Antoine Watteau

1684-1721

Jean-Antoine Watteau lived only 36 years, yet he invented a whole genre, the fête galante, and steered painting from the weight of the Baroque toward the lighter, more natural Rococo. His actors, lovers and resting soldiers carry a quiet note of wistfulness that still feels personal.

Origins

Watteau was baptised on 10 October 1684 in Valenciennes, a town of the old County of Hainaut that had passed to France after the Franco-Dutch War. He was the second of four sons of Jean-Philippe Watteau, a roofer said to be given to brawling, and Michelle Lardenois. The family was fairly well off. He showed an early interest in painting and may have been apprenticed to a local painter, Jacques-Albert Gérin. His first subjects were the charlatans who sold quack remedies in the streets of his home town.

Life and turning points

In 1702 he left for Paris. After a time as a scene-painter, in poor health, he made copies of Flemish and Dutch genre pictures in a workshop at Pont Notre-Dame, where his sketchlike technique took shape. By 1705 he was assistant to Claude Gillot, who introduced him to the characters of the commedia dell'arte. After a quarrel he moved to the decorator Claude Audran III, curator of the Palais du Luxembourg, where he could study the Rubens canvases painted for Marie de Medici. In 1709 he won only second prize in the Prix de Rome. Charles de La Fosse helped him become an associate of the Academy in 1712 and a full member in 1717, when he finally delivered his reception piece, the Pilgrimage to Cythera. He later lived with the collector Pierre Crozat. He died on 18 July 1721, aged 36, perhaps of tuberculous laryngitis.

Style and technique

Watteau revived interest in colour and movement in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens, and is credited with inventing the fête galante: scenes of bucolic, idyllic charm with a theatrical air. Many of his subjects come from Italian comedy and ballet. Rubens and the Venetian masters he studied in Crozat's collection were major influences. He was a prolific draughtsman, usually working in the trois crayons technique, and his drawings were admired even by people who found fault with his paintings. Unlike the more playful Rococo of Boucher and Fragonard, his theatrical flair is usually tinged with sympathy and sadness at how quickly love and other pleasures pass.

Stories and anecdotes

When he showed The Departing Regiment to Audran, his master made light of it and told him not to waste his gifts on such subjects. Watteau left, saying he wanted to go home to Valenciennes, and the sale of the picture paid for the journey. His last masterpiece, the Shop-sign of Gersaint, was made for the Paris shop of his friend the dealer Edme-François Gersaint, painted, by his own insistence, in eight days, working only in the mornings to warm up his fingers. It has been compared with Las Meninas as a meditation on art and illusion. In 1720 he went to London to consult the physician Richard Mead, an admirer of his work, but the damp, smoky air undid the treatment. In his final days, the Abbé Haranger said, he was nearly mute, holding a brush and painting imaginary pictures in the air.

Legacy

Little known in his lifetime beyond a small circle, Watteau was rarely mentioned by critics of his day. Michael Levey said he created, without meaning to, the idea of the artist loyal only to himself. Jean de Jullienne published etchings after his drawings in 1726 and 1728 and engravings after his paintings in 1735, a record without precedent that spread his influence across Europe and into the decorative arts. His reach extended to costume, film, poetry and music; the loose Watteau dress is named after him. J. M. W. Turner admired him, the Goncourt brothers revived his fame in France, and in 1984 Watteau societies were founded in Paris and London for his tercentenary.

Schon gewusst?

He made two versions of the Pilgrimage to Cythera, one in the Louvre and one in Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin.
His painting Pierrot was long identified as Gilles.
His buyers were mostly bourgeois, such as bankers and dealers, rather than aristocrats.
His nephew Louis Joseph Watteau and grand-nephew François-Louis-Joseph Watteau also became painters.

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