What-ho, Watteau!
David Platzer | The New Criterion | 11th April 2025
As with Vermeer, we know little about Watteau. He came from modest Flemish circumstances and lived a “vagabond life”, mostly in and around Paris. An acute observer of life, his portraits and scenes of soldiers have nuance and emotional depth. His re-invention of the fêtes gallantes genre owed something to Flemish art traditions but more to imagination and an attentiveness to fashions of the day. Watteau is unsurpassed in “capturing feminine elegance” and communicating that “elegant pleasures are fleeting”.