Jean-Antoine Watteau, despite his brief life, is one of the key figures in French rococo art and the inventor of the Fête Galante, a genre which showed amorous couples flirting in an idyllic landscape setting.
Although Watteau’s immediate influences were French decorative painters like Claude Gillot and Claude Audran, his real influences were the Venetian poésie of Giorgione (ca. 1477/78–1510), Titian (1488/90–1576) and Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) as well as the mythologies of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640). Watteau’s earliest paintings are of military subjects such as La Porte de Valenciennes (Frick Collection, New York), which depicted French soldiers at rest or on the march. As with nearly all Watteau’s works, they are executed on a small scale and focus on the human dimension: the boredom of the soldiers, their camaraderie, smoking and drinking and playing with camp followers or dogs.
Selected artworks
Further Reading
Katharine Baetjer, ed., Watteau, Music and Theater, exh. cat., New York, 2009
Jed Perl, Antoine’s Alphabet: Watteau and His World, New York, 2008.
Meg Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, Watteau 1684-1721, exh, cat. Paris, 1984.
Marianne Roland-Michel, Watteau: an Artist of the Eighteenth Century, London, 1984.
Ettore Camseca and Pierre Rosenberg, Tout l’œuvre peint de Watteau, Paris, 1968, revised 1982.
Edmond de Goncourt, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d’Antoine Watteau, Paris, 1875.
Notable Exhibitions
Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Center, Watteau at Work: La Surprise, 23 November 2021 – 20 February 2022. Curated by Emily Beeny and Davide Gasparotto.
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, 6 June – 7 September 2003; travelled to Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, 12 October 2003 – 11 January 2004; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 8 February – 9 May 2004. Curated by Philip Conisbee, Colin B. Bailey, and Thomas W. Gaehtgens.
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watteau, Music, and Theater, 22 September – 29 November 2009. Curated by Katharine Baetjer.
Paris, Grand Palais, The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David, 15 October 1991 – 6 January 1992; travelled to Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 23 February – 26 April 1992; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 23 May – 2 August 1992. Curated by Colin Bailey, Philippe Le Leyzour, and Pierre Rosenberg.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Watteau: 1684–1721, 17 June – 23 September 1984; travelled to Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 23 October 1984 – 28 January 1985; Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg, 23 February – 27 May 1985. Curated by Pierre Rosenberg.