Description
“The Baroque tamed and toned down for a more civilized era, not without a certain sense of humor.”
– Sir Michael LEVEY, British Art Historian – on the Rococo style, 1966.
The gallant party & the Rococo style
When Watteau presented his painting Pilgrimage to the Island of Kythera in 1717 at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, he breathed new life into a new genre borrowed from the play. Qualified as a painter of “fête galantes”, Watteau offers a new visual universe in which he deploys charm, sensuality and romance – with typically rococo accents.
The origin of the “Fête galantes” dates back to the finest hours of Versailles, when Louis XIV offered his court a feast of the “Pleasures of the Enchanted Island”. Fireworks, music, ballet and theater stages frame the festivities for hundreds of guests. The “Gallantry” then becomes the synonym of the aristocratic elite.
Associated with Watteau’s work, “les fête galantes” designate these genre scenes where the rejoicings of honest people and elegant characters with good manners occupy the canvas – in sumptuous parks or cozy lounges.
At the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, the painting and sumptuous decorations of Versailles went out of fashion and gave way to a lighter, lively, colorful and graceful style: the Rococo. This style appears in the decorative arts and is expressed in a climate of delicate and warm elegance. Watteau is the first representative, followed by Boucher and Fragonard. Chardin, for his part, works in a more sober spirit.
The work & its composition
This work reaches the height of exuberance and slightly erotic charm, scented with the essence of Rococo style. The brightly colored palette used by the artist to depict outfits and settings, lends liveliness to a light and graceful atmosphere.
Warm, Rococo painting offers a spontaneous vision and its delicate treatment establishes the elegance of romance.
Both theatrical and intimate, the staging is imbued with humor: the characters seem careless and unconstrained. Two musicians play their instruments, while a third lets herself go, lascivious, under the gaze of a clergyman.
A certain frivolity of the characters recalls the satirical painting of Hogarth or the scenes of Boucher – which mock the aristocratic manners of the time.
Contrary to moralizing compositions and the nobility of history painting, the painter ridicules the relations agreed between upstarts and the weak erudition of characters with pretense.
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