How Did Jean Antoine Watteau Influence His Artist
JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU
AND THE PEOPLE WHO INFLUENCED HIS CAREER
JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU
AND THE PEOPLE WHO INFLUENCED HIS CAREER
Who was Jean-Antoine Watteau?
Gradually drifting away from the seventeenth century Baroque style, French painting of the eighteenth century embraced the Rococo. One of the most influential and acclaimed artists of this era was Jean-Antoine Watteau. Watteau undoubtedly mapped the path of new artistic advancements in France. He was a former costume designer of a small, provincial town that evolved into a master of the fêtes galantes genre painting. He became pupil to the theatrical painter Claude Gillot and eventual member of the prestigious Académie. Consequently, it should come …show more content…
as no surprise of this artist’s rising fame and success during his time and for centuries to come.
Watteau was born in Valenciennes, a northern town in France on October 10th of 1684.1 Valenciennes, culturally more Flemish than French, had recently separated from the Spanish Netherlands and officially became a part of France six years prior to his birth.2 His hometown’s Flemish background had a lasting influence on his art and life. As a young boy, Watteau was an enthusiastic reader, lover of music, and even enjoyed performing on the public square.3 His reading consisted mostly of pastorals, interludes, operas, and ballets, which inadvertently seem to play a large role in his later art.4 He showed interest in painting from an early age. Therefore, around the age of 18, he was apprenticed to a local, amateur painter named Jacques-Albert Gérin.5 However, in around 1702, he traveled to Paris, the city where he would carve out his career and eventually meet his teacher and mentor, Claude Gillot, who was a set designer of the opera and decorator to various theatrical establishments.6 It is believed by historians that if Watteau had not ventured to Paris, he might be considered a Flemish artist today.7
For most of the seventeenth century, French painters were only considered tradesmen with minimal opportunity or hope to any social footing among the elite. However, due to permanent social, cultural, and political shifts in France during these years, the status of art and artists changed drastically.8 Established in the heart of Paris, Watteau gained access to a multitude of social and cultural experiences. Despite his frequenting the salons and fairs of wealthy, affluent art collectors and his acceptance into the official, highly respected Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture; he remained humble.9 Acceptance into the Académie and access to the upper echelons of society greatly promoted the appreciation of Watteau’s artwork.10 There are several key figures that had a huge influence in Watteau’s life: Pierre Crozat, Edme-François Gersaint, and Jean de Jullienne. These three people helped to deeply impact Watteau’s career in a multitude of ways.
Pierre Crozat and the “Genre” Painting of Watteau
Watteau’s work is often described as fascinating, illustrious, or charming. Yet, despite Watteau’s light-hearted and enthralling approach to art, some of his most significant paintings seem to derive from a melancholic attitude.11 It is challenging to precisely characterize Watteau’s genre of painting since his compositions, iconographies, and mediums varied so immensely. Through the course of his life, his artwork ranged from candid scenes of Parisian street life to the representations of military, comical, or pastoral scenes.12 He was the “frivolous” painter of revel, dance, masquerade, landscapes, animals, flowers and everyday life.13 Claude Gillot introduced Watteau to one of his favorite subjects: the characters of the banned Italian commedia dell’arte.14 In Watteau An Artist of the Eighteenth Century, Marianne Roland Michel cites Gersaint, Watteau’s trusted art dealer and close companion, as saying that, “all that Watteau gained from this master was a certain taste for the grotesque and the comic.”15 Watteau’s unpretentious background made him especially inclined to depict ordinary or common people in his art: this included beggars or peasants, theater performers, soldiers, shepherds, and even friends.16 He drew the stage characters from public theaters, such as the Comédie française, the Comédie italienne, and the Opéra, where his talent quickly surpassed those of his master, Gillot and his work that was focused on the same material.17 Depicting these characters became one of his lifelong passions.18 It is evident that he enjoyed theatrical themes and illustrating the spontaneous, unpredictable behavior of the actors in comedy.19
However, he is said to have invented his own fêtes galantes genre painting style. This was a new term coined to describe paintings of lush, imaginary landscapes with galant and champêtre scenes, usually of the elite in festive and theatrical costume.20 The amorous and ornate depictions of the balls, caprices, fashions, costumes, silken fabrics, and the noteworthy, elusive expressions of the figures’ faces -- known as airs de têtes – were the principal elements which dominated Watteau’s captivating and imaginative paintings.21 Ostentatious men and women gathered in groups, amusing themselves with: flirting, dancing, chatting, or music making. As settings one finds unreal, sumptuous landscapes or majestic settings.22 These paintings cultivated a sense of fantasy and were not necessarily painted from actual events, but more likely reproductions of reality. These paintings were symbolic representations of the current Parisian aristocratic society.23 The combination of his innovative use of color combined with a delicate and graceful adaptation of scenery, which allowed him to eventually be granted acceptance into the renowned Académie in 1717.24 This is where he earned the title of the Painter of Gallant Feasts to the King.25 As mentioned before, these fêtes paintings conveyed a dream world of fantasy, imagination, and mystery, specifically limited to the social elite.26 The Pélerinage à l 'île de Cythère (Figure 1) was Watteau’s reception piece that officially granted Watteau into the Académie.27 There is a lyrical, delicate eroticism that is being portrayed. The Académie members declared the painting in its own category: the fêtes galantes.28 The Pélerinage à l 'île de Cythère (Figure 1) describes the embarkation of pilgrims for a Greek island. It is a mythical representation that illustrates delighted men and woman in an airy woodland scene of mountains and a body of water. This painting symbolizes the members of the elite’s escapism from the real world; and travel to a magical, fictional island to engage in erotic passion or earthly pleasures.29
Watteau was allowed access to the polished and refined Parisian aristocracy through one of his patrons, Pierre Crozat.
Crozat was born in Toulouse in 1665 and arrived in Paris around 1685 where he focused on his private business affairs and devoted his time to the arts.30 Crozat was a banker, art and curiosity collector, and happened to be intimately intertwined in the high society.31 In the early eighteenth century, his hôtel particulier in Paris increasingly became a renowned artistic center in France.32 His collections closely reflected to the “official” taste of his day, meaning the Académie Royale approved it. Since Watteau had recently been accepted in the Académie, he was granted the opportunity of being introduced to Crozat at his hôtel.33 Crozat owned a mansion in Montmorency, north of Paris.34 From time to time, Watteau traveled there to stay at Crozat’s country home where he more than likely would have witnessed the leisure activity of elite firsthand.35 These visits ultimately helped to inspire Watteau to create the new fêtes galantes paintings. In 1715, Watteau completed La Perspective (View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat) (Figure 2), a fêtes galantes oil painting that clearly depicts the Château de Montmorency in the background. Watteau freely transformed the site by creating a fantasy world setting of towering trees and graceful figures.36 Crozat commissioned a series of large oval paintings depicting the Four Seasons for his dining room in …show more content…
Paris from the artist.37 Overall, Pierre Crozat was a generous patron, extremely passionate about art, and exposed Watteau to the elite society.38
Gersaint: Watteau’s Dealer and The Rise of the French Art Market
During the eighteenth century, collecting art had become more popular for a multitude of reasons: whether to gain social prestige, historical knowledge, aesthetic pleasure, investing or financial purposes, or simply a new form of recreation.39 This rising trend led to the demand for experts who specialized in appraising art and regulating the art market exchanging process. Therefore, art dealers began to take on the role as middlemen to provide for the market of consumers.40 With that said, Watteau’s dealer and friend, Edme-François Gersaint, has been called the best-known art dealer in early eighteenth century Paris.41 Gersaint is nearly always associated with Watteau, particularly because of Watteau’s final masterpiece, L’Enseigne de Gersaint (Figure 3). This was a painting produced in only eight days specifically for Gersaint’s gallery on the Bridge of Notre Dame. The leading source of information regarding Gersaint’s shop sign comes from the Lorangère sale catalogue of 1744, which features his written biography of Watteau.42 L’Enseigne (Figure 3) is a remarkably natural painting of a social gathering set in the interior of Gersaint’s gallery. The two–part panel sets a tone of excitement by illustrating the elegantly, silk dressed women and their eagerness and delight in purchasing art. While the males appear to be serious and stern, the painting is separated in two, symbolizing the convergence of two realms. The painting is an idealized representation, where there is a mixture of fantasy and reality, the recurring theme used in Watteau’s fêtes paintings.43 According to Gersaint, Watteau painted this panel as a gift, in which it was utilized to advertise a certain lifestyle.44 However, at this time, it was frowned upon for artists to engage in any promotional aid with dealers.45 After Watteau passed away, the painting’s value and price drastically escalated. It appears Gersaint had little sentiment when it came to Watteau’s artwork because he did not waste much time selling L’Enseigne (Figure 3) and profiting from his artwork.46
Gersaint truly enjoyed the art of collecting and its social rewards. It was believed that collecting secured one’s access to openly converse with social superiors who share a mutual interest.47 Gersaint was a member of the marchand-merciers, who were criticized by Diderot in the Encyclopédie for being “makers of nothing and sellers of all.”48 There was a strong negative stereotype of art dealers in the early eighteenth century and Gersaint persistently sought to overcome this unfavorable image.49 He was one of the first to write about the commerce of art. He focused on his many different advertising and business strategies to promote art sales and boost his own public person – for example, with the use of shop signs, printed notices, and sales catalogues.50 Despite his constant attempt to counter the distasteful image of dealers in the 1720s and 1730s, it is not until after his death that there is a gradual acceptance of art dealers in Paris. Dealers later borrowed many of Gersaint’s marketing strategies such as the detailed sale catalogues, the auction and preview, and the buying trips abroad.51
Jean de Jullienne
One can easily distinguish Watteau’s sense of individuality, his distinctive and unique qualities, and profoundly original approach to art in France during this age. Most art historians agree that several other artists influenced his work.52 As mentioned earlier, his first true teacher, Claude Gillot, for example, created many magnificent, extravagant drawings and decorative engravings, which were crucial for Watteau’s evolution of the use of color.53 It also is believed Gillot introduced Watteau to Claude Audran III, an engraver and ornamental painter.54 Audran taught Watteau arabesques, ornamental décor, and continued his interests in theatrical amusements.55 Audran was a famous decorator for the royal residences, and curator for the Luxembourg Palace, where Watteau was able to view and appreciate the work of Peter Paul Rubens and his Netherlandish style.56 He intently studied Rubens’ use of composition and color. Rubens was an artist from whom he would constantly borrow ideas throughout his life.57
More importantly, another one of Watteau’s dedicated patrons was Jean de Jullienne. Jean de Julienne wrote an early biography of Watteau. Jullienne was one of the primary French amateurs and collectors of the eighteenth century. He was an editor, collector, art dealer, and played a huge role in Watteau’s oeuvre.58 He sponsored an unprecedented campaign to record Watteau’s drawings as etchings, which contributed immeasurably to his fame and influence as a draftsman.59 Thanks to the patron, friend, and avid collector of this artist, Jullienne and his recorded documentation provides evidence of Watteau’s many painted arabesques, sanguine chalk images, and gouache studies, in which most were lost throughout time.60 After Watteau’s death in 1721, a series of engraving were made known as the Recueil Jullienne.
Despite his outstanding achievement with oil paintings, Watteau was gifted in other artistic departments, which can be observed in his numerous, assorted chalk sketches of individual figures, heads, or hands. His initial and dominant tool of drawing was red chalk, otherwise known as sanguine.61 Later, he added black and white chalk to his sketches, and even used graphite, pastel, gouache, or oil colors to enrich the visual outcomes.62 Sanguine was used particularly in fashion plates, ornaments, silhouettes of figures, and landscapes.63 The Woman Lying on a Sofa (Figure 4) is a whimsical example of Watteau’s skill according to Heinrich Leporini, as a “magic due to dematerialized effect of the glistening and shining tones and high lights in the delicate network of sanguine strokes.”64 In his Seated Woman (Figure 5) drawing, one can note the use of trois crayons: black, red, and white chalk, in which he captures the incandescent, natural curves of a young woman. 65 Graceful and eloquent, luminous and soft, Watteau uniquely and accurately delivers the natural movements and timid expression of the drawn-from-real-life woman in this sketch. His exquisite method of trois crayons, in my opinion, seems to provoke a spiritual sensation.
In conclusion, one of the most talented and original artists of the eighteenth century, Jean-Antoine Watteau made an everlasting impact historically and culturally in the art spectrum during his time and beyond. He came from a modest upbringing and transformed into a successful, inspirational artist of the Parisian society. Thomas Crow, in Painters and Public Life in 18th-Century Paris, explains Watteau’s attributes by stating,
The career of Watteau – his Flemish origins, early aspirations for academic legitimacy, immersion in the milieu of the fairs, apprenticeship in the most lavish and fashionable decorative painting, and acceptance in a circle of both unsurpassed private luxury and advanced art-historical awareness – put him, in an almost uncanny way, at the intersection of all the major components of artistic culture after 1700.66
Painter, draftsman, and engraver: these are the notable artistic professions that Watteau exercised and excelled in during his life. Whether one sees his art as moving and influential as myself, or happens to find faults and discrepancies with it, it is evident that Jean-Antoine Watteau made an impact in the Parisian art scene during his day. Without the help and support of Pierre Crozat, Edme-François Gersaint, and Jean de Jullienne, Watteau’s art career would not have been as inspiring or influential during the eighteenth century.
Figure
Fig. 1 Le Pélerinage à l 'île de Cythère, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1717, Oil on canvas, 129 X 194 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Figure
Fig. 2 La Perspective (View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat), Jean-Antoine Watteau
1715, Oil on canvas, 46.7 x 55.3 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Figure
Fig. 3 Woman Lying on a Sofa, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1717-18, Black, red, and white chalk, 21.7 x 31.1 cm
Fondation Custodia, Paris
Figure
Fig. 4 Seated Woman, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1716-17, Black, red, and white chalk, 24 x 13.8 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Figure
Fig. 5 L’Enseigne de Gersaint, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1721, Oil on canvas, 163 x 308 cm
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin
Bibliography
Cowart, Georgia.
The Art Bulletin. Watteau 's "Pilgrimage to Cythera" and the Subversive Utopia of the Opera-Ballet. Vol. Vol. 83, No. 3, pp. 461-478. College Art Association, 2001. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177238 (accessed March 17, 2013).
Crow, Thomas E. Painters and Public Life in 18th-Century Paris. Yale University Press, 1985.
Crow, Thomas. Representations. Codes of Silence: Historical Interpretation and the Art of Watteau. Vol. No. 12, pp. 2-14. University of California Press, 1985. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3043773 (accessed March 17, 2013).
Edwards, Jolynn. Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time.
Watteau Drawings: Artful and Natural. Edited by Mary D. Sheriff. University of Delaware Press, 2006.
Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. s.v. "Antoine Watteau." http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/637696/Antoine-Watteau (accessed March 17, 2013).
Hattori, Cordélia. Master Drawings. Contemporary Drawings in the Collection of Pierre Crozat. Vol. 45, No. 1. Master Drawings Association, 2007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20444490 (accessed April 30, 2013).
Hendy, Philip. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Watteau and Rubens.
Vol.
Vol. 49, No. 282, pp. 137-139. The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd., http://www.jstor.org/stable/863067 (accessed March 17, 2013).
The Illustrated Magazine of Art. Watteau. Vol. Vol. 4, No. 19, pp. 55-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20538372 (accessed March 17, 2013).
Leporini, Heinrich. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Watteau and His Circle.
Vol. Vol. 66, No. 384, pp.137-138 140. The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd., http://www.jstor.org/stable/866092 (accessed March 17, 2013).
McClellan, Andrew. Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time.
Gersaint’s Shopsign and the World of Art Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Edited by Mary D. Sheriff. University of Delaware Press, 2006.
McClellan, Andrew. The Art Bulletin. Watteau 's Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of
Art in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Vol. Vol. 78, No. 3, pp. 439-453. College Art Association, 1996. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3046194 (accessed March 17, 2013).
Michel, Marianne Roland. Watteau An Artist of the Eighteenth Century. London: Trefoil
Books Ltd., 1984.
Plax, Julie Anne. Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time.
Interpreting Watteau Across the Centuries. Edited by Mary D. Sheriff. University of Delaware Press, 2006.
Plax, Julie Anne. Watteau and the Cultural Politics of Eighteenth Century France.
Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Plax, Julie. Eighteenth-Century Studies. Gersaint 's Biography of Antoine Watteau:
Reading Between and Beyond the Lines. Vol. Vol. 25, No. 4, Special Issue: Art History: New Voices/New Visions, pp. 545-560. The John Hopkins University Press, 1992. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2739312 (accessed March 17, 2013).
Tillerot, Isabelle. "Engraving Watteau in the Eighteenth Century: Order and Display in the Recueil Jullienne." Getty Research Journal. no. 3 (2011): 33-52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23005386 (accessed April 30, 2013).
Vogtherr, Christopher Martin, and Eva Wender De Calisse. The Burlington Magazine.
Watteau 's 'Shopsign ': The Long Creation of a Masterpiece. Vol. Vol. 149, No. 1250, pp. 296-304. The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd., 2007. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20074823 (accessed March 17, 2013).
AND THE PEOPLE WHO INFLUENCED HIS CAREER
JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU
AND THE PEOPLE WHO INFLUENCED HIS CAREER
Who was Jean-Antoine Watteau?
Gradually drifting away from the seventeenth century Baroque style, French painting of the eighteenth century embraced the Rococo. One of the most influential and acclaimed artists of this era was Jean-Antoine Watteau. Watteau undoubtedly mapped the path of new artistic advancements in France. He was a former costume designer of a small, provincial town that evolved into a master of the fêtes galantes genre painting. He became pupil to the theatrical painter Claude Gillot and eventual member of the prestigious Académie. Consequently, it should come …show more content…
as no surprise of this artist’s rising fame and success during his time and for centuries to come.
Watteau was born in Valenciennes, a northern town in France on October 10th of 1684.1 Valenciennes, culturally more Flemish than French, had recently separated from the Spanish Netherlands and officially became a part of France six years prior to his birth.2 His hometown’s Flemish background had a lasting influence on his art and life. As a young boy, Watteau was an enthusiastic reader, lover of music, and even enjoyed performing on the public square.3 His reading consisted mostly of pastorals, interludes, operas, and ballets, which inadvertently seem to play a large role in his later art.4 He showed interest in painting from an early age. Therefore, around the age of 18, he was apprenticed to a local, amateur painter named Jacques-Albert Gérin.5 However, in around 1702, he traveled to Paris, the city where he would carve out his career and eventually meet his teacher and mentor, Claude Gillot, who was a set designer of the opera and decorator to various theatrical establishments.6 It is believed by historians that if Watteau had not ventured to Paris, he might be considered a Flemish artist today.7
For most of the seventeenth century, French painters were only considered tradesmen with minimal opportunity or hope to any social footing among the elite. However, due to permanent social, cultural, and political shifts in France during these years, the status of art and artists changed drastically.8 Established in the heart of Paris, Watteau gained access to a multitude of social and cultural experiences. Despite his frequenting the salons and fairs of wealthy, affluent art collectors and his acceptance into the official, highly respected Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture; he remained humble.9 Acceptance into the Académie and access to the upper echelons of society greatly promoted the appreciation of Watteau’s artwork.10 There are several key figures that had a huge influence in Watteau’s life: Pierre Crozat, Edme-François Gersaint, and Jean de Jullienne. These three people helped to deeply impact Watteau’s career in a multitude of ways.
Pierre Crozat and the “Genre” Painting of Watteau
Watteau’s work is often described as fascinating, illustrious, or charming. Yet, despite Watteau’s light-hearted and enthralling approach to art, some of his most significant paintings seem to derive from a melancholic attitude.11 It is challenging to precisely characterize Watteau’s genre of painting since his compositions, iconographies, and mediums varied so immensely. Through the course of his life, his artwork ranged from candid scenes of Parisian street life to the representations of military, comical, or pastoral scenes.12 He was the “frivolous” painter of revel, dance, masquerade, landscapes, animals, flowers and everyday life.13 Claude Gillot introduced Watteau to one of his favorite subjects: the characters of the banned Italian commedia dell’arte.14 In Watteau An Artist of the Eighteenth Century, Marianne Roland Michel cites Gersaint, Watteau’s trusted art dealer and close companion, as saying that, “all that Watteau gained from this master was a certain taste for the grotesque and the comic.”15 Watteau’s unpretentious background made him especially inclined to depict ordinary or common people in his art: this included beggars or peasants, theater performers, soldiers, shepherds, and even friends.16 He drew the stage characters from public theaters, such as the Comédie française, the Comédie italienne, and the Opéra, where his talent quickly surpassed those of his master, Gillot and his work that was focused on the same material.17 Depicting these characters became one of his lifelong passions.18 It is evident that he enjoyed theatrical themes and illustrating the spontaneous, unpredictable behavior of the actors in comedy.19
However, he is said to have invented his own fêtes galantes genre painting style. This was a new term coined to describe paintings of lush, imaginary landscapes with galant and champêtre scenes, usually of the elite in festive and theatrical costume.20 The amorous and ornate depictions of the balls, caprices, fashions, costumes, silken fabrics, and the noteworthy, elusive expressions of the figures’ faces -- known as airs de têtes – were the principal elements which dominated Watteau’s captivating and imaginative paintings.21 Ostentatious men and women gathered in groups, amusing themselves with: flirting, dancing, chatting, or music making. As settings one finds unreal, sumptuous landscapes or majestic settings.22 These paintings cultivated a sense of fantasy and were not necessarily painted from actual events, but more likely reproductions of reality. These paintings were symbolic representations of the current Parisian aristocratic society.23 The combination of his innovative use of color combined with a delicate and graceful adaptation of scenery, which allowed him to eventually be granted acceptance into the renowned Académie in 1717.24 This is where he earned the title of the Painter of Gallant Feasts to the King.25 As mentioned before, these fêtes paintings conveyed a dream world of fantasy, imagination, and mystery, specifically limited to the social elite.26 The Pélerinage à l 'île de Cythère (Figure 1) was Watteau’s reception piece that officially granted Watteau into the Académie.27 There is a lyrical, delicate eroticism that is being portrayed. The Académie members declared the painting in its own category: the fêtes galantes.28 The Pélerinage à l 'île de Cythère (Figure 1) describes the embarkation of pilgrims for a Greek island. It is a mythical representation that illustrates delighted men and woman in an airy woodland scene of mountains and a body of water. This painting symbolizes the members of the elite’s escapism from the real world; and travel to a magical, fictional island to engage in erotic passion or earthly pleasures.29
Watteau was allowed access to the polished and refined Parisian aristocracy through one of his patrons, Pierre Crozat.
Crozat was born in Toulouse in 1665 and arrived in Paris around 1685 where he focused on his private business affairs and devoted his time to the arts.30 Crozat was a banker, art and curiosity collector, and happened to be intimately intertwined in the high society.31 In the early eighteenth century, his hôtel particulier in Paris increasingly became a renowned artistic center in France.32 His collections closely reflected to the “official” taste of his day, meaning the Académie Royale approved it. Since Watteau had recently been accepted in the Académie, he was granted the opportunity of being introduced to Crozat at his hôtel.33 Crozat owned a mansion in Montmorency, north of Paris.34 From time to time, Watteau traveled there to stay at Crozat’s country home where he more than likely would have witnessed the leisure activity of elite firsthand.35 These visits ultimately helped to inspire Watteau to create the new fêtes galantes paintings. In 1715, Watteau completed La Perspective (View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat) (Figure 2), a fêtes galantes oil painting that clearly depicts the Château de Montmorency in the background. Watteau freely transformed the site by creating a fantasy world setting of towering trees and graceful figures.36 Crozat commissioned a series of large oval paintings depicting the Four Seasons for his dining room in …show more content…
Paris from the artist.37 Overall, Pierre Crozat was a generous patron, extremely passionate about art, and exposed Watteau to the elite society.38
Gersaint: Watteau’s Dealer and The Rise of the French Art Market
During the eighteenth century, collecting art had become more popular for a multitude of reasons: whether to gain social prestige, historical knowledge, aesthetic pleasure, investing or financial purposes, or simply a new form of recreation.39 This rising trend led to the demand for experts who specialized in appraising art and regulating the art market exchanging process. Therefore, art dealers began to take on the role as middlemen to provide for the market of consumers.40 With that said, Watteau’s dealer and friend, Edme-François Gersaint, has been called the best-known art dealer in early eighteenth century Paris.41 Gersaint is nearly always associated with Watteau, particularly because of Watteau’s final masterpiece, L’Enseigne de Gersaint (Figure 3). This was a painting produced in only eight days specifically for Gersaint’s gallery on the Bridge of Notre Dame. The leading source of information regarding Gersaint’s shop sign comes from the Lorangère sale catalogue of 1744, which features his written biography of Watteau.42 L’Enseigne (Figure 3) is a remarkably natural painting of a social gathering set in the interior of Gersaint’s gallery. The two–part panel sets a tone of excitement by illustrating the elegantly, silk dressed women and their eagerness and delight in purchasing art. While the males appear to be serious and stern, the painting is separated in two, symbolizing the convergence of two realms. The painting is an idealized representation, where there is a mixture of fantasy and reality, the recurring theme used in Watteau’s fêtes paintings.43 According to Gersaint, Watteau painted this panel as a gift, in which it was utilized to advertise a certain lifestyle.44 However, at this time, it was frowned upon for artists to engage in any promotional aid with dealers.45 After Watteau passed away, the painting’s value and price drastically escalated. It appears Gersaint had little sentiment when it came to Watteau’s artwork because he did not waste much time selling L’Enseigne (Figure 3) and profiting from his artwork.46
Gersaint truly enjoyed the art of collecting and its social rewards. It was believed that collecting secured one’s access to openly converse with social superiors who share a mutual interest.47 Gersaint was a member of the marchand-merciers, who were criticized by Diderot in the Encyclopédie for being “makers of nothing and sellers of all.”48 There was a strong negative stereotype of art dealers in the early eighteenth century and Gersaint persistently sought to overcome this unfavorable image.49 He was one of the first to write about the commerce of art. He focused on his many different advertising and business strategies to promote art sales and boost his own public person – for example, with the use of shop signs, printed notices, and sales catalogues.50 Despite his constant attempt to counter the distasteful image of dealers in the 1720s and 1730s, it is not until after his death that there is a gradual acceptance of art dealers in Paris. Dealers later borrowed many of Gersaint’s marketing strategies such as the detailed sale catalogues, the auction and preview, and the buying trips abroad.51
Jean de Jullienne
One can easily distinguish Watteau’s sense of individuality, his distinctive and unique qualities, and profoundly original approach to art in France during this age. Most art historians agree that several other artists influenced his work.52 As mentioned earlier, his first true teacher, Claude Gillot, for example, created many magnificent, extravagant drawings and decorative engravings, which were crucial for Watteau’s evolution of the use of color.53 It also is believed Gillot introduced Watteau to Claude Audran III, an engraver and ornamental painter.54 Audran taught Watteau arabesques, ornamental décor, and continued his interests in theatrical amusements.55 Audran was a famous decorator for the royal residences, and curator for the Luxembourg Palace, where Watteau was able to view and appreciate the work of Peter Paul Rubens and his Netherlandish style.56 He intently studied Rubens’ use of composition and color. Rubens was an artist from whom he would constantly borrow ideas throughout his life.57
More importantly, another one of Watteau’s dedicated patrons was Jean de Jullienne. Jean de Julienne wrote an early biography of Watteau. Jullienne was one of the primary French amateurs and collectors of the eighteenth century. He was an editor, collector, art dealer, and played a huge role in Watteau’s oeuvre.58 He sponsored an unprecedented campaign to record Watteau’s drawings as etchings, which contributed immeasurably to his fame and influence as a draftsman.59 Thanks to the patron, friend, and avid collector of this artist, Jullienne and his recorded documentation provides evidence of Watteau’s many painted arabesques, sanguine chalk images, and gouache studies, in which most were lost throughout time.60 After Watteau’s death in 1721, a series of engraving were made known as the Recueil Jullienne.
Despite his outstanding achievement with oil paintings, Watteau was gifted in other artistic departments, which can be observed in his numerous, assorted chalk sketches of individual figures, heads, or hands. His initial and dominant tool of drawing was red chalk, otherwise known as sanguine.61 Later, he added black and white chalk to his sketches, and even used graphite, pastel, gouache, or oil colors to enrich the visual outcomes.62 Sanguine was used particularly in fashion plates, ornaments, silhouettes of figures, and landscapes.63 The Woman Lying on a Sofa (Figure 4) is a whimsical example of Watteau’s skill according to Heinrich Leporini, as a “magic due to dematerialized effect of the glistening and shining tones and high lights in the delicate network of sanguine strokes.”64 In his Seated Woman (Figure 5) drawing, one can note the use of trois crayons: black, red, and white chalk, in which he captures the incandescent, natural curves of a young woman. 65 Graceful and eloquent, luminous and soft, Watteau uniquely and accurately delivers the natural movements and timid expression of the drawn-from-real-life woman in this sketch. His exquisite method of trois crayons, in my opinion, seems to provoke a spiritual sensation.
In conclusion, one of the most talented and original artists of the eighteenth century, Jean-Antoine Watteau made an everlasting impact historically and culturally in the art spectrum during his time and beyond. He came from a modest upbringing and transformed into a successful, inspirational artist of the Parisian society. Thomas Crow, in Painters and Public Life in 18th-Century Paris, explains Watteau’s attributes by stating,
The career of Watteau – his Flemish origins, early aspirations for academic legitimacy, immersion in the milieu of the fairs, apprenticeship in the most lavish and fashionable decorative painting, and acceptance in a circle of both unsurpassed private luxury and advanced art-historical awareness – put him, in an almost uncanny way, at the intersection of all the major components of artistic culture after 1700.66
Painter, draftsman, and engraver: these are the notable artistic professions that Watteau exercised and excelled in during his life. Whether one sees his art as moving and influential as myself, or happens to find faults and discrepancies with it, it is evident that Jean-Antoine Watteau made an impact in the Parisian art scene during his day. Without the help and support of Pierre Crozat, Edme-François Gersaint, and Jean de Jullienne, Watteau’s art career would not have been as inspiring or influential during the eighteenth century.
Figure
Fig. 1 Le Pélerinage à l 'île de Cythère, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1717, Oil on canvas, 129 X 194 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Figure
Fig. 2 La Perspective (View through the Trees in the Park of Pierre Crozat), Jean-Antoine Watteau
1715, Oil on canvas, 46.7 x 55.3 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Figure
Fig. 3 Woman Lying on a Sofa, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1717-18, Black, red, and white chalk, 21.7 x 31.1 cm
Fondation Custodia, Paris
Figure
Fig. 4 Seated Woman, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1716-17, Black, red, and white chalk, 24 x 13.8 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Figure
Fig. 5 L’Enseigne de Gersaint, Jean-Antoine Watteau
1721, Oil on canvas, 163 x 308 cm
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin
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