II
HIS ART
Watteau's art appeals to everybody, and fascinates all who study it attentively. The lovely decorative pictures tell their own story; and for those who require more than a story in a picture, there is his craftsmanship, his originality, his personality; the delight of comparing one alluring achievement with another, and the interest in noting the inferiority of his followers—Lancret, Pater, and the rest—who annexed his manner but who could not annex the flame of his genius. Visit the Dulwich Gallery, study and enjoy Watteau's "Ball under a Colonnade," then go to Hertford House and examine Pater's copy of Watteau's "Ball." The fire of genius and glory of colour are gone. It is as stolid as Paul Potter's "Bull."
I have an especial affection for "The Ball under a Colonnade" at Dulwich; for until the regal gift of Hertford House to the nation, with its nine Watteaus, this little "Ball under a Colonnade," and in a lesser degree its companion picture at Dulwich, a "Fête Champêtre," were my first wanderings in the lyric land of Watteau. The National Gallery which, before the present Director came into office, treated the French school with an indifference that almost amounted to disdain, does not possess a single Watteau. Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Cambridge own examples of varying merit, and there is one in that treasure-house of rare and strange things, Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is probable that the nation possesses yet another example. "A Watteau in the Jones' Collection" was the surprising heading of an article in a recent number of the Burlington Magazine by Mr. Claude Phillips, who claims that the little Watteau-like picture called "The Swing" in the Jones' Collection at South Kensington is a veritable Watteau.
Germany is rich in Watteaus, with ten at Potsdam and five in Berlin. France, which should be the richest, is poorer in number and importance than either Germany or England, although there are ten examples in the Louvre, including the original "Embarkment for Cythera," "L'Indifférent," and "Jupiter and Antiope."
PLATE V.—JUPITER AND ANTIOPE
(In the Louvre, Paris)
"Jupiter and Antiope" suggests Titian and Rubens filtered through Watteau. This nude studied from life, not painted from his drawings, is more laboured than his other pictures, but the loss of spontaneity in the colour is compensated by the truth and beauty of the abandon of the beautiful limbs in repose. Brown Jupiter, blonde Venus—no attenuation of the truth here—lights loaded, browns rich with pearly reflections on the fair skin.
