"January 1720.
"Those sharply-arched brows, those restless eyes which seem larger than ever—something that seizes on one, and is almost terrible, in his expression—speak clearly, and irresistibly set one on the thought of a summing up of his life."
And then the end under date July 1721:—
"Antony Watteau departed suddenly, in the arms of M. Gersaint, on one of the late hot days of July. At the last moment he had been at work upon a crucifix for the good curé of Nogent, liking little the very rude one he possessed. He died with all the sentiments of religion.
"He has been a sick man all his life. He was always a seeker after something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all."
EPILOGUE
The greatest gift in art is personality. But all masters are not of equal personality. Indeed, so rare is the gift in its fulness, that in the whole field of art there are but a few who appear as planets in the monotony of sidereal excellence.
Luminous examples of this quality of personality are such originals as Donatello, Holbein, Vermeer of Delft, and Watteau, to mention only a few of the most lovable. That something in an artist which finds a new way to express an old thing is the rarest and most to be desired of gifts. This gift Watteau had in the highest degree. He originated a grace unsurpassed in its way—dare I say it?—even by the Greeks. Attic simplicity of grace is grander, but not more beautiful, not more intimately beautiful. The Greeks gave us the grand beauty of form; Watteau gives us the beauty of caprice, of frills and fripperies; but his people are adorned by garments that lend them grace; his women walking are rhythmical lines, sitting they are silhouettes of delight, their garments enhancing beauty, not hiding it.
Watteau is the great master of the eighteenth century in France, a century distinctly feminine. To say that he is the most feminine painter that ever lived is in no sense a disparagement, for to this quality of grace and daintiness, of coquetry and caprice, of melancholy and longing, was united a very masculine quality of craft and originality in craft.