Watteau, Jean-Antoine
Watteau, Antoine ( 1684-1721 ) . A Gallic rococo creative person whose charming and graceful pictures show his involvement in theatre and concert dance, Antoine Watteau is likely best known for his feasts galantes. These romantic and idealised scenes depict intricately costumed ladies and gentlemen at drama in notional out-of-door scenes.
Jean-Antoine Watteau was born on Oct. 10, 1684, in Valenciennes, France. In 1702 he traveled to Paris, where he supported himself by turning out spiritual images and copying the plant of popular Dutch creative persons. In 1704 he began analyzing with Claude Gillot. Gillot, who designed and executed scenery for the phase, passed on to Watteau his love of the Italian theatre and the characters from the commedia dell’arte.
In 1708 Watteau began working with Claude Audran, who had the attention of the hoarded wealths at the Luxembourg Palace. This aggregation included a group of scenes from the life of Marie de ‘ Medici painted in the early 1600s by the Flemish maestro Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens ‘s influence can besides be seen in Watteau ‘s work. In 1709-10 Watteau returned to Valenciennes, where he executed a series of military scenes. In the old ages 1710-12 he painted the first of three versions of the myth of Cythera, the island of love for which pilgrims embark but ne’er arrive. The pictures represented impossible dreams, the retaliation of lunacy on ground and of freedom on moral regulations.
Watteau returned to Paris and in 1715 was befriended by Pierre Crozat, a rich moneyman and art aggregator who owned a glorious aggregation of Flemish and Italian pictures and who admired Watteau ‘s pictures. Watteau lived for a clip in the abode of Crozat, but after a piece he left to populate in privacy. This began the period of his major pictures, including the feasts galantes.
Gersaint ‘s Shopsign ( item )
By 1719 Watteau was enduring from TB. That twelvemonth he traveled to London to see a celebrated doctor, Richard Mead, for whom he painted The Itali
an Comedians. In 1720 he returned to Paris and stayed with his friend E.F. Gersaint, an art trader. For him he did Enseigne de Gersaint, a picture of the inside of Gersaint ‘s store intended for usage as a signboard. Watteau ‘s wellness continued to neglect, and he moved to Nogent-sur-Marne merely east of Paris, where he died on July 18, 1721.
The pictures of Watteau and his fellow rococo painters Francois Boucher and Jean-Honore Fragonard fell from favour in the late 1700s. His work was non to the full appreciated once more until the mid-1800s.
Pierrot ( besides known as Gilles )
One of the few things we can be certain about, in this celebrated but puzzling work, is the fact that Gilles is a Pierrot. Watteau may hold painted it as a mark for the caf & # 1081 ; run by the former histrion, Belloni, who made his name as a Pierrot. The theoretical account, a friend or another histrion, is unknown. Standing with his weaponries swinging at his sides, with a dreamy, naif expression on his face, the moonstruck Pierrot stands out monumentally and idiosyncratically against a leafy Italianate background. At the pes of the hill, reminiscent of a fairground phase, four half-hidden figures — the Doctor on his donkey, L & # 1081 ; andre, Isabelle and the Capitaine — contribute to the uniqueness of the composing and the poetic play.
The Embarkation for Cythera
Genre picture came back into favor when the Academy admitted Watteau to its ranks in 1717 on the presentation of this work, the topic of which was so fresh that the term “ f & # 1082 ; te galante ” was coined to depict it. Pulling its inspiration from the theater, the image shows lovers in party frock — some have oning the pilgrim ‘s hooded ness — coming to seek love on the island of Cythera, under the statue of its goddess, Venus. In an iridescent landscape which owes much to Venetian picture, fable is caught up in the whirl of twosomes in a revery ; a new and less didactic reading of Titian ‘s elegiac manner.
