Antoine Watteau

Jean Antoine Watteau (or Wateau), born with Valencian the October 10th 1684 and died in Nogent-sur-Marne the July 18th 1721, is a painter French.

He is one of the first representatives of the movement Rococo. Inspired by the Commedia dell' Arte , he likes to represent the theater in his tables, whether it is through the heavy curtains or the topics. Its most famous tables are Pierrot , Pèlerinage in the island of Cythère .

One of the independent sources of information on its life is the biography written by his/her friend the count de Caylus.

Biography

Jean Antoine Watteau is wire of a Master-roofer, merchant of tiles, resulting from an large family. Towards the ten years age, it is put in training at Jacques-Albert Gérin, one of the famous painters of the city, whose museum and churches of Valencians preserve some works, of poor value, in the Flemish taste. Gérin dies on June 7th 1702. Little time afterwards, one finds the young man in Paris, without protection, without resources, but decided to get some by work. Engaged initially through a painter without customers, Métayer, who cannot nourish it, it passes in a manufacturer of paintings, with the Notre-Dame bridge, which employs it, with some other apprentices, to copy, in many specimens, of the religious images and the genre paintings, in particular a Vieille Reading light of Gerald Dou, and a Saint Nicolas, very required by the excessively pious people.

While being devoted to this insipid work realizing “three books per week and soup the every day”, Watteau binds with a painter of Antwerp, Jean-Jacques Spoede, raises royal Academy, and with Claude Gillot, painter, draftsman, engraver, decorator, of an inexhaustible liveliness and an original imagination. Gillot, having seen some drawings or tables of Watteau, invited it to come to remain at his place. The agreement between the Master and the pupil, of also sharp mood, was not long life. Nevertheless, Watteau always preserved for Gillot a great recognition, because “it is at his place that it managed completely”, known as Gersaint. It is well at Gillot, indeed, that it took the taste of the scenes of theater, gallant imaginations, the arabesques with figurines, mythologies and the antics, and that it enhardit in its tendencies natural to observe surrounding realities unceasingly and to enjoy, as a delicate dreamer, of the spectacle of the fashionable or rustic life.

In 1709, it was accepted second with the Prix of Rome. Three years later, in 1712, it postulated again. This time, its work was judged of a so great quality that it was accepted like full member of the Académie. But it was only in 1717, after five years of work, which it presented its piece of reception, the famous Pèlerinage in the island of Cythère . The Academy created a kind for him especially: the “gallant festival”.

If Watteau seems in its fabrics to condense the spirit of Regency, he survived only six years Louis XIV and he did not have guards in the aristocracy, except the marquis of Julienne, aristocrat of origin inhabitant of Barcelona which had reached the rich person function of farmer general when it had come to France with the continuation from Infante from Spain, intended to marry the king. The marquis of Julienne had a splendid palate (today the Museum of the Goblins) where Watteau and other painters had the lodging and the table opened permanently. It remains that the majority of its purchasers were of the middle-class men, bankers and merchants.

Posterior influence

The so original treatment of the landscapes and the characters, characterized by a distinct poetic atmosphere, by a blur nimbus of sadness, will be worth to him to exert a great influence as of its century.

Some critic art saw in its works a harbinger of the Impressionnisme.

With the XIXe century, its influence becomes clear. In a poem written in 1838, Théophile Gautier evokes the atmosphere which emerges from the work of Watteau. In 1854, the critic art Charles Blanc publishes the Painters of the gallant festivals , a book of weak pagination but with strong pulling. In 1857, Baudelaire devotes a quatrain to the painter in the Headlights , putting it at the same level as the largest Masters. The Goncourt brothers are interested in the artist in 1860 with their study devoted to art to the XVIIIe century . They see in Watteau the large poet of this century. Then Verlaine obviously publishes in 1869 a collection entitled gallant Fêtes , inspired by the table of reception of Watteau to the Academy, Pèlerinage in the island of Cythère .

With the XXe century, certain fabrics gain in importance. Indifferent the is those. Rilke pays to him homage in one of these poems written in French. Paul Claudel sees in the only character of this oil a “mother-of-pearl messenger”, a “before-mail of the Dawn”, of which it compares the step with that of the “ambiguous poet, inventive of its own prosody, of which does not know if it flies or if it goes, its foot, or this wing when it wants deployed, with any foreign element, that it is the ground, or the air, or fire, or this water to swim there which one calls ether! ”

Major works

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