Watteau: His Palette E-Book

Arron Adams

• Herausgeber: Arron Adams
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

One of the most brilliant and original artists of the eighteenth century, Antoine Watteau had an impact on the development of Rococo art in France and throughout Europe lasting well beyond his lifetime. Living only thirty-six years, and plagued by frequent illness, Watteau nonetheless rose from an obscure provincial background to achieve fame in the French capital during the Regency of the duc d'Orléans. Watteau clearly had a genuine love of music. His drawings of those playing and listening offer uncanny portraits of the way it can heighten emotions. Equally, the play of light he orchestrates on fine fabrics, on children’s skin or on various elements of his landscapes, provides a startling anticipation of the Impressionists. He is the inventor of la fête galante, a genre that shows the bourgeoisie at play outdoors. It was an update of the classic format which portrayed mythical beings in pastoral settings. For, rather than selling to royals or aristocrats, Watteau’s art was purchased by rich bankers and tradesmen. His solution was to forge a style they could accept. He replaced traditional nymphs and shepherds with posh Parisians – shown at play not in some mythic Arcardia, but in their own contemporary parks and gardens. He personalized the scenes with figures from two ‘outside’ worlds, those of the theatre and of music. Many of the models for such protagonists were Watteau’s own friends: Parisian actors and musicians he often drew. His drawing ability remains spectacular. But even more startling is his modernity.

Leseprobe

Watteau

His Palette

By Arron Adams

First Edition

*****

Watteau: His Palette

*****

Copyright © 2016Arron Adams

Foreword

One of the most brilliant and original artists of the eighteenth century, Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) had an impact on the development of Rococo art in France and throughout Europe lasting well beyond his lifetime. Living only thirty-six years, and plagued by frequent illness, Watteau nonetheless rose from an obscure provincial background to achieve fame in the French capital during the Regency of the duc d'Orléans. His paintings feature figures in aristocratic and theatrical dress in lush imaginary landscapes. Their amorous and wistful encounters create a mood but do not employ narrative in the traditional sense. During Watteau's lifetime, a new term, fête galante, was coined to describe them. Watteau was also a gifted draftsman whose sparkling chalk sheets capture subtle nuances of deportment and expression.

The son of a roofer, Watteau was born in 1684 in Valenciennes, a small city in the north that had only been ceded to France from the Spanish Netherlands six years earlier. Details of his initial training remain obscure, but early biographers concur that shortly upon arriving in the French capital, Watteau was employed in the mass production of crude copies of devotional paintings. Sometime around 1705, he began working for Claude Gillot, who specialized in comic scenes inspired by the commedia dell'arte and who, in turn, introduced him to Claude Audran III (1658–1734), a designer of ornament and interior decoration. Working under these two influential masters, Watteau developed his mature style, increasingly incorporating theatrical subject matter and designs based on the airy arabesques that had begun to dominate interior design.

Despite his unconventional training, Watteau was permitted to compete for the Prix de Rome at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. He won a second-place prize in 1709, but to his great disappointment was never sent to study in Italy. With the backing of Charles de La Fosse, a fellow admirer of Rubens and Venetian painting, Watteau was accepted into the Academy in 1712. His innovative subject matter did not fit into any established category in the academic hierarchy, and he was ultimately accepted with the unprecedented title "painter of fêtes galantes." His reception piece, Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera (Musée du Louvre, Paris), was finally submitted to the Academy in 1717. It depicted amorous couples on the mythical island of Cythera, in various stages of their metaphoric "journey" of love.

With ingenuity and determination, Watteau continued his artistic education by copying works by Rubens and sixteenth-century Italian artists in the collection of Pierre Crozat, a wealthy banker and art collector. Italian Landscape with an Old Woman Holding a Spindle (after Domenico Campagnola) is an example where Watteau carefully transcribed in red chalk the rustic, hilly Italian countryside, adding to his repertoire of motifs that would inspire the backgrounds of his imaginary landscapes. Around the same time Watteau was assiduously making copies from his renowned collection of drawings, Crozat commissioned from him a series of large oval paintings depicting the Four Seasons for his dining room in Paris. Standing Nude Man Holding Bottles is one of a series of studies Watteau made for Autumn, now lost and known only through an engraving.

Another of Watteau's dedicated patrons and friends was Jean de Jullienne, who wrote an early biography of the artist and sponsored an unprecedented campaign to record his drawings as etchings, contributing immeasurably to his fame and influence as a draftsman. His collection included the Mezzetin, a bittersweet depiction of the commedia dell'arte character Mezzetin. He is shown seated and playing music in a garden, his pose evocative of the anguish of unrequited love. In a study for the head, Watteau focused on the figure's plaintive expression. Jullienne also owned The French Comedians, a late canvas likewise inspired by the popular commedia dell'arte theater troupes, although it is unclear whether Watteau meant to portray a specific scene or specific actors.

Admiration for the drawings of Watteau has always been equal to that of his paintings. He drew few compositional studies; for the most part, his graphic oeuvre is made up of chalk studies of heads or figures. In contrast to prevailing practice, Watteau seems usually not to have made figure studies in preparation for predetermined compositions, but apparently filled sketchbooks with incisive renderings of figures drawn from life, which he would later mine for his painted compositions. A drawing of a Seated Woman, for example, has captured all the spontaneity and grace of a young woman's natural movements, yet does not seem to have been used in a painted composition.

Although he limited himself to chalk, there is a clear evolution in the technique of Watteau's drawings. His earliest studies are in red chalk alone, with black chalk eventually added to the red, as in Savoyarde. Around 1715, he added white chalk to the mix. Although Watteau did not invent the technique of trois crayons, or three chalks (Rubens and La Fosse, among others, had used it before him), his name is always linked to the technique for his intuitive mastery of it, melding red, black, and white to great painterly and coloristic effect. In Standing Nude Man Holding Bottles, the three colors of chalk, in combination with the tone of the paper reserve, create a convincing rendering of flesh tones.

Watteau drew because he loved to draw. Sketching constantly, with application and curiosity, was the way he came to understand the world around him. Although he developed great expertise in depicting them, Watteau also looked beneath social frivolities. This was partly a result of his personal isolation.

Sickly and tubercular, the artist died at 37 – always having lived alone or with friends. Even as he struggled with his failing health, his savings vanished with the crash of the French Royal Bank.

Although concerned with public life and its rituals, Watteau’s art is actually intriguingly private. What it truly concentrates on is the moment. This the artist seizes with a stunning virtuosity and a gaze so penetrating the human beings it serves up still seem to be breathing. His restless eye explored an unconventional range of subjects, from visiting Persians to weary working soldiers.

Watteau focused not just on those in satin, but also on the poor who came to Paris, as he had, for a better life. Some of his sketches juxtapose porcelain beauties with exquisite studies of their young black servants.

Watteau clearly had a genuine love of music. His drawings of those playing and listening offer uncanny portraits of the way it can heighten emotions. Equally, the play of light he orchestrates on fine fabrics, on children’s skin or on various elements of his landscapes, provides a startling anticipation of the Impressionists.

Watteau is the inventor of la fête galante, a genre that shows the bourgeoisie at play outdoors. It was an update of the classic format which portrayed mythical beings in pastoral settings. For, rather than selling to royals or aristocrats, Watteau’s art was purchased by rich bankers and tradesmen. But this did not stop their author from craving that formal acceptance available only from the Académie des Beaux-arts.

His solution was to forge a style they could accept. He replaced traditional nymphs and shepherds with posh Parisians – shown at play not in some mythic Arcardia, but in their own contemporary parks and gardens. He personalised the scenes with figures from two ‘outside’ worlds, those of the theatre and of music. Many of the models for such protagonists were Watteau’s own friends: Parisian actors and musicians he often drew.

His drawing ability remains spectacular. But even more startling is his modernity.

Paintings

The Country Dance, 1706-1710, oil on canvas

In this, his earliest known painting, Watteau draws inspiration from scenes of fairs, peasant weddings and country dances by Flemish painters like Peter Paul Rubens and David Teniers. Compared to their Flemish forebears, however, Watteau's dancing villagers are more civilized and courtly. Rustic music, which frequently accompanies drunkenness and debauchery in Flemish art, here alludes to the natural harmony of social and familial order.

The increasing popularity in 18th-century France of novels and plays with rural themes also reveals a new appreciation for the imagined harmony and simplicity of country life.

Detail

Fêtes Venitiennes, 1715, oil on canvas

This is a very fine example of the 'fêtes galantes' perfected by Watteau. He included himself as the seated musician playing a musette. The central dancer may be the leading actress Charlotte Desmares, who was mistress of the Duc d'Orleans. Her male dancing partner is Nicolas Vleughels, a Flemish painter, who was Watteau's friend and landlord. The painting may contain a private meaning enjoyed by the two artists. The other figures are based on drawings Watteau made from his direct observations of contemporary society. The painting acquired its present title from an engraving made after it, published in 1732.