Rococo artist antoine watteau biography
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Jean-Antoine Watteau
Watteau was one of the most influential French painters of the early 18th century. He painted numerous scenes with Commedia dell'Arte characters and also invented a type of painting known as the Fête Galante - small cabinet pictures which explored the psychology of love, usually in a landscape setting. Other painters, including Lancret and Pater, took up the theme.
Watteau was born at Valenciennes in the north of France and arrived in Paris in The influence of Rubens and of other Flemish and Dutch painters of the 17th century, including Teniers, remained with him during his years of training in Paris with (possibly) Abraham Metayer, Claude Gillot (about /8) and Claude Audran III (about /9). In he was admitted as a probationer to the French Academy, becoming a full member in with the presentation of his 'Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera' (Paris, Louvre), for which the Academy created the new category of Galante.
He also made many paintings of Italian comedy,
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Jean-Antoine Watteau
The few facts that are known about Watteau's life are in distinct contrast to the great importance of his art, which set new standards in French painting at the beginning of the eighteenth century. One can mention his modest origins in provincial Flanders, then beneath French occupation, his first training under a little-known local painter, and his move to Paris around His two teachers there, Claude Gillot and Claude III Audran, nurtured his talent in different ways. Through Gillot he learned about possibilities of visualization provided by the theatre, and with them the notion of an ambiguous reality. From Audran he learned the art of the arabesque, whose dialectical combination of ornamental and figural forms decisively influenced his visual structure. Equally important was the fact that Audran, as Concierge of the Palais du Luxembourg, gave Watteau access to Rubens's Medici Gallery and thereby laid a crucial foundation for his continuing study of the Flemish
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Summary of Jean-Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau's sensuously painted Rococo idylls conveyed courtly love and ideas of reverie, longing, and utopia at a time of aristocratic indulgence and hedonism. Painting both decorative and fine arts works, Watteau's subjects attracted a wealthy clientele and the newly emerging collecting class, making him quite successful during his lifetime. Watteau's elevation of ornament combined with his subtle compositions, use of color, and playful subjects captures the Rococo era like no other artist.
During and after the French Revolution his paintings fell out of favor. With more egalitarian aspirations, the revolutionaries despised all things associated with the aristocracy, including Watteau's paintings. Increasingly, though, Watteau's reputation has recovered as artists and scholars alike understand better his subtle exploration of the burgeoning modern selfhood and his complex painting techniques.
Accomplishments
- Watteau's paintings of