Watteau

by C. Lewis Hind

Living in the Luxembourg Palace he had access to the pictures; he studied them, especially the works of Rubens. Restlessly he would roam the gardens of the Palace, enchanted and inspired by the figures wandering down the paths and grouping themselves under the great trees. Watteau, dallying in the gardens, remembering the theatrical methods of Métayer, the subjects of Gillot, the flexibility and fancy of Audran, the daring of the great Rubens, began to develop into an original. Gradually, too, he grew restless, feeling that he was not wholly free to paint his dreams. A vague nostalgia persuaded his artistic temperament that it was his home he wanted to see—Valenciennes and his people. Be that as it may, this was the reason he gave for leaving Audran, who had always been kind and appreciative; although the wily painter of garlands and arabesques tried to dissuade his protégé from painting pictures, fearing to lose so able an assistant in his own ornamental work. Before parting from Audran, Watteau made his first real essay in his second manner, a picture of "The Departure of the Troops," a reminiscence of the life at Valenciennes. This work he sold to the dealer Sirois for sixty livres, and with the money he started for home, despite Audran's protests.

Valenciennes at that time was gay with soldiers and dames galantes and Watteau painted several military pictures—groups marked with truth, yet full of grace; he also filled his sketch-books with incomparable drawings. But he could not long resist the call of Paris. Valenciennes seemed to have grown smaller, less interesting. The painter fretted in the narrow sphere of the provincial town; once again his wayward feet were set towards the capital. He arrived in Paris in 1709, and before long persuaded himself that he would like to visit Rome. With this end in view he competed for the Prix de Rome, but succeeded only in obtaining second prize. Soon recovering from the disappointment, he painted a companion picture to the work he had sold to Sirois for sixty livres, but for the companion he asked and obtained two hundred and sixty livres. These two pictures he borrowed from Sirois and hung in a room, where he knew they would be seen by the Academicians as they passed from one apartment to another. The painter De la Fosse, impressed by their colour and quality, paused and asked the name of the author. He was informed that they were the work of a young and unknown man who craved intercession with the king for a "pension" in order that he might study in Italy. De la Fosse sent for Watteau, whom he found modest, shy, and deprecatory of his work. Watteau stated his desire to study abroad. He was told—the episode in these days seems hardly credible—to his astonishment and joy, that there was no need for him to study with any one; that he was already master; that he would honour the Academy if he would consent to become a member, and that he had only to present himself to be enrolled. This he did and was duly elected, the inauguration fee in consideration of his circumstances being reduced to one hundred livres. And so in 1712, at the age of twenty-eight, the poor unknown, who failed to win the first prize in the Prix de Rome, was made free of the Academy, was given the new title of peintre des Fêtes Galantes, and became, almost in a bound, famous.

Ill and moody, he worked incessantly at his drawings and the pictures which were making it possible for him eventually to produce his masterpiece, "The Embarkment for Cythera." Always dissatisfied with his work, he did not ratify his election to the Academy by sending in his diploma picture until 1717. The patience of the Academy being exhausted, he was reminded of the rule that each newly elected member must present a picture. In a brilliant dash he finished "The Embarkment for Cythera," which was accepted on August 28, 1717, as his pièce de reception.

No longer was there poverty to contend with. Success followed success. The Academy had set its seal upon him. Everybody wanted Watteaus. In 1716, the year before he sent in his pièce de reception, he had gone to live with M. de Crozat, whose beautiful house in the Rue Richelieu and his country mansion at Montmorency were filled with works of the old masters, drawings and paintings. We are told that Crozat possessed four hundred pictures of the Venetian and Flemish schools, thousands of drawings, of which two hundred and twenty-nine were by Rubens, one hundred and twenty-nine by Van Dyck, one hundred and six by Veronese, and one hundred and thirteen by Titian. In these luxurious houses of his admiring friend and patron, Watteau might have lived with delight and profit. The park of the country house at Montmorency became the background which inspired his Pastorals, the perfection of his art; this perfection the study of the old masters aided somewhat, no doubt, but Watteau was now master himself, and in knowing them confronted his peers. Here too, for the first time, he met his models as an equal—untrammelled. This man of "medium height and insignificant appearance," whose eyes showed "neither talent nor liveliness," was on familiar and friendly terms with the company gathered at M. de Crozat's house—ladies of fashion, from whom in old days he tried to steal for his note-book a line of neck, a turn of wrist, furtively and hastily, asked nothing better than to be party to his pictures in gardens gay with mondaines, male and female. He observed and painted. We can almost hear the frou-frou of their garments in his pictures.

M. de Julienne, another patron, was full of enthusiasm and eager to possess his works; it was for him that Watteau painted the replica, carried farther and more finished, of the "Embarkment for Cythera," which is now at Potsdam. All the world smiled upon Watteau, but the world's favours only made the more capricious and melancholy this incurable brooder over the unattainable. Loving no woman as he loved his art, he longed for tenderness, yet was afraid of it. Cold, shy, fastidious, reserved, ill, he shunned society now that it sought him, and drugged himself with work as a refuge from ennui and from nostalgia for no earthly country.

He left M. de Crozat's house, independence being more vital to him than luxury, and found a companion in Nicolas Vleughels, whom he had met at M. de Julienne's. The two lived together until 1718. Once more the desire for solitude assailed him. M. de Julienne, who seems always to have been his devoted friend, admonished the ailing painter and begged him to be more careful about his material welfare, as indeed all his other friends did, to whom he retorted, "At the worst there is the hospital; no one is refused there!" His friends advised him to travel. Of all places he chose London, and arrived on these shores in 1719, finding lodgings at Greenwich.

In London his physician, Dr. Mead, presented him to the king, for whom he painted four pictures, which are now at Buckingham Palace. His health showed no improvement, and the English climate aggravated his illness. In a letter to Gersaint he wrote of "Le mauvais air qui regne à Londres à cause de la vapeur du charbon de terre dont on fait usage."

Dr. Mead, aware no doubt that his condition was hopeless, advised him to return to Paris. This he did, and settled in the house of Gersaint, son-in-law to Sirois, for whom he painted the delightful picture called "Gersaint's Sign,"—"just to limber up his fingers," as he expressed it.

Restlessness again seized him. He believed that he would recover in the country. His friend the Abbé Haranger asked M. le Fèvre to find him accommodation in a house at Nogent, and thither he went in 1721.