Portrait of Jean Antoine Watteau

Jean Antoine Watteau Painting Reproductions 1 of 3

1684-1721

French Rococo Painter

Jean-Antoine Watteau (October 10, 1684 - July 18, 1721) was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement (in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens), and revitalized the waning Baroque idiom, which eventually became known as Rococo. He is credited with inventing the genre of fetes galantes: scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with an air of theatricality. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet.

Early life and training
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 of Flemish descent. Showing an early interest in painting, he was apprenticed to Jacques-Albert Gerin, a local painter. Having little to learn from Gerin, 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, it was in that period that he developed his characteristic sketchlike technique.
In 1703 he was employed as an assistant by the painter Claude Gillot, whose work represented a reaction against the turgid official art of Louis XIV's reign. In Gillot's studio Watteau became acquainted with the characters of the commedia dell'arte (its actors had been expelled from France several years before), 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.

Mature works
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, rather than receiving the one-year stay in Rome for which he had applied, 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.
Interestingly, while Watteau's paintings seem to epitomize the aristocratic elegance of the Regence (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 fetes 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, beside the two versions of the Pilgrimage to Cythera (one in the Louvre, the other in the Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin), are Pierrot (long identified as "Gilles"), Fetes venitiennes, Love in the Italian Theater, Love in the French Theater, "Voulez-vous triompher des belles?" and Mezzetin. The subject of his hallmark painting, Pierrot or Gilles, with his slowly fading smile, 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. The painting may be read as Watteau's wry comment on his mortal illness.
Watteau's final masterpiece, the Shop-sign of Gersaint, exits the pastoral forest locale for a mundane urban set of encounters. Painted at Watteau's own insistence, "to take the chill of his fingers", this sign for an art shop in Paris is effectively the final curtain of Watteau's theatre. It 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 facade has magically vanished. The gallery and street in the canvas are 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 wished to make the best of his time and worked with feverish haste. Watteau's plans to return to Valenciennes failed to materialize. He died in Nogent-sur-Marne in 1721 at the age of 37.

Critical assessment and legacy
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". Sir Michael Levey once noted that Watteau "created, unwittingly, the concept of the individualistic artist loyal to himself, and himself alone". If his immediate followers (Lancret and Pater) would 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. In contrast to the Rococo whimsicality and licentiousness cultivated by Boucher and Fragonard in the later part of Louis 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.
Watteau's influence on the arts (not only painting, but the decorative arts, costume, film, poetry, music) was more extensive than that of almost any other 18th-century artist. According to the 1911 Britannica, "in his treatment of the landscape background and of the atmospheric surroundings of the figures can be found the germs of Impressionism". 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 in his paintings, is named after him. A revived vogue for him began in Europe during the Victorian era and was later encapsulated by the Goncourt brothers and the World of Art. In 1984 Watteau societies were created in Paris and London. Since 2000 a Watteau centre has been established at Valenciennes.

66 Watteau Paintings

La Boudeuse (The Capricious Girl), c.1718 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

La Boudeuse (The Capricious Girl) c.1718

Oil Painting
$1565
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2968
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 42 x 34 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Actors of the Comedie-Francaise, c.1714/15 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Actors of the Comedie-Francaise c.1714/15

Oil Painting
$2025
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2970
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 20 x 25 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

An Embarrasing Proposal, c.1715/16 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

An Embarrasing Proposal c.1715/16

Oil Painting
$2502
Canvas Print
$56.46
SKU: WJA-2971
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 65 x 84.5 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Savoyard with a Marmot, 1716 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Savoyard with a Marmot 1716

Oil Painting
$1487
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2972
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 40.5 x 32.5 cm
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Harlequin and Columbine, c.1716/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Harlequin and Columbine c.1716/18

Oil Painting
$2420
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2973
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 35.9 x 25.9 cm
The Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom

The Music Party (Les charmes de la vie), c.1717/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Music Party (Les charmes de la vie) c.1717/18

Oil Painting
$2782
Canvas Print
$54.24
SKU: WJA-2974
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 67.3 x 92.5 cm
The Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom

Les Champs Elisees, c.1717/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Les Champs Elisees c.1717/18

Oil Painting
$2547
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2975
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 33.1 x 42.6 cm
The Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom

Gilles and his Family (Sous un habit de Mezetin), c.1716 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Gilles and his Family (Sous un habit de Mezetin) c.1716

Oil Painting
$1626
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2976
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 27.7 x 21 cm
The Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom

Pastoral Dance, c.1706/10 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Pastoral Dance c.1706/10

Oil Painting
$2615
Canvas Print
$62.55
SKU: WJA-2977
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 49.5 x 60 cm
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, USA

The Festival of Love (The Pleasures of Love), 1717 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Festival of Love (The Pleasures of Love) 1717

Oil Painting
$2936
Canvas Print
$61.71
SKU: WJA-2978
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 61 x 75 cm
Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany

The Venitian Festival, c.1718/19 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Venitian Festival c.1718/19

Oil Painting
$3222
Canvas Print
$62.41
SKU: WJA-2979
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 55.9 x 45.7 cm
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Pierrot (Gilles), c.1718/19 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Pierrot (Gilles) c.1718/19

Oil Painting
$1584
Canvas Print
$61.17
SKU: WJA-2980
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 185 x 150 cm
Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Pierrot Content, c.1712 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Pierrot Content c.1712

Oil Painting
$1605
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2981
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 35 x 31 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain

Whatever I Build, Assassins Destroy, c.1716/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Whatever I Build, Assassins Destroy c.1716/18

Oil Painting
$2936
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2982
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 26 x 37 cm
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia

Meeting in the Open Air, c.1719/20 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Meeting in the Open Air c.1719/20

Oil Painting
$3186
Canvas Print
$61.71
SKU: WJA-2983
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 60 x 75 cm
Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, Germany

View through the Trees in the Park Pierre Crozat, c.1715 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

View through the Trees in the Park Pierre Crozat c.1715

Oil Painting
$2069
Canvas Print
$64.98
SKU: WJA-2984
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 46.7 x 55.3 cm
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts, USA

Mezzetin, c.1718/20 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Mezzetin c.1718/20

Oil Painting
$1711
Canvas Print
$60.00
SKU: WJA-2985
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 55.2 x 43.2 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA

Le faux-pas (The Misste), c.1716/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Le faux-pas (The Misste) c.1716/18

Oil Painting
$1414
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2986
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 40 x 31.5 cm
Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Quadrille (La Contredanse), c.1716/19 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Quadrille (La Contredanse) c.1716/19

Oil Painting
$2502
Canvas Print
$61.14
SKU: WJA-2987
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 44.5 x 54.6 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA

The Foursome (La Partie Quarree), c.1713 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Foursome (La Partie Quarree) c.1713

Oil Painting
$2726
Canvas Print
$78.34
SKU: WJA-2988
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 49.5 x 62.9 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA

The Fortune Teller, c.1710 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Fortune Teller c.1710

Oil Painting
$2281
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-2989
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 37.1 x 27.9 cm
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, USA

The Scale of Love, c.1715/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Scale of Love c.1715/18

Oil Painting
$2615
Canvas Print
$76.31
SKU: WJA-3218
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 50.8 x 59.7 cm
National Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Reclining Nude, c.1713/17 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Reclining Nude c.1713/17

Oil Painting
$1271
Canvas Print
$50.22
SKU: WJA-3557
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 14 x 17.1 cm
Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, USA

Pilgrimage to Cythera, c.1718/19 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Pilgrimage to Cythera c.1718/19

Oil Painting
$3797
Canvas Print
$51.20
SKU: WJA-8247
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 129 x 194 cm
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany

Top