WATTEAU, ANTOINE (1684-1721), French painter, was born in Valenciennes, of humble Flemish origin. At fourteen he was placed with Gerin, a mediocre Valenciennes painter. But he learnt more from Ostade's and Teniers's paintings in his native town. His earliest works suggest this influence. Gerin died in 1702, and Watteau, almost penniless, went to Paris, where he joined the scene-painter Metayer. Things went badly with his master, and Watteau, broken in health, worked in a factory where devotional pictures were turned out wholesale. Three francs a week and meagre food were his reward. Claude Gillot then took Watteau as assistant, but the young man soon excelled his master, whose jealousy led to a quarrel. Watteau and his pupil, Lancret, entered about 1708 the studio of Claude Audran, decorative painter and keeper of the collections at the Luxembourg. His chinoiseries and singeries date probably from this period.
Watteau painted at this time "The Departing Regiment," the first picture in his second and more personal manner, in which the touch reveals the influence of Rubens's technique, and the first of a long series of camp pictures. He found a purchaser for the picture, at the modest price of 6o livres, in Sirois, the father-in law of his later friend and patron Gersaint, and was thus enabled to return to Valenciennes. There he painted a number of small camp-pieces, two of which are at the Hermitage in Leningrad.
After a short sojourn at Valenciennes, he returned to Paris, where he lived with Sirois. He obtained the second prize in the Prix de Rome competition (1709). Watteau was made an associ ate of the Academy in 1712, and a full member in 1717, on the completion of his diploma picture, "The Embarkment for Cythera," now at the Louvre.
Watteau now went to live with Crozat, the greatest private art collector of his time, for whom he painted a set of four decorative panels of "The Seasons." He lived for six months with his friend Gersaint, for whom he painted in eight mornings a wonderful signboard depicting the interior of an art dealer's shop. His health made it imperative for him to live in the country, and in 1721 he took up his abode with M. le Fevre at Nogent. He continued working with feverish haste. Among his last paintings were a "Crucifixion" for the cure of Nogent, and a portrait of the famous Venetian pastellist Rosalba Carriera, who at the same time painted her portrait of Watteau. His rest lessness increased with the progress of tubercular disease; and on the 18th of July 1721 he died in Gersaint's arms.
Watteau, though Flemish, was more French than his French contemporaries. He led a revolt against the pompous classicism of the Louis XIV. period and combined a poet's imagination with a power of seizing reality. In his art can be found the germs of impressionism. Later theories of light and its effect upon the ob jects in nature are foreshadowed by Watteau's fetes champetres.
He is the initiator of the Louis XV. period, but his paintings are usually free from the licentiousness of Lancret and Pater, and Boucher and Fragonard. Watteau's art was highly esteemed by such fine judges as Sirois, Gersaint, the comte de Caylus, and M. de Julienne, the last of whom collected paintings and sketches, and published in 1735 the Abrege de la vie de Watteau, an introduc tion to the four volumes of engravings after Watteau by Cochin, Thomassin, Le Bas, Liotard and others. Until 1875, when Edmond de Goncourt published his Catalogue raisonne of Watteau's works, also discovering Caylus's discourse on Watteau delivered at the Academy in 1748, prices of Watteau's paintings rarely exceeded oo. Then the reaction set in, and in 1891 the "Occupation ac cording to Age" realized 5,200 guineas at Christie's, and "Perfect Harmony" 3,500 guineas. At the Bourgeois sale at Cologne in 1904 "The Village Bride" fetched L5,000.
The finest collection of Watteau's works was in the possession of the German emperor, who owned as many as thirteen, all of the best period, and mostly from M. de Julienne's collection. At the Kaiser Friedrich museum in Berlin are two scenes from the Italian and French comedy and a fête champetre. In the Wallace Collection are nine of his paintings, among them "Rustic Amusements," "The Return from the Chase," "Gilles and his Family," "The Music Party," "A Lady at her Toilet" and "Harle quin and Columbine." The Louvre owns, besides the diploma picture, the "Antiope," "The Assemblage in the Park," "Autumn," "Indifference," "La Finette," "Gilles," "A Reunion" and "The False Step," as well as thirty-one original drawings. Other paint ings of importance are at the Dresden, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St. Petersburg and Vienna galleries; and a number of drawings are to be found at the British Museum and the Albertina in Vienna. Of the few portraits known to have been painted by Watteau, one is in the collection of the late M. Groult in Paris.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Since the resuscitation of Watteau's fame by the de Goncourts, an extensive literature has grown around his life and work. The basis for all later research is furnished by Caylus's some what academic Life, Gersaint's Catalogue raisonne (Paris, 5744), and Julienne's Abrege. For Watteau's childhood, the most trustworthy information will be found in Cellier's Watteau, son enfance, ses com temporains (Valenciennes, 1867). Of the greatest importance is the Catalogue raisonne de l'oeuvre de Watteau, by E. de Goncourt (1875), and the essay on Watteau by the brothers de Goncourt in L'Art du XVIII° siecle. See also monographs by P. Mantz (Paris, 1892), by P. Dargenty (1891), by G. Seailles (1892), by Claude Phillips (1895), by Camille Mauclair (19o5, and 192o), and A. M. Hind, Watteau, Boucher and the French Engravers (19II).