Portrait of Jean Antoine Watteau

Jean Antoine Watteau Painting Reproductions 3 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

The Shy Lover, 1718 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Shy Lover 1718

Oil Painting
$2204
Canvas Print
$59.89
SKU: WJA-13342
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 55 x 43 cm
Palacio Real, Madrid, Spain

Recreation Galante, c.1717/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Recreation Galante c.1717/18

Oil Painting
$4483
Canvas Print
$52.08
SKU: WJA-13343
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 111 x 163 cm
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany

The Spring: Fete Champetre in a Water Garden with Figures in a Boat, n.d. by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Spring: Fete Champetre in a Water Garden with ... n.d.

Oil Painting
$2936
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13344
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 32.4 x 45.7 cm
Private Collection

L'Accordee du Village, n.d. by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

L'Accordee du Village n.d.

Oil Painting
$5913
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13345
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: unknown
Private Collection

The Harlequin, Emperor of the Moon, c.1712 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Harlequin, Emperor of the Moon c.1712

Oil Painting
$2668
Canvas Print
$59.33
SKU: WJA-13346
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 65 x 82 cm
Musee des Beaux Arts, Nantes, France

The Two Cousins, c.1716 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Two Cousins c.1716

Oil Painting
$668
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13347
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 30 x 36 cm
Louvre Museum, Paris, France

The Italian Comedy, c.1716 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Italian Comedy c.1716

Oil Painting
$2607
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13348
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 37 x 48 cm
Gemaldegalerie, Berlin, Germany

The Surprise, n.d. by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Surprise n.d.

Oil Painting
$2110
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13349
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 36.3 x 28.2 cm
Private Collection

The Country Dance, c.1711 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Country Dance c.1711

Oil Painting
$2378
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13350
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 43.2 x 32.4 cm
Huntington Library and Art Gallery, California, USA

Fete Champetre, c.1720 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Fete Champetre c.1720

Oil Painting
$3013
Canvas Print
$63.23
SKU: WJA-13351
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 54 x 65.7 cm
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Gathering in a Park, c.1712/13 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Gathering in a Park c.1712/13

Oil Painting
$2711
Canvas Print
$68.00
SKU: WJA-13352
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 47.2 x 56.9 cm
Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain

Pastoral Gathering, c.1718/21 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Pastoral Gathering c.1718/21

Oil Painting
$4124
Canvas Print
$79.38
SKU: WJA-13353
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 48.6 x 64.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

Evening Landscape with Spinner, c.1713/17 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Evening Landscape with Spinner c.1713/17

Oil Painting
$2278
Canvas Print
$64.34
SKU: WJA-13354
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 55 x 66 cm
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands

The Rest, c.1709 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Rest c.1709

Oil Painting
$2749
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13355
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 32 x 42.5 cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain

Capitulations of Wedding and Rural Dance, c.1711 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Capitulations of Wedding and Rural Dance c.1711

Oil Painting
$5187
Canvas Print
$65.46
SKU: WJA-13356
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 47 x 55 cm
Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain

The Music Lesson, c.1717/18 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

The Music Lesson c.1717/18

Oil Painting
$1707
Canvas Print
$50.54
SKU: WJA-13357
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 16.1 x 19.9 cm
The Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom

Fete in a Park (Divertissements Champetres), c.1718/20 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Fete in a Park (Divertissements Champetres) c.1718/20

Oil Painting
$4245
Canvas Print
$51.12
SKU: WJA-13358
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 127.2 x 191.7 cm
The Wallace Collection, London, United Kingdom

Portrait of Antoine de la Roque, 1718 by Watteau | Painting Reproduction

Portrait of Antoine de la Roque 1718

Oil Painting
$2411
Canvas Print
$63.48
SKU: WJA-19019
Jean Antoine Watteau
Original Size: 46 x 54.5 cm
Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan

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