ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF 
 THE GREAT ARTISTS. 
 
 ANTOINE WATTEAU. 
 
ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF 
 THE GREAT ARTISTS. 
 
 The following volumes, each illustrated with front 14 to 20 Engravings, are 
 now ready, price y. 6d. Those marked with an asterisk are 2.s. 6d. 
 
 GIOTTO. By Harry Quilter, M.A. 
 FRA ANGELICO. By C. M. Phillimore. 
 
 FRA BARTOLOMMEO and AND: DEL SARTO. By Leader Scott. 
 
 MANTEGNA and FRANCIA. By Julia Cartwright. 
 
 GHIBERTI and DONATELLO.* By Leader Scott. 
 
 LUCA DELLA ROBBIA.* By Leader Scott. 
 
 LEONARDO DA VINCL By Dr. J. Paul Richter. 
 
 MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI. By Charles CLtMENT. 
 
 RAPHAEL. By N. D'Anvers. 
 
 TITIAN. By R. F. Heath, M.A. 
 
 TINTORETTO. By W. R. Osler. 
 
 CORREGGIO.* By M. Compton Heaton. 
 
 VELAZQUEZ. By E. Stowe, M.A. 
 MURILLO.* By Ellen E. Minor. 
 
 ALBRECHT DURER. By R. F. Heath, M.A. 
 
 THE LITTLE MASTERS OF GERMANY. By W. B. Scott, 
 
 HANS HOLBEIN. By Joseph Cundall. 
 
 OVERBECK. By J. Beavington Atkinson. 
 
 REMBRANDT. By J. W. Mollett, B.A. 
 
 RUBENS. By C. W. Kett, M.A. 
 
 VAN DYCK and HALS. By P. R. Head, B.A. 
 
 FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. By Lord Ronald Gower. 
 
 CLAUDE LORRAIN. By Owen J. Dullea. [/« preparation. 
 
 WATTEAU. By J. W. Mollett, B.A.* 
 VERNET and DELAROCHE. By J. RuuTZ Rees. 
 
 ROUSSEAU AND MILLET. By W. E. Henley. [In preparation. 
 
 MEISSONIER.* By J. W. MOLLETT, B.A. 
 
 SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. By F. S. Pulling, M.A. 
 WILLIAM HOGARTH. By Austin Dobson. 
 
 GAINSBOROUGH and CONSTABLE. By G. Brock-Arnold, M.A. 
 
 ROMNEY and LAWRENCE.* By Lord Ronald Gower, F.S.A. 
 
 TURNER. By Cosmo Monkhouse. 
 
 SIR DAVID WILKIE. By J. W. Mollett, B.A. 
 
 SIR EDWIN LANDSEER. By F. G. Stephens. 
 
The whole world without Art would be one great wilderness'^ 
 
 WATTEAU 
 
 JOHN W.^OLLETT, B.A. 
 
 OFFICIER DE L'INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE, FRANCE, 
 AUTHOR OF "LIFE OF WILKIE," 
 ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, 
 CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1883. 
 
 MD 
 
{All fights reserved.) 
 
 BUNGAT: CLAY AND TAYLOR, PttlNTEBS. 
 
 THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM LIBRARY 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 , „^ ^ PAGE 
 
 Watte AU s Work and Position in the History of Art . . i 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 1684—1709. 
 
 Birth — Parentage — Local and Hereditary Influences — 
 
 Early Education, and Apprenticeship in Art. ... 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 1709—1719. 
 
 Visit to Valenciennes — Admission to the Academy — Life in 
 
 Paris 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 1719—1721. 
 
 Visit to England — Return to France, and Death .... 46 
 
 M 3 51 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Watteau's engraved and other work 57 
 
 Portraits 58 
 
 ,, Satirical and Allegorical "Works 59 
 
 ,, Mythological Subjects 61 
 
 ,, Military Scenes 62 
 
 Theatrical Scenes 63 
 
 „ Character Figures 65 
 
 „ Domestic Scenes, including Fetes Champ&tres . 66 
 
 Pictures in the Louvre 76 
 
 Pictures in England 77 
 
 Chronology of Watteau's Life 80 
 
 Appendix 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAnE 
 
 Portrait of "Watteatt Frontispiece 
 
 Minuet in a Sunbeam xii 
 
 Study for a Landscape 13 
 
 Study for Decoration 24 
 
 La Partie Carrie ?>'> 
 
 Tuning the Guitar 40 
 
 M. DE Julienne {Chazaud Collection) 48 
 
 Study of a Girl's Head 5(5 
 
 L'Jndifferent {Louvre) 64 
 
 La Finette (Lotivre) 65 
 
 Perfect Harmony i. • • ■ ''^ 
 
 Gilles {Louvre, Lacaza Collectio7i) 74 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 WATTEAU'S WORK AND POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF ART. 
 
 ONTENELLE has a fanciful theory that the inspiration of 
 
 art and letters is acted upon like a barometer by the 
 weather. 
 
 " The eighteenth century," he says, "was distinguished with a mild 
 sun and laughing sky, and earth covered in roses. France was a 
 universal garden rich with the sweetest and most enervating perfumes. 
 Then were born two delicate children destined to give spirit and 
 colour to their age ; they were Voltaire and Watteau, the represent- 
 ative poet and painter of the eighteenth century. " 
 
 In the same spirit M. Arsene Honssaye speaks of the parallel- 
 ism of art and letters. 
 
 " Poussin, Le Sueur, Champaigne, and Le Brun are a good pendant to 
 Corneille, Moliere, Boileau, and Racine. La Fontaine has no pendant, 
 he was himself poet and painter. In the eighteenth century grandeur 
 and simplicity meet. Voltaire, who is only poet by the lightness of 
 his grace, was born at the same time as Watteau, with the same fire 
 of genius, the same caprice. Marivaux, Gentil-Bernard, Crebillon- 
 le-gai, and Boufflers are contemporaries of Van Loo, Boucher, La 
 Tour, and Fragonard. Later on Greuze and Florian appear together ; 
 then David and Prud'hon contend nobly with Marie-Joseph Chenier 
 and Andre Chenier, and thus painting and poetry advanced hand in 
 hand in France." 
 
 W 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 Those who regard Watteau from the point of view of the 
 subject matter of his art, who class him together with the 
 feeblest of his unworthy imitators, who are impressed rather 
 Avith the charms of the fairyland that he invented than with 
 the solid artistic merits of his work, call Watteau a purely 
 French painter, and the founder of a school of French painting 
 isolated from the great stream of modern art, and peculiar to the 
 eighteenth century, or rather to the era of the Kegency. But 
 the subject of his compositions, full of poetry and charm as they 
 are, is insignificant by the side of their artistic merit. 
 
 " If painting consists, not in tlie expression of tragedies upon canvas, 
 but in inventing witli poetic feeling, and impressing by colour, 
 "Watteau is the greatest of French painters. None has surpassed him 
 in his love of Nature and his feeling for the ideal. He creates an 
 immense and infinite Nature, which he envelopes in a luminous 
 atmosphere " ( Th. de Banville). 
 
 Others, judging by his later works, in which his colouring 
 approaches to that of the Venetians, call him a disciple of Paolo 
 Veronese. But he only studied the works of this master late in 
 life, when his taste was already formed. A more influential 
 school of critics, whose verdict is confirmed by modern opinion, 
 classify him with the Flemish painters, and the study of his 
 history has shown that it was undoubtedly from the works of 
 Eubens that the most important art impressions of his early 
 life were derived. 
 
 "At the Manchester Exhibition," says M. Burger, "the Amiosements 
 Champetres of "Watteau are close to the FMinhow of Rubens, and the 
 two pictures harmonize well. The tone of the landscape, the sky, the 
 rays of the setting sun among the foliage, the delicious flesh tints of 
 the women seated on the sward in robes of iridescent colours, have all 
 the quality of Rubens. Watteau is French in tendence and genius, 
 and in style he is of the Flemish frontier-land, and in execution and 
 colour he is a disciple of Rubens. It is not far from Valenciennes to 
 Antwerp. " 
 
 Combining all verdicts and criticisms, we perceive that beyond 
 
THE TREATMENT OF LIGHT. 
 
 3 
 
 and above the seductions of Watteau's fanciful poetry, and tlie 
 naive charms of his composition, we are to look for his higher 
 claim to immortality in the same quality that makes beautiful 
 the coarse interiors of Teniers, BrouAver, and Van Ostade, and 
 sets Rembrandt on his pinnacle of fame — 
 
 " The treatment of Light — the soul of painting — which, modified in 
 intensity and in direction by each object that it falls upon, plays 
 from one to the other like a rebounding ball, absorbed by some 
 bodies, reflected by others, passing through the diaphanous, half 
 penetrating in the down of a peach, or the froth of a vessel of beer, 
 in the silky hair of a spaniel or the curls of a girl ; scattering abroad on 
 its way all colours in infinite gradation ; now blotted in broad patches, 
 now split into a thousand rays each of which has its destiny as they 
 separate, meet, and mingle like the waves of a moving sea ; brilliant 
 at every angle, gliding softly round all curves, in the corners of 
 furniture, in the wrinkles of a face ; here and there brightly reflected 
 on the eyes, or on metals, or on the polish of marble or mirror, or 
 deadened on the surface of a porous vase, or changed by clouds, by 
 vapour, or by smoke ; varying at every rent or stain of a rag, or re- 
 splendent in the irid shades and reflections of a velvet or satin ; 
 mingling with the colour of every part an echo of the parts that are 
 near it, and from change to change passing on to the ead of this 
 long Odyssey ; and, ready to die or escape from the picture, 'showing 
 on the last object that it illuminates the traces of all the modifications 
 it has passed through, all combined and mingled as the old man's 
 wrinkles show the traces of the great emotions of his life " {L^on 
 Dumont). 
 
 The reader should compare with the above the remarks of M. 
 Biirger on the two pictures, L' Indifferent and La Finette, on p. 65. 
 
 M. Leon Dumont enlarges upon the theory that the whole 
 pantheon of painters is naturally divided into two schools by 
 the atmospheric conditions of their homes ; that in the cloudless 
 South there can be no such study of the effects of light and 
 shade as there is in those parts of the world where the light of 
 day is subjected to the accidents of mist and fog, and where a 
 great proportion of life is passed under cover, and by artificial 
 light. Both schools existed in France, the one represented by 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 WATTE AU. 
 
 the classical painters, followers of the Italian method, and the 
 
 other par excellence by Watteau. 
 
 "It is remarkable," he adds, "that all these champions of light and 
 colour in France come from the north of Europe. At the end of 
 the fifteenth century we have the Clouets coming from Brussels to 
 Paris, at the very period of the Italian renaissance under Leonardo 
 da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto. The taste for the picturesque 
 appears in the Clouet portraits in the prominence given to costumes, 
 in feathered caps and bright-coloured tunics, rich armour and the 
 glitter of precious stones. In the sixteenth century there are the 
 brothers Le Nain ; they were born at Laon, and probably instructed 
 by a Fleming. Their rustic scenes and drinking booths are full of 
 excellent treatment of reflected lights, their characters are peasants 
 of Flanders and Picardy. Kubens had a powerful influence on the 
 groAvth of French taste in art. He lived a long time at Paris, and 
 the masterpieces that he produced there have ever since been studied, 
 copied, or imitated by painters. After the conquest of Flanders and 
 
 I Hainault by Louis XIV. there were no Flemish painters excepting 
 at Paris. Van der Meulen became the historiographer of the great 
 king. A native of Lille, Monnoyer, was the first great flower painter 
 who appeared in France ; his chiaroscuro is admirable. Largilliere 
 was taught painting at Antwerp ; he produced scenes of peasant life 
 in the manner of Van Ostade, and puppet-shows after Pieter van Laar. 
 Eigaud was not only the pupil of an imitator of Van Dyck, he 
 imitated him himself, and his women are very Flemish. Tournieres 
 of Normandy, who made some charming compositions in the manner 
 of Schalken and Gerard Dow, was trained in the first principles of 
 painting by a Dutchman, Lucas of the Hague. Desportes, our first 
 animal painter, was a disciple of the Fleming Nicasius, who was a 
 pupil of Snyders ; he certainly owes to these masters the freshness 
 of his colouring. These were the precursors of Antoine Watteau in 
 France." 
 
 It is, however, not to be supposed that it was from these 
 " precursors " that Watteau derived his similarity of excellence 
 with them. Their names are quoted as those of painters who, 
 born and educated under similar influences, directed their talents 
 to the same end as Watteau, and share with him the honours of 
 the school of art which treated Light as " the soul of painting." 
 It was not from each other that they derived this secret, but 
 
DECADENCE OP FRENCH ART AFTER WATTEAU. 5 
 
 from untrammelled study of the nature of their native skies. It 
 seems absurd to argue that their merit in this respect was greater 
 or less than that of the Italian school of painters who did the 
 same. The great leaders of each school were ultimately truthful 
 to Nature as they saw it, hut Watteau has the peculiar merit of 
 resisting in a world of fiction and conventionality, and under a 
 drilling that would have turned a lesser genius into a scene 
 paiuter, the debasing attractions of his time and surroundings. 
 
 The remarks of M. Dmsieux (' Les Artistes Frangais a 
 TEtranger.') on the origin and tendency of Watteau' s school are 
 worth quoting. De la Fosse and Jouvenet, he says, are stages 
 in the process of transition from the school of Le Brun to that 
 of the eighteenth century. But in this iaterval there was a 
 reaction in the whole French school of art, the first symptoms 
 of which appear immediately after the death of Le Brun. 
 Architects, engravers, and decorative artists shook off foreign 
 and antique influences, and strove to create a new style of art of 
 undeniable originality. "Le Moine and Watteau, the engravers 
 Coyzevox and Coustou, the architects Eobert de Cotte and De 
 Boifrand, are the most illustrious representatives of this new 
 phase of French art. Watteau — that eminent artist, the 
 greatest colourist of the French school — is quite original, though 
 he owes much to Gillot. The ' Fetes galantes ' and the ' Con- 
 versations ' of Watteau are charming and spirited works of 
 imagination, in design altogether French, and most wonderful 
 in colour. This painting breaks with all the solemn traditions 
 of the school of the seventeenth century, as completely as it 
 deviates from the Flemish style in its nobility and elegance." 
 
 The changes that had come about in the style of decorating 
 apartments reacted on painting in a regrettable degree, by 
 excluding all pictures beyond a certain size. So we see Boucher, 
 the pupil of Lemoine, and the principal painter of the age of 
 Louis XV., painting nothing but genre subjects and decora- 
 tions. After him the school feU almost entirely into a faded 
 
6 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 voluptuous mannerism typical of the manners of the age ; the 
 most melancholy representatives of this decadence are Baudouin 
 and Lavreince. 
 
 M. Diderot "wrote, in 1767, " The French school has much 
 degenerated, and will degenerate more. There is no more 
 demand for large pictures. The luxury and evil morals which 
 have suhdivided the palaces into little cabinets will destroy the 
 fine arts." 
 
 " Le Brun," says Houssaye, "provoked the decadence ; Watteau broke 
 the yoke. Le Brun had tainted French art with the wig of Louis 
 XIV. ; Watteau brought back laughter and liberty in his 'fetes 
 galantes,' &c. Watteau delivered art from the academic traditions of 
 Le Brun ; then David, who was a sculptor rather than a painter, 
 created a counter revolution. " 
 
 But the school of Watteau had before this sunk into well- 
 merited contempt, and his imitators and followers had nothing 
 of his character but the choice and imitation of his subjects. 
 This was not apprehended by his fellow-countrymen, though 
 they saw foreign collectors competing eagerly for Watteau's 
 works, and it has taken a hundred years of time to sift the real 
 gold of Watteau's work from the dross of that of his followers, 
 and to put him, as he ought to be, alone and unrivalled in the 
 peculiar school that he rather is than founded. ^ 
 
 1 Compare the criticisms of Wilkie — Sir Joshua Keynolds, and others, 
 in Chapter IV., ad fin. p. 79. 
 
W ATTEAU. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 1684—1709. 
 
 BIRTH — PARENTAGE LOCAL AND HEREDITARY INFLUENCES 
 
 EARLY EDUCATION, AND APPRENTICESHIP IN ART. 
 
 'T^HE river Scheldt divides above Yalenciennes into a great 
 
 X number of separate channels, which flow about among the 
 narrow and tortuous streets of the city, and form a great moat of 
 running water round the fortifications. In a corner on the north- 
 west the branches of the river surround an island approached by 
 a broad bridge on the south end, and occupied by the church of 
 S. Jacques and the cloistral buildings pertaining to it. The 
 register of this church contains the following entry : — 
 
 " On the tenth of October, 1684, was baptized Jean-Antoine, 
 legitimate son of Jean Philippe Watteau, and of Michelle Lar- 
 denois his wife. Jean-Antoine Boucher, parin, Anne Maillar, 
 marene. P. E, Ptre." 
 
 The city of Valenciennes had, at the above date, been 
 French for a few years. Many centuries of flourishing inde- 
 pendence and commercial prosperity, due to its situation at 
 
8 
 
 WATTE A.U. 
 
 the extreme inland point of the navigable Scheldt, had accus- 
 tomed its citizens to wealth and the luxuries of life, amonw 
 which last a liberal patronage of the fine arts, especially those 
 of Antwerp, was traditional. The monasteries and private 
 houses about Valenciennes contained important treasures of 
 pauiting, including masterpieces by Eubens, Van Dyck, Martin 
 de Vos, and other representatives of the Flemish school. The 
 principal pictures still to be seen in the local museum were 
 already there, and, no doubt, a great many which have since 
 been destroyed in the revolutionary troubles, or in the English 
 bombardment of the city in 1793. The proud and ancient city 
 had before Watteau's birth endured more than a century of 
 fearfully disastrous oppression. The citizens, in daily correspond- 
 ence and full sympathy with their neighbours of the Nether- 
 lands, had freely adopted the doctrines of the Eeformation, 
 and, at first, this innovation, peacefully cultivated, produced 
 unmitigated benefits. There was a contest of emulation in 
 merit. The Eoman clergy introduced much-needed reforms in 
 the monasteries ; the Eef ormers distributed their substance in 
 abundant benefactions to the poor. But soon the character of 
 the contest changed: "the Catholics raised pyres, the Protestants 
 broke images." The break-out of iconoclasm at Valenciennes 
 happened six days after that of Antwerp, on the 24th of August, 
 1566, six years to a day before the massacre of S. Bartholomew. 
 The churches were sacked, the images broken, the convents 
 plundered. 
 
 This outrage was fearfully avenged in the siege of the city in 
 the following year by ISToircarmes, who finally entered the gates 
 on Palm Sunday, and found the streets lined with despairing 
 groups of women and children, " dans tout le d^sordre de la 
 douleur," holding out branches of green palms in their hands. 
 Then followed the well-known episode of horror, the " conseil de 
 sang ; " the demoniac emissaries of Alba ; a period of universal 
 terror and confusion, and finally of general flight, by which in 
 
ETHNIC INFLUENCES. 
 
 9 
 
 less than a year, besides the innumerable deaths by execution or 
 wholesale massacre, a hundred thousand houses were left standing 
 empty, while all the neighbouring states were peopled with the 
 fugitive inhabitants. 
 
 The next great disaster of the " munitissima urbs " was its 
 siege by Louis XIV, in person, in the year 1677, when it was 
 again taken by assault. The city was exempted from pillage 
 on condition of its furnishing the funds for the construction of 
 the citadel, afterwards built by Vauban. In 1701 it is described 
 as "great, beautiful, commercial, rich, and very strong." 
 
 The transfer of this Flemish city to the crown of France did 
 not alter the characteristics of the place or its inhabitants. In 
 spite of their loss in wealth and independence, the Flemings of 
 Valenciennes maintained their ancient qualities of thrift and 
 industry, courage and perseverance ; their women still cherished 
 the form of happiness, for which Bernardin de S. Pierre praises 
 them, of " incessant occupation in their household duties, and 
 perpetual harmony with their husbands ; " and their passion for 
 cleanliness described by Madame de Bocage : — 
 
 "Places where one walks are cleaner there than our plates and dishes. 
 The women carry their husbands on tlieir backs that they may not 
 have to tread on the floors. The very cows have their tails tied up 
 to keep them clean. The servant girls would despise a master who 
 should refuse to have the furniture turned out to the barn for the 
 Saturday's washing, and the windows and all the walls are washed 
 every day." 
 
 A great body of enthusiastic commentary exists on the beauty 
 of the Flemish women, especially of those of Valenciennes. 
 Regnard, the comic author, who passed through the city in 
 1681, says in his journal, "We remarked that all the women in 
 this country are beautiful." M. Dieudonne (' Statistique du 
 Xord') says — 
 
 " In general all ancient wi'iters praise the beauty of the people, of both 
 sexes, in these parts. It is observed, to this day, and especially in 
 the cities, that the men are finer in feature than the women, and that 
 
10 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 those of the latter possess more regularity than grace or refinement. 
 As we advance towards the north we find those large, fine, strong 
 women with the fresh complexions, with whom Eubens adorns his 
 pictures, by the side of whom our delicate Parisians look like ghosts. 
 Eeturning southward, at Valenciennes, for example, or Douai, there 
 is more delicacy and softness {mignardise) in the features of the 
 women." 
 
 If we now turn to a portrait of Antoine Wattean, it will not 
 be difficult to re-clothe Ms : careworn young face with the full 
 Flemish regularity of feature, softened by the mignardise 
 peculiar to his native city. Several portraits of Watteau, 
 painted by himself, exist, and all of them represent a fair, 
 delicate face of regular features, but giving full expression to 
 that nervous sensibility of temperament which was his prominent 
 characteristic. 
 
 From time immemorial the Flemings have been remarkable 
 for the passion that is born in them for fetes, fairs, and gala 
 days ; and what was said of them in the seventeenth century by 
 Guicciardini (' Descrittionedi tutti paesi bassi ') is true to this day : 
 
 "They have such a love of joy and amusement that a journey of 
 twenty-five, thirty, or forty leagues is not an obstacle to them when 
 there is an opportunity of going to a feast, especially to one of those 
 annual feasts called ' kermesses.' " 
 
 Any modern traveller who has passed by way of Li^ge and 
 Cologne at carnival time, or has spent a kermess in Eotterdam, 
 can confirm the old traveller's report. None of the abundant 
 illustrations of these peasant gatherings which the Dutch 
 masters have bequeathed to us have an inkling of the refine- 
 ment with which Watteau has idealized the subject ; but the 
 fetes themselves appear to have been identical throughout the 
 Netherlands, and there is no reason to believe that those of 
 Valenciennes differed from others in kind. The gross revels 
 painted by Teniers and Van Ostade existed in Valenciennes, and 
 the elegant harlequins of Watteau carried the same spangles 
 into Holland. Watteau's subjects of this class are not French, 
 
FLEMISH LOVE OF PAGEANTS. 
 
 11 
 
 hnt riemisli; recollections of his home, not of the opera at 
 Paris. 
 
 A peculiarly Flemisli creation %yas Saint Pansard, personified 
 Slirove Tuesday, the Carnival in person. He is of remote 
 antiquity, and mentioned by Eabelais. On Ash Wednesday he 
 was marched through the streets of Lille, in the likeness of a 
 well-clothed person, fat and hearty, followed by a train of shop- 
 keepers and fish-women. His procession was renewed every 
 Sunday, but at each appearance his corpulence diminished and 
 his train of attendants dwindled. On Palm Sunday he appeared 
 pale, exhausted, and with no attendants but a surgeon and 
 apothecary, Finally on Easter Eve he died in the streets at 
 noonday in the arms of a hospital nurse. 
 
 Among the Flemish festivals, M. Dinanx mentions those 
 specially appointed for the children : S. Gregory for the smaller 
 school-children, S. Catherine for the girls, S. Mcolas for the 
 boys, Christmas of course for all, and finally Innocents Day, which 
 used to be observed in the following singular manner. The 
 youngest child in the household was on that day its master, and, 
 dressed in the clothes and wearing the jewellery and laces of 
 the head of the house, gave his orders to the servants' who 
 attended his levee and received their instructions for the 
 arrangements of the day, which were faithfully carried out 
 (subject, it is to be presumed, to the restrictions of prudence and 
 possibility). 
 
 Watteau has shown in his works that in respect to the 
 appreciation of festivals he was a true son of his country, and 
 the earliest authentic record that we have of his childish days 
 is connected with his love for the histrionics of the market- 
 place. 
 
 The "Watteau,^ or, as it would be written in the Eouchi dialect, 
 
 1 In the old Walloon language the "W is substituted for G, and the very- 
 name ' Wallon ' is derived from ' Gallus.' ' "Watteau ' stands for ' Gateau,' 
 as 'William' does for 'Guillaume,' &c. {A. Dinaux). 
 
12 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 Wattiau, family was very respectably represented at Valenci- 
 ennes, at the time of the painter's birth, by a number of 
 prosperous citizens, who were in all probability the common 
 descendants of one Denis Wasteau, a mercer (" merchier"), who 
 was made a citizen of Valenciennes in 1586. Jean Philippe 
 Watteau himself, the father of the artist, was a slater and tiler, 
 whose contracts with the municipality are on record in the 
 quaint dialect of the period. In 1683 M. Watteau couvre de 
 thuiles ung lieu situe tout proche des escuries des pavilions et 
 proche des archers " (i. e. tiled over a place near the stables, 
 &c.). In 1684 he has another contract for the manufacture and 
 delivery of tiles for the "little slaughter-house," This contract 
 is labelled " sur recours." Six years later he undertakes a much 
 more important piece of work, apparently of a permanent nature, 
 which proves him beyond a doubt to have been at this time 
 (Antoine being six years of age) in enjoyment of capital and 
 credit. The contract was for the " maintenance of the tiled 
 roofs of the old and new buildings ' de ceste ville,' of the 
 Dominical school and its dependencies, and also of the roofs of 
 the barracks, of the citadel, of the ' pavilions ' and ramparts of 
 the city." Cellier mentions other contracts in which Jean 
 Philippe is interested, including one by which he sells a house 
 of his own, situated in the Rue des Cardinaux. It does not 
 appear that he was either a poor or an uneducated man for his 
 period and position, and he signs his own name on the registers 
 of the church of S. Jacques in a clear bold handwriting. 
 
 It is probable that Antoine Watteau was born in a street 
 called the Eue basse du Eempart, but conclusive evidence on 
 which this would rest is lost with the census of 1684. The 
 next existing census is that of 1697, or Antoine's thirteenth year. 
 Jean Philippe had left the parish of S. James at that time, and 
 lived with his family in a house of the Eue des Chartreux, at 
 the corner of the street called " Under the Vine " (ISTo. 20 of Eue 
 de Mons). In 1699 the master tiler had returned to his old 
 
FIRST EFFORTS IN ART, 
 
 13 
 
 parish, to a new house huilt near the gateway of the Abhey of 
 S. Jean. In a view hy Simon Leboucq, dated 1650, we have a 
 view of this abbey standing alone in open ground. The naonks, 
 however, subsequently built themselves in by a screen of houses, 
 which they found very profitable, and it was in one of these 
 houses, " the seventh from the entrance," that the young Antoine 
 "Watteau was living and working at that critical time of his life 
 when he made his first studies in the art of painting. He was 
 already nearly sixteen years old. 
 
 The broad open space in front of "Watteau's home was the 
 scene, on market-days, of the performances of the quack doctors 
 and mountebanks of the period, who erected their booths under 
 his father's windows. These performances Antoine was never 
 tired of watching, as he sat on the window-sill in a trance of 
 admiration, unconscious of the sordid reality of the life that 
 Harlequin and Columbine covered with silks and spangles. 
 
 "Was not this glamour," says M. Houssaye, "typical of Watteau's 
 whole career ? His eye stopped at the superficial beauties of form 
 and colour, but never penetrated to the soul. It was the fault of his 
 time and of his school. The comedy c[ueens and opera nymphs of 
 the Regency had nothing to do with the affections. The theatre is a 
 place where the heart is kept concealed." 
 
 Antoine, we are told, when his gay friends were gone, 
 affectionately perpetuated their figures by sketches of them, 
 which he made upon the broad white margins of the pages of a 
 ' Vie des Saints ' belonging to his father. 
 
 His unsuspecting parent was struck with the dreamy melan- 
 choly of the boy, and especially by his evident attachment to 
 religious literature, and thought Antoine was directing his mind 
 to a monastic life. When, however, he discovered the illustra- 
 tions that Antoine had made in his book, he took them at once 
 to a local painter, who found in them so much merit that he 
 immediately asked to be allowed to instruct the hoy in the 
 principles of his art. 
 
14 
 
 WATTE AU. 
 
 Either in the above way, or probably by some other and more 
 prosaic, the father of Antoine discovered his son's bent for art, 
 and, although a favourite legend exists to the contrary, sent 
 him to be instructed accordingly. Antoine was at this age no 
 ordinary boy. We have contemporary evidence of this from 
 Gersaint, who was his friend, and M. de Caylus, who adds that 
 " Watteau had a delicate taste for music and all other works of 
 genius ; that he was continually reading, and profited by what he 
 read." Many of his letters are preserved, and are elegantly 
 written. Moreover, he had been brought up among artists, his 
 family being intim.ate with that of the engraver Pater, and one 
 of his cousins, Julien Watteau, who was a few years older than 
 himself, was a historical painter. ^ 
 
 The struggles of Watteau's later life were real and severe, but 
 there is no foundation for the romance that would have them begin 
 in his infancy. His first master in painting was Jaques Albert 
 Gerin, upon whom all the romantic biographers heap contumely, 
 and exalt the genius of Antoine, which could take root and 
 flourish under the teaching of a master " qui ne peignit qu'a la 
 toise " (says Goncourt). " Ou du moins il s'en fallait si pen 
 que cela ne vaut pas la peine d'etre discute." Hecart, on the 
 contrary, speaks highly of the talent of Gerin, praising his 
 accuracy of drawing, his clever composition, portraiture, and his- 
 torical paintings. He says that Gerin would have rivalled the 
 greatest masters if to his other gifts he had added that of 
 colour. Nearly all the works of this artist have been destroyed 
 in the revolutionary wars of 1793. There survive an Adoration 
 of the Magi at Douai, in the church of Notre Dame, and 
 another in the church of S. Catherine at Lille. At Valenciennes 
 also there remain three respectable, not excellent, pictures.^ 
 
 ^ Julien was admitted "master painter "in 1693, wlien Watteau was 
 nine years of age (CeUier). 
 
 2 The finest of the pictures of Gerin was at the Carmelites. The ladies 
 of Beaumont, the Sepmerienues, the Urhanistes possessed several-; that 
 
"WATTEAU'S FIRST TEACHER. 
 
 15 
 
 The man was probably no genius, but had sufficient technical 
 experience and knowledge of first principles in his art for the in- 
 struction of a boy of Antoine's age. Gerin, moreover, was officially 
 the painter laureate of the municipality of the city ; president 
 also of the local guild of the painters and engravers. In the 
 year 1685 the records show that he was paid twenty-five lire for 
 painting the Eoyal Arms " mises dans ung ouve en dessus de la 
 grande salle d'entree de Monseigneur le Gouverneur" (Magalotti). 
 In 1681 he had received the commission to design a series of 
 subjects from the life of S. Giles, the patron saint of Valenciennes, 
 which were subsequently worked out in tapestry for the chapel 
 of S. Peter, Designs, tapestry, and chapel have all vanished 
 now ; the record of the payments on account of Gerin's work has, 
 however, been preserved by accident, and is interesting enough 
 in its quaint antiquity. 
 
 The romantic biographers, in their contempt for poor Gerin, 
 affect to doubt whether Watteau really studied under him at all, 
 but Hecart brings forward the testimony of contemporaries to 
 establish the fact. Some pieces, in the style of Teniers, painted 
 
 wMch was at the Chapelle de I'lntendance, called Vicoignette, was the 
 admiration of connoisseurs. The figures were so perfectly draped that 
 there was no monotony that would be expected in a picture where almost 
 all the figures were Carmelites. This picture of his was also that in which 
 the flesh tints were the truest to nature. In all his works the draperies 
 were perfect ; he painted as if he had studied from the antique, whereas 
 only nature and taste had been his masters. {Hecart, 1825.) 
 Existing pictures by Gerin : — 
 
 1. In the Museum (No. 91 of the catalogue), a small picture representing 
 a child resting on a skull, and blowing soap-bubbles. The work is not 
 " transcendant," but shows skill and boldness. 
 
 2. In the chapel of the Hospital, an important canvas, ^S". Giles healing 
 the sick in one of the churches of Orleans. This is a good picture, justifying 
 all Hecart's praises. The drawing is correct, the composition well arranged, 
 but the colouring is defective. It is signed "J. A. Gerin 1691." It is a 
 work of his old age. 
 
 3. In the church at Fresnes, a picture of a monk adoring the Holy 
 Child. This was formerly in the ChapeUe de I'lntendance. 
 
16 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 in tlie house of Gerin by Watteau, are extant ; among tliem one 
 bearing the title of La vraie Gaiete, which was afterwards etched 
 by its possessor, M. Lehardy de Faniars. It is a small picture 
 of a dance of Flemish peasants, showing, says M. de Goncourt, 
 "this future ' peintre galant ' in full, servile imitation of 
 Teniers, and plagiarizing his scenes of drinkers at the door 
 of an inn." The picture was dedicated to the daughter of the 
 engraver of it, a Valenciennes amateur, whom De Goncourt 
 calls a patron of Watteau " after the manner of the Baron de 
 Joursan vault for the debuts of Prudhon," 
 
 Gerin died in 1702, and in the same year Watteau, then 
 eighteen years of age, quitted his native town for Paris. The 
 circumstances under which Antoine set out for Paris are not 
 provable. The legend (told by M. Dinaux) that he was brought 
 to Paris by a scene painter is not based on any good evidence, and, 
 as Cellier says, " Nobody has ever given a name to this scene 
 painter, and the whole story is apocryphal." The narrative of 
 Gersaint, professing as it does to be based on Watteau' s own con- 
 fessions in conversation, bears internal evidence of at least care- 
 less inattention, and this might be expected from the momentary 
 character of the purpose that it was intended to serve, for 
 insertion in an auction catalogue of objects of art. Watteau pere, 
 he says, was a naturally stern man, and embarrassed for money, 
 so that the expense of Antoine's education became troublesome 
 to him, and on the death of Gerin he refused to make any 
 further provision for it. Whereupon Antoine, who was already 
 chafing at the restraints of his home life, and full of ambition in 
 his art, left home without money or luggage, and took refuge in 
 Paris, in search of a painter who would teach him his art. 
 Here he fell in by chance with Metayer, " peintre mediocre," 
 whom he very soon left for want of work ; he then entered the 
 service of a still humbler genius, who carried on a wholesale 
 business in cheap pictures for provincial hawkers. In all this 
 there is no confirmation of the story of the scene painter. 
 
OPEEA LIFE IN PARIS. 
 
 17 
 
 D'Argenville, however, in ' L'abrege de la vie des plus fameux 
 peiutres,' tells the story differently, and says that Watteau, 
 sensible of his master's want of genius, left 7im to follow another 
 who had a talent for theatrical decorations ; came with this 
 other to Paris in 1702, and worked with him upon a commission 
 that he had at the Opera House, in which he was afterwards 
 supplanted by Gillot, when the master returned to Valenciennes 
 and Watteau remained in Paris. This story is confirmed to 
 some extent by M. de Julienne, the great friend of Watteau, 
 who says that Watteau worked at theatrical decoration under 
 this scene painter. It is probably true that he did so, and 
 that this was the origin of his acquaintance with Gillot, but 
 it cannot be true that he left Gerin for the reason stated, 
 because we know that it was upon Gerin's death that he 
 left Valenciennes. M. Arsene Houssaye, in pursuit as usual 
 of romance, represents the boy plunging at his first debut 
 into all the vie galante of the Opera, painting portraits of 
 Mademoiselle La Montague and her frail sisters of the ballet, 
 and disputing their favours with the roues of the court with all 
 the gay insouciance of an experienced old libertine of the 
 period. 
 
 " Une danseuse qui n'avait pas grand' chose k faire se laissa peindre 
 par lui. Watteau fit durer le portrait plus long temps que les 
 dedains de Mademoiselle La Montagne. Ce ne fut pas tout. On 
 trouva le portrait si gracieux dans le monde des danseuses qu'il lui 
 vint tons les jours des portraits a faire au meme prix." 
 
 If he could paint portraits and achieve conquests like this at the 
 age of eighteen, his time at Valenciennes must have been more 
 profitably employed than Gerin's detractors admit. 
 
 It is not difficult to judge from the pictures in the Lacaze 
 collection, of Watteau's style of painting in his early days. M. 
 Leon Lumont, in his monograph for the public conference at 
 Valenciennes, says of the gradual development of Watteau's 
 talent that — 
 
18 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 " There is such a difference between his early and his later style that he 
 seems to have passed all intermediate stages between the most opposed 
 qualities. In his first attempts his touch is as ' dry' as it will hereafter 
 be soft and harmonious. His handling is already remarkably light, 
 but the outlines are sharp and too abrupt, the drawing is moderately 
 correct, the draperies are stiff. The colouring is no less different 
 from what it will be in the end ; it is dazzlingly clear, but transparent, 
 monotonous, without power, and like enamel painting. Watteau is 
 not yet initiated in the secrets of the chiaroscuro, and it is remark- 
 able that these are precisely the faults of Gerin, his Valenciennes 
 master. There are the same feeble colouring and the same dry treat- 
 ment in a canvas of this painter, now hung in the General Hospital 
 of that city— /S. Giles healing the Sick. The same faults are to be 
 seen in the landscape painter Dubois, another pupil of Gerin. (M. 
 Albert Coutin, the keeper of the Museum at Valenciennes, has two of 
 his pictures. ) The character of the first manner of Watteau is almost 
 that of the little school of painting of which the capital of French 
 Hainault was the centre at the end of the seventeenth century." 
 Among the pictures attributable to tlie period of Watteau's 
 early struggles is, according to Thore, tliat called the Signature 
 of the Contract of the Village Wedding, engraved by Cardon. 
 The engraving of it is dedicated to the Duke of Arenberg, whose 
 family still have the signature of Watteau to the receipt. A 
 sketch for this picture is mentioned in Goncourt's ' CEuvre,' of 
 the notary of the Italian comedy presenting a pen. M. Leon 
 Dumont brings forward this picture, in comparison with later 
 works, as an example of his style before he had acquired that 
 admirable knowledge of the effects of light by which his greatest 
 productions are distinguished. 
 
 The figures in this picture may be counted by the hundred. The 
 artist has got good effects of light and shade ; he has managed his 
 "points de rappels" skilfully ; his aerial perspective is admirable ; 
 but the tones are deficient in warmth, and the study of the half-tints 
 defective. In his period of maturity, on the contrary, he attains per- 
 fection ; then this disciple of Rubens has learned to place for a charm- 
 ing contrast in the midst of his foliage a white statue of Venus or 
 Pan, a garland of flowers, or an intruding head among the branches ; 
 then he throws the warm, red glare of a torch across the midnight 
 darkness, upon his Actors of the Italian Comedy, or his Masqueraders 
 
SERVITUDE AT THE PONT NOTRE DAME. 
 
 19 
 
 in a Venetian Street; or the pale blue rays of the moon on an 
 amorous couple ; then all his colours are charged with life, the sun 
 joyfully caresses the rosy cheeks, the sparkling eyes, the ribands and 
 robes of silk of his fresh little beauties. 
 
 The masterpieces of Watteau are not only festivals of gallantry, 
 they are also festivals of light. 
 
 With the return of Gillot to the Opera, and of his patron 
 scene painter to Valenciennes, Antoine, supposing M. Houssaye's 
 romantic narrative to be accurate, had the great good fortune of 
 being thrust out of his Capua into the hard realities of a struggle 
 for existence. We next find him in the workshop of a real slave- 
 driver, doing penance for the past, whatever it was. His new 
 employer is a merchant of the Pont Notre Dame, whose business 
 consisted in the production of small portraits and devotional 
 subjects, which provincial dealers bought from him wholesale, by 
 the gross. He had in his employment a dozen or so of miser- 
 able pupils who were trained to work mechanically, and were 
 valued according to. their rapidity of execution. The labour was 
 systematically divided among them — each had his allotted part 
 of it. Some washed in the skies, others did the heads, others the 
 draperies, others put in lights and shadows ; a last batch gave 
 a finishing touch. Watteau was an " all-round " genius at this 
 work, and remarkably rapid. His particular branch of the busi- 
 ness was the portrait of S. Nicholas, which, like an Egyptian 
 sculpture, he turned out by the score, all after one model. " I 
 knew my S. Mcholas by heart," he said to Gersaint, " and used 
 to do him without the copy." His wages for the tiresome and 
 unprofitable work were three lire a week, which would be 
 equivalent to tAvelve shillings of our money. 
 
 From this slavery he was delivered by the intervention of 
 Gillot, who (says M. de Julienne), having seen some drawings 
 and pictures by Watteau, invited him to come and live with 
 him.i Watteau had had up to this time but little instruction 
 
 ' Abrege de la Vie d' A. "W. ' preface to the volume of etchings from 
 designs by Watteau. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 WATTE AU. 
 
 from his taskmasters. He had, however, acquired experience 
 and facility, " and," says M. L^on Dumont, 
 
 "What he had not learned at Valenciennes he learned alone, and 
 without guidance. None of the painters -whom he had to work for 
 when he went in search of fortune to Paris could have seriously 
 influenced him. The secrets of his admirable colouring were not 
 derived from the dealer who set him to paint S. Nicholas by the dozen ; 
 nor from Metayer, a simple opera decorator ; nor from Audran, who 
 made nothing but cameos ; nor Gillot, who was a mere designer and 
 engraver." 
 
 But from Gillot he learned something else. M. de Caylus says 
 that Watteau in after life praised Gillot's works, and acknow- 
 ledged that he was much indehted to him. It was not, as some 
 hiographers say, entirely by chance that the two artists met. 
 M. de Julienne says that Gillot, having seen some of Watteau's 
 drawings, invited him to come and live with him. Gillot was 
 at that time confining his work to subjects of Italian comedy, 
 and "this kind of composition," says M. de Caylus, " gave the 
 bent to Watteau's taste." ^ 
 
 Of Watteau's connection with Gillot, we read that in a short 
 time the pupil surpassed his master, and, leaving him behind, 
 became distinguished for that closer study of nature that he 
 never afterwards abandoned, and that when Gillot saw himself 
 beaten by Watteau's fetes cliampetres, he put him with Claude 
 Audran. 
 
 1 Gillot, born at Langres in 1673, was a pupil of Jean Baptiste Corneille, 
 and had a genius for grotesque figures, for fauns' and satyrs, and opera 
 scenes. He was admitted to the Academy in 1715, and died at Paris in 
 1722. M. de Julienne says : " He designed with spirit and taste, he engraved 
 with the same qualities, but he was inaccurate, and so bad a painter that his 
 works were buried with him." In Gersaiut's catalogue we find mention 
 of " The triumph of Harlequin God Pan, comic subject, engraved in black 
 and white by Jacques Sarabat, after the painting by Claude Gillot. This, 
 he says, is one of the first pictures done in this style, and, having met 
 with general approval, it has given origin to many others which have been 
 since produced by Fateau," etc. {Catalogue de Lorangere). 
 
APPRENTICESHIP UNDER CLAUDE GILLOT. 21 
 
 M. de Caylus says that Watteau broke with Gillot, and would 
 never in after life explain the reasons of the rupture. He praised 
 his work, and acknowledged how much he owed him. On the 
 other hand ; whether Gillot acted from jealousy, and perceived 
 that his pupil had surpassed him, or not, he abandoned painting, 
 and devoted all his attention to etching, for which he is cele- 
 brated in respect of the intelligence and harmony of his composi- 
 tions. He illustrated in this manner most of the fables of La 
 Fontaine. 
 
 Gersaint says — 
 
 "Never were two characters or dispositions more alike, but, as tliey 
 had the same faults, never were there two more incompatible. They 
 could not have lived together long on a good understanding. Never 
 a fault escaped notice on either side, and they were at last obliged to 
 separate in a manner disagreeable to them both. Some say that 
 Gillot's jealousy was the cause, but, however that be, it is certain 
 that they separated with at least as much satisfaction as they had 
 previously united. " 
 
 All this contemporary gossip on the subject throws light on 
 the character and position of the two men, and seems to indicate 
 that their connection was of the character of friendship, and 
 their separation a matter of regret, at least to Watteau. 
 
 It was in Gillot's studio that Watteau found his pupil Lancret, 
 who followed him, and whom he advised, says Gersaint, to 
 " form himself from the study of nature." 
 
 Allan Cunningham takes the view that Gillot was a good friend 
 to his pupil, and describes in a few words their probable relation. 
 
 "Fortune at length grew weary of persecuting him. He became 
 accidentally acquainted with Claude Gillot, a master in all things 
 grotesque, who took him to his house, revealed the secrets of his 
 profession, and read Mm a chapter on the world and its ways." 
 
 The young adventurer, hitherto the sport of fortune, certainly 
 appears to have added, after his connection with Gillot, a more 
 prudent care of his interests, and study of expediency, to the 
 unflagging industry of his career. 
 
22 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 Soon after his parting with Gillot we find Watteau domiciled 
 with Clande Audran, the concierge or guardian of the Luxem- 
 bourg, working under his direction upon the decorations of the 
 palace, inserting figures in the arabesques and other designs 
 for which he is celebrated ; which, as M. de Caylus remarks, 
 were of the kind of those introduced into the decoration of 
 the Vatican by Eaphael, and in the palace of Fontainebleau 
 by Primaticcio.^ This Claude Audran came of a family in 
 which the pursuit of art was traditional, and which had pro- 
 duced a number of skilful engravers from the time of Charles 
 Audran, who flourished in the commencement of the seventeenth 
 century.2 Claude was the son and pupil of Germain Audran; 
 he had two uncles, also artists, Gerard and Claude, and is called, 
 in distinction from the latter, Claude le jeune. He died in the 
 Luxembourg in 1734. In the latest edition of Brice's ' Descrip- 
 tion de Paris,' edited by Mariette in 1752, there is the follow- 
 ing note under the article * Luxembourg ' : — 
 
 ^ Francesco Priniaticcio, Abbe de S. Martin, a native of Bologna, 1490 — 
 1570, continued under Francis I. the ornamentation of the palace at 
 Fontainebleau, commenced by Rosso de' Rossi. His principal work there, 
 the gallery of Ulysses, is now known to us only by Van Thulden's etchings. 
 
 In truth the roll of these Audrans as a family of engravers is long and 
 distinguished, viz. : Charles (1594 — 1674) and his brother Claude 1. 
 (1597—1677) ; Gerard (1640—1703), the third son of Claude I., and the 
 most celebrated of the family, eminent as the author of a work on " the 
 proportions of the human figure " (published at Paris 1680). Benoit I. 
 (son of Germain, eldest son of Claude I.), his nephew .and pupil (1661 — 
 1721), and Jean (1667—1756), brother of the last, also the pupil of Gerard. 
 Then Claude II. (1639 — 1684), the second son of the above-mentioned 
 Claude, and pupil of his imcle Charles, a painter who executed works for 
 the Gobelins under the tyranny of Le Brun, whom he imitated. Claude 
 III., eldest son of Germain, and friend of "Watteau, painted grotesques and 
 foliage with spirit. He died in the palace of the Luxembourg, 1734, at the 
 age of seventy-six. Gerviain, painter and engraver, of Lyons (1631 — 1710), 
 pupil of his father Claude and his uncle Carle. Jean (1667 — 1756), and 
 Louis (1670 — 1712), fourth and youngest son of Germain. 
 
APPRENTICESHIP UNDER CLAUDE AUDRAN. 
 
 23 
 
 " Claude Audran, concierge of the palace, is justly considered one of the 
 first designers who has ever appeared for arabesques and grotesques. 
 He has left a number of his works ; especially in the Chateau at 
 Meudon, in that of Anet, in the Menagerie at Versailles (arabesques 
 on a gold ground with illustrations of the fables of La Fontaine), 
 where he has done admirable work, more beautiful and ingenious 
 than anything ever yet seen of its kind in France. The celebrated 
 animal painter Desportes worked with Audran at the Luxembourg. 
 Watteau was employed to insert small figures in his designs on the 
 ceiling." 
 
 It was in the Luxembourg that Watteau's taste for decorative 
 designs was perfected, and that he acquired that peculiar light- 
 ness and delicacy of manipulation which the white or gilded 
 grounds of Audran, upon which he had to work, required. A 
 representative collection of Watteau's ornamental designs is 
 contained in a work puhhshed in Edinburgh in 1841.1 In 
 these the poetic fancy and the delicacy of the dreamlike 
 fairy-land of Watteau's genius are already developed. Audran 
 himself is eminent for his introduction of grace and lightness 
 into his ornamentation, advancing the reaction that was in pro- 
 gress from the ponderous conventionalities of Lebrun, under 
 whose direction his uncle, Claude II., designed for the Gobelins. 
 
 A more important source of instruction than the decorative 
 studies that he had to work upon for Audran existed in the 
 Eubens gallery, where, we are told, he spent a great part of his 
 hours of leisure, and soon " lost all traces of the manner of 
 Gillot, and acquired a better tone of colour, a finer, more accurate, 
 and more skilful style of design." The beautiful gardens of the 
 palace, " wilder," says M. de Caylus, " and moins peignes " than 
 those of the other royal residences, were open to him, and here 
 he incessantly studied — probably for the first time in his life — 
 the beauties of nature in landscape. It is here in the Luxem- 
 bourg, and in the gardens of M. Crozat at Montmorency, that we 
 
 * ' The ornamental designs of "Watteau collected from his works, litho- 
 graphed by W. Nichol.' 
 
24 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 are to look for the earliest inspiration of Watteau's idealized 
 landscape : 
 
 "With its trees, of foliage trickling and cascading to the ground; 
 and boskets of witch-elm spreading a fan-shaped screen behind the 
 siesta of lovers ; and arches of verdure opening like the side scenes of 
 a theatre ; and pathways thronged with * a minuet in a sunbeam ; ' 
 and great forests rolling up their shade over groups of bathing girls, 
 like the partial letting down of a curtain ; and all that evanescent 
 foliage touched with his ' fluid ' colour, and decorated with balus- 
 trades, terms, statues, and women of marble and children of stone, 
 and fountains enveloped in rain, of which Watteau has created a 
 Nature 'plus belle que la Nature' "i (Goncourt). 
 The critic points out how all the forest shadows and leafy 
 screens of Watteau's landscape are broken with glimpses of light, 
 "Which carry the eye to the sky, to perspectives, to horizons, to 
 distance, to the infinite, to luminous and empty s,^a.ce:— provoking 
 dreams. . . The nobility with which Watteau clothes his academic 
 landscape is the poetry of the painter-ipoet ; and M^ith this poetry he 
 'super-naturalizes,' so to speak, the corner of the earth that his 
 pencil paints. Idealized landscapes; landscapes attaining in the 
 poetry of their composition something of the supernatural to which 
 the material art of the painter cannot attain alone,— this is the 
 characteristic of the landscape of Watteau. This is the characteristic 
 of that Enchanted Isle, where, on the banks of a lake of water 
 stagnant, glittering, and losing itself in the distance among the 
 shadows of trees penetrated by the rays of the setting sun, we see a 
 group of men and women seated on the grass, their eyes turned 
 towards the snowy mountains of the other shore, beyond an immense 
 level plain that has no boundaries nor end, and is marked out in 
 mirage by the horizontal light of the evening." ^ 
 
 ^ " Paree a la Frangoise, un jour dame Nature 
 Eut le desir coquet de voir sa portraiture. 
 Que fit la bonne mere ?— EUe enfanta Watteau. 
 Pour elle ce cher fils, plein de reconnoissance, 
 Non content de tracer partout sa ressemblance, 
 Fit tant et fit si bien, qu'il la, peignit en beau." 
 
 {Lamothe-Houdar.) 
 ' The picture was offered for sale from the collection of the late M. A. 
 Febvre (April, 1882). 
 
STUDY lOR DECORATION. 
 
RETURN TO VALENCIENNES. 
 
 25 
 
 I cannot discover in any of the authorities that I have heen 
 able to consult any reliable dates to serve as landmarks in the 
 history of this part of the master's life. About seven years 
 have to be accounted for between his arrival at Paris in 1702, 
 and his gaining of ■ the prize at the Academy in 1709 j but 
 what portions of this period of apprenticeship he spent at the 
 Opera, at the Pont E'otre Dame, ivith Gillot and with Audran 
 respectively, I have not been able to ascertain. 
 
 One author states that it was during his residence at the 
 Luxembourg that Watteau worked for the Academy prize ; but 
 M. de Caylus arranges it otherwise, although it appears probable 
 that the desire to revisit his native city ripened with his first 
 substantial success. 
 
 However this may be, it is obvious from the following part of 
 the narrative of M. Gersaint, that although Watteau may have 
 profited by the opportunities of study afforded him during his 
 employment under Audran, his remuneration for his work Avas 
 not such as to enrich him : and his master, however talented, 
 was not more disinterested or generous in his treatment of 
 "Watteau than Gillot or the wholesale dealer. The same sus- 
 picion attaches to Gersaint himself, friendly and intimate as his 
 relations with the painter became, and still more strongly to the 
 father-in-law of Gersaint, who, as we shall see, subsequently hid 
 him away in a corner out of sight of the world, while he bought 
 his pictures of him. 
 
 The following is the description in Gersaint's narrative of the 
 manner of Watteau's separation from Claude Audran, which 
 seems to exemplify still more the careless contempt of money 
 with which Watteau managed his affairs, selling his pictures at 
 prices regulated rather by his own immediate need than by their 
 value. 
 
 " Not wishing to remain with Audran, nor to pass his life in working 
 for another man, and conscious of the power of his imagination, 
 he ventured upon a painting of genius which he produced in 
 
26 
 
 WATTE A U. 
 
 the intervals of Ms labours, representing a Departure of Troops.'^ 
 (This is one of the two pictures which were engraved by M. Cochin 
 pere.) Watteau showed it to M. Audran, and asked his advice upon 
 it. Audran, a clever man, and able to recognize a fine work, was 
 startled by the merit that he perceived in this picture, but for fear of 
 losing an assistant who was useful to him, and on whom he had begun 
 to rely very often for the arrangement and even for the composition 
 of his work, he advised Watteau not to waste his attention upon 
 follies of that kind, but to devote it to his regular work. Watteau, 
 however, was not deceived. He had decided upon leaving, and the 
 wish to see Valenciennes again confirmed his resolution. The plea 
 that he wanted to visit his parents was a sufiicient one, but he had 
 no money. He consulted in this difiiculty a M. Spoude, who is still 
 alive, a painter from his own neighbourhood, and a private friend. 
 Chance guided M. Spoude to my father-in-law, M. Sirois, and he 
 showed him the picture. The price was fixed at sixty livres (!), and 
 the bargain concluded on the spot. Watteau fetched his money and 
 set out gaily for Valenciennes. It was all his fortune, and he had 
 never been so rich before." 
 
 There do not appear in any of the authorities at hand any 
 details of the visit that Watteau now paid to his native city. 
 D'Argenville simply tells us that "he left Paris to study in his 
 own country, and returned a short time afterwards." 
 
 There exists, in effect, no such work as a systematic biography 
 of "Watteau, referring the incidents of his life to their dates, or 
 even narrating them with any approach to accuracy in the order 
 in which they occurred. As M. Cellier remarks of the innumer- 
 able short treatises that have appeared on this subject — 
 
 "All these clever virtuosi have done, has been to labour to enrich with 
 the products of their own brilliant imaginations a worn-out melody, 
 but they cannot hide its insignificance. It is easy to see that the 
 common origin of all these ingenious works has been the dry state- 
 ment given by Gersaint in the catalogue of the Queutin collection of 
 the Orangere." 
 
 ' Depart de Garnison, No. 59 of the ' CEuvre ' of Goncourt. (See p. 62. ) 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 1709—1719. 
 
 VISIT TO VALENCIENNES ADMISSION TO THE ACADEMY 
 
 LIFE IN PARIS. 
 
 THE date of "Watteau's return to Yalenciennes being deter- 
 mined by that, upon record, of the success of his compe- 
 tition for the Academy prize, brings our narrative to the year 
 1709, the twenty-fifth of his life, and the seventh of his 
 apprenticeship at Paris. 
 
 In 1702 he had entered the great arena, armed only with his 
 youthful enthusiasm, and sufficient knowledge of the principles 
 of his art, acquired from Gerin or otherwise, to enable him to be 
 useful to the scene'painter at the Opera House ; if not, according 
 to the romantic legend of Arsene Houssaye, to win the hearts of 
 the danseuses by painting their portraits. The theatrical life 
 must have touched his hereditary Flemish love of pageants, and 
 the same chords as the Harlequins and Columbines that he 
 sketched in his infancy from the windows of his father's house in 
 the market-place ; and the glamour of the mimic paradise of the 
 Opera must have fallen upon him, at his impressionable age, with 
 the force of an enchantment never, in the short dream of his 
 after life, to be dissolved. The memory of it must have been 
 brooding in him during his mechanical drudgery in the workshop 
 of the Pont ^^otre Dame. One wonders where all the heads of 
 
28 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 S. Nicholas are gone to that he produced at this period ; and if 
 any were found, would there not he ahout them some touch of a 
 higher aim, some indication of the genius that was wasted upon 
 their production 1 How the smouldering fire must have flashed 
 out its hoarded energies with the first glimpse of freedom and con- 
 genial air under Gillot !— on opera subjects again ; and where are 
 the records of this pathetic drama hidden 1 Even the dates of his 
 
 servitude and liberation are lost. What a pitiful story it is of 
 
 a chained genius, whose only knowledge of the realities of life 
 and of nature was drawn through the mimicry of the stage ; 
 whose school of art was an upholsterer's studio, and his models 
 the inventions of Lebrun ! Unlike other happier students of 
 art, he had to create his nature from a study of its caricature ; 
 until in a fortunate hour the gallery of Rubens and the Luxem- 
 bourg gardens [moins j^eignes) lay before him, and he was able 
 to spring into sympathy at once with the tendencies of his own 
 Flemish school of art in Rubens, and the perfection of nature in 
 the " moderately cultivated " gardens of the palace. 
 
 What part of the seven years, 1702—1709, was spent with 
 Gdlot, and what part with Audran, or how soon before or after 
 his success at the Academy he took his trip to Valenciennes, is 
 not known ; anymore than the length of his residence at his native 
 city, or what he did there, or when he returned to Paris. All that 
 M. Gersaint tells us of the visit to Valenciennes, and therefore 
 all that the later compilers from his short treatise are able to 
 tell, is told in the following sentence : " The fickleness of Watteau's 
 character, and the little that he found worthy of his emulation 
 at Valenciennes, where he had nothing under his eyes that could 
 animate and instruct him, decided him to return to Paris." 
 
 M. Cellier, a native of Valenciennes, is jealous for the honour 
 of the city, and denies that it could have wanted attractions for 
 the painter's genius. 
 
 "Too little respect," lie says, "has been paid to the artistic snrroimd- 
 iugs of Watteau's youth, which was the very cradle of the art of the 
 
STA.TE OF AET IN VALENCIENNES. 
 
 29 
 
 eighteenth century. This Flemish city, made French against its will 
 by the force of events, and partly ruined by the conquest, takes 
 revenge in endowing France with an incomparable school of art ; 
 producing "Watteau and Pater in painting, D'Eisen for design, and De 
 Saly the engraver ; i. e. four of the most distinguished artists of the 
 century." 
 
 M. Cellier claims that the school of French art jmr excellence 
 came forth fully established from Valenciennes, as the origin of 
 all Flemish painting was the same in the time of Harlinde and 
 Eelinde.^ 
 
 That art was not neglected at Valenciennes at the date of 
 "Wattean's return is proved by the then flourishing condition of 
 the corporation or guild of artists and engravers, formed on the 
 model of that of Holland, under the patronage of S. Luke, of 
 which Jacques Albert Gerin had been the president. The 
 artists had before this incident been confounded with the " gor- 
 liers,2 esperonniers, scelliers, armoyeurs et autres mesthiers," 
 
 ^ The story of these two sisters, and of their connection with the dis- 
 coveries of the Van Eycks, is given in the ' Revue des Cours litteraires de 
 la France et de I'l^ltranger, ' by M. Ch. Potrin :— 
 
 "An ancient legend exists of two sisters, named Harlinde and Relinde, 
 children of the Seigneur de Denain, who in the year 714 finished 
 their education in the convent des Recollets of Valenciennes (the 
 burial-place of Jacques de Guise, the celebrated author of the ' Chro- 
 niques du Hainaut,' 1398), and, removing to the place called Maes 
 Eyck, in the Liege country, founded there a monastery, and devoted 
 their lives to the art of illuminating manuscripts, transplanting in 
 this manner from the Hainault to the cradle of the two founders of 
 Flemish art the study of colour that culminated in the great improve- 
 ments made by the Van Eycks in the art of painting in colours mixed 
 with oil. By a similar solidarity of progress later on, in literature, we 
 see Jean le Bel removing from Liege to Valenciennes, and becoming the 
 instructor of the historian Froissart ; and again, in painting, the schools 
 of Maestricht and of Tournai preceded and introduced that of Bruges, 
 and finally one school of Flemish art had its disciples in all the towns 
 of the Belgian provinces Dinant, Liege, Brussels, Mechlin, Antwerp, 
 Bruges." * Qy. joailliers. 
 
30 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 under the branch of S. George. It was about fifty years after 
 this that the two Watteaus of Lille flourished ; their relation- 
 ship to Antoine is not recorded. The elder of them, Louis 
 Joseph Watteau, in 1755, succeeded M. Dachou at the academy 
 of Lille, and it is he who, with his colleague M. Tillier, was 
 expelled by the magistrates for introducing the study from the 
 nude. Later on he was reappointed, and, in 1795, he made an 
 inventory of the works of art deposited in the municipality ; he 
 died at Lille the 27th August, 1798. His son Louis Francois 
 Joseph was born at Yalenciennes the 19th August, 1758. It is 
 he who is most usually described as Watteau of Lille. He 
 painted rustic scenes and designs for fans, and ceilings, panel- 
 lings, &c. He gained the medal of the Lille Academy, and in 
 1774 went to study at Paris under Durameau.^ It has been 
 worth while to mention these incidents, as showing that the 
 Hainault was still actively maintaining its position in the domain 
 of art ; ^ and because the works of the two Watteaus of Lille, 
 especially of the younger, are often confounded with ' those of 
 the great master of the same name. 
 
 It would have been pleasant, had materials existed, to have 
 accompanied the wearied and melancholy poet-painter in his 
 visit to the scenes of his youth, under the sound of the Flemish 
 carillons.^ If M. de Caylus is accurate in the order of his 
 narrative, he must have painted there the picture of David 
 granting Abigail the. pardon of Nadal ; and M. de Gersaint 
 informs us that it was there that he painted for M. Sirois the 
 
 ^ See tlie article in the 'Archives du Nord ' by M. Dinaux, torn. iii. 
 p. 447. 
 
 2 Among the painters who flourished at Valenciennes at the period of 
 Watteau's visit, I may mention Jean Baptiste Van-Moor, a painter of 
 Oriental subjects, born at Valenciennes 1670, died 22 January, 1737. 
 
 ^ " Les horloges flamandes etaient toutes ornees de carillons, et de figures 
 qui representaient des scenes mouvantes a chaque sonnerie d'heure ou 
 demi-heure" ('Description de tous les Pays Bas,' ^ar Loys Guicciardin, 
 1565). " 
 
ADMISSION TO THE ACADEMY. 
 
 31 
 
 pendant of the first picture lie had sold to him, and forwarded 
 it to Paris, receiving in payment this time 200 livres. The 
 subject represented was the Halt of an Army ; " the whole of it," 
 says Gersaint, " was painted from nature, and the pair of pictures 
 have always been regarded as the two finest things that have 
 come out of his hands." ^ But on this subject it must be re- 
 membered that M, de Gersaint was a dealer in pictures, and was 
 speaking of some that were his own property. 
 
 I have already quoted Gersaint's account of Watteau's stay at 
 Yalenciennes, and the motives of his return to Paris. M. de 
 Caylus carries forward the narrative as follows : — 
 
 " He then left his native place (he did not make a long stay there) and 
 returned to Paris. His wish to go to Rome and take advantage of 
 the fine establishment ,that' Louis XIV. has made there for the ad- 
 vancement of the arts and of pupils, prompted him some time after- 
 wards to enter the ranks for the prize of your school. He gained 
 the second prize in the year 1709, with the subject of David granting 
 Abigail the pardon of Nadah, but was not admitted for the journey, 
 the first prize having been awarded to Antoine Grison. He was 
 forced, therefore, to content himself with the pursuit of his studies at 
 Paris, which he did — without, however, abandoning his project. 
 
 " In 1712 he brought before you, with this intention, some pictures in 
 his own style, far superior to that with which he had gained the 
 prize. A talent ' forme et tres-distingue ' and the uselessness of the 
 journey that he solicited were motives for the Academy to admit him 
 (a I'agreer)." 
 
 In the short paragraph quoted above we have the only record 
 of a period of about three years, from 1709 to 1712, which 
 appear (according to the narrative of M. de Caylus) to have been 
 passed by Watteau in Paris " in pursuit of his studies," but 
 where or under what circumstances we are not informed. . . 
 D'Argenville, in the ' Abrege,' gives his account of the matter 
 as though the incident of his admission to the Academy followed 
 closely upon his retiirn from Valenciennes. It is indeed singular 
 (as Gersaint states that the pictures he exhibited were the pair he 
 
 1 See No. (52) of the ' Works,' p. 62. 
 
32 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 painted, one before and one during his holiday, for M. Sirois) 
 that the interval of three years should have produced no other 
 pictures than these for hini to bring forward for an object so 
 important to himself. If M. de Caylus is in error in this 
 instance, it is possible he may be so also in his statement that 
 the competition for the Academy followed instead of preceded 
 the holiday. D'Argenville then says — 
 
 " He quitted Paris to return to his own country to study, and returned 
 quelque temps apres. Two pictures of the same size were exhibited in 
 a gallery of the Louvre, through which the painters of the Academy 
 were in the habit of passing. The celebrated La Fosse, seeing these 
 two pictures, was surprised by them, and inquired the name of their 
 author. He was told that they were the works of a young man who 
 wished to go to learn his profession at Eome. Wateau waited upon 
 him. ' My friend,' said La Fosse, ' you are unconscious of your 
 talent ; you know more than we do, and you may be an honour 
 to our Academy.' He made his visits, and was received as an acade- 
 mician under the title of the ' peintre des fetes galantes.' " 
 
 The narrative by Gersaint of this incident is in some details 
 
 more explicit : — 
 
 " The singular manner in which he was admitted into the Academy is 
 very honourable. He had some desire of going to Rome, to study 
 there from the Great Masters, especially from the Venetian school, 
 whose colour and composition he liked, He was not in a position to 
 make this journey without assistance, and therefore wished to petition 
 for the royal pension. With this object he resolved one day to have 
 carried to the Royal Academy the two pictures that he had sold to 
 my father-in-law, in order to try to get the pension. He sets out, 
 with no other friends than his works, and has these exhibited in the 
 room through which the gentlemen of the Academy of Painting and 
 Sculpture generally pass. They all turn their eyes on the pictures, 
 and admire the workmanship of them, without knowing the painter. 
 M. de la Fosse, a celebrated painter of this date, stopped with the 
 rest, and, astonished to see tv.'o pieces so well painted, he entered 
 the Salle de I'Academie, and inquired by whom they had been done. 
 These pictures had a vigorous colouring, and a certain harmony, which 
 led them to be thought to be by an Old Master. He was told that 
 they were the work of a young man, who was come there to pray these 
 
"l^embarquement pour cythere." 
 
 33 
 
 gentlemen to intercede for him to get him the king's pension for Italy. 
 De la Fosse orders him to be admitted, and Watteau appears. ' Sa 
 figure n'est point imposante ; il explique modestement.' Finally 
 De la Fosse dissuades him from his purpose of proceeding to Italy, 
 saying, ' Nous vous trouvons capable d'honorer notre Academie ; 
 faites les demarches necessaires nous vous regardons comme un des 
 ndtres. II se retira, fit ses visites et fut agree aussitot.' " 
 The following proces verbal is extracted in the ' Histoire des 
 Peintres' from the registers of the Academy. 
 
 "The Academy, after taking the votes in the customary manner, has 
 received the said Sieur Watteau as academician, to enjoy the privileges 
 attached to this position (quality), and he has promised ; taking an 
 oath at the hands of M. Coypel, ecuyer, iirst painter of the king, and 
 of H. R. H. the Duke of Orleans, president being at the meeting. 
 As to the ' present pecuniary,' it has been reduced {modere) to the 
 sum of 100 livres." 
 
 The above is a verbatim, though obviously ungramraatical, 
 translation from the note in M. de Goncourt's work. It pretends 
 to be a quotation from Gersaint. The ' Histoire des Peintres ' 
 referred to is not more closely specified, and there is no date 
 given to the extract from the archives. 
 
 But if the above be correct, what is the meaning of the 
 following from the " Chronological List of Admissions to the 
 Academy of Painting and Sculpture. 28 August 1717." 
 " Watteau, Antoine, peintre des fetes galantes ne a Valenciennes ; 
 t 35 ans ; 18 Juillet 1721." i There is another entry as follows : 
 " Wateau (Antoine), Peintre de genre, 28 AoUt 1717 : sur un 
 tableau intitule Vembarqueynent pour Vile de Cythere. Musee 
 du Louvre." M. de Caylus furnishes the explanation. Watteau, 
 he says, was five years in finishing the jdcture required for his 
 admission. M. de Caylus mentions this as an example of the 
 indolence and instability of his disposition. 
 
 The sketch for this picture, V Emharquement pour Cythere, 
 engraved by Tardieu, is now in the Louvre, of which M. de 
 Goncourt says — 
 
 1 See 'Archives de I'Art Fran§ais,' tome i. 15 January, 1851. 
 
34 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 " The sketch figures in the Louvre, under the number 469. I say the 
 sketch, for the Louvre does not possess M. de Julienne's picture, 
 engraved by Tardieu. In the engraving the composition is much 
 more rich, more crowded with figures, accessories and details which 
 grew under Watteau's pencil during the inspiration of work — suc- 
 cessive details which, little by little, filled up the void of his first 
 idea. In M. de Julienne's picture the great sail of the galley, which 
 is not seen in the Louvre sketch, is filled up with a flight of Cupids, 
 like a scattering of birds in the sky. And the Cupids continue their 
 flight to the shadows of the woods, where the}'- entangle the lovers in 
 chains of roses.- In Tardieu's engraving the distance is not closed by 
 mountains, but extends into space over the sea, and the shore is 
 beaten upon by the flow of a heavy sea. The pedestal and bust in 
 the sketch are replaced by the statue of Venus Victrix taking out a 
 dart from the quiver of one of the Amoriui who are clambering up her 
 pedestal. A buckler placed at the foot of the statue I'eflects in its 
 mirror of steel the elegant group of the amorous shepherd offering 
 flowers to his shepherdess, &c." . . . 
 
 The pictvTre is in the " Elisabeth " room of the old castle at 
 Berlin, in a state of perfect preservation, and has lost nothing of 
 the freshness of its colour. 
 
 In the mean time Watteau's reputation, we are told, and the 
 number of his admirers increased so rapidly, that he was glad 
 to take refuge from the visits of the latter by accepting the 
 proposal of M. Crozat that he should come and live with him 
 in his celebrated house near the Eue Eichelieu. M. Crozat 
 invited him, in all ' probability at the instance of De la 
 Fosse, to paint the decorations of an apartment, and Watteau 
 very gladly accepted the offer, esteeming probably the advan- 
 tages of study in the galleries of M. Crozat quite as much as the 
 retirement from the invasion of his admirers. 
 
 In this house De la Fosse died in 1716, having resided there 
 since 1707, when he finished the painting of the ceiling of the 
 gallery. It is suggested that he may have made the acquaintance 
 of Watteau there in 1712. 
 
 M. de Caylus, in his paper read at the Academy on February 
 , 1748, enters into considerable detail of Watteau's mode of 
 
U 2 
 
36 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 life between tlie period of his election and his entry into the 
 house of M. de Crozat.^ He describes how the honours he had 
 gained drew upon him the troublesome attention of all the demi- 
 connoisseurs and unoccupied crowd who frequented the studios 
 of artists, and interrupted their work : a tenacious and trouble- 
 some crew, as M. de Caylus describes them, " aussi ardens a se 
 produire que difficiles a congedier." They were followed or 
 accompanied by the dealers and collectors who prey upon 
 sketches and studies, and collect specimens of art at little or no 
 expense. 
 
 "Watteau was vigorously besieged by all these. He easily dis- 
 tinguished the two species of bore, understood them thoroughly, and 
 took his revenge in painting the characters and manners of the most 
 troublesome. But this lively painting did not console him for the 
 annoyance which, in the end, nearly overwhelmed him. I have 
 often seen him distressed by it to the point that he wished to throw 
 up everything. 
 
 "One would imagine that his brilliant successes in public "would have 
 been so flattering to his self-esteem as to raise him above these little 
 incidents. But he was so constituted as to be nearly always disgusted 
 with his own work. I think one of the strongest reasons for this was 
 the grand ideas that he had of painting ; for I can give assurance 
 that he looked at art from a much higher standard than he practised 
 it. This disposition rendered him generally very little prepossessed 
 with his works. He cared no more for the price that he received for 
 them, which was far lower than it should have been. He had no 
 love for money." 
 
 M. de Caylus enlarges upon Watteau's inability to appreciate 
 the marketable value of his own work, and tells an anecdote of 
 a wig, with which Watteau was " enchanted," as a chef-d' oeuvre of 
 imitation of nature, for which he paid the perruquier with two of 
 his pictures, and would have sent him a third, but for the inter- 
 vention of De Caylus ; and of another picture that he gave to a 
 talkative critic, who boasted of his influence in the studios of 
 Messieurs de Troy, De Largilliere, and Rigaud, with the simple 
 
 But he also says that it was in the same year of 1712 that he began 
 his work for M. de Crozat ! 
 
PERSOXAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 37 
 
 object of getting him out of the room. The end of this story, 
 however, throws a new light on the character of Watteau, 
 for De Caylus having explained to him the character of the 
 boaster in question, who went about depreciating the painters 
 who had offended him, and claiming the merit of advising them 
 in their work, Watteau took advantage of his request to retouch 
 the picture he had given him, to wipe it out altogether from the 
 panel before his eyes ; and, says De Caylus, " he never appeared 
 to enjoy the painting of any other picture as much as he enjoyed 
 the effacement of this one." 
 
 " Enjoying an agreeable reputation, he had no other enemy than 
 himself, and a certain evil spirit of instability by which he was 
 dominated. No sooner was he settled in any lodging than he took a 
 dislike to it. He changed hundreds of times, and always under some 
 pretexts that he took all the pains in the world to make plausible. 
 He settled best in some rooms that I had in different quarters of 
 Paris, which we only used for posing the model and for painting and 
 drawing in. In these places entirely consecrated to art, free from 
 interruption, Watteau and I and a common friend, ^ who was ani- 
 mated by the same tastes, experienced the pure joy of youth 
 combined with liveliness of imagination, both always united with 
 the charm that attaches to painting. I may say that Watteau, 
 everywhere else so gloomy, so hypochondriac, so timid, and so 
 sarcastic, was then only the Watteau of his pictures ; that is to say, 
 the author suggested by tliem — agreeable, tender, and perhaps a little 
 berger. In these retreats I learned to my profit how deeply Watteau 
 reflected upon painting, and how far inferior his execution was to 
 his ideas. In eff'ect, having no knowledge of anatomy, having 
 scarcely ever studied h'om the nude, he could neither read it nor 
 express it. . . . This defect of practice in drawing debarred him 
 from painting or composing any heroical or allegorical subject, or 
 producing figures of a certain size. The Four Seasons that he painted 
 in the salon of M. de Crozat are an instance of this. They are 
 nearly half the size of nature, and although he executed them after 
 sketches by M. de la Fosse, they contain so much mannerism and 
 dryness that no good can be said of them." 
 
 M. de Goncourt, however, maintains that these arabesques 
 
 1 No doubt M. Henin. See page 40. 
 
38 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 were executed from original sketches by "Watteau, -wliich are 
 now in his own possession, and not from De la Fosse's 
 sketches ; and the criticisms of M. de Caylus (which repre- 
 sent those in vogue in France for nearly a century after his 
 time, and by which, no doubt, Watteau's singular exclusion from 
 the national collections of the Louvre was influenced) are, now 
 that Watteau's works are better known, generally reversed. 
 
 "Aic fond," he continues, " it must be admitted Watteau was infini- 
 ment manie're. Although he was gifted with certain 'graces,' and 
 seductive in his favourite subjects, his hands, his heads, even his 
 landscape, are all marked with this defect. Taste and effect are his 
 principal advantages, and these produce agreeable illusions, his colour 
 being good and true to the expression of textures which are drawn 
 ' d'une fagon piquante.' It must be remarked, however, that nearly 
 all his textures are silk, which falls in small folds. But his draperies 
 were well put on and the arrangements of the folds was true, because 
 he drew them always from the living model, and never from the lay- 
 figure. The choice of local colours to his draperies was good, and 
 never disturbed the harmony. Finally, his delicate and light touch 
 gave to all of his execution a ' piquant ' and lively effect. Of his 
 power of rendering expression I can say nothing, for he never ven- 
 tured the representation of any passion." 
 
 The house of M. Pierre de Crozat was built in 1704 upon 
 a space of about nine roods, near the Eue Eiclielieu. 
 
 "It consisted of a square building, of one story high, and attics in 
 the roof, and looked on three sides over a charming landscape garden. 
 The external decorations of the house were simple, but in good taste ; 
 they were the work of Cartault, a distinguished architect formerly 
 in the service of the Duke de Berri. A prodigious collection of 
 curiosities was the special attraction of the interior. 
 
 "Two large apartments of the rez-de-chaussee were full of admirable, 
 pictures, and in one of these was a very beautiful antique statue of 
 Bacchus, restored by Frangois Flamand. These apartments led to 
 a large gallery, which filled a whole side of the building and com- 
 manded a view of the garden. This is the first instance of such an 
 arrangement, and its success was so great that it was often afterwards 
 imitated in other buildings. The gallery was sixty feet in length, 
 and twenty-two feet wide, and very beautifully proportioned, richly 
 
HOUSE OF M. DE CROZAT. 
 
 39 
 
 decorated in a manly taste, and free from affectation or superfluity of 
 ornament. 
 
 ' ' The ceiling, wliicli is painted with all imaginable skill, is one of the 
 finest works of Charles de la Fosse, who finished it in 1707. It 
 represents the birth of Minerva, and most admirable is the art with 
 which the painter has taken advantage of the nature of the place 
 that he had to paint ; he has arranged his grouping so well ; his sky 
 is painted with such truth and harmony that the vault looks as if it 
 were open to the air. The upper story is on the same plan, divided 
 into two separate apartments. One of these was occupied by Charles 
 de la Fosse, who died there in 1716, at the age of eighty, and (at the 
 date of the description being written) his widow is living there still. 
 The other apartment, which looks to the north, consists of a suite of 
 rooms and a gallery lighted at each end. It is here that the amateur 
 of painting and sculpture will find ample food for his curiosity. 
 The master of the house has always taken pride in the possession of 
 objects of beauty, and he has had the good fortune to see an infinite 
 number of other famous collections pass successively into his own, 
 making together the most ample collection of pictures, busts, bronzes, 
 models of the most excellent sculptors, stones cut in relief, engrav- 
 ings, and especially drawings by the great masters, which their owner 
 takes pleasure in exhibiting to the amateurs who visit him. 
 
 "The place in which he preserves his rarest treasures is an octagonal 
 cabinet, lighted a V Italieiiiie, of the same arrangement as the famous 
 saloon of the gallery of the Grand Duke at Florence, called the 
 Tribune, which also contains so many precious objects. This cabinet 
 is decorated all round with excellent sculptui'e in stucco, representing 
 the genii of the arts, by Pierre le Gros." 
 
 The above description is taken verbatim from Brice (' De- 
 scription de Paris de Germain Brice,' edition de 1752). He says 
 of tlie garden mentioned above, that it was of great expanse, and 
 commanded extremely varied views over a great extent of country. 
 
 The terrace above the orangery bordering the new avenue 
 planted on the ramparts of the city was a most agreeable walk. 
 The fruit garden, which was large and regular, was beyond the 
 avenue, and was reached by a subterranean passage pierced at a 
 great cost in the earth of the fortification. Two of Watteau's 
 pictures contain views of M. Crozat's other garden at Mont- 
 moreuci : one. La Perspective, engraved by Crespy le fils, from 
 
40 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 the picture in the possession of M. Guenon, carpenter to 
 the king ; another, a drawing by "Watteau, engraved by M. de 
 Caylus. La Fosse finished the ceiling of the great gallery in 
 1707, and it was in 1712 that Watteau painted the fresco of 
 the Four Seasons in the dining-hall, after La Fosse's sketches 
 {Caylns). 
 
 . M. de Caylus says that he and M. Henin were in the 
 habit of bringing to Watteau, while' he was with M. de Crozat, 
 " an infinite number " of drawings from the studies of the best 
 Flemish masters and the great Italian painters of landscape, in 
 such a state of progress that he could get the eff'ect of them " en 
 y donnant quatre coups." This, he says, was what Watteau 
 liked above all things — to achieve his result ra^ddly and without 
 trouble. 
 
 "The style of the 'petit' makes this easy. There a mere trifle pro- 
 duces or alters the expression. . . Watteau, in pursuit of rapidity of 
 execution, liked paniting d gras. This expedient has always "had 
 many advocates, and the greatest masters have employed it. But its 
 success is dependent upon great and skilful preparations, and Watteau 
 hardly ever made any. As a substitute for them he used, when he 
 took up one of his pictures to finish, to rub it all over carelessly with 
 huile grasse, and paint over that. This temporary advantage has 
 caused serious damage to his pictures, increased by a certain want of 
 cleanliness in his practice which has aff'ected the ' constancy ' of his 
 colours. He seldom used to clean his palette, and often went several 
 days without setting it. His pot of huile grasse, that he used so 
 freely, was filled with dust and dirt, and mixed with all sorts of 
 colours from the washings of his brushes. . . Tliis want of care was 
 the effect of Watteau's indolence, and of a certain impulse of vivacity 
 given by the desire, or even the necessity, of throwing an idea rapidly 
 on to the canvas. He had this impulse at times, but was much more 
 frequently impelled to drawing. This occupation had an infinite 
 attraction for him ; and although generally the figures that he drew 
 from nature had no definite purpose, he could not tear himself away 
 from it. . . He never made a sketch or a ' pensee,' ever so slight, for 
 any of his pictures. He used to make all his sketches or studies into 
 a bound volume, so that he always had a large number ready to his 
 hand. He had a collection of ' gallant ' costumes, and a few comic. 
 
TUNING THE GUITAR 
 
DETAILS OF HIS METHOD, AND LIFE IN PARIS. 41 
 
 ■with which he used to dress up his models. . . When he wished to 
 compose a picture he refez'red to his collection, selected the figures 
 that suited him at the moment, and arranged them in groups, 
 generally upon a background of landscape already composed. . . This 
 method of composition is the cause of the uniformity, or monotony, 
 of Watteau's pictures. . . With the exception of a few of his pictures, 
 such as the Accordee, or the Noce de Village, le Bal, VEnscigne (painted 
 for M. Gersaint), and the Emharquement dc Cythere (painted for his 
 reception to the Academy, and since repeated), his compositions have 
 no motive. They do not show the expressions of any passion, and 
 are in consequence destitute of one of the most attractive parts of 
 painting — I mean that of action." 
 
 M. Gersaint does not say how long Watteau's stay with M. 
 Crozat lasted ; his navi'ative on the subject is the following : — 
 
 "The favourable opportunity that he had of entering the house of M. 
 Crozat M'as the more agreeable to him because he knew what great 
 treasures of drawings this ' curieux ' possessed. He profited by them 
 eagerly, and had no other pleasures than that of perpetually examin- 
 ing, and even copying, all the pieces by the greatest painters, 
 
 "Love of liberty and independence led him at last to remove from 
 M. de Crozat ; he wished to live at his own pleasure, and indeed in 
 obscurity. He retired to the house of my father-in-law,^ where he 
 had a small lodging, and absolutely forbad the discovery of his place 
 of residence to any who should inquire for it." 
 
 Here again the available records leave a slight difficulty. 
 M. d'Argenville gives us a different account. He says, Watteau 
 found, in the house of the 'grand curieux' (M. de Crozat), 
 
 ' ' A collection of pictures and drawings by the great masters, which 
 finished his education (qui acheva de le perfectionner) ; and the 
 influence of the study of so many beautiful things was remarked in 
 his work. He afterwards went to lodge unth the Sienr Vleughels,'^ 
 a friend of his who died afterwards when he was the Director of the 
 Academy of Rome," 
 
 ' M. Spoude. 
 
 2 He was living with Vleughels in the house of the nephew of M. le 
 Brun, on the moats (fos-'ez) of the ' Doctrine Chretienne,' when the idea of 
 making his fortune induced him to cross over to London {Gersaint). 
 
42 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 M. de Mariette mentions a portrait of Vleughels, engraved by- 
 Cars in the ' Eecueil des figures de differents Caracteres.' He 
 does not indicate the figure, but De Goncourt supposes it to be 
 one of a three-quarters face turned to the left, and wearing a 
 nightcap.^ 
 
 "His success increased up to tlie year 1718, and would have been 
 carried still farther, if his natural instability of character had not set 
 limits to it." 
 
 It will be observed that each of these narratives contains, 
 without mentioning it, the date of Watteau's final admission to 
 the Academy and appointment to the office of "peintre du roi." 
 M. Gersaint says — 
 
 " Watteau was not puffed up with his new dignity, and the new lustre 
 with which he had now been decorated. His desire to live in 
 obscurity continued, and, far from overvaluing his own merit, he 
 applied himself still more to study, and became still more dissatisfied 
 with his work. I have often been a witness of his impatience, and 
 the dislike he had for his own work. Sometimes I have seen him 
 entirely wipe out finished pictures which displeased him for some 
 fault that he found in them, and that in spite of my offer of a fair 
 price. On one occasion I snatched one out of his hands in spite of 
 himself, to his great mortification. 
 ' "From this time (1717 ?) until the date of his voyage to England, in 
 1720, the instability {le'gerete) of bis character impelled him to 
 frequent changes of residence ; never pleased for long with places 
 which he had chosen for himself, 'et qu'il avait desire avecardeur.' " 
 
 Eeferring to this part of his life, and throwing perhaps as 
 much light upon its history as a great number of dry facts, are 
 the following letters. They were published in the 'Archives de 
 I'Art Francais,' in 1855. They were communicated by the Earon 
 Eothschild, at that time jMinister in England fur the King of 
 Sweden and Norway. 
 
 M. de Chennevi^res edits them with the remarks : "All 
 Watteau is there, with liis heart, with his Avorks. with the 
 
 1 Comediens Frangois, No. 64 in the ' (Euvre ' of De Goncourt. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 43 
 
 habits of his life and his labour, and even to the failings of his 
 poor health. And what a delicious enthusiasm he has for 
 Eubens, of whom, with Van Dyck, he is the most brilliant 
 pupil ! Did you see, in the great salon of the Louvre, in 1848, 
 the Voyage a Cythere by the side of the Kermesse ? Did the 
 chef-d'ceuvre of the master eclipse that of Watteaul" 
 
 A Monsieur Gersaint, Md., sur le Pont Notre Dame, de la part 
 DE Watteau. 
 
 Dii, Samedi. 
 
 ^ MoN AMI Gersaint, 
 
 Oui, comme tu le desires, je me rendrai demain a diner avec 
 Antoine de la Roque, chez toi. Je compte aller a la messe a dix 
 heures a St. Germain de Lauxerrois ; et assurement je seroi rendn 
 chez toi a midi, car je n'auroi avant qu'une seule visite a faire a 
 I'ami Molinet qui a un pen de pourpre depuis quinze jours. 
 
 En attendi'', ton amy, 
 A. Watteau. 
 
 "k Mr. Monsieur de Julienne, de la part de Watteau par expres. 
 
 Be Paris, le 3 de Mai. 
 
 1 Monsieur ! 
 
 Je vous fais le retoiir du grand tome premier de I'Ecrit de 
 Leonardo de Vincy, et en mesmes temps je vous en fais agreer mes 
 sinceres remerciements. Quand aux Lettres en manuscrit de P. 
 Rubens, je les garderai encore devers moi si cela ne vous est pas trop 
 desagreable en ce que je ne les ai pas encore achevees ! ! Cette douleur 
 au cote gauche de la tete ne m'a pas laisse sommeiller depuis mardi 
 et Mariotti veut me faire prendre une purge des demain au jour, il 
 dit que la grande chaleur qu'il fait I'aidera a souhait. Vous me 
 rendrez satisfait au dela de mon souhait, si vous venez me rendre 
 visite d'iqi k dimanche ; je vous montrerai quelqires bagatelles comme 
 les paisages de Nogent que vous estimez assez par cette raison quo 
 j'en fis les pensees en presence de Madame de Julienne a qui je baise 
 les mains tres-respectueusement. 
 
 Je ne fais pas ce que je veux en ce que la pierre grise et la pierro 
 de sanguine sont fort duxes en ce moment, je n'en puis avoir 
 d'autres. 
 
 A. Watteau. 
 
 ^ See Translation in Appendix, p. 81. 
 
WATTEAU. 
 
 A. Mr. Monsieur de Julienne de la part de W. 
 
 Dc Paris, le 3 de Septembre. 
 
 Monsieur ! 
 
 Par le retour de Marin qui m'a apporte la venaison qu'il 
 vous a pleu m'envoier des le matin, je vous adresse la Toile ou j'ai 
 peinte la teste du sanglier et la teste du renard noir, et vous pourrez 
 les depecher vers Mr. de Losmesnil, car j'en ai fini pour le moment. 
 Je ne puis m'en cacher mais cette grande toile me rejouist et j'en 
 attends quelque retour de satisfaction de vostre part, et de celle de 
 Madame de Julienne qui aime aussi infiniment ce sujet de la chasse, 
 comme moi-mesme. II a fallu que Gersaint m'ammenat le bon homme 
 la Serre pour agrandir la toile du coste droit, ou j'ai ajouste les 
 clievaux dessous les arbres, car j'y eprouvois de la gesne depuys que 
 j'y ajouste tout ce qui a este decide ainsi. 
 
 Je pense reprendre ce coste la des lundi k midi passe, parceque des 
 le matin je m'occupe des pensees a la sanguine. Je vous prie ne pas 
 m'oublier anvers Madame de Julienne k qui je baise les mains. 
 
 A. Watte ATJ. 
 
 A M. Mon Sieur de Julienne, 
 
 Monsieur ! 
 
 Il a pleu a Mon Sieur I'Abbe de Noirterre de me fsiire I'envoi 
 de cette toile de P. Rubens ou il y a les deux testes d'anges, ct au 
 dessous sur le nuage cette figure de femme plongee dans la contempla- 
 tion. Rien n'aurait sen me rendre plus heureux assurement si je ne 
 restois persuade que c'est par I'amitie qu'il a pour vous et pour Mr. 
 v6tre neveu, que Monsieur de Noirterre se dessaisit en ma faveur 
 d'une aussi rare peinture que celle-la. 
 
 Depuis ce moment oil je I'ai regne, jfe ne puis rester en repos, et 
 mes yeux ne se lassent pas de se retourner vers le pupitre ou je I'ai 
 placee comme dessus un tabernacle ! ! On ne saurait se persuader 
 facilement que P. Rubens aie jamais rien fait de plus acheve que 
 cette Toile. II vous plairra, Monsieur, d'en faire agreer mes verit- 
 ables remeryimens a Monsieur I'abbe de Noirterre jusques a ce que je 
 puisse les lui adresser par moy-mesme. Je prendrai le moment du 
 messager d'Orleans prochain, pour lui escrire et luy envoier le tableau 
 du repos de la S'" famille que je luy destine en reconnoissance. ' 
 
 Votre bien attache amy et serviteur, Monsieur ! ! 
 
 A. Watte A0. 
 
 ^ See page 61 . 
 
HIS ADVISERS AND TRIENDS. 
 
 45 
 
 M. de Caylus, in spite of his severe criticism of Watteau's 
 indolence and restless instability of purpose, competes with 
 Gersaint in professions of the friendship that he entertained for 
 him, and the remonstrances he addressed him on the subject of 
 his ruinous disregard of his interests in the affairs of life. 
 
 "I saw with real pain that he was continually the dupe of everybody 
 round him ; and the more to be pitied because he had sense enough 
 to appreciate this, whilst his feebleness carried him onwards ; finally, 
 that the delicacy of his constitution increased from day to day. . . I 
 represented to him, besides all this, that he had good friends, but 
 that knowledge of the world taught how little reliance is to be placed 
 upon them when adversity arrives. I added that those of his friends 
 who were more highly-minded were still liable to death. I used 
 every argument that his position supplied, only too abundantly, to 
 my friendship. I rested these arguments even upon his own love of 
 independence, with which Nature appeared to have endowed him, 
 and which, in general, is the pleasant accompaniment of genius. . . 
 To all tliis fine sermon I received no answer but this, with a personal 
 expression of thanks : — ' Le pis-aller, n'est ce pas I'hopital ? On n'y 
 refuse personne.' " 
 
 We Can hardly believe that Watteau, however careless he 
 might be, was serious when he made this last speech. Another 
 interpretation of it might be found in the supposition that he 
 had some reliance upon the force of his genius, and scarcely took 
 into serious consideration the extremity suggested in the worldly- 
 wise sermon of his friend. He was shrewd enough to know that 
 between him and the refuge for the destitute that he named, 
 there lay, had health and strength been granted him, the pos- 
 sibilities of eminence and wealth. All is conjecture in his 
 history ; but his journey, almost we may call it his fiiglit, into 
 England has the air of an escape from surroundings where, as 
 M. de Caylus says, he was, in his indolent generosity of disposi- 
 tion, the dupe of everybody ; to a fresh field of enterprise, where, 
 shaking off at the same time the men who cozened him and 
 those who patronized him, he could indulge in his own way that 
 love of independence with which, as M. de Caylus says, "Nature 
 appeared to have endowed him." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 1719 — 1721. 
 
 VISIT TO ENGLAND — RETURN TO FRANCE, AND DEATH. 
 
 IN the previous cliapter I have followed, with such preci- 
 sion as the records at my disposal permitted, the eleven 
 years of Watteau's comparative prosperity, the principal cloud 
 upon which appears to have been tlie nervous restlessness 
 and the natural melancholy of his temperament. Gratifying in 
 the first instance, and with the first gleam of hope inspired by 
 his gain of the Academic prize, his longing for liberty (for I do 
 not adopt the narrative of M. de Caylus, which would place the 
 date of his visit to Valenciennes before the incident of his 
 gaining the Academic prize), he hastens home, not, as he might 
 have dreaded in the days of the Pont Notre Dame, a broken 
 penitent, but flushed with his first success in life, and full of 
 confidence in his power. The little incident of the price of the 
 second picture that he sold to M. Spoude, two hundred lire, 
 instead of the sixty that he had received for its pendant, shows 
 that he was already feeling firm ground under him. His 
 residence with M. Crozat must have been one long enjoyment, 
 and, in respect of its influence on his art, a continuation of 
 his experiences in the Luxembourg. Again he found himself 
 domiciled in the midst of the works of the great masters, and 
 his leisure hours were spent among gardens still more beautiful 
 and more highly cultivated than those of the Luxembourg. In 
 his solitude and retirement among these beautiful scenes he 
 
A RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY. 
 
 47 
 
 found the fairy-land inspirations that he transmitted to his 
 canvases. " Le milieu explique I'liomme," says Diderot; the 
 festivals at Valenciennes, the opera at Paris, and the clipped 
 and cultivated gardens at Montmorenci, all mingle in his 
 paintings. A striking feature in his character is his failure to 
 realize the extent of his own success, or to grasp the rewards 
 that lay at his feet. He was impelled by his temperament 
 rather to seek obscurity and solitude, in which to indulge the 
 dreams that a closer contact with the world. might have converted 
 into nobler appreciations of realities. 
 
 ifo man leading such a life can live long, or happily. In- 
 cessant concentration of thought on one subject, and that mostly 
 the phantasy of his own invention, is distinctly unhealthy; and 
 accordingly we find him with ruined health in what should have 
 been the prime of his life. The pitifulness of his story is, 
 however, wonderfully relieved by the glimpse into his friend- 
 ships and his piety of disposition to be got in the few letters 
 printed at the end of the last chapter. His life was not alto- 
 gether solitary, we see, and his friends were sympathetic. It 
 would be extremely interesting to discover more of such corre- 
 spondence. The story is full of broken links, but here and 
 there the gaps may be bridged over without any over-daring 
 exercise of the imagination. 
 
 His quiet amusements with his friend M. de Julienne have a 
 record in a picture, of which the engraving is mentioned by M. 
 de Goncourt. It represents a scene of country, with Watteau 
 occupied in painting, and M. de Julienne playing on the 
 violoncello. Underneath the picture is the following inscription, 
 probably from the pen of M. de Julienne : — 
 
 " Assis aupres de toy sons ces cbarmants Ombrages 
 Du temps, mon oher Watteau, je craiiis peu les outrages. 
 Trop henreux si les traits d'un fidele Burin 
 En multipliant tes ouvrages, 
 Instruisaient I'Univers des sinceres lionimages 
 Que je rends a ton Art divin." 
 
48 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 A still more interesting illustration of the same subject is 
 tlie picture called La Conversation, of which De Goncourt 
 says — 
 
 "The composition called La Conversation, with its freedora from 
 poetical conventionality, its costumes of the period, and its tons of 
 contemporary reality, is beyond dispute a representation of M. de 
 Julienne's society. The honorary member of the Academy of Painting 
 is recognized in the ' causeur a la grande perruque ' seated on the right 
 hand. Watteau — the same "Watteau, ' longuet et maigriot,' whom 
 we see in the Shipwreck — is easily identified standing upright in the 
 centre of the composition. . . A study for the head of the negro who 
 is handing round refreshments is in the British Museum." 
 
 We have seen enough of M. de Gersaint, and even of M. de 
 Caylus, to understand that, even if there were no stronger motive, 
 a restless dislike of the restraint of their incessant patronage and 
 advice might well have been an impulse to Watteau to take a 
 holiday, even from them. His friendship with M. de Julienne 
 appears in a pleasanter light of assumed equality, and a more 
 genial form of intercourse. Watteau, moreover, had begun life 
 with a long apprenticeship to servitude and injustice. The 
 selfish " exploitation " of which Gillot and Audran had made 
 him the victim may well have left him inclined to be suspicious 
 even of " L'ami Gersaint " and his accommodating father-in-law. 
 He had also, as M. de Caylus explains, passed through a time 
 of independence and comparative fame, and found his life made 
 insupportable by the calculated assiduities of his flatterers. 
 
 The criticisms and the narrative of De Caylus lead to the 
 reflection that it was an evil inspiration of M. de la Fosse that 
 led him to dissuade Watteau from his purpose of studying at 
 Eome. He seems to have felt henceforth a disgust at the 
 dedication of his talents to the Trivial in art, while his health, 
 which the climate of Italy might have re-established, broken 
 probably by the hardships of his long probation, was too feeble 
 for his energy, and he sank into comparative indolence, out of 
 which his genius flickered with an uncertain light, feeble in 
 
HIS WORK IN LONDON. 
 
 49 
 
 comparison with what it might have been, as that of his pictures 
 is to the brightness of the skies of Italy. 
 
 M. de Caylus passes rapidly over the subject of Watteau's 
 residence in England : — 
 
 " His natural restlessness having impelled liim to leave M. Vleughels, 
 he did nothing but wander from place to place, making fresh ac- 
 quaintances. Among these, as his misfortune would have it, were 
 some who exaggerated the advantages of residence in England with 
 that foolish enthusiasm which we find in many people who have 
 never made a voyage. He wanted no more than this to turn to that 
 country his incessant desire for change. He set out in 1719, arrived 
 at London, worked there, but was very soon displeased with the 
 melancholy life that, being a foreigner ignorant of the language, he 
 was forced to lead there. However, Frenchman though he was, he 
 was well enough received, and studied the practical side of his affairs. 
 But at the end of a year the fogs and the coal-smoke that one 
 breathes for air in that country injured the health which even a 
 purer air would not have preserved to us for long, for even before the 
 voyage his lungs were affected. He therefore returned to France, 
 and to Paris." 
 
 All other notices of his life pass over his visit to this country 
 with similar brevity. Gersaint says : 
 
 "He was very hard at work during his residence in England ; his 
 works were much run after there, and were well paid. It is there that 
 he first began to acquire a taste for money, which he had previously 
 despised. . . The bad air which prevails in London from the vapour 
 of the coals that are burned in that country is very injurious to tliose 
 who are aff'ected in the lungs ; but he was so severely attacked by the 
 disease which is there called ' La consomption,' that he has ever after- 
 wards dragged out a languishing life, which by insensible degrees 
 brought him to his grave." 
 
 He placed his health in the care of the eminent Dr. Eichard 
 Mead, the physician to King George II., " who advised him " 
 (Allan Cunningham records) " to study less and amuse himself 
 more ; and, in order to keep him from sinking into poverty, for 
 Watteau was never rich, he commissioned from him a couple 
 of pictures, leaving the subjects to his own taste." 
 
 w E 
 
50 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 One of these pictures, painted for Dr. Mead, was tlie Italian 
 Comedians, engraved by Baron, mentioned in a ' Catalogue of 
 the genuine and capital collection of pictures, by the most cele- 
 brated masters, of that late great and learned physician Doctor 
 Eichard Mead,' sold at Langford's March, 23 March, 1754, for 
 50 guineas. Another, L' Amour paisible, sold on the previous 
 day for £42. It is described as 102 of the ' Q£uvre,' on p. 27. 
 
 The king, at the recommendation of Dr. Mead, also gave him 
 a commission for the four pictures v?hich are now at Buckingham 
 Palace, described on p. 77. 
 
 There is an interesting proof engraving in the British Museum 
 (mentioned by M. de Goncourt) of a family group painted by 
 Watteau during his residence in London : of a miniature painter 
 of the time, named Pierre Mercier, with his wife and children. 
 Watteau's friend stands on the left of the picture, and in front 
 of him a little girl is riding on a wooden hobby-horse, her little 
 brother holding her up. Mercier' s wife stands in the centre of 
 the picture, with the painter's tobacco-pipe in her hand ; and a 
 little girl is playing with a racket by herself in a corner. 
 
 "Change of air," says Cunningham, "or rather change of 
 scene, made him look up a little. He felt, however, that 
 ' Death was with him dealing,' and returning to Paris, sickened 
 and died in the thirty-seventh year of his age." 
 
 A curious instance of the uncertainty that exists as to the 
 facts of his history arises in connection Avith a portrait of 
 the sculptor Antoine Pater, the father of his pupil. M. de 
 Goncourt mentions that this portrait is now in the possession of 
 M. Bertin of Valenciennes, a descendant of the Pater family. It 
 is one of the rare specimens of Watteau's portraits in oil, which 
 the critic is disposed to allow to be authentic. It is a half-length 
 portrait, and on the head a " vaste perruque blonde aux ombres 
 fauves." M. Cellier says that the colouring of this portrait is 
 as powerful as that of a Eembrandt, and that the head of M. 
 Pater appears in several of Watteau's other pictures. He also 
 
RETURNS TO PARIS. 
 
 51 
 
 maintains that it was painted, after "Watteau's return from 
 England, during a visit that he paid to Valenciennes, which is 
 not mentioned by any of his biographers. M. Leon Dumont 
 adopts this hypothesis ; he says of the picture — • 
 
 " This beautiful canvas is calculated to overthrow the theories of those 
 who assert that Watteau could not diverge from his usual subjects. 
 "We recognize at once the touch of a great master, and think of 
 Rembrandt and the magic day that illuminates his figures. The 
 countenance is full of expression, especially the forehead; the eyes 
 and the root of the nose are remarkable. It is altogether in the 
 painter's linal style. The work was evidently done very rapidly, and 
 at the same time with the facility that s,prings from an extraordinary 
 degree of firmness and precision. It is curious to inquire into the 
 circumstances of its production. If we may believe the family tra- 
 ditions, Antoine Pater never left his native place : a voyage to Paris 
 was a great undertaking two hundred years ago. The picture must, 
 therefore, have been painted at Valenciennes. We know that Watteau 
 passed some months there at the age of twenty-three ; but he was, 
 at that time, far from being able to paint like this, and Pater would 
 then have been scarcely forty years of age, whilst his portrait is that 
 of a man of fifty. It is necessary, therefore, to admit a second visit, 
 of which the biographers have lost sight. M. Cellier makes an 
 ingenious suggestion : the journey of the painter to England is 
 assigned to the second year before his death. Now Valenciennes is 
 on the high road from Paris to London. Watteau, who loved his 
 own country, who had dedicated to the pleasure of a visit there the 
 price of his first picture, who in his last moments formed the wish to 
 die there, did not return to the north of France without first repos- 
 ing, a few days at least, among his family and friends. M. Bertin 
 remembers a portrait of the wife of Pater, which by a variety of 
 accidents has been finally completely destroyed. " 
 
 On his return to Paris, Watteau took up his residence again 
 with L'Ami Gersaint, and the first work that he did was to 
 paint a sign-hoard for the shop of that enterprising dealer, " to 
 keep his fingers warm " (pour se degourdir les doigts). This 
 "plafond," as the sign-boards were then called, produced a 
 sensation in the quarter. " The whole of it," says Gersaint, 
 
 £ 2 
 
52 
 
 "WATTEAU. 
 
 ' ' Was painted from nature ; the attitudes in it were so easy, the 
 composition so natural, that it attracted the eyes of all the passers- 
 by ; and even the most skilful painters came several times to admire 
 it. It was the work of eight days, Watteau only working in the 
 mornings, by reason of the delicacy of his health and his weak- 
 ness, &c. " 
 
 M. de Gersaint's signboard was engraved by P. Aveline, and 
 formed part of the collection of M. de Julienne. It would 
 appear that Watteau attempted to'reproduce in the work, which 
 represented a dealer packing up his pictures, the various styles 
 of the painters of the day, 
 
 "Watteau, dans cette enseigne, k la fleur de ses ans, 
 Des Maistres de son Art Imite la maniere, 
 
 Leurs caracteres differens ; 
 Leurs touches et leur gout composent la mati^re." 
 
 M. Leon Dumont says of this picture that it is wonderful for 
 its accumulated details. It represents — 
 
 "A long gallery, the walls of which are covered with pictures of all 
 sizes, and of all schools of art. The styles of the various masters are 
 reproduced with such accuracy that they are recognized at the first 
 glance. The shop is full of visitors and customers, who are looking 
 over the canvases, or busy driving bargains. The painter has 
 neglected nothing that could add variety to the scene ; he has not 
 even forgotten the house-dog." 
 
 M. de Goncourt's account of his discovery of this picturie is 
 interesting. It is now, he says, in the " Elisabeth " or " Ked 
 Eoom," of the old palace at Berlin. 
 
 In the month of February, 1721, Watteau, at the request of 
 M. de Crozat, sat for his portrait to a Venetian lady, Eosalba 
 Carriera ; and painted in revenge at the same time a charming 
 portrait of herself holding a lapful of white roses in two hands, 
 and inscribed Rosa Alba. The engraving of this portrait has 
 some lines beneath it, beginning, " La plus belle des fleurs ne 
 dure qu'un matin," ^ a motto that she might with too sad a truth 
 
 ♦ 1- Goncourt, 'QLuvre.' 
 
KETREAT TO NOGENT. 
 
 63 
 
 have retorted upon poor Watteau himself. Eosalba was of as 
 melancholy a disposition as Watteau. She made a portrait of 
 herself crowned with a faded wreath, and called the picture 
 the tragedy of her life, and the token of her mournful death. 
 The diary of her visit to France has been published under the 
 title 'Diario degli anni 1720 et 21, scritto da Eos. Carriera.' 
 Venice, 1793, 4to. There are one hundred and fifty -seven 
 specimens of her work in the Dresden Gallery (Nagler). 
 
 He remained with M. de Gersaint six months, the decline 
 of his health obviously progressing, and the restlessness and 
 desire for change, which are the common accompaniment to such 
 a condition, gaining upon him. 
 
 ^Neither of the biographers appears to have considered, in the 
 preparation of his narrative, the interest that would have been 
 added to it by the recapitulation of the works painted under 
 the circumstances that they describe, and there are very few of 
 Watteau's paintings to which it is possible to assign a precise date. 
 
 Materials must, however, exist somewhere which would amplify 
 in an interesting manner this investigation. Their disappearance 
 for a century is significant of the neglect that fell upon Watteau's 
 memory in France during that period. To return to Gersaint' s 
 narrative : he continues it : — 
 
 "The languor that oppressed him at this time, from his delicate and 
 worn-out health, led him to think that he would be incommoding me, 
 after six months, if he continued to stay at my house. He expLained 
 this, and begged me to find him a suitable lodging. It would have 
 been useless for me to resist. He was self-willed, and brooked no 
 reply. I therefore did as he wished, but he did not remain long in 
 his new lodgings. His malady increased ; his restlessness redoubled ; 
 he thought that he would be much better in the country. He became 
 impatient, and finally was tranquillized by the information that M. Le 
 Febvre, then ' Intendant des Menus,' had allotted him a retreat in 
 his house at Nogent, above Vincennes ; at the solicitation of his 
 friend, the late Abbe Haranger, Canon of S. Germain TAuxerrois, I 
 took him there, and went over to see him and console him every two 
 or three days. " 
 
54 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 Watteau's friend, the Abbe Haranger, was, at the date of M. 
 de Caylus's address, an honorary member of the Academy of 
 Painting and Sculpture. He was probably, therefore, attracted 
 to Watteau by his attachment to art, and not merely in his 
 religious duties. ^ M. Le Febvre was also an honorary member 
 of the Academy. 
 
 Poor Watteau carried his malady and his unrest with him. 
 Caelum non animam mutant — 
 
 "The longing for change tormented him afresh ; he thought he might 
 conquer this malady by returning to his native air. He communi- 
 cated his idea to me, and begged me to make an inventory of the 
 little property that he had, and to sell it. It produced about 3000 
 livres, of which he made me the trustee. This was the whole fruit of 
 his labours, with 6000 livres which M. de Julienne had saved for him 
 from the wreck at the time that he set out for England, and which 
 were restored to his family after his death, together with the 3000 
 livres in my hands " {Gersaint). 
 
 This paragraph is pregnant with tantalizing partial revelations 
 of incidents that would have added to the interest of this history. 
 It tells us that at the date of his departure for England some 
 catastrophe of Watteau's fortunes, which Gersaint calls " le 
 JSTaufrage," happened, from which M. de Julienne had saved 
 6000 livres for Watteau. It appears that he kept these livres 
 as a trustee, as Gersaint did — as if Watteau were incapable of 
 looking after his own affairs at all. Then there is the mention 
 of his family, of whom Ave have heard nothing before. M. de 
 Gersaint does not mention who it was that constituted this 
 family — father and mother, or even wife and children ! The 
 whole history is involved in obscurity. 
 
 Watteau appears, in spite of his deadly illness of mind and 
 body, to have continued assiduously at work during the last 
 
 ^ S. Germain I'Auxerrois is the church mentioned in Watteau's letter to 
 Gersaint (quoted in the previous chapter) as that where he was in the habit 
 of attending mass. The chapter of S. Germain, when valued in 1770, was 
 composed of a dean, with 8000 livres revenue, of a " dignite de Chantre," 
 and twelve canons at 1500 livres apiece. 
 
DEATH. 
 
 So 
 
 days of his life ; principally in instruction of his pupil Pater, 
 who said in after years that he owed all that he inherited of 
 Watteau to these parting lessons ; but many of Watteau's own 
 works are also attributed to this period ; and of these are 
 satirical and humorous subjects. Of the former we have, attri- 
 buted to this date, The Doctor (described on p. 60), and M. 
 Dinaux narrates the circumstance of his making a number of 
 portrait sketches of his spiritual adviser, the reverend curate of 
 Nogent, who " was as jovial and gay a man as the painter was 
 the contrary, and had one of those figures of prosperity which 
 are not uncommon in the Church," in the character of Pierrot 
 or Crilles. 
 
 " This peccadillo," we are told, " weighed on the conscience of Watteau. 
 In his last moments he asked the curate's pardon for thus abusing 
 his features. The good pastor, in granting it, presented him, accord- 
 ing to the custom, with a crucifix to kiss. The image must have 
 been very badly executed, for Watteau cried out, ' Take away that 
 crucifix ; how could an artist dare to portray so grossly the features 
 of a God ! ' " 
 
 Gersaint only says that while the poor dying Watteau was 
 hoping from day to day to recover strength to return and die at 
 home, " his decline became more and more rapid, and suddenly 
 succumbing, he died in my arms at \N"ogent, on the 18th of 
 July, 1721, at the age of thirty-seven." 
 
 M. Biirger ^ has discovered in a Joueur de basse of Lancret, 
 which was exhibited by its owner, M. Burat, at the Paris col- 
 lection in 1860, a portrait of Watteau— in a very simple brown 
 costume, a powdered wig ; free from caprice or eccentricity, &c. ; 
 the head a little inclined to one side, like the attitude of a 
 musician listening to his own performance ; the face a little 
 wrinkled, and the expression melancholy ; a " drole de nez," 
 beviUed at the point. " How like it is to Watteau ! and of a 
 certainty it is he." Lancret must have painted him during the 
 
 1 ' Gaz. des Beaux Arts,' T. 7, p. 275. 
 
56 
 
 WATTE AU. 
 
 time when they were friends, before a sort of very superficial 
 rivalry had divided them, say about 1715. The basso-player looks 
 about thirty years old, which would do for Watteau at that date. 
 
 " Watteau," says Gersaint, "was a man of average stature, and con- 
 stitutionally feeble ; in disposition restless and changeable, strong 
 willed, libertine by inclination but steady of life, impatient, timid, 
 cold and embarrassed, reserved and cautious with strangers ; a good 
 friend, but hard to please ; misanthropical, and a malicious and sharp 
 critic, always discontented with himself and others ; unready to 
 forgive ; he spoke little, but well ; he was very fond of reading, wiiich 
 was the only amusement he allowed himself in his leisure ; although 
 not highly educated, he had a good judgment of works of intellect. 
 There, as far as I have been able to study him, you have his life- 
 portrait. No doubt his continual devotion to work, the delicacy of 
 his constitution, and the great sorrows with which his life was 
 chequered, made him irritable, and influenced the social faults which 
 he was subject to. " 
 
STUDY OF A girl's HEAD. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 WORKS. 
 
 WATTEAU'S ENGRAVED AND OTHER WORK — CRITICAL AND 
 HISTORICAL REMARKS. 
 
 THE catalogues of Watteau's pictures by M. Edmond de 
 Goncourt and other authors are all based upon, the collec- 
 tion of engravings prepared by M. de Julienne. ^ It is unfor- 
 tunate that tbese catalogues deal rather with the interest of the 
 merchant and collector than the student, and, bestowing infinite 
 pains in tracing out the story of the successive transfers of each 
 work, the prices that it fetched, its measurement in inches, and 
 the copies or engravings of it that exist, say only a word here 
 and there of the far more interesting subjects of its date and 
 history, and the circumstances under which it came into 
 existence. 
 
 M. de Goncourt's lists commence with that of the Etchings 
 by Watfeau's own hand, which I have not space to detail. 
 They are confessedly bad works of art, however valuable as 
 " curiosities." 
 
 ^ " Ij'oeuvre d'Antoine Watteau, peiutre du Roy en son Academie Royale 
 de Peinture et de Sculpture : Grave d'&pres ses Tableaux et Desseins 
 Originaux, tirez du Cabinet du Roy et des plus curieux de I'Europe par les 
 soins de M. de Julienne a Paris." A hundred copies were printed of this 
 collection, of which one is to be seen in the Print Room of the British 
 Museum. 
 
58 
 
 WATTE AU. 
 
 He next gives a list of Portraits, heginning with our fi ontis- 
 piece, and other portraits of Watteau, painted hy the artist 
 himself. Those of M. de Julienne and Watteau (14), and of 
 The painter Herder and his family (15), in London, I have 
 mentioned in their places, i These are followed by portraits of 
 M.J.B. Rebel (16), musician to the king," dessine par Watteau 
 son ami ; " and the Retour de Ghasse (18), mentioned below ; the 
 Rosalba'^ (19), of February 1721 ; Vleughels,^ and others which 
 have not been engraved. 
 
 M. de Crozat was in the habit of giving concerts, and one 
 of these is reproduced in a crayon drawing of Watteau, now in 
 the collection of the Louvre, with portraits of three musicians— 
 Antoine, a flute-player, and an Italian, Paccini, and a lady of 
 the name of D'Argenon, singers. These individuals are described 
 in a marginal note on the drawing as three virtuosi of the Crozat 
 concerts. 
 
 M. Sirois, the brother-in-law of M. Gersaint, figures in the 
 Italian concert. 
 
 " Sous un habit de Mezetin 
 Ce gros brun au riant visage." 
 
 M. de Mariette says, "This 'gros brun au riant visage' is 
 Watteau's friend, the Sieur Sirois, playing the guitar in the 
 midst of his family, in the character of Mezetin " (see ' Figures 
 Frangoises et Contemporaines '). 
 
 There were two friends of this name, father and son, and 
 the son had daughters, of one of whom there is a portrait 
 in a piece called the Retour de Chasse, which was painted by 
 Watteau on his return from Flanders, when he was living with 
 M. Sirois j)ere. This lady, represented in a hunting costume, 
 has been generally thought to be Madame de Vermanton, a 
 niece of M. de Julienne. A portrait of Madame de Julienne 
 appears in La Famille. Waagen mentions among the collection 
 of H. A. J. Munro, Esq., Portraits of two young children— life- 
 » Pages 47, 50. 2 p^gg 3 p^ge 42. 
 
SATIRICAL WORKS. 
 
 59 
 
 size — " A picture of the utmost attraction for the naivete and 
 truth of conception, and the delicate and transparent colouring." 
 
 A more important section is the Satirical and Allegorical 
 WORKS ; the first two, Painting and Sculj^ture, being lingeries. 
 The latter is said to be at present in the Orleans Museum. 
 " Les singes peintres — is a small picture on copper, in the gallery 
 of the Palais Eoyal, where it hangs as a pendant to the Musique 
 des Chats of Breughel."— (7e?-saw2^. Then (22) Le Dejeuner, 
 another ape subject ; (23) Depart pour les Isles is an important 
 composition. (24) Le Nanfrage. An engraving by Caylus is 
 extant of this composition, which Wattcau painted in com- 
 memoration of the unpleasant sea-journey that he had on his 
 return from England ; and perhaps, M. de Goncourt suggests, 
 with allusion to the fund of 6000 livres which M. de Julienne 
 had saved for him out of the shipwreck of his affairs, when he 
 set out on his journey (see p. 54). 
 
 Among the satirical works may be mentioned also the picture 
 called (25) The Doctor ; the original sketch of which, represent- 
 ing the sick man in night-cap and dressing-gown, flying for his 
 life, pursued by two apothecaries, is said to be in Eussia, in 
 the Lyceum of the palace of Tsarskoe-Selo. The engraving, 
 by Caylus, has some of the usual rough poetry under it, 
 beginning — 
 
 "Qu'ay-je fait, assassins maudits, 
 Pour m'attirer vOtre colere ? " &c. 
 
 This is not to be confounded with the other caricature of (26) 
 Doctor Misauhin, whom M. de Mariette describes as a French 
 surgeon who had taken refuge in England, and a vendor of 
 certain infallible pills that he had invented. He is represented 
 holding in his hand a three-cornered hat of the period, with long 
 crape streamers attached ; and all around him ghastly death's- 
 heads, tombs, and sarcophagi. The picture was engraved in 1739 
 
 1 In referring to pictures mentioned by M. de Goncourt, I adopt his 
 numbers for convenience of reference. 
 
60 
 
 WATTE AU. 
 
 by Arthur Pond, with the legend " Prenez des Pillules! prenez 
 des pillules ! " 
 
 A picture in the Lacaze collection of a similar subject, or 
 rather a combination of the two subjects above, is attributed 
 (along with another representing a juggler performing at a table) 
 to the earliest period of Watteau. 
 
 " The scene takes place in a cemetery; an invalid in a dressing-gown is 
 flying before the faculty, and finds no other refuge than the grave 
 from the apothecaries and their artillery. Watt'eau's doctors are 
 a repetition of the doctors of Moliere and Regnard. Certain bio- 
 graphers, naturally associating the ideas of doctors with those of 
 death and sickness, have considered it clever to make the artist paint 
 this picture in his last moments, and to regard it as a joke in extremis. 
 But it is impossible to admit this ; the work carries its date in the 
 method of its execution. These critics fall into the error of the 
 historian who romances from his imagination." 
 
 (27) A satirical piece entitled, " Ce manant de Dandin n'est 
 par ma foi, pas bete." 
 
 The Allegorical paintings of The Four Seasons for the dining- 
 hall of M. de, Crozat's house (painted about the year 1712) 
 were upon oval canvases of 4 ft. 9 in. high, by 3 ft. 9 in. broad. 
 M. de Caylus says that they were after designs of La Fosse. 
 " Caylus," says M. de Goncourt, " is mistaken ; I possess the 
 original sketches of the Spring and Autumn:' The Slimmer and 
 Winter were sold from the estate of the Due de Choisenl in 1786, 
 and again, at the Lebrun sale, in 1791, for 140 livres. Other 
 four seasons (on canvases 1 ft. 5 in. by 1 ft. 8 in.) were among 
 M. de J ulienne's collections. 
 
 The next section contains the Eeligious Subjects. 
 
 Of Watteau's works upon religious subjects, M. de Goncourt 
 supposes that the greater number have been lost sight of and 
 never engraved. He mentions among the engraved work, David 
 receiving Divine Inspiration (28), a composition which Mariette 
 says was executed for the edition of the Psalms by Calmet ; a 
 picture called The Penitent (29), in the coUection of M. de 
 
RELIGIOUS : MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS. 
 
 61 
 
 Julienne ; Tobias himjing the Dead (30) ; a Holy Famihj (31), 
 whicli went to Eiissia, and has "been frequently copied or repeated ; 
 and first among those which have escaped engravir.g, The Cruci- 
 fixion, which he painted on his deathbed for the cure of i^ogent. 
 The original title of this picture was Christ on the Gross, sur- 
 rounded hy Angels. Many others are mentioned,^ and finally 
 Hecart says, in his biographies, that he had seen a Watteau 
 " une merveille" : The sleep of the Infant Jesus, and the little 
 Saint John airahening Him hy blowing iqjon a horn. This picture, 
 says Hecart, was destroyed by a bombshell during the bombard- 
 ment of Valenciennes in 1793. 
 
 " The flesh tints had the freshness of the rose. The child Jesus was 
 buried in sleep ; two angel heads appeared from a cloud above and 
 contemplated Him. S. Joseph was placed at the head of the cradle, 
 the Virgin on the right. S. John Baptist was holding a small trumpet 
 of black horn, which was partly concealed by his little hand. Im- 
 patient to play with the infant Jesus, he put it to his mouth ; and 
 you could see by the inflation of his cheeks that he was sounding it 
 to awaken his little companion ; but the Virgin, noticing this, holds 
 up a finger, and seems to be saying, ' He must not be disturbed.' " 
 
 The next section, of Mythological Subjects, contains — (32) 
 Acis and Galatea, " imitating," we are told, " the landscapes of 
 Forest"; (33) L'amour desarme ; (34) L' amour mal acconi- 
 pagne ; (35) Les Amusements de Cythere ; (36) Diana at the 
 Bath; (37) The Children of Bacchus; (88) The Children of 
 Silemis, which bears an alias of Jeu d'enfants ; (39) The Rape 
 of Europa ; (40) Fetes of the god Pan; (41) Pomona. ]\r. 
 de Mariette says that this picture was for a long time used as a 
 sign-board to a painter's shop in the Pont ISTotre-Dame. (42) 
 The Sommeil Dangereux, alias Antiope surprised hy Jupiter in 
 the form of a Satyr; (43) The Triumph of Ceres; (44) The 
 Triumph of Venus, mentioned by Waagen in Mr. Neeld's 
 collection as " sketchily, but cleverly executed in his most 
 
 1 See p. 44, where the picture for the Abbe de Noirterre is mentioned: 
 Le Eepos de la Sainte Famille. 
 
62 
 
 WATTE AU. 
 
 transparent colouring; (45) Venus and Love; (46 — 49) The 
 Four Seasons ^ ; and a number of similar compositions not 
 engraved, including three which are now in the La Gaze collec- 
 tion in the Louvre, viz. : The Judgment of Paris, and Aidumn 
 (sketches), and Jupiter and Antiope. 
 
 M. de Goncourt's next section, of Historical Subjects, 
 mentions only an historical picture from the collection of M. de 
 Julienne, representing Louis XIV. investing Monsieur de Bour- 
 goyne, the father of Louis XV., with the Cordon hleu. Mariette, 
 in his ' Abecedario,' says that Watteau painted this picture for 
 M. Dieu, who had undertaken to prepare a series of designs of the 
 great actions of the life of the king, for reproduction in tapestry 
 work — a plan that was, however, ultimately abandoned. 
 
 Military scenes. — (51) Halt of a Detachment. (52) Camp 
 Volant. This is the picture (mentioned on p. 31) which he 
 painted for Sirois, during his first visit to Valenciennes in 1709, 
 as a pendant to the Depart de Garnison (mentioned on p. 26) ; 
 (pZ) Return from the Campaign. (54) Les fatigues de la Guerre ; 
 (55) Les delassements de la Guerre. These two pictures are 
 described by Gersaint as the most " piquants " that Watteau 
 ever painted. (56) Escorte d' equipages. Mariette calls this 
 picture " merveilleux." (67) A Halt; (58) Defile; (59) Depart 
 de Garnison — represents a departing troop ; a line of troops 
 passing beneath a large vault with horses, and in the foreground 
 several soldiers and others taking farewell.^ (60) The Pillage 
 of a Village; (61) The Revenge of the Peasants; (62) The 
 Vivandiere. Others are mentioned which have not been engraved. 
 
 Theatrical scenes. — (63) The Alliance of Music and Comedij ; 
 (64) Comediens Francois ; (65) L' Amour au Theatre Fran^ais ; 
 in the Berlin Museum; (66) Spectacle Francois — a landscape 
 with comedians ; (67) Adonis — " In a park, a dancer upright, 
 holding a rose ; on the right four nymphs reclining under a bust 
 of Pan ; on the left, on a bench, a Leander making a declaration 
 1 Mentioned on pp. 37, 60. ^ Mentioned on p. 26. 
 
THEATRICAL SCENES. 
 
 63 
 
 to an Isabelle, surprised by Crispin." (68) Cowediens Italims ; 
 or Les Artistes de la Comedie Italienne. A picture exhibited by 
 M. James de Eotlischild, at the exhibition of 1860. Pierrot 
 and the Doctor ; Sylvia, Columbine, and Leander. One holds 
 a mandoline. The figures are not of the best quality, but the 
 upper part cf the picture represents a luminous sky, among 
 groups of branching trees, which M. Burger says is " very fuU of 
 poetry, and fortunately in good preservation." 
 
 (69) n Amour au Theatre Italien. This picture, now at the 
 Berlin Museum, and its pendant, No. 65, are described by Dr. E. 
 Dohme as in almost perfect preservation — the best Watteaus in 
 the Eoyal collections. (70) The Departure of the Italian Come- 
 dians in 1697. (71) La Troupe Italienne. This picture is now 
 in the possession of Sir Eichard Wallace ; it is described in an 
 old catalogue of 1789 as " one of Watteau's finest designs." (72) 
 The Italian troup ''en vacances" — a composition of fifteen 
 figures. • (73) The Doctor — of the Italian comedy, represented in 
 a background of landscape. (74) La TouriVere. (75) " Arlequin, 
 Pierrot et Scapin : Endansant ont Vdme ravie." The picture is 
 in the possession of Sir Eichard Wallace. (76) " Belle, n'ecoutez 
 rien, Arlequin est un trditre." (77) " Four garder Vhonneur d'une 
 belle." These are two scenes of Italian comedy. (78) " Coquettes 
 qui pour voir galans au rendez-vous; " (79) Comediens comiques ; 
 (80) Le Rendez-vous comique. Gersaint mentions La Serenade 
 Italienne, representing six figures in a garden, engraved by 
 
 ' A copy of verses quoted in the ' Figures Fran9oises et Comiques ' illus- 
 trates contemporary criticism of these Italian pieces. (The orthography 
 is original. ) 
 
 " Les habits son Italiens 
 Les air fraii9ois, et je pai'ie 
 Que dans ces vray comediens 
 Git une aimable tronperie ; 
 Et qu' Italiens et fran9ois 
 Riant de Ihumaine folic 
 lis se moquent tout a la fois 
 De la france et de litalie." 
 
64 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 Scotin, " which passed at a high price from M, Titon du 
 Tillet, to M. de Julienne, and successively through the galleries 
 of M. M. de Boisset, de Brun, and M. X. . . x. . . x." 
 
 Of the theatrical pieces not engraved is the Gilles of the 
 Lacaze collection, at the Louvre, a masterpiece, of which there 
 is a very good etching in the ' Gazette des Beaux Arts ' of 1860 
 {See the Tllustratioji). M. Hedouin i tells a curious story of 
 this picture, which remained unsold, in the hands of a dealer 
 named Meuniez, for years, with the inscription scratched in chalk 
 upon it, " Que Pierrot serait content 
 
 S'il avait I'art de vous plaire." 
 It is a remarkable picture. M. Biirger says of this picture, 
 which was exhibited by M. de Cypierre in 1860 : — 
 
 "Ah! here is Pierrot in all his beauty, Pierrot in all his taille, 
 planted straight and stiff as a post, with his two arms swinging 
 against his sides ! Pierrot full face, quite at home in his floating 
 white costume, his malicious and smiling head framed into an 
 aureole by his broad-brimmed hat ! It is said that Watteau never 
 painted another life-size figure ; it is a pity, for he paints them as 
 well as Eubens or Veronese. ... It is not easy to paint a white figure 
 in the open air. The whites of Gilles's costume are wonderful. . . 
 The breadth and solidity of the execution are also surprising in this 
 painting, the proportions of which are not those habitually chosen 
 by the master. All painters of figurines are generally lost when 
 they attempt life-size figures : Metsu, Berchem, Du Jardin, and many 
 others of the Dutch masters, for example. On the contrary, the 
 hrosseurs of large compositions are admirable when they amuse 
 themselves with little personages : Frans Hals, for instance, in his 
 portraits of the size of Terburgh. The incomparable sculptor 
 Benvenuto Cellini is only ordinary in his gigantic statue of Pei jus, 
 whilst Michel Angelo would have done justice to the engraving of a 
 vase or a gem. Poussin, accustomed to small figures, is not so giood 
 in his Francois Xavier as he is in his Shepherds in Arcadia. It is 
 the sign of a thorough artist to be able to work well on any scale. 
 Chardin had this merit as well as Watteau." 
 
 ' Hedouin, Pierre, Mosaiques, Peintres, &c., a partir du xme siecle, &c. 
 Valenciennes, 1856. 
 
CHAKACTER FIGURES, 
 
 65 
 
 Character Figures (81). L'Amante inquiefe; on wood, 
 originally in the collection of the Abb6 Haranger, with a 
 pendant of a Mezzetin. 
 
 (82) La Fileuse represents a peasant girl spinning. 
 
 (83) La Finette ; (84) V Indifferent ; on wood. {See the Illus- 
 trations.) These two pictures are in the Lacaze Gallery of the 
 Louvre. They were at one time the property of Madame de 
 Pompadour, and were exhibited in 1860 by M. Lacaze. M. 
 Burger points them out as masterpieces for " qualite et puret^," 
 and describes them as follows : — 
 
 "The Indifferent is the counterpart of the Gilles ; standing upright 
 and full face, but with his arms spread out horizontally en balancier, 
 as if he was making a pirouette ; and the whole figure is not twenty- 
 centimetres high. ' Oh, le gentil danseur ! ' in his little pink Crispin 
 lined with pale blue, on a waistcoat of blue enverdiire, with breeches 
 of the same, and pink silk stockings. The hat is in the same 
 fine greens as the costume, which thus plays upon two tones of 
 extreme delicacy. On the left is a background of trees, always 
 between the green and the blue ; on the right a background of a 
 setting sun in silvery pinks, which answer to the little cloak and the 
 pink silk stockings. Is it not singular to see the foliage and the sky 
 painted with the same pate that glistens on the costume ? The 
 whole charm lies in these gradations {nuances brisees) — broken up, 
 indescribable — ' qui se penetrent mutuellement, se refletent, s'accor- 
 dent,' and produce a harmony which is very simple ; in some sort 
 monochrome, but extremely distingu^e and rare. The same pheno- 
 menon may be seen in the Finette, perhaps to a more intense degree. 
 The lady is seated almost with her back towards us, but her head 
 turned so as to show a three-quarters profile. In her left hand she 
 holds a mandolin, of which we can only see the handle. Her long- 
 trained robe is of a pearl grey, with pink and silver reflections, of the 
 same tone as the sky, where the sun is setting, and as the landscape 
 of fantastic forms. 
 
 " Watteau is one of those who paint the colours of the air, and not the 
 colours of objects, and therefore their colour — the light — is beyond 
 description, like some pictures of Rembrandt and Velasquez in which 
 it is impossible to point out the dominant colour. " 
 W F 
 
66 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 (85) La Marmotte, on wood ; now in the Hermitage at St. 
 Petersburg. (86) Mezetm, a subject often repeated by Watteau. 
 De Goncourt mentions three examples, of which one is in the 
 Hermitage. (87) La Polonnaise, representing a young woman 
 in Oriental costume. (88) La Reveuse, a lady in Turkish dress. 
 (89) La Sultane. Almost the same subject; the lady holds 
 a mask in her hand, and is smiling. (90) La Villa.geoise ; 
 described as a girl crossing a brook. (91) Le Petit Salotier 
 Boudet. M. Goncourt mentions others as doubtful. 
 
 Domestic Scenes. L' occupation selon Vage, in Mr. Eames's 
 collection. (93) Le chat malade. (94) La Toilette du Matin. 
 
 (95) LEnseigne, M. de Gersaint's sign-board, described on p. 50. 
 
 (96) Le Bain. (98) L'Accordee de Village, described as 
 
 The Marriage; No. 69 in the descriptive catalogue of M. 
 ISToel Desenfans (1801) of the exhibition of his purchases for the 
 King of Poland, at N"o. 3, Berners Street, in 1802. 
 
 " In a fine landscape executed quite in the manner of the Venetian 
 artists, Watteau offers here a composition of fifty-six figures in 
 varied attitudes, and all painted with astonishing spirit. Towards 
 the centre of the picture a large piece of red drapery, upon which 
 hangs a crown of flowers, is suspended between two trees, behind the 
 young bride, who is seated at a round table, with her lover by her 
 side. The notary is also occupied in drawing up the contract, and 
 on the right, as well as on the left, their friends are diverting them- 
 selves, some sitting on the grass, and others dancing to the sound of 
 a viol and bagpipe. 
 
 "Watteau has painted himself in a corner of the picture with his 
 children and his friend Ryshrack. 
 
 I have failed to find in any other biography or catalogue 
 any mention of Watteau's children, or a possible mother to 
 them. 
 
 (99) Les Agremem de VEste, formerly called La Moisson. 
 
 (100) The same title, presenting " the interior of a park, with 
 large trees, a lady in a swing, and ten other figures looking on." 
 
 (101) L'amant repousse. The description of this picture 
 
PIKETTE. 
 
DOMESTIC SCENES. 
 
 67 
 
 resembles that of the Fete Champetre of the Dulwich Gallery. 
 
 (102) V amour paisiUe, painted for Dr. Mead, and again, 
 
 (103) Uamour paisihle — was exhibited in 1860 under the title 
 Le Repos dans la Gampagne, and sold at the Due de Morny's 
 sale, in 1865, as the Recreation Champetre. It represents half- 
 a-dozen miniature figures seated in the centre of a landscape 
 broken by mountains. 
 
 " By what fatality has this marvellous gem been denature, and so 
 cruelly treated, that it has had to be re-executed in. all its sculptures, 
 and the heads, the feet, and the hands in it to be repainted, so that 
 all the delicate perfection of their original state is lost ? Alas ! there 
 is no jeweller skilful enough to restore a Watteau gem." 
 
 (105, 106) Amusements Champetres. Goncourt gives two 
 pieces under this title : one a composition of fourteen figures, 
 with a man playing the flute at the foot of a statue of Pan ; the 
 other containing twenty-two figures, including three in a boat. 
 The latter is in the collection of Sir Kichard Wallace, and 
 appeared in the Manchester Exhibition. 
 
 ^ (113) Le Bosquet de Bacchus, is supposed to be a picture 
 described by Waagen, in the possession of Lord Overstone. 
 
 (116) The Champs EIysees,oi which an engraving was published 
 in London in 1782 " from an original picture in the possession 
 of M. A. Maskin." 
 
 (117) Les Charmes de la vie is in the collection of Sir E. 
 Wallace, under the wrong title of Concert Champetre. It repre- 
 sents the ancient Champs Elysees, taken from the balcony of 
 the Tuileries. 
 
 (118) La Colation is in the Snermondt collection. It is 
 mentioned by M. Eiirger (' Gaz. des Beaux Arts,' 1869). 
 
 (119) Le Concert Champetre, formerly in the possession of 
 
 ^ I have passed over ; (107) Les Amusements Italiem ; (108) L'Assemblee 
 Oalantc ; (109) L' Avanturiere ; (111, 112) Bals ChampStres ; (114) La 
 Boudeusc ; (120) Le Conteur ; (129) L'Emploi du bel age; {\2,()) L' Enchan 
 teur ; (131) Entretiens Ameureux, and other less important works. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 M. Bougi, who is represented playing the violoncello. (122) La 
 contre dame is described by Waagen in the collection of Mr. 
 Mildmay. (123) La Conversation, is the picture mentioned on 
 p, 47, representing the amusements of the family of M. de 
 Julienne. It departs from the conventional costumes of 
 "Watteau's work, and is a faithful representation of a scene of 
 real life. 
 
 (124) Les deux cousines — may be the portrait of two children 
 mentioned on p. 56. (126) Le danseur anx castagnettes — is 
 supposed to be at the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg under 
 the title of Amusement Champetre. It represents seven figures 
 of men and women seated in a circle looking on at a young 
 man who is dancing. (127) La diseuse d'Avenfure, was once 
 called la Bohemienne, and was sold in London in February, 
 1765, under the title of A Gipsy telling Fortunes. (128) is 
 the celebrated Eniharquement pour Cythere, described on 
 p. 33. 
 
 (134) La Famille — sold at M. de Morny's sale, in 1865, as 
 the Lady tvith the Fan. M. Biirger says of this picture — 
 
 " What a fine Veronese tint is the yellow silk dress of the lady ; how 
 boldly the head is drawn and modelled in its extreme refinement ! 
 We recognize one of Watteau's favourite models — his friend, the wife 
 of his friend M. de Julienne. It is the same type as the superb. 
 Naiad, a half-length figure from the nude, the only life-size picture 
 from the nude that Watteau ever painted." 
 
 I do not find any mention of this JTaiad (under that name) 
 in M. de Goncourt's catalogue. M. Biirger, writing in 1860, says 
 it was the property of M. Barroilhet. 
 
 (135) Fetes Venitiennes. This important picture, containing 
 eighteen figures in a landscape, was originally bought by M. de 
 Julienne. The history of its depreciation under the reaction is 
 amusing. At M. de -Julienne's sale, in 1767, it was sold for 
 2615 livres, or about 13,000 francs; at the sale of Eandon de 
 Boisset, 1777, it brought 3000 livres, or 15,000 francs; while 
 
DOMESTIC SCENES. 
 
 69 
 
 as IsTo. 50 at the Vente Clos, in 1812, it was sold for 400 francs. 
 It was engraved by Laurent Cars. 
 
 ^ (142) Les Jaloux, from the cabinet of M. de Julienne. 
 Mariette says this was the picture upon which Watteau was 
 admitted to the Academy. (144) Legon d' amour is in the 
 palace of Berlin. 
 
 (145) Vheureux Loisir — is described by Goncourt as a com- 
 position in Avhich the fete galante of Watteau takes its first 
 departure from the ordinary contemporary pastoral pieces. 
 (148) La Mariee de Village is in a ruined condition in the 
 royal palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam, having suffered faom 
 a long exposure to the sun. (150) La partie quarree — repre- 
 sented on p. 35. (152) La Perspective — with a view of M. de 
 Crozat's garden at Montmorency. 
 
 (155) Les Plaisirs du Bal. This is the celebrated picture in 
 Dulwich College under the title Of Le Bal Champetre. It contains 
 ninety-seven figures, and has been repeatedly imitated by Pater. 
 One of these imitations was exhibited at Paris in 1860 by the 
 Due de Morny as La Danse Venitienne by Watteau. M. Burger 
 points out the characteristics which prove it to be a Pater : — 
 " The character of the drawing peu volontaire, the touch light and 
 feeble, the colour superficial, all is characteristic of him (Pater) ; in 
 copying his master he has even changed the types of the heads, 
 turned up the noses, and rounded the cheeks in his own style." 
 
 The following is the description of this picture in the catalogue 
 of the Dulwich College Gallery :— 
 
 " The spectator looks out from the back of an alcove or arcade over a 
 garden, with many birch trees and a fountain. The style of the 
 architecture is rich renaissance, alternate courses of white and grey 
 stone, figures, vases, and shells. A flight of steps leads down to a 
 
 ^ (136) La Game d' Amour; (137) Harlequin Jaloux ; (138) L'Hiver; 
 (139) L'lle enchant^e (described in a quotation on p. 24) ; (140, 141) L'ile 
 de Cythere ; (143) Le Oaland Jardinier ; (146) Le Lorgneur ; (147) La 
 Lorgneuse, described as coloured like a Titian ; (149) La Mu.'>eUe ; (151) Le 
 Fasse temps; (153) Pierrot Content ; (154) Le Plaisir Pastoral. 
 
70 
 
 WATTEAU, 
 
 garden. On a black and white marble tiled floor a lady and gentle- 
 man dance a minuet de la cour. . . . On the left, a group of ladies 
 looking on, some sitting on the ground, others standing. On the right, 
 gentlemen and ladies converse and flirt, and drink wine. Behind 
 them are more company and the musicians. On the same side, 
 between two figure-carved pilasters, is a huge heap of plate on a 
 buffet piled with fruit and refreshment. A solitary lap-dog is in the 
 foreground. On the same side a glimpse of distant architecture is 
 seen through the gardens and trees." 
 " In this picture," says Hazlitt, "we see Louis XIV. himself dancing, 
 looking so like an old beau, his face flushed and puckered up with 
 gay anxiety, but then the satin of his slashed doublet is made of the 
 softest leaves of the water-lily ; zephyr plays wanton with the curls 
 of his wig. " 
 
 M. de Goncourt mentions two other examples of this subject 
 attributed to Watteau, of which, in 1862, he says one was at 
 Blenheim,^ and the other at Wroseton Abbey. A copy by Pater 
 existing at S. Petersburg is mentioned by Dussieux. 
 
 Fete Champetre, described in the catalogue of the Dulwich 
 Gallery as follows : " A glade in a green wood looks out over 
 a fantastic country of wood and water, and contains the figure 
 groups. Two ladies sit on the ground in the centre of the 
 picture ; they wear sacques. A gentleman is behind them in 
 attendance, with his hand on the arm of the nearest one. In 
 the foreground a lady pushes away a cavalier, who is attempting 
 to put his arm round her waist," &c. 
 
 This picture is not mentioned in the Desenfans catalogue of 
 1801, nor (under the above name) by Goncourt.'-^ In the last 
 
 1 In the Guide-book published in 1860, this picture is mentioned in 
 the " Grand Cabinet," the painter's name being mis-spelt Wooteau. 
 
 2 (156) La Promenade; (157) Promenade sur les Ramparts; (158) La 
 Proposition Emharassante ; (159) Le Qu'en dira-t-on ; (161) Recreation 
 musicale ; (163) Xe Rendezvous ChampHre ; (165) La, Serenade Italienne, 
 (174) Heureux Age ! age d'or, ou sans inquietude ! (178) Sous un habit de 
 Mezzetin (portrait of Sirois playing the guitar in the midst of his family) ; 
 (179) Voulez vous triompher des Belles? (180 — 183) The Seasons, and 
 other unimportant works, I have passed by. 
 
72 
 
 WATTEATT. 
 
 edition of the Dulwich Catalogue, it is described as the Eejxist 
 in the Wood. 
 
 (160) Recreation Italienne — now at Sans Souci. (162) Le 
 Rendezvous, in the possession of M. A. Sichel. The painting 
 has been a little rubbed and worn away, but is described as : 
 " franche peinture du joli faire cristallise du maitre." 
 
 (164) Le Rendezvous de Chasse — in the collection of Sir 
 Eichard Wallace. M. Burger describes as follows : — 
 
 " This is a large composition, six feet by four, and very rich, containing 
 a dozen figures, some horses, dogs, and dead game, lofty trees, and a 
 Eubens sky. It represents a forest clearing opening broadly to the 
 horizon, and exactly in the centre two young couples are seated : 
 one of the women in rose-colours, a half face turned to the right ; 
 the other, in pale blue, turns her back to the spectator. ... On 
 the second plan of the clearing two other couples are losing them- 
 selves in the intricacies of the wood. . . . The great forest fills the 
 right corner, but in front of the trees, in a soft half shadow, is a prin- 
 cipal group ; they are, for the moment, three : a young woman in 
 yellow, just arriving on a dappled grey horse, and two gentlemen 
 assisting her to dismount. Two other horses are tethered close by ; 
 one of these, a chesnut, not happily drawn nor even coloured, is the 
 weak point of the picture. Among the bushes on the left is a young 
 man with a gun, a dead hare, and some birds hanging up among the 
 branches. This hare is wondeiful, and worthy of Chardin or Jan Fyt. 
 On the same side there are five sporting dogs, and some more men 
 with guns." 
 
 (166) La signature du contrat de la noce de village, is men- 
 tioned on page 18. (167) Surprise, painted for M. Henin, 
 is described by Mariette as one of the finest of Watteau's works. 
 
 (175) Iris, c'est de bonne lieure avoir I'air a la danse, is in the 
 old palace at Berlin. (177) Pour nous prouver que cette helJe. 
 Trouve I'liymen un nodud fort doux, is the title of a picture in 
 the possession of Sir Eichard Wallace. 
 
 The first specimen of the Landscapes and Eustic Subjects 
 is (184) La vraie gaiete, mentioned on p. 16. This is followed 
 by (185) La Danse Champ)estre ; (186) Collation Chainpestre — 
 a picture of the early times of Watteau, 
 
RUSTIC SUBJECTS. 
 
 73 
 
 (189) L'Indiscret (M. Biirger says it has another name of 
 L] amour hadin), exhibited at the collection of French masters in 
 1860, belongs to Sir Eichard "Wallace. 
 
 Here we have Harlequin and his good friend Columbine. They are 
 seated apart from their comrades of the troupe, who are playing music. 
 Columbine has a dress— the loveliest in the world — of saffron-coloured 
 tone, of a " high fantasie. " The motley Harlequin should be fond of 
 colour, and it is not surprising that he should make his court to a 
 pretty girl so happily adorned. 
 
 L'heureuse Chute. 
 
 The fourth picture by Watteau in the Lacaze collection ia called 
 L'heureuse Chute — " Soit ! " says M. Burger. This pretty blondine 
 " mi-renversee " has obviously tripped over a twig, and her friend 
 has helped her a little with her falling. But she seems to be trying 
 to get up again, and her little left hand on the grass is nervously 
 clenched. "We have a back view, and her swan-like neck (when we 
 are with Watteau we must return now and then to the old similes of 
 the "langue Pompadour")— her swan-like neck rises from a corset of 
 pale lilac. The young man, stooping towards her, shows a front view, 
 and their two heads, close together, stand out against an azure blue 
 sky of a tone "un pen vif " This background seems to have lost some 
 of its original glazings, which ought to soften the transition from the 
 blues of the sky to the vermilion that is shining from the young 
 man's face. 
 
 A curious anecdote is related by M. de Goncourt of the dis- 
 covery of the now celebrated Watteau, called The Village 
 Festival. It represents, "on the right a table laid out for a 
 repast, Turks, Harlequins, and richly-costumed figures dancing 
 in the foreground, and on the left a chariot with four white 
 horses." M. Carrier discovered this picture, thrown away on 
 the ground of a smith's workshop, and acquired it for 10 francs, 
 and presented it to M. Saint, of whom he was a pupil. At M. 
 Saint's death it was sold for 1140 francs, and subsequently 
 brought to London, and was added to the collection of Mr. Baring, 
 who has refused an offer of .£2000 for it. 
 
 M. de Goncourt gives a catalogue of about a hundred and fifty 
 
74 
 
 WATTEAU, 
 
 Arabesques and Decorative Designs invented by Watteau, 
 which have been perpetuated by engravings ; but points out that 
 a large number of these are merely reproductions of his inven- 
 tions given in rapid sketches, and generally very cleverly 
 executed. Among the most important of those painted by 
 Watteau are the Cliinese figures painted upon the wainscotting 
 of the " Cabinet du Eoy " in the Chateau de la Muette, of which 
 some were engraved by Boucher. 
 
 " It must not be supposed that the ' Chinoiseries ' of La Muette were 
 pure imagination. If Watteau has put the stamp of his own poetic 
 invention on this decoration, as lie did on all the objects of real life 
 that he touched, the master — will it be credited 'f — prepared himself 
 for these exotic representations by a serious course of study of 
 Chinese objects and humanity. A curious instance of this is given 
 in the Albcrtina collection at Vienna. This is a large drawing, a 
 large study in black lead of a Chinaman, typical in the almost 
 photographic rendering of his costume, his peculiar shoes, finally in 
 all the peculiarities of a native of the Celestial Empire ; and even 
 his name is preserved on a block of stone : F. Sao." 
 
 But the names of all the originals are equally preserved in 
 the catalogue, and include doctors, gardeners, eunuchs, male and 
 female bonzes, mandarins, Buddhist monks and nuns, gods and 
 goddesses, soldiers, men, women, and children. 
 
 Watteau acquired from Gillot a liking for the representation 
 of apes, and M. de Goncourt says — 
 
 "The comic and gambolling animals appear in all corners of his 
 arabesques, and sometimes even in his more serious pictures, mingling 
 in the sports of mythological infants. A picture reputed an un- 
 doubted Watteau was sold at Dreux about 1862, representing an 
 orgie of apes, collected round a broken barrel. It was bought by 
 Basset for 1700 francs, in a very curious frame of bamboo, with the 
 figure of a Chinaman seated in the centre. The proximity of Dreux 
 to Madame de Pompadour's chUteau of Crecy suggests that this 
 jiicture was a fragment of an entire decoration from her chateau. " 
 
 But the most remarkable examples of liis work in this direction 
 
GILLES 
 
" SINGERIES." 
 
 75 
 
 are the decorations of the two saloons in the chateau at Chan- 
 tilly, called La Grande and La Petite Singerie. M. de Goncourt 
 linds in these arabesques 
 
 " The characteristics of those of "Watteau's creation : his light style of 
 oniameut, delicately traced with the very point of a pen ; his rain of 
 little curiosities ; his manner of assembling and grasping the attributes 
 of War or Pastoral life ; his 'lambrequins,' his cameos, his arbours of 
 foliage and fruits, his trellised architecture, his terminals with the 
 bone-shaped pedestals, his vases in the shape of teetotums, his 
 wreaths of may suspended in the sky. All these panels have in the 
 upper parts the delicate confusion of gauzy textures of his engraved 
 arabesques ; and in the lower the little painted tail-piece which the 
 master habitually throws into his decorative compositions, just as a 
 designer of vignettes throws in a tail-piece at the end of a chapter in 
 a book. And the signature of Watteau looks out silently from among 
 the incessantly recurring ornaments, the rose work, the nimbus of 
 butterfly wings, the ' d^chiquetures auz mcarices assoupies des papil-, 
 Ions dc la mcit. ' " 
 
 His description of the great singerie frescoes deserves repro- 
 ducing in extenso, but is too long for our purpose. They are 
 extant engraved, and should be carefully studied by the students 
 of Watteau, and by those of decorative art in general. 
 
 M. Leon Dumont refutes the suggestion that these singeries 
 are a satire upon the corrupt morals of the times, or an allusion 
 to the loves of Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour, as the 
 cicerone of the palace is in the habit of explaining to visitors. 
 Watteau died in 1721, and Madame de Pompadour was born 
 in 1722. He describes the designs : — • 
 
 "There are apes dancing, riding, swinging, carrying flags, painting, 
 playing music, bathing, and dressing ; but nothing is caricatured. 
 Watteau has only sought efi"ect in graceful, piquant, and ingeniously- 
 chosen posing. . . But we must not attach too much importance to 
 this work ; in the richness of its detail we can appreciate the fertility 
 of the artist's imagination, but it was impossible for him to give 
 scope to his best qualities in these isolated figures detached upon a 
 Avhite ground ; all effects of chiaroscuro and light were absolutely 
 interdicted." 
 
76 
 
 WATTEAU. 
 
 A collection of ornamental designs by Watteau was published 
 about 1843, in 10 parts, by J. Weale and Akerman, under the 
 patronage of the " Commission for the advancement of Scotch 
 manufactures." 
 
 M. de Goncourt observes that Pater has the privilege of being 
 frequently mistaken for his master. " In this way Madame de 
 Graffigny, in her description of a room in Voltaire's house at 
 Circy, says that all the small panels are filled with Watteau' s 
 pictures; and mentions le Baiser donne and le Baiser rendu, 
 which are compositions of Pater. She also attributes to Watteau 
 five panels, which she calls The Five Senses, and Brother 
 Philippe's Geese, which is a panel from the brush of Lancret. 
 
 M. Leon Dumont mentions four Dessus de Porte that he 
 was examining in the Petit Trianon, where he was studying 
 eighteenth century art. 
 
 "The keeper hastened to inform me that they were the work of 
 Watteau. I protest ; — I maintain that these pictures are obviously 
 by Pater. ' It is true,' replied my candid friend, ' but we are accus- 
 tomed to call them Watteaus, because there are enough Paters in 
 the next room.' For a certain class of visitors this would be a 
 sufficient reason. The name of Watteau has become associated with 
 scenes of merriment and frivolity. ... If a picture is only ' galam- 
 ment compose,' it is unscrupulously attributed to liim." 
 
 Watteau's pieces are dispersed through the world, and until 
 the acquisition of the Lacaze bequest, the Louvre contained only 
 the Emharquement de Cythere. At Berlin there is a large col- 
 lection of his smaller pieces well worthy of study — collected by 
 Frederick the Great, who was a great admirer of Watteau ; and 
 the Dresden gallery possesses two fine specimens of his style. 
 Munich also has a fine example. Ladies and Gentlemen in a 
 Park ; and the Belvedere at Vienna, a Lute-player. At Cassel 
 there are a Pierrot and Gilles composition ; and a garden 
 landscape with figures ; and many other galleries and private 
 collections in Germany boast of the possession of one or 
 more examples of Watteau ; but it is observed that the 
 
PICTURES IN ENGLAND. 
 
 77 
 
 authenticity of the works is doubtful. They are recapitu- 
 lated in a work called the Salon des Tableaux, published by 
 G. Parthey, Berlin, in 1864, and many by M. Dussieux. At 
 Seville there are four Fetes Champetres, and at St. Petersburg 
 the Lute-player and a number of other fine examples. 
 
 But it is in England that the master is most fully represented. 
 The Loan Exhibition of Sir Richard Wallace's collections, at 
 Bethnal Green in 1872, afforded the English public an oppor- 
 tunity of studying a great variety of his best work. Among the 
 finest specimens then exhibited was an Amusements Champetres 
 from the collection of Cardinal Fesch, a more elaborate work 
 than that mentioned under Ko. 104 above, remarkable for its 
 breadth and spaciousness, and worthy of study as a fine specimen 
 of Watteau's landscapes. A study called the Toilet exhibited 
 in the same collection has been described by M. Burty as one of 
 the brightest and most powerful paintings he has ever seen. 
 Buckingham Palace possesses the pictures painted for King 
 George during Watteau's residence in London. They are two 
 Fetes Champetres ; Bourceaugnac surrounded by his wives and 
 children; and Harlequin and Pierrot, a composition of ten 
 figures. At Blenheim there are the Plaisirs da Bal, the Troupe 
 Italienne, and three minor compositions. In the Duke of 
 Sutherland's collection at Stafford House, half a dozen repre- 
 sentative Amusements Champetres of various kinds. Lord 
 Northbrook has a famous white Pierrot — pronounced by Waagen 
 for " vivacity in the heads, clearness and warmth of colouring, 
 and carefulness of execution ; one of the most remarkable works 
 of the master " — and a landscape, and two smaller pictures less 
 imposing, but perhaps of equal importance in quality of colour- 
 ing. Lord Dudley, two Pastorales Galantes. Mr. Holford, "a 
 very attractive party of ladies and gentlemen in the open air." 
 Miss Eogers, two small pastorales of the most remarkable tran- 
 sparency of colour. Mr. Tulloch, a Fete Champetre — there is 
 something wrong with the colouring, which is heavy and dark. 
 
78 
 
 WATTEATJ. 
 
 Mr. Bredel, a Danse Champetre — a fine specimen of great warmth 
 and transparency of colour, and of singular carefulness of execu- 
 tion. The late Mr. Wynn Ellis had two delicately-executed 
 pictures, Avith numerous figures. The Marquis of Lansdown at 
 Bo wood, " two charming little pictures in his well-known style." 
 Mr. Lahouchere, some very pretty pictures, including some repre- 
 senting children. Lord IN'orthwick, at Thirlestane House near 
 Cheltenham, had a hunting party at luncheon — " spirited and 
 delicate." Mr. Andrew James has (So. 92) L' Occupation selon 
 Vage; a domestic suhject, altogether differing from those gener- 
 ally chosen by Watteau. Waagen describes it as " a peep into 
 a happy and simple menage. The grandmother is seated at a 
 spindle ; the wife— her daughter apparently — is sewing a dress ; 
 a great girl is holding a pretty kitten on her arm, at which a 
 little dog is barking ; while a little boy lies reposing in great 
 comfort. In this unusual subject Watteau appears to great 
 advantage. The general effect is pleasingly domestic ; the heads 
 are very animated, the keeping excellent, and the sketchy treat- 
 ment is very clever." There are two smaller pictures, the 
 colouring of which is remarkable for power and transparency. 
 But the great interest of this collection to the student of Watteau 
 lies in the remarkable collection of sketches and drawings that 
 it contains ; including a large number of studies from nature for 
 his pictures. The Avliole have been published in one of the 
 most interesting works as representative of Watteau's genius 
 that exists. The collection is only second to that in the British 
 Museum. It is remarkable Avhat a number of the drawings 
 came from the sale of the effects of Sir Thomas Lawrence. 
 
 Mr. Morrison's collection at Basildon Park, contains a land- 
 scape with figures, which Waagen describes as " one of the 
 master's gaudy works," and de Goncourt (after him) as " couleur 
 argentine." The Duke of Devonshire has some important 
 specimens. There are also several at the Fitzwilliam Museum 
 at Cambridge. Mr. Henry G. Bohn, of JSTorth End House, 
 
CRITICISMS, 
 
 79 
 
 Twickenliam, possesses fourteen pictures (including five Fetes 
 Champetres), several of wlii(;li have been engraved in " Watteau's 
 Works." 
 
 The above list does not pretend to approach exhaustion of the 
 subject. It serves to show how highly Watteau has been 
 appreciated by English collectors, and how judiciously these 
 have selected and retained in this country the finest specimens 
 of his work. 
 
 Wilkie wrote in his journal at Dresden : " The Watteaus, of 
 which there is one in the gallery, and one I saw to-day, are in 
 quality too light and feeble, but elegant and gay in the extreme. 
 If it be objected that his style is aff'ected ; that, the subjects 
 themselves require. His style stands alone in the art, as the 
 essence of fashion, frivolity and elegance ; the converse of 
 boorishness; rendered in an artist-like and picturesque manner.'' 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his ' I^fotes on Dufresnoy,' says : " We 
 may recommend here an attention to the works of Watteau, for 
 excellence in the florid style of colouring" ('Works,' vol. iii. 
 p. 156). 
 
 B. R. Hay don also writes : "The only man (of the French 
 school) who coloured with exquisite feeling, was Watteau ; whose 
 touch and delicacy of tint may be studied with great profit by 
 any artist" (' Enc. Britt.' Article ' Painting'). 
 
 Finally, I conclude this short notice with a quotation from 
 M. Dussieux {Les Artistes Frangais a V Etranger). Of a dozen 
 lines into which he compresses his notice of the life and 
 works of Watteau, three are devoted to the remark that — 
 "It is obvious that our great artist, by his imagination, his 
 originality, his liumou7% and his colour, exercised a great influ- 
 ence on the modern English School." And it is from this point 
 of view that his history and the quality of his work are deserv- 
 ing of more attentive study than has yet been generally given 
 by those who have learned to describe Watteau only as the 
 peintre des fetes galantes. 
 
CHRONOLOGY OF WATTEAU'S LIFE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Born at Valenciennes 1684 
 
 Baptized in the Church of S. Jacques, Oct. 10 .... 1684 
 
 Became a Pupil of Jacques G^rin 1698 
 
 Went to Paris and Painted Scenes for the Opera . . . 1702 
 
 Became a Pupil of Claude Gillot 1703 
 
 Assisted Audran to Paint the Decorations op the Luxem- 
 bourg 1708 
 
 Gained a Prize at the Academy 1709 
 
 Visited Valenciennes 1709 
 
 Made an Academician 1717 
 
 Visited London for about a Year 1719 
 
 Went to Live in the House of M. Lefebvre at Nogent . 1721 
 
 Died there, Aged 37, July 18 . . 1721 
 
8] 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 TRANSLATION OF THE LETTERS ON PAGES 43-44. 
 
 To M. Gersaint, merchant, on the Pont Notre Dame, from 
 Watteau. 
 
 Saturday. 
 
 Friend Gersaint, 
 
 Yes, as you wish it, I will come to-morrow and dine at your 
 house with Antoine de la Roque. I intend going to hear mass at 
 S. Germain de I'Auxerrois ; and I shall certainly be with you at 
 noon, for I shall only have one visit to make first, to friend Molinet, 
 who has been suffering for a fortnight from a slight attack of fever. 
 
 Meantime, your friend, 
 
 A. "VVatteatj. 
 
 To Monsieur de Julienne, from Watteau, by express. 
 
 Paris, the 3rd of May. 
 
 Sir! 
 
 I return you the large first volume of the writings of Leonardo 
 da Vinci, and ])eg you at the same time to accept my sincere thanks. 
 As to the manuscript letters of P. Rubens, I shall still keep them 
 before me if that is not too disagreeable to you, as I have not yet 
 come to the end of them ! ! A pain in the left side of the head 
 has not allowed me to sleep since Tuesday, and Mariotti wants me to 
 take a purge to-morrow, he says that the great heat will assist him. 
 You will make me happy beyond my desires if you pay me a visit 
 here on Sunday. I will show you some trifles, such as the landscapes 
 from Nogent, which are sufficiently valuable to you for the reason 
 that I thought out the plan of them in the presence of Madame de 
 Julienne, whose hands 1 most respectfully kiss. 1 am not doing all 
 that I wish, because the grey stone ("pierre gris") and the blood 
 stone ("pierre sanguine ") are very hard at present, and I cannot get 
 others. 
 
 A. Watteau. 
 
 W G 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 To Monsieur de Julienne from "W. 
 
 Paris, the 3rd September. 
 
 Sir ! 
 
 By Marin, who lias brought me the venison that you were 
 pleased to send me this morning, I send you the canvas on which I 
 have painted the heads of the boar and of the black fox, and you can 
 forward them to M. de Losmesnil, for I have done with them for 
 the moment. I cannot conceal from myself that this large canvas 
 pleases me, and I expect from it some return of satisfaction on your 
 part and on that of Madame de Julienne, who is as infinitely fond of 
 subjects of the chase as myself. It was necessary for Gersaint to 
 send me the worthy La Serre to enlarge the canvas on the right 
 hand, where I have added some horses under the trees, for I was 
 embarrassed there since I have made the additions decided upon. 1 
 hope to take up that part of the picture on Monday afternoons : 
 1 am engaged all the morning in chalk sketches. 
 
 I beg you not to forget me to Madame de Julienne, whose hands 
 I kiss. 
 
 A. Watteau. 
 
 to monsieub de julienne. 
 
 Monsieur ! 
 
 Monsieur the Abbe de ISToirterre has been pleased to send me 
 that canvas of P. Rubens on which there are two angel heads, and 
 under them on the cloud the figure of a woman absorbed in thought. 
 Surely there is nothing that could have rendered me happier, if I 
 had not even been persuaded that it is from friendship for you and 
 for your nejihew that Monsieur de Noirterre deprived himself of 
 so rare a picture as that in my favour. Since the moment I 
 received it I have not remained at rest, and my eyes never tire of 
 returning to the desk on which I have placed it, as it were in a 
 shrine ! It would not be easy to persuade oneself that P. Rubens 
 ever did anything more finished than this canvas. I will beg you, 
 sir, to convey my sincere thanks to Monsieur the Abbe de Noirterre, 
 awaiting my own opportunity of expressing them myself. I will 
 take the opportunity of the next Orleans post to write to him, and 
 to send him the picture of the "Rest of the Holy Family," which I 
 intend for him in gratitude. 
 
 Your most attached friend and servant, Sir ! ! 
 
 A. Watteau. 
 
INDEX OF 
 
 PAINTINGS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Signature of the Contract of 
 
 the Village Wedding 18,41,72 
 La Vraie Gaiete . . 16, 72 
 The Enchanted Isle . . 24 
 Departure of tlie Troups . 26, 62 
 David granting Abigail the par- 
 don of Nadal . . .30 
 Halt of an Army . . 31, 62 
 L'Embarquement pour Cy- 
 
 there . . . . 33, 69 
 La Perspective . . 39, 70 
 Four Seasons . . 40, 60, 62 
 Accordee de Village . 41, 66 
 
 Le Bal 41 
 
 L'Enseigne . . . .41 
 Recueil des figures de differ- 
 
 ents Caracteres . . .42 
 Le Repos de la Sainte famille 44, 61 
 La Conversation . . .48 
 Italian Comedians . . .60 
 L'Amour paisible . . 50, 68 
 Portrait of Antoine Pater, the 
 
 Sculptor . . . .50 
 Signboard . . . .51 
 Rosa Alba ... 52, 58 
 
 Page 
 
 The Doctor . . 55, 59, 63 
 Portraits of M. de Julienne and 
 
 Watteaii . . . .58 
 Portraits of the Painter Mercier 
 
 and his family . . .58 
 Portraits of M. J. B. Rebel . 58 
 Retour de Chasse . . .58 
 Vleughels , . .42, 58 
 Crayon Drawing in the Louvre 58 
 Portraits of Two Young Chil- 
 dren 58 
 
 Painting and Sculpture . .59 
 Les Singes peintres . , . 59 
 Le Dejeuner . . . .59 
 Depart pour les Isles . . 59 
 Le Naufrage . . . .59 
 Doctor Misaubin . . .59 
 Ce manant de Dandin n'cst, par 
 
 ma foi, pas bete . . ,60 
 David receiving Divine Inspir- 
 ation ..... 60 
 The Penitent . . . .60 
 Tobias burying the Dead . 61 
 Holy Family . . . .61 
 The Crucifixion . . .61 
 
84 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Page 
 
 The sleep of the Infant Jesiis 
 and the little Saint John 
 awakening Him by blowing 
 upon a horn . . .61 
 Acis and Galatea . . .61 
 L' Amour desarme . . .61 
 L' Amour mal accompagne . 61 
 Les Amusements de Cy there . 61 
 Diana at the Bath . . .61 
 The Children of Bacchus . 61 
 The Children of Silenus, or Jeu 
 
 d'enfants . . . .61 
 The Rape of Europa . .61 
 Fetes of the God Pan . .61 
 Pomona . . . .61 
 Sommeil Dangereux, or Antiope 
 surprised by Jupiter in the 
 form of a Satyr . . .61 
 The Triumph of Ceres . .61 
 The Triumph of Venus . .61 
 Venus and Love . . .62 
 Judgment of Paris and Autumn 
 
 (sketches) . . . .62 
 Jupiter and Antiope . . 62 
 Louis XIV. investing Monsieur 
 de Bourgoyne with the Cor- 
 don Blue .... 62 
 Halt of a Detachment . .62 
 Camp Volant . . . ,62 
 Return from the Campaign . 62 
 Les Fatigues de la Guerre . 62 
 Les Delassements de la Guerre 62 
 Escorte d'equipages . . .62 
 
 A Halt 62 
 
 Detile . . . , .62 
 The Pillage of a Village . .62 
 The Revenge of the Peasants . 62 
 The Vivandifere . . .62 
 The Alliance of Music and 
 
 Comedy . . . .62 
 Comediens Franyois . ,62 
 
 Page 
 
 L' Amour au Theatre Francois . 62 
 Spectacle Frangois . . .62 
 
 Adonis 62 
 
 Comedion Italien, or Les Ar*:- 
 
 istes de la Comedie Italienne 63 
 L' Amour au Theatre Italien . 63 
 The Departure of the Italian 
 
 Comedians in 1697 . . 63 
 La Troupe Italienne . . 63 
 The Italian Troup " en vacances " 63 
 La Tourilere . . . .63 
 Arlequin . . . .63 
 Pierrot et Scapin : En dansant 
 
 out I'dme ravie . . .63 
 Belle, n'ecoutez rien, Arlequin 
 
 est un traitre . . .63 
 Pour garder I'honneur d'une belle 63 
 Coquettes qui pour voir galans 
 
 au rendez-vous . . .63 
 Comediens comiques . .63 
 Le Rendez-vous comique . . 63 
 La Serenade Italienne . . 63 
 
 Gilles 64 
 
 L'Amante inqui^te . . .65 
 Mezetin . . . . 65, 66 
 La Fileuse . . . .65 
 La Finette . . . .65 
 La Polonnaise . . .66 
 L'Indifferent . . . .66 
 La Reveuse , . . .66 
 La Marmotte . . . .66 
 La Sultane . . . .66 
 La Villageoise . . .66 
 Le Petit Sabotier Boudet . 66 
 L'occupation selon I'age . . 66 
 Le Chat Malade . , .66 
 La Toilette du Matin . .66 
 L'Enseigne ... 51, 66 
 Le Bain .... 66 
 L'Accordee de Village . 41, 66 
 The Marriage . . . .66 
 
INDEX. 
 
 85 
 
 ics Agremens de I'Este . 
 
 Page 
 . 66 
 
 /Aniant repousee . 
 
 . 66 
 
 , 71, 77 
 
 'ete Champelre . 66 
 
 j' Amour paisible . 
 
 66, 68 
 
 Lmusements Cliampetres 
 
 68, 77 
 
 je Bosquet de Bacchus . 
 
 . 68 
 
 Les Chanips-Elysees 
 
 . 68 
 
 Les Charmes de la vie 
 
 . 68 
 
 Concert Champetre . 
 
 . 68 
 
 La Colation 
 
 . 68 
 
 La Conversation 
 
 . 69 
 
 Les deux Cousiues . 
 
 . 69 
 
 La Famille 
 
 . 69 
 
 Fetes Venitiennes . 
 
 . 69 
 
 Le Danseur aux Castagnettes . 69 
 
 La Diseuse d'Aventure 
 
 . 69 
 
 Los Jaloux 
 
 . 70 
 
 Le§on d' amour 
 
 . 70 
 
 L'lieureux Loisir 
 
 . 70 
 
 La Mariee de Village 
 
 . 70 
 
 La Partie Quaree 
 
 . 70 
 
 La Perspective 
 
 . 70 
 
 Les Plaisirs du Bal . 
 
 70, 71 
 
 Bal Champetre 
 
 . 70 
 
 w 
 
 Page 
 
 Danse Venitienne . . .70 
 Fete Champetre . . .71 
 Repast in the Wood . .71 
 Recreation Italienne . .72 
 Le Rendez-vous . . .72 
 Le Rendez-vous de Chasse . 72 
 La Surprise . 72 
 
 Iris, c'est de bonne heure avoir 
 
 Pair a la danse . 72 
 
 Pour nous prouver que cette 
 
 belle trouve I'hymen un nceud 
 
 fort doux . 72 
 
 La vraie Gaiete . . 16, 72 
 La Danse Champetre . . 72 
 Collation Champetre . . 72 
 L'Indiscret (L'amour badin) . 72 
 L'Heureuse Chute . . .73 
 The Village Festival . . 73 
 La Grande and La Petite Sin- 
 
 gerie . . . , . 75 
 Ladies and Gentlemen in a Park 76 
 Lute- player . ' • .76 
 Toilet ..... 77 
 Pastorales Galantes . . .77