Antoine Watteau was one of the most brilliant and original artists of the eighteenth century. He 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. His method of juxtaposing flecks of color on the canvas was carried further by Delacroix and later reduced to a science by Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists.

"Accompanying an exhibition in honor of Philippe de Montebello, Director Emeritus of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, this engaging book examines the influence of music and theater on the art of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Fifteen major paintings and a number of drawings by Watteau that illustrate the connections between painting and the performing arts in Paris are explored. In addition, drawings and prints by other 18th-century artists featuring musical or theatrical subjects and objects and musical instruments are included."--Publisher description.

The essays in Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time offer a richly textured portrait of the artist's life, work, and reputation for students, specialists, and the general public. The volume brings together art historians whose research is currently defining the field of Watteau studies with scholars from history and literature who have published widely on the political and cultural trends of Watteau's era. Essays include studies of the artist's drawing practice, his relation to the emerging public sphere, and the changing fortunes of his reputation, as well as considerations of art dealing and fashion in Watteau's time. Other essays take up conversation, dance, seduction, and theatricality as essential themes of Watteau's art. This volume will be an indispensable resource for all those interested in the visual culture of Regency France.

Here is the definitive study of the great painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), best known for his exquisite fetes galantes--scenes of the pastoral pleasures of elegant society. Until now, critical interpretations of this remarkable artist have been shaped by essentially Romantic views. Donald Posner provides a reassessment of the life and work of Watteau; his account is enriched with reproductions of all of Watteau's paintings and major studies.

In a garden glade before a grand fountain, surrounded by a musical party, an elegant woman in a lustrous white gown dances as part of a foursome, raising her eyes to the viewer as if extending an invitation to the dance. This is the enticing scene in the J. Paul Getty Museum's painting "Dance before a Fountain" by Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), an excellent example of the fete galante, a genre that was created and reached the peak of its popularity in France during the first half of the eighteenth century. This monograph seeks to familiarize American audiences with Lancret, a master of this genre, who was a revered painter in his own time, rivalling his contemporaries Antoine Watteau and Francois Boucher, and a favourite of crowned heads across Europe. Mary Tavener Holmes's engrossing text uses this painting as a springboard to reveal a remarkable amount about the painter, his mode of painting, Paris at the time this work was made, eighteenth-century dance, and the world of art patronage and collecting in France and elsewhere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lavishly illustrated with comparative paintings by artists such as Watteau, Boucher, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Francois De Troy, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and Hubert Robert, this fascinating peek into a bygone Parisian era is a treat for the eyes and the intellect alike.

Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings were aesthetic, intellectual, and economic touchstones in the Parisian art world of the Revolutionary era, but their importance within this framework, while frequently acknowledged, never attracted much subsequent attention. Darius A. Spieth’s inquiry into Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art reveals the dominance of “Golden Age” pictures in the artistic discourse and sales transactions before, during, and after the French Revolution. A broadly based statistical investigation, undertaken as part of this study, shows that the upheaval reduced prices for Netherlandish paintings by about 55% compared to the Old Regime, and that it took until after the July Revolution of 1830 for art prices to return where they stood before 1789.