Jean antoine watteau pronunciation
AKA Jean-Antoine Watteau
Born:Oct
Birthplace: Valenciennes, France
Died:Jul
Location of death: Nogent-sur-Marne, France
Cause of death:Tuberculosis
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation:Painter
Nationality: France
Executive summary: Rococo painter of f�tes galantes
French painter, born in Valenciennes, of humble Flemish origin.
Comte de Caylus, his staunch friend of later years, and his first biographer, refers to Watteau's father as a hard man, strongly disinclined to accede to his son's wish to become a painter; but other accounts show him in a kinder light -- as a poor, struggling man, a tiler by trade, who secured for his son the best possible education.
Certain it is that at the age of fourteen Watteau was placed with G�rin, a mediocre Valenciennes painter, with whom he remained until It is to be assumed that he learned far more from the study of Ostade's and Teniers's paintings in his native town than from his first master's teaching. Not only in subject-matter, but in their general tonality, his earliest works, like "La Vraie Gaiet�", which was in the collection of Sir Charles Tennant, suggest this influence.
G�rin died in , and Watteau, almost penniless, went to Paris, where he found employment with the scene-painter M�tayer. Things, however, went badly with his new master, and Watteau, broken down in health and on the verge of starvation, was forced to work in a kind of factory where devotional pictures were turned out in wholesale fashion.
Jean antoine watteau education connection pdf One of the most brilliant and original artists of the eighteenth century, Antoine Watteau — had an impact on the development of Rococo art in France and throughout Europe lasting well beyond his lifetime. His paintings feature figures in aristocratic and theatrical dress in lush imaginary landscapes. Their amorous and wistful encounters create a mood but do not employ narrative in the traditional sense. Watteau was also a gifted draftsman whose sparkling chalk sheets capture subtle nuances of deportment and expression. Early Career and Training The son of a roofer, Watteau was born in in Valenciennes, a small city in the north that had only been ceded to France from the Spanish Netherlands six years earlier.Three francs a week and meagre food were his reward; but his talent soon enabled him to paint the St. Nicolas, the copying of which was allotted to him, without having to refer to the original. Meanwhile he spent his rare leisure hours and the evenings in serious study, sketching and drawing his impressions of types and scenes.
His drawings attracted the attention of Claude Gillot, an artist imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance, who after having successfully tried himself in the mythological and historical genre, was just at that time devoting himself to the characters and incidents of the Italian comedy. Gillot took Watteau as pupil and assistant, but the young man made such rapid progress that he soon equalled and excelled his master, whose jealousy led to a quarrel, as a result of which Watteau, and with him his fellow-student and later pupil, Lancret, severed his connection with Gillot and entered about the studio of Claude Audran, a famous decorative painter who was at that time keeper of the collections at the Luxembourg Palace.
From him Watteau acquired his knowledge of decorative art and ornamental design, the garland-like composition which he applied to the designing of screens, fans and wall panels.
Jean-antoine watteau paintings: With ingenuity and determination, Watteau continued his artistic education by copying works by Rubens and sixteenth-century Italian artists in the collection of Pierre Crozat (–), a wealthy banker and art collector.
At the same time he became deeply imbued with the spirit of Rubens and Paolo Veronese, whose works he had daily before him at the palace; and he continued to work from nature and to collect material for his formal garden backgrounds among the fountains and statues and stately avenues of the Luxembourg gardens. His chinoiseries and singeries date probably from the years during which he worked with Audran.
Perhaps as a recreation from the routine of ornamental design, Watteau painted at this time "The Departing Regiment", the first picture in his second and more personal manner, in which the touch reveals the influence of Rubens's technique, and the first of a long series of camp pictures.
He showed the painting to Audran, who, probably afraid of losing so talented and useful an assistant, made light of it, and advised him not to waste his time and gifts on such subjects. Watteau, suspicious of his master's motives, determined to leave him, advancing as excuse his desire to return to Valenciennes. He found a purchaser, at the modest price of 60 livres, in Sirois, the father-in-law of his later friend and patron Gersaint, and was thus enabled to return to the home of his childhood.
Jean-baptiste chardin Young Watteau was a very clever boy, constantly sketching, and as quite a youth was taken to the studio of Gerin, who gave him his first education. He received, however no sympathy at home, but, on the contrary, was urged to give up draughtsmanship. He therefore left Valenciennes, and tramped to Paris , where he arrived without a friend or a penny, and nearly starved. At first he commenced as a sign-board painter, but in was fortunate enough to be received into the studio of Gillot, with whom he remained for five years, and then became the assistant of Audran , one of the first artists of his day, and the keeper of the Luxembourg. Audran discovered his skill, but was inclined to keep him in his studio as a pupil and assistant, and to prevent him engaging in original work.In Valenciennes he painted a number of the small camp-pieces, notably the "Camp-Fire", which was again bought by Sirois, the price this time being raised to livres. Two small pictures of the same type are at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
Returning to Paris after a comparatively short sojourn at Valenciennes, he took up his abode with Sirois, and competed in for the Prix de Rome.
He only obtained the second prize, and, determined to go to Rome, he applied for a crown pension and exhibited the two military pictures which he had sold to Sirois, in a place where they were bound to be seen by the academicians. There they attracted the attention of de la Fosse, who, struck by the rare gifts displayed in these works, sent for Watteau and dissuaded him from going to Italy, where he had nothing to learn.
It was to a great extent due to de la Fosse and to Rigaud that Watteau was made an associate of the Academy in , and a full member in , on the completion of his diploma picture, "The Embarkment for Cythera", now at the Louvre. A later, and even more perfect, version of the same subject was subsequently painted.
It is quite possible that the superb portrait of Rigaud by Watteau was painted in acknowledgment of Rigaud's friendly action.
Watteau now went to live with Crozat, the greatest private art collector of his time, for whom he painted a set of four decorative panels of "The Seasons." Crozat left at his death some paintings and 19, drawings by the masters.
Jean antoine watteau education connection Jean Antoine Watteau 10 October , Valenciennes - 18 July , Nozhan-sur-Marne near Paris - French painter and draftsman, member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture the outstanding master of the French Regency period, one of the founders and main representatives of the art of the Rococo. For a short period of creative life, most of which was spent in Paris, Watteau left a rich legacy: about a thousand drawings and more than paintings; of the latter, in addition to landscapes, portraits, mythological, religious, battle and everyday scenes, the most famous he brought the so-called gallant scenes - group images of figures in the park space. Watteau was greatly influenced by the achievements of artists of previous eras - representatives of the Flemish, French and Italian schools on the one hand, and the realities of his contemporary culture in particular, the interaction of the traditions of French theater and the Italian Commedia dell'arte on the other. Watteau's work, which was at odds with the academic tradition and with the theory of Enlightenment realism, was frowned upon by his contemporaries in the 18th century; it was more widely recognized on the wave of Romanticism and Impressionism in the 19th century; at the same time the scientific study of Watteau's life and work, which inspired artists of subsequent periods, began. A large-scale retrospective exhibition, presenting the most important milestones of Watteau's work, was held in on the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of his birth; the bibliography of works about the artist numbers over titles.It is easy to imagine how Watteau roamed among these treasures, and became more and more familiar with Rubens and the great Venetians. In or the state of his health had become so alarming that he went to London to consult the famous doctor Richard Mead. But far from benefiting by the journey, he became worse, the London fog and smoke proving particularly pernicious to a sufferer from consumption.
On his return to Paris he lived for six months with his friend Gersaint, for whom he painted in eight mornings the wonderful signboard depicting the interior of an art dealer's shop. His health made it imperative for him to live in the country, and in he took up his abode with M. le F�vre at Nogent.
During all this time, as though he knew the near approach of the end and wished to make the best of his time, he worked with feverish haste. Among his last paintings were a "Crucifixion" for the cur� of Nogent, and a portrait of the famous Venetian pastelist Rosalba Carriera, who at the same time painted her portrait of Watteau. His restlessness increased with the progress of his disease; he wished to return to Valenciennes, but the long journey was too dangerous; he sent for his pupil Pater, whom he had dismissed in a fit of ill-temper, and whom he now kept by his side for a month to give him the benefit of his experience; and on the 18th of July he died in Gersaint's arms.
Watteau's position in French art is one of unique importance, for, though Flemish by descent, he was more French in his art than any of his French contemporaries.
He became the founder -- and at the same time the culmination -- of a new school which marked a revolt against the pompous decaying classicism of the Louis XIV period. The vitality of his art was due to the rare combination of a poet's imagination with a power of seizing reality.
Jean antoine watteau education connection en
The few facts that are known about Watteau's life are in distinct contrast to the great importance of his art, which set new standards in French painting at the beginning of the eighteenth century. One can mention his modest origins in provincial Flanders, then under French occupation, his first training under a little-known local painter, and his move to Paris around Through Gillot he learned about possibilities of visualization provided by the theatre, and with them the notion of an ambiguous reality. From Audran he learned the art of the arabesque, whose dialectical combination of ornamental and figural forms decisively influenced his visual structure. Equally important was the fact that Audran, as Concierge of the Palais du Luxembourg, gave Watteau access to Rubens's Medici Gallery and thereby laid a crucial foundation for his continuing study of the Flemish painter and other old masters.In his treatment of the landscape background and of the atmospheric surroundings of the figures can be found the germs of impressionism. All the later theories of light and its effect upon the objects in nature are foreshadowed by Watteau's f�tes champ�tres, which give at the same time a characteristic, though highly idealized, picture of the artificiality of the life of his time.
He is the initiator of the Louis XV period, but, except in a few rare cases, his paintings are entirely free from the licentiousness of his followers Lancret and Pater, and even more of Boucher and Fragonard. During the last years of his life Watteau's art was highly esteemed by such fine judges as Sirois, Gersaint, the comte de Caylus, and M.
de Julienne, the last of whom had a whole collection of the master's paintings and sketches, and published in the Abr�g� de la vie de Watteau, an introduction to the four volumes of engravings after Watteau by Cochin, Thomassin, Le Bas, Liotard and others. From the middle of the 18th century to about , when Edmond de Goncourt published his Catalogue raisonn� of Watteau's works and Caylus's discourse on Watteau delivered at the Academy in , the discovery of which is also due to the brothers de Goncourt, Watteau was held in such slight esteem that the prices realized by his paintings at public auction rarely exceeded � Then the reaction set in, and in the "Occupation according to Age" realized guineas at Christie's, and "Perfect Harmony" guineas.
At the Bourgeois sale at Cologne in "The Village Bride" fetched �
University: Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture
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