What Antoine Watteau wrote. Watteau's paintings

Date of: 28.01.2024

Antoine Watteau is an artist whose biography is described in this article. It was one of the most original and famous in the 18th century. And he became the creator of a new style - Rococo, based on the traditions of Dutch and Flemish art.

early years

The artist Antoine Watteau was born on October 10, 1684 in Valenciennes. Initially the city was Flemish, but then went to France. Antoine's father worked as a carpenter and roofer, but earned little. However, noticing his son’s interest in drawing, when Antoine painted small pictures of everyday life, he sent him to study with a local artist.

But his teacher could not be called talented. His lessons gave Antoine almost nothing. And at the age of 18, he went on foot to Paris, wanting to find a mentor who would help him improve in painting.

First job

Since 1702, Antoine has lived in Paris. At first it was quite difficult for him. To support himself, he got a job as an apprentice to artists in the Marietta workshop, which was located on the Notre-Dame Bridge. The painters painted for the merchant, who was only interested in the quick sale of paintings. The owner of the workshop paid his workers pennies. And for them, painters copied tacky paintings. Watteau is an artist who was outraged by this attitude towards art. But he had to endure until he found a real teacher.

The first real teacher - K. Gillot

And fate presented Antoine with a gift - a meeting with K. Gillot, a truly talented artist. Watteau became his student. K. Gillot preferred to write rural stories, theatrical scenes, and village holidays. Watteau mastered this theme to perfection and subsequently often stuck to it. She was close to him in spirit. But it soon became clear that the inclinations and tastes of Gillot and Watteau did not coincide in many ways. And this led to the breakdown of their relationship. But this did not prevent Antoine from maintaining respect and gratitude for his teacher throughout his life.

New teacher - K. Audran

Watteau began searching for a new teacher. It was Claude Audran. He did decorations and wood cutting. From 1707 to 1708, Watteau worked and studied with C. Audran. These classes taught him fluidity, expressiveness and ease in painting. Since Audran was the custodian of the painting collection, Antoine also had the opportunity to admire the art of the old masters.

Most of all he was attracted by the paintings of Rubens. Partly because he was also a Flemish, and the master's art had a tactile persuasiveness. But Watteau wanted to paint his own paintings, and not copy other people's ideas. And he decided to leave Odran.

Watteau radically changes his life

Under the pretext of wanting to go to his native land, Antoine said goodbye to his teacher. Arriving home, Watteau painted several paintings. And when he returned to Paris, he applied to the Academy of Arts to participate in the competition. The winner had to go to Rome for further studies. But only second place was given to Watteau. The artist who took first place was never able to become a great master.

Education

But in any case, Antoine needed to get an education. And his path still lay through the Academy of Arts. In 1712, Watteau managed to enter this institution. He had the opportunity to receive the title of academician, which he received in 1718.

Life and art

After some time, he became famous. His paintings were very popular, and fans did not give way, wanting to communicate with the talented painter. This is partly why Watteau had to change his place of residence often.

But the reason for this was also some qualities of nature. Watteau is an artist who was characterized by inconstancy and a love of change. So constant moving not only saved him from excessive attention from fans, but also satisfied his spiritual impulses. He needed silence. Watteau loved to copy paintings by old artists. And this had a great influence on my own creativity.

As Antoine's friends described him, he was of slight build and of average height. His mind was always insightful and lively. Watteau spoke little; he expressed all his emotions in drawings and paintings. Constant thoughtfulness created a feeling of a certain melancholic nature. In communication, Antoine was often cold, which embarrassed even his friends, making them feel awkward.

Indifference was one of Watteau's serious shortcomings. Another point is contempt for money. The enormous popularity of his paintings and the sums that were offered for them irritated the artist. He always believed that they paid too much for the works of art he wrote, and he returned everything that seemed to him surplus.

Antoine wrote drawings, like paintings, not for sale, but exclusively for himself, expressing on paper and canvas the most subtle nuances of human emotions - irony, anxiety, sadness. The heroes of Watteau's works were shy, awkward, flirtatious, etc. And it’s amazing how the artist could convey these subtle shades of the human soul.

Watteau is an artist who created a new style - Rococo. All of Antoine's paintings are imbued with light virtuosity of writing, a variety of tonal shades, and poetic play. Many paintings kept at the Academy of Arts acquired honorary status. Watteau transferred many subjects to canvas, starting from his sketch drawings. Even his early works anticipated the future style of the true master.

Illness and death of the artist

Watteau died on July 18, 1721 at the age of 36. The cause of death was consumption. The illness was partly aggravated by a trip to England in 1720. He lived there for almost a year. In England, Watteau worked a lot, and his paintings were a huge success. But the climate of this country was not conducive to good health, which began to deteriorate. Even before his trip to England, Watteau fell ill with consumption. And this disease began to progress. Watteau returned to his homeland completely ill.

He settled with a friend who sold paintings. But due to illness, Watteau became very weak and worked only in the mornings. Six months later he wanted to change his place of residence, and his friends helped him move to Nogent. But the disease did not subside. Watteau grew weaker and weaker and wanted to return to his home, but did not have time.

There are artists whose biography is not replete with external events. On the contrary, it is poor in them. Watteau is precisely from this category of masters. He was born in the north of France, in the province of Valenciennes. Until some time it belonged to Flanders, which is why Watteau was called “Flemish”. Indeed, he owes a lot to the masters of this school, and, at the same time, the purely French spirit of gallantry does not allow him to be compared with representatives of any other nationality. Watteau's father was a roofer and was unable to give his son a systematic education. The early years of the future artist have many “blank spots”. Antoine's first mentors were Claude Gillot and Claude Audran. The relationship with the first did not work out due to envy; with the second, Watteau got along well and lived in perfect harmony. It was Audran who showed Watteau a collection of works by P.P. Rubens. And although Rubens did not become Watteau’s idol, the painting technique itself made a strong impression on the young artist. The apprenticeship period took about five years. Watteau failed to win the Royal Academy even after two attempts. However, this relative failure did not prevent him from very soon becoming one of the first painters of his era. He was nevertheless accepted into the Academy and was even allowed to paint a picture for the title of academician in the genre in which he himself wished. He receives the title of master of gallant painting. Orders poured in from different directions, but Watteau was calm about material success and was very selective and picky. He led a wandering lifestyle, constantly moving from place to place and never staying anywhere for long. Glorifying sensual love, he never started his own family. Perhaps the reason for this was consumption, which tormented the artist for many years and inexorably undermined his already far from heroic health. The disease was then considered incurable, and Watteau’s days were numbered. He died at one of the French resorts before reaching the age of forty. He was no longer destined to return to his hometown of Valenciennes...

The works of Jean Antoine Watteau

Contemporaries who left their testimonies about Watteau’s personality unanimously claim that he was a difficult, withdrawn person who loved solitude. Surely, he was well acquainted with attacks of hypochondria and self-doubt. How else can we explain the fact that the artist almost never signed his canvases, did not put dates on them, and did not give them titles either. This was done by his friends or customers, and then after the death of the master. Watteau did not stand still, he tried himself in different genres. And yet, the pinnacle of his creativity were works of a gallant nature. The word “gallant” itself in Russian does not have a clear and monosyllabic equivalent. Gallant can be called an idle company of young people and their girlfriends, having fun and carefree time in the lap of nature, singing songs and drinking wine, not alien to flirting and love affairs. Plunging into the world of Watteau’s paintings, we seem to become participants in the traditional Italian comedy of masks dell’arte, transforming into the role of Pierrot, Harlequin or Columbine. Yes, this world is conventional, theatrical, but isn’t our whole life a game and a theater? Watteau’s paintings are densely “populated,” although it is difficult to talk about their subject matter. There is no action as such, the characters are static, their poses are deliberate. The decorative nature of Watteau’s creative style became a kind of prologue to the emergence of the court Rococo style. Some art historians call this talented artist the first romantic in painting. In many ways, Watteau remained the artist of one painting, which brought him fame and fame - “Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera.”

Watteau's art sensitively reflected the onset of a new century, which opened up for artists the possibility of a freer vision of the world in all the inconstancy and depth of its phenomena, breaking the mechanism of thinking of Descartes' supporters - the Cartesians. The short life of this artist, who died at the age of thirty-seven, fell on a turning point, and the first two decades of the 18th century he seemed to enter art along with the new century. Was Antoine Watteau a timeless artist, as is sometimes believed due to the fact that his art was soon rejected by the official criticism of the 18th century, which valued moralizing and anti-heroization in accordance with the aesthetic tastes of the Age of Enlightenment? His art itself refutes this idea. The genre of “gallant holidays” created by Watteau with the depiction of light and plastic figurines of ladies and gentlemen, reminiscent of graceful Tanagra figurines against the backdrop of the greenery of Parisian parks, indeed, did not meet official tastes much already in the middle of the century. But, looking at Watteau’s small canvases, you fully feel the magic of 18th-century art with its inherent subtlety of sensations of the “charm of life” (that’s what the artist called one of the “gallant holidays”) and, at the same time, some of its sad nuances. “It was a wonderful era,” I would like to say, looking at them, in the words of Charles Baudelaire, who, along with the Goncourt brothers, appreciated the art of a forgotten artist who anticipated the aesthetic quests of the 19th century.

During Watteau’s time, when the sophisticated Rococo culture was taking shape, artists were freer to search for the ideals of beauty than in the middle and second half of the century, when the rationalistic theory of imitation of antiquity was elevated to the rank of fashion and then a postulate. However, Watteau’s art at the very beginning of the century expressed the main focus of the aesthetics of the Enlightenment - the correlation of reality and ideal, the vision of reality through these ideal images of beauty. And the artist, who had a tremendous gift of imagination, was able, like no one else in his era, to find his own colors to embody their synthesis. It was the imagination, so valued by the age, that allowed it to see and decompose reality, synthesizing the new.

Watteau was born in Valenciennes, in northern France, where the influence of Flemish art was strong. His first teacher was perhaps Zh.A. Zherin, author of altar images in local churches. In 1702, Watteau went to Paris, which opened up great opportunities for self-improvement for the young provincial. Acquaintance in 1704-1705 with C. Gilot, a Flemish painter who appreciated the grotesque and painted small paintings depicting comic theatrical performances and masquerade scenes, strengthened Watteau’s interest in the theater. A short period of work with the decorative painter C. Audran, who decorated the palaces in Marly and Meudon, also proved useful for entering the Parisian artistic environment. From him, Watteau mastered the art of ornament, and the artist’s “arabesques”, published in 1731 in an etching by J. de Julien, found the widest use in the art of the 18th century. Among the artist's close friends in the 1700-1710s were the critic A. de La Rocque, marchands and collectors Sirois, Gersen, P. Crozat, the publisher of his etchings J. de Julien, musicians, actors, and the painter of Flemish origin N. Fleugels. This was a circle of enlightened people, in which the artist, who already had many orders and enjoyed the recognition of his contemporaries, felt great.

In 1708-1709, Watteau studied at the Academy of Arts, but, without receiving the Rome Prize, he never visited Italy. It is known that this trip was his dream; he wanted to see the works of the Venetians, whom he knew only from works from the collection of P. Crozat. The disposition of the highest officials of the Royal Academy towards Watteau is evidenced by the fact that its president, C. de Lafosse, ordered the young artist to have panels based on the scenes of the Four Seasons to decorate his mansion on Richelieu Street.

Historical painting, which occupied the highest position in the hierarchy of genres, did not captivate Watteau. He owns a number of paintings on religious ("The Holy Family", 1716-1717, Paris, Louvre) and mythological subjects ("Jupiter and Antiope", c. 1712; "The Bathing of Diana", 1716; "The Judgment of Paris", 1720; all - Paris, Louvre). Some of them were influenced by their passion for Flemish painting and knowledge of the works of French masters of the “grand style”. They are a bit dry and painterly in execution. The most impressive is the image of the golden-haired Ceres, personifying “Summer” (1717-1718, Washington, National Gallery of Art), from a series of canvases based on the subjects of “The Seasons”, commissioned by P. Croz.

Obviously, this genre did not correspond to Watteau’s talent; they do not contain the charm that his scenes of bivouacs and “gallant holidays”, images of actors of French and Italian comedies, and genre portraits give rise to. A born draftsman, Watteau very early, while still in Valenciennes, appreciated the possibilities of working from life. In his drawings, executed in sanguine or in the “three pencils” technique (sanguine, charcoal and chalk) or bistre with a brush wash, one can feel the refined culture of the 18th century draftsman. They give rise to joy, felt both by the artist himself and by the viewer to whom it is transmitted. From the delicate lines and soft spots of shading, charming, differently inclined female heads, images of modern dandies, endowed with either exquisite prettiness or character, emerge easily and gracefully. In his drawings, he clarified all the nuances of future paintings: composition, poses, gestures, costume details, breaks in the folds of silk fabrics. Watteau created his paintings without sketches, using only drawings. And in this he was a master of his age, he boldly violated academic principles and looked for simpler methods of conveying nature.

The events of modern reality are reflected in the image of “bivouacs”. During the war between France and Flanders, Watteau could often observe such stops of soldiers, refugee peasants, and sutlers moving along the roads of the country. He painted these scenes by order of the painting dealer Alrua; they were easily sold out and reproduced in engravings. The image of a wandering organ grinder with a marmot in the painting “The Savoyard with a Marmot” (1716, St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum) is equally sincere.

Appreciating the gift of improvisation and theatrical travesty, Watteau devoted his talent to depicting scenes with actors of French and Italian comedies. The heroes of his paintings - Harlequin, Pierrot ("Gilles", 1721, Paris, Louvre), guitarist Mezzetin (1717-1719, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) - are famous characters in comic plays performed on stage.

Watteau places them as on the stage podium in the canvases “Love in the Italian Theater” (after 1716, Berlin, State Museums), Actors of the French Theater (c. 1712, St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum). Each scene immediately captures the atmosphere of the French theater with its ceremonies, gallantly dressed actors, or the more common spirit of the Italian theater, in which the spirit of commedia dell'arte reigns. For the artist, it is important to emphasize one feeling in a given scene and to subordinate it to the expression of the “game” of all the characters.

The images of the playing jester in the canvas “The Indifferent” (1717, Paris, Louvre) or the young “Capriciousness” (c. 1718, St. Petersburg, State Hermitage) are, at the same time, a type portrait and a kind of theatrical role. As a result of real observations, correlated with the ideal image of the theater, charming creatures are born.

The spirit of theatrical transformation is also inherent in Watteau’s portraits. He loves to create costume portraits, as in the painting In Costume "Mezzetena" (London, Wallace Collection), which depicts Sirois surrounded by his wife and pretty daughters, whose heads are often found in Watteau's drawings, especially Marie Louise, who became the wife of Gersain - the author of the first catalog works of Watteau (1736). The artist’s friend N. Fleugels is depicted in the paintings “The Charm of Life” (London, Wallace Collection) as a guitarist and “Venetian Feast” (1717, Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland) as a dancer. The critic Antoine de la Roque, who wrote extensively about Watteau in the French Mercury newspaper, is captured in the landscape among mythological characters, in a scene reminiscent of an episode from a theatrical production. The gesture of the hand with an open palm, accepted in the etiquette of the century, indicates the reflection to which he indulges in the lap of nature. A more traditional image is of the sculptor A. Pater (1709, Valenciennes, Museum of Fine Arts), the father of Watteau’s student J.-B. Pater, also a native of Valenciennes.

The circle of people known to Watteau may have been captured by him in the “gallant holidays.” The canvases “Perspective” (1715, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), “Champs Elysees” (London, Wallace Collection), “Society in the Park” (Berlin, State Museums) hardly depict extras, as one of the artist’s biographers claimed. It is known, for example, that in the canvas Perspective, Watteau reproduced the park alley near the house of P. Crozat in Montmarency. In the depths of the alley, behind the figures of ladies having fun and their companions, you can see a theater pavilion built for the play The Marriage of Themis. It doesn’t matter where Watteau preferred to paint trees from life - in the Tuileries Park or at the Luxembourg Palace, but reproduced with his light, tremulous brush, they always create a charming decorative frame for cheerful companies of Parisians, and in the distance, as if behind the stage, a breakthrough into the bright heavenly space is visible . An element of theatricality is brought to the “gallant holidays” by park sculptures of nymphs and Venus, interpreted, at times, grotesquely, and reminiscent of the figures of living people watching what is happening. It is no coincidence that Watteau calls his canvases the Feast of Love or the Charm of Life: he shows in them a theatrical reality that can evoke wonderful sensations. The townspeople in aristocratic wigs and corsets, simple dresses and felt hats look like characters from theater and reality at the same time. The genre of “gallant holidays” itself could have been inspired by the works of the Flemings of the 17th century, but they were conveyed by the brush of a French artist who subtly sensed the “charm” of real French life in the early 18th century.

The keen eye of Charles Baudelaire noted in the famous canvas “Sailing to the Island of Cythera” (1717; Louvre; version - 1718-1719, Berlin, Charlottenburg Palace), which belongs to this genre, primarily “playfulness” and “prankishness”. The critic did not look for complicated philosophical implications in it. This is also a celebration of love in the lap of nature, in the depiction of which the necessary harmony is found in the fusion of reality and ideal, which for the artist has always been the world of theater, which embodied his dream of beauty. For this painting, Watteau received the title of academician in 1717.

The later painting “Signboard of Gersen” (1721, Berlin, Charlottenburg Palace) depicting his friend’s antique shop is important evidence that Watteau valued nature above all else. This is a living illustration of the artistic life of Paris at the beginning of the century. Perhaps, here too, many of the images are portraits, and this scene, full of living characters, reproduces the environment that surrounded the artist.

The image of Watteau was brought to us by a pencil portrait of F. Boucher and a pastel by the Venetian R. Carriera, who visited the artist’s studio in Paris in 1720 before his detour to Nogent-sur-Marne, where he died. One can imagine Antoine Watteau just like in the pastel by R. Carriere - with an intelligent face, fine features, and kind eyes. His art turned out to be especially spiritually close to the artists of the 19th century, who, like him, were looking for a way to depict the surrounding world more deeply and adequately to their own feelings.

Elena Fedotova

ST. PETERSBURG ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT AND ECONOMICS

Altai Institute of Economics

COURSE WORK

Topic: The work of Antoine Watteau

Discipline: World culture and art

Is done by a student:

Mikhailik Alexey Leonidovich

No. gr.6511/1-1

Checked:

Myagkikh Svetlana Valerievna

Barnaul – 2008

Introduction

1. Life and creativity

Conclusion

Illustrations

Literature

Introduction

The great advantage of the works of the famous French artist Jean Antoine Watteau is that they inspire intelligent conversations, serious and intimate conversations; they give birth in our imagination to strings of unsteady images, like garlands, which are separated and united again, evoke slow dreams, awaken a vague and light curiosity, prompting us to be interested in everything, without exhausting anything completely; they revive dear memories, help you forget about base worries and look into your own soul with excitement.

This topic is relevant in that it shows the place of artistic art in France in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and helps to learn about the life and work of artists of that time, in this case Jean Antoine Watteau. Through this theme, the life of Antoine Watteau is shown as one of the largest Rococo artists and the creator of his type of “gallant celebration” paintings. To do this, you need to analyze his biography, identify the essence of the paintings, especially his personal direction in art.

How to see a person through the paintings and drawings he created, how to unravel his fate with the help of a dozen pages? What finally made the artist immortal?

It is not difficult to understand that in the last century Watteau became the idol of those who admired the eighteenth century, with its cynical and whimsical spirituality, sophistication of thought and bitter irony. It is also natural that our age, prone to analysis, does not want to see in this artist only a singer of gallant festivities and to distinguish in art its depth and seriousness.

1. Life and creativity

(1684–1721) Jean Antoine Watteau (Watteau, Jean-Antoine) (Fig. 1) (1684 - 1721), French painter (Fig. 1), one of the largest Rococo artists. His name is mainly associated with a type of tableau that he himself invented - the "gallant festival", where exquisitely dressed young people indulge in fun in a delightful, romantic pastoral setting. Watteau's paintings are extremely artificial (love theatrical scenes), but under their frivolity there is sometimes a feeling of melancholy, reflecting the artist's conviction that all the joys of the flesh are transitory. The sophistication of Watteau's works helped French art overcome its dependence on Italian prototypes.

Born on October 10, 1684 in the small northern French town of Valenciennes. His father Jean Philippe Watteau was a roofer and carpenter. The boy received his first lessons in painting from the local elderly painter Zherin. However, the study did not last long: the miserly father did not want to pay six Tours livres a year for his studies.

Around 1700, Antoine left his hometown for Paris, accompanying the theater artist Méteilleux. He is hired into a painting workshop on the Notre Dame Bridge, the owner of which has organized the mass production and profitable sale of cheap religious pictures. For his dull and exhausting work, Watteau received a paltry pay and “a bowl of soup every day.”

Antoine was lucky to meet Jean Mariette, a painting dealer and art connoisseur. In the Mariettes' house he met his first real teacher, Claude Gillot. From him the young artist learned to love the theater, to which he later devoted most of his work. Watteau spent about four years in Gillot's workshop. The reason for the separation of teacher and student is not entirely clear, but, as some contemporaries testify, it was that the old master “was jealous of Watteau’s talent.”

Watteau’s first independent painting was written based on Molière’s motifs - “A Satire on Doctors.” It also has a second very characteristic title, which reveals its content: “What have I done to you, damned murderers?”

In 1708, Watteau left Gillot and became an assistant to the decorative artist Claude Audran. It is believed that it was Gillot who introduced his “protégé” to Claude Audran, who became Watteau’s second mentor. Audran was not only a successful artist, but also the custodian of the Luxembourg Palace. The latter circumstance gave the young Watteau the opportunity to get acquainted with the masterpieces of world art - in particular, with Rubens’ “Medici Gallery” (“The Life of Marie de’ Medici”). Rubens's coloring and free style had a great influence on the painter, although, of course, in spirit Rubens was not “his” artist. Together with his teacher, Antoine works a lot on ornamental paintings, acquiring the ease and precision of drawing that is characteristic of him in the future. At the same time, he continues to copy and study the works of old masters.

Around 1709, Antoine Watteau, deciding to become an independent painter, left his mentor. In the same year he tried to win the Royal Academy's Rome Prize. But his work on a biblical subject, submitted to the academy, took only second place, and the artist was unable to travel to Italy. Watteau made his second attempt to receive the Rome Prize three years later, but it was also unsuccessful. He was not destined to see Rome.

In the meantime, in 1709, he stood at a crossroads. After leaving Audran and failing at the Royal Academy competition, Watteau decided to settle in the provinces and returned to his native Valenciennes. But a year later he takes off and goes to the capital again as a major, creatively mature master. The main theme to which he devotes his works at this time is military.

“In his very small, emphatically intimate paintings, we see troops marching in bad weather, a short rest for soldiers, again marching in the rain and wind, a tired crowd of recruits,” writes I.S. Nemilova. – “The Hardships of War” and “Military Rest” are among the best films in this series. In the first of them, one can appreciate the artist’s skill in conveying the state of nature, a sudden whirlwind that drives wisps of clouds, bends trees and inflates the cloaks of riders. Small figures of people seem to be unable to withstand bad weather. Anxiety permeates the whole picture.

The second scene depicts a diametrically opposite mood: people, exhausted by military life, enjoy their vacation, some blissfully stretched out under the trees, others have a snack in the canteen's tent. The soft lighting of a summer day emphasizes the tranquility of the environment.”

War scenes put Watteau among the most successful artists. The paintings were in particular demand among participants in the Flemish campaigns.

Upon his arrival from Valenciennes, Watteau settled with the frame and painting dealer Pierre Sirois, through whom he met Pierre Crozat, the royal treasurer, millionaire and subtle art connoisseur. In 1712, he became a candidate member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, presenting several “costumed gallantry scenes” to the academic jury.

The circumstances surrounding Watteau’s admission to “full member” of the Royal Academy are very curious. It was clear to all academicians that the artist’s works could not be fit into the framework of any of the already existing genres, that his very style rejected the possibility of such “fitting in”. And so the Academy made an unprecedented decision: Watteau was allowed to independently choose the subject for the picture, which had to be presented during the transition from candidates to full academicians. Usually it took two years to paint such a picture. Our hero finished his work only five years later. By this time, Watteau had already gained fame and even fame - orders rained down on him one after another (perhaps that’s why it took him so long to write “academic work”).

Contemporaries note that even at the peak of his popularity, Watteau remained a closed and somewhat mysterious person in his isolation. He was not too interested in material success and took only those orders that were interesting to him. Friends called him "cold" and "unemotional." Possessing a difficult character, Watteau, for all that, was remarkably able to establish the “necessary” relationships - both among artists and among painting resellers and wealthy collectors. The latter must be given their due: they patiently endured all the artist’s oddities and patronized him, despite the difficulties associated with this patronage.

Watteau's life was spent in constant moving - it seems that he was afraid to take root somewhere in one place, to get used to it. Probably in 1714, Watteau accepted Crozat's offer to live in his Parisian mansion. There the artist could enjoy contemplating a magnificent collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, carved stones, and could work there without thinking about his daily bread. Then he moved to his own country estate, Crozat. Here, in a charming place near Montmorency, the artist was able to get acquainted with the brilliant collection of paintings by old masters, collected by the owner of the estate. This is where his reverent love for nature began. It is from this moment that the landscape begins to occupy an increasingly important place in Watteau’s paintings.

Simultaneously with military themes, themes related to the life of the theater and actors began to firmly enter into Watteau’s work. The artist himself creates the mise-en-scène, replacing the scenery with a landscape background. Sometimes it is a lonely figure of a musician, singer or dancer against the backdrop of a landscape: “Finetta”,

“Indifferent” (both 1716–1717), sometimes several artists or friends of the artist in theatrical costumes: “In the clothes of Metseten” (1710s), “Actors of the Italian Comedy” (circa 1712).

Antoine Watteau(Jean Antoine Watteau) - great French artist. Considered one of the founders of the Rococo style.

Antoine Watteau was born on October 10, 1684 in Valenciennes, France. Around 1702 he moved to Paris. For a long time he worked as a copyist of paintings. He studied with artists such as Claude Gillot and Claude Audran. Creativity had a great influence on his paintingPeter Paul Rubens . At the beginning of his career, he painted battle genre paintings, but then he began to pay more and more attention to genre scenes.

The works of Antoine Watteau are imbued with a special mood, theatrical play, irony and lyricism. Characteristic elements for Watteau's paintings are the expressiveness of poses and gestures, gentle combinations of colors. Unlike ceremonial and official art, which was most in demand in the 18th century, his paintings were quite simple and therefore extremely charming.

Researchers of Antoine Watteau's work emphasize the undoubted influence of Rubens' art on the artist's style. A special sense of color makes his paintings fabulous and enchanting. Looking at Watteau's paintings, one may be surprised at how light and free his painting is. The artist's brush is both airy and energetic. Clear images are surrounded by a special atmosphere that promotes contemplation. The outstanding colorist was able to convey mood, emotion and trembling excitement.

The great French artist Antoine Watteau died on July 18, 1721 in Nogent-sur-Marne, France. Despite the fact that Watteau's main creative period covered only 10-12 years, he managed to create many stunning masterpieces, which today are in the most famous museums in the world - the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the National Museum of Sweden, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Dresden gallery, London National Gallery, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Louvre and others.