in fact display a sober melancholy, a sense of the ultimate futility of life, that makes him, among
18th century painters, one of the closest to modern sensibilities. His many imitators, such as
Nicolas Lancret and
Jean-Baptiste Pater, borrowed his themes but could not capture his spirit.
Among his most famous paintings are
Pierrot (long identified as
"Gilles"),
Fêtes venitiennes,
Love in the Italian Theater,
Love in the French Theater,
"Voulez-vous triompher des belles?" and
Mezzetin. Watteau's final masterpiece exits the pastoral forest locale for a mundane urban set of encounters, the
Shop-sign of Gersaint.[
1] This painting has been described as Watteau's
Las Meninas, in that the theme appears to be the promotion of art. The scene is an art gallery where the façade has magically vanished. Women in their finery peruse paintings for sale. It is perhaps a comment on the final commercial nature of the artistic enterprise. In many ways the aim of art is to represent a world no different from the world beyond the canvas. The gallery and street in this painting are also fused into one contiguous drama.
Watteau alarmed his friends by a carelessness about his future and financial security, as if foreseeing he would not live for long. In
1720, becoming ill, he moved to
England for a while, looking for a better climate but returning in worse health. He died in
Nogent-sur-Marne in
1721 at the age of 37.
The
Watteau dress, a long, sacklike dress with loose pleats hanging from the shoulder at the back, similar to those worn by many of the women is his paintings, is named after him.
If
François Boucher,
Fragonard, and other French Roccoco artists would later depict the unabashed frillery of aristocratic romantic pursuits, Watteau in a few masterpieces anticipates an art about art, the world of art as seen through the eyes of an artist. When not depicting Roccoco whimsicality, he depicts the conflict of art and the external world. His
Pierrot or Gilles seems a confused actor who appears to have forgotten his lines; he has materialized into the fearful reality of existence, sporting as his only armor the pathetic clown costume.
* Schneider, Pierre,
The World of Watteau. Time-Life Books, 1967.
* Levey, Michael,
Rococo to Revolution. Thames and Hudson, 1966.
*
Watteau paintings at the Web Gallery of Art
