Mlle. Desmares en habit de Pèlerine
(From the Jullienne engravings from Watteau, British Museum).
L’Embarquement pour l’Ile de Cythère
(From a photograph, by E. Alinari, of Watteau’s painting in the Louvre).
In the third act of Monteclair’s ballet, the opening directions are: “Le Théâtre représente les Rives de la Seine. On voit le soleil prêt à se coucher” (which might possibly account for the soft, warm tone of Watteau’s Embarquement) and one of the characters comes to warn some lovers with a song: “Tendres amants, la Barque est prête”; and the ballet concludes with a dance divertissement, as was usual at the period.
One cannot dogmatically assert that these operas did directly inspire the pictures named, but that Watteau caught his first suggestion of some from such performances as his own taste and his association with a theatrical and musical set would have led him to frequent, must seem, at the least, probable.
CHAPTER XVI
THE SPECTATOR AND MR. WEAVER
Queen Anne had long been dead, but she can never have been very lively when alive, for her period was one when political intrigue, theological controversy, and the War of Spanish Succession were the chief subjects that occupied everybody’s attention, especially her own, and—could anything be duller? Moreover, she was of somewhat portly proportions, had a solemn husband, and—unlike Queen Elizabeth—was really no dancer.