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O/C/P, Couple Reclining, after J. A. Watteau? Medium: Oil Support: Canvas mounted on panel. Artist: After Jean Antoine Watteau Artist Dates: 1684 - 1721 Country of Origin: France Title & Description: 'Courtship Scene' The Age of Feasts of Courtship. On the document testifying to Watteau's acceptance into the Academy, the title "embarquement pour Cythere" is crossed out and replaced by "La fete galante". Over the preceding years, fete galante (feast of courtship) had become a genre in its own right like history painting and still life. It was a genre which Watteau himself had invented and with which he had made his name. He had already produced over 50 feast of courtship paintings, most of them employing a small format, unlike the Paris and Berlin Cythera canvases. They all depict handsome young men and women who are chatting, dancing, flirting and making music. They are mostly dressed in a rustic style or in the costumes of the Italian Commedia dell'arte. In the present painting they are carrying long pilgrim's staffs, for they are making a pilgrimage to a sanctuary of love. Signature: AW conjoined Date of Work: 19th century? Frame: Later gesso frame Work Size: 3.75" H x 5 " W Frame Size: 11.5" H x 13" W x 2.25 " D Weight: 2 lbs Provenance: From the estate of Arthur J. Connoly Condition: Light craquelure, no inpainting when placed under black light. Artist Biography: Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Jean-Antoine Watteau was the most representative painter of the French Rococo* style, an artist beside whom the painterly talents of his contemporaries (like the Venetian Giambattista Tiepolo, and the Frenchmen Francois Boucher and Jean-Honore Fragonard) are measured. He was born at Valenciennes - the town had only recently been ceded to France, and during his lifetime he was considered a Flemish artist - and his early years are obscure. He trained under local artists, and arrived in Paris in 1702 as an assistant to one of them, a painter of scenery for the Paris Opera. This was probably Watteau's first contact with the theatre. He later became infatuated with it. Left in Paris by his master, Watteau was forced to produce copies of popular Old Masters* on a semi-production-line basis. It may have been at this time that he began to paint in his own right, scenes he would have known during his childhood at Valenciennes, executed in the style of the Dutch Realists Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38) and David Teniers (1610-90). Throughout his life his paintings were always based on drawings, and even during these early years in Paris when he was living in poverty, he made many delicate drawings after nature. Quite soon after his arrival in Paris he had the good fortune to come into contact with Claude Gillot (1673-1722), the theatrical painter, daughtsman* and etcher*, and by 1703, he may have been his pupil. Under Gillot he renewed his association with the theatre and in particular with the Commedia dell'Arte. This troupe of Italian comedians had taken Paris by storm with their fast and irreverent pantomimes; their performances had been considered so scandalous that the company had been expelled from the city in 1697. The memory of the Commedia dell'Arte lived on in the productions of French comedians who also based their plays round the traditional characters of Harlequin, Pierrot, and Pantalone. Scenes from the Commedia formed most of the subject matter of Gillot's paintings, handled in a rather matter-of-fact way. Not surprisingly, the paintings that Watteau made during his apprenticeship with Gillot are Commedia scenes that seem, like his master's, to have been painted from actual performances. Meta: Painting