Two Drawings by Antoine Watteau

The Art Institute of Chicago

Two Drawings by Antoine WatteauAuthor(s): Hugh EdwardsSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 1 (1966), pp. 8-14Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4104369 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:12

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Art Institute of Chicago is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Instituteof Chicago Museum Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:12:19 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=artic

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4104369?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Figure 1. ANTOINE WATTEAU: The Old Savoyard



By HUGH EDWARDS

Two Drawings by Antoine Watteau

THE COLLECTION of eighteenth-century French drawings recently received two im-

portant additions by Watteau, Landscape with a Castle and The Old Savoyard.1 These come to the Art Institute as gifts of the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation. The Institute now owns five drawings by the great French artist, two of which, Spring and the above-mentioned Landscape, represent important stages in his artistic evolu-

tion; the other three rank with the greatest drawings of his maturity. Along with the Four Studies of Italian Actors and the Three Studies of a Seated Woman, The Old

Savoyard is one of the group of three, not only because it shows Watteau dealing with a

subject that was unusual for him but still highly characteristic, but also because it

surpasses the familiar styles and conventions of its period, and by its indefinable, large singularity, places itself in that category conveniently called universal.

The Landscape with a Castle is a copy after a sixteenth-century Venetian

master, probably Domenico Campagnola. For a short time Watteau worked and lived in the house of the great collector, Crozat. P.-J. Mariette, the eighteenth-century dealer and recorder of the art world of his time, tells us that Watteau copied more than one hundred drawings by Domenico Campagnola, then owned by Crozat, and quotes his statement of the profit he derived from this "academic" experience. One of

Campagnola's drawings, formerly in the Crozat collection, is now owned by Walter C.

Baker, who has with it a copy by Watteau, and these give support to the belief that the Institute's drawing belongs to the same series. In our group of five drawings by Watteau, the Landscape is a significant illustration of the approach to the consum-

9



10 MUSE UM ST UDIES 1

mation of the artist's best achievements. Its special appeal to the student does not lessen a broader interest. It shows us how Watteau could look into the work of another and translate its inherent character. He does not dominate the subject, as C4zanne did in his studies of L'Ecorche. With his copy, Watteau produces a revelation, not self-

expression; he is always present, and every line and stroke affirm an understanding admiration.

The Old Savoyard offers radical contrast. Here the subject is an arresting piece of naturalism transformed into a great work by Watteau's particular faculties and

aptitudes. It has the magic that is found in all his characteristic work, yet is the reverse

of the world of the ftes galantes and their population of debonair figures in a mise-en- scene where time has stopped, and whose light suggests no definite hour. Watteau was one of the first to formulate a poetry of the reality of the unreal; yet, in this drawing of a wandering peasant from Savoy, he turns this about and makes reality the vehicle of his special skills and originality. The result is a statement so personal that it does not

need even its distinguished provenance to verify its authenticity. Watteau's life was so short, and his creative activity so prolific, that following

the stages of his development to establish a chronology of his work has been a laby- rinthine pursuit. Few artists have left such small indication of the when and why of

their production. Even his nationality has been questioned. In 1677, Louis XIV be-

sieged and captured the Flemish city of Valenciennes, where, in 1684, Watteau was

born. So this most typical of French artists is said to be of Flemish origin. His father, a

tiler and carpenter, allowed the boy to go to Paris to follow his inclination for painting. It was not long before he was working in the studio of Claude Gillot, an artist much

engaged in the painting of theatrical decor, who introduced Watteau to the wonders of

the commedia dell'arte. This man was probably the most significant influence in

Watteau's life, for even after they quarrelled and parted, he always praised Gillot's

work. From Gillot, Watteau went to Claude Audran, a painter of decoration and

ornament, in whose studio he is said to have acquired the lightness of touch which

was later one of his most admired qualities. Watteau suffered from the jealousy of both

masters, his cause for leaving them. But, by this time, he was famous. The greatest amateurs of the day, Caylus, Crozat, Gersaint, Jean de Jullienne, were his patrons and

friends, and he was made a member of the Academy. He was a mystery to all who knew

him, and a greater mystery since to those who have cared about him. He is described as

atrabilaire, for he was cursed with hypochondria and consumption. In an effort to cure

himself, he made a trip to England (the only time he left France) to visit Dr. Richard



Two Drawings by Antoine Watteau 11

Figure 2. ANTOINE WATTEAU: Landscape with a Castle

Mead, but the fogs and climate of London made his condition much worse, and he

returned to France, to die at thirty-seven, in 1721. In this brief existence twenty years were passed in rare accomplishment, ten of

these in brilliant success. Assigning a date to The Old Savoyard has to be a matter of

conjecture. In making his drawings, Watteau apparently had no intention other than

producing objects which were sufficient of themselves. They were never experiments, and they seldom seem studies for other works. Although some were used as ideas for

paintings, it is not likely they were intended for specific purposes; this is one of the

many difficulties encountered in making a chronology. Parker and Mathey arranged the artist's 961 drawings according to subject, and for The Old Savoyard one may con-

clude 1712, or later, as a probable date.2 This is acceptable, even without the several reasons they give, for this drawing strikingly illustrates an artist at full maturity who makes brilliant use of a manner and medium peculiarly his. It is obviously not an early work, for influences in it have been assimilated only as ingredients to strengthen



12 MUSEUM STUDIES 1

unique gifts and individuality. If Watteau looked back to Flemish predecessors, to

Teniers, and, especially in this case, to Rubens and Rembrandt, it is clear he had

passed beyond their domination. This is one of Watteau's works to justify the convic- tion that he formulated a style and tradition in French drawing that was to animate

Chardin, the Saint-Aubins, Boucher, Fragonard, the nineteenth-century illustrators, Renoir, Degas, Vuillard, and still others, all of whom bear a relationship to him.

James Watrous wrote of Watteau's methods: "The supreme master of red, black, and white chalk combinations was Watteau. Unlike most of his predecessors, who would intermix strokes of the three chalks in some areas of shading, Watteau

usually let each stroke of the chalk remain autonomous and assigned each color to a

particular portion of the body or costume. Thus each chalk was unadulterated in color, and the drawing ensemble was scintillating in its freshness of color contrasts."3 In The Old Savoyard, Watteau omitted the white chalk and restricted himself to black and predominantly red. Although drawing in black and red chalks was favored by Rubens, one feels that in this drawing by Watteau it was intentionally used to give the

right intensification, weight, and color, so that the composition gained in strength and

became an entity which could have nothing added or taken away. During his lifetime, Watteau's drawings were highly esteemed, and there

was a careful distribution of them when he died. One of the best collections was the

large group brought together by his friend, Jean de Jullienne, head of the Royal Manufactory of Gobelin Tapestries, and first owner of The Old Savoyard. In the

1720's, Jullienne undertook to publish engravings of all of Watteau's work, of which four folio volumes were completed. Two of them, Figures de diffe'rents caracteres, de

paysages et d'dtudes, issued in 1726 and 1728, are devoted to the drawings and contain

351 plates, executed in the favorite eighteenth-century medium of etching intensified

by engraving touches. The Old Savoyard was the twentieth of these plates and was etched by Francois Boucher. It is another indication of Jullienne's insight and dis- crimination that he chose Boucher to collaborate in this publication. Though Boucher was then only nineteen, he was given complete freedom in his choice of subjects and

the number he cared to engrave. For this, one of his first commissions, he produced 125

plates with brilliance and finesse. In 1767, a year after the death of Jullienne, his

collection was sold. Our drawing appears as lot 769 in the sale catalogue. Ten Watteau drawings are known of Savoyards, a type the artist must have

encountered often in the Paris streets. Every year, unbearable winters compelled large numbers of the Savoy people-often as many as 530,ooo-to leave their homes to



Two Drawings by Antoine fWatteau 15

wander far and wide over France. As vagabonds, they followed the professions of the

miserable outcast: chimney sweeps, scavengers, beggars, or, like the one in Watteau's

drawing, street entertainers. Something of the eternal is to be sensed in the surprising

personage who confronts us; sinister sagacity and peasant craftiness are illuminated

hv a wisdom as rich as Montaigne's, who believed the only reason for living is to live.

Our Savoyard carries two boxes, the paraphernalia of his trade. The one on his back is

the box of curiosities, to be opened to display pictures and other objects; the other, on

his left arm, housed the marmot. This lethargic, furry, small-eared rodent was taken

from its box to help in an entertainment. It is said the success of this show owed more

to an illusion created by the trainer's sticks than to the animal's slow-motion antics.

Great artists are often best in unexpected works. The Old Savoyard has

Watteau's particular excellencies, yet in it a new Watteau appears, to disclose pro- found psychological penetration and realistic understanding. This drawing takes its

place as a masterpiece, and sustains Charles Baudelaire, that greatest writer to write

about the arts, who in two phrases, thirteen years apart, placed Watteau's name next

to Raphael's.

NOTES

1THE OLD SAVOYARD (figure I) Red and black chalk, 14'8 x 8% in., 360 x 225 mm. Joseph and Helen Regenstein Collection 64-74 Ex coll.: Jean de Jullienne, sale, Paris, 30 March-22 May, 1767, lot 769; Mrs. A. L. Grimaldi, sale, London, Sotheby's, 25 February 1948, lot 85, reprod.; Mrs. Corina Kavanagh, Buenos Aires, sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 March 1964, no. 220, reprod. Engr.: F. Boucher, Figures de difdrentes caractdres ... , 1726, vol. 1, no. 20.

Lit.: Edmond de Goncourt, Catalogue raisonne' de l'oeuvre peint, dessine' et gravd d'Antoine

IWatteau, Paris, 1875, no. 370; K. T. Parker and J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau/Catalogue complet de son oeuvre dessine', Paris, 1957, vol. i, no. 492, reprod.

LANDSCAPE WITH A CASTLE (figure 2) Red chalk, 8% x 13% in., 225 X 340 mm.

Joseph and Helen Regenstein Collection 64.194 Ex coll.: Charles Rogers, London, stamp recto (Lugt 624); William Cotton, his brother-in-law; Fauchier-Magnan, sale, London, Sotheby's, 4 December 1935, no. 72. Exh.: 1925, Paris, Petit Palais, Le Paysage francais de Poussin a' Corot. Lit.: K. T. Parker and J. Mathey, op. cit., no. 427, reprod.

2 Op. cit., no. 492., and p. 65 5 James Watrous. The Craft of Old-MZaster Drawings, 1957, p. 96.



14 M_ USE UM STUDIES 1

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles Baudelaire. Oeuvres cornplktes. Paris, Biblioth'bque de la Pleiade (N.R.F.), 1954; Edmond de Goncourt. Catalogue de l'oeuvre peint, dessine' et gravd d'Antoine Watteau. Paris, 1875; Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. L'Art du XVIIIe sidcle. 3rd edition. 2 vols. Paris, 188o/82; Jacques Herold and Albert Vuaflart. Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIIIe siecle. 4 vols. Paris, 1921/29; Arthur Mayger Hind. Watteau, Boucher, and the French Engravers and Etchers of the Earlier

Eighteenth Century. New York, 1911; Pierre Larousse. Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siecle.

17 vols. Paris, 1866/90. Articles: lfarinotte and Savoie; Frits Lugt and Carlos Van Hasselt. Exposi- tion/Le Dessinfrancaise de Claude & Ce'zanne dans les collections hollandaises. Paris and Amsterdam, 1964; Pierre-Jean Mlariette. Abe'ce'dario. 6 vols. Paris, 1859/60. Articles: Crozat, Jullienne and

Watteau; K. T. Parker and J. Mathey. Antoine Watteau: Catalogue cornplet de son oeuvre dessine'. 2 vols. Paris, 1957; Claus Virch. Master Drawings in the Collection of Walter C. Baker. New York,

1962; James Watrous. The Craft of Old-Master Drawings. Madison, Wisconsin, 1957-



Two Drawings by Antoine Watteau

Documents

Transcript of Two Drawings by Antoine Watteau