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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Young woman in a dark dress ca. 1716 drawing British Museum |
"And at last one has actual sight of his work – what it is. He has brought with him certain long-cherished designs to finish here in quiet. That charming Noblesse – can it be really so distinguished to the minutest point, so naturally aristocratic? Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, no less than the landscape he composes, and among the accidents of which they group themselves with such a perfect fittingness, a certain light we should seek for in vain upon anything real. For their framework they have around them a veritable architecture – a tree-architecture – to which those moss-grown balusters, termes, statues, fountains, are really but accessories. Only, as I gaze upon those windless afternoons, I find myself always saying to myself involuntarily, "The evening will be a wet one." The storm is always brooding through the massy splendour of the trees, above those sun-dried glades or lawns, where delicate children may be trusted thinly clad; and the secular trees themselves will hardly outlast another generation."
– Walter Pater, A Prince of Court Painters, from Imaginary Portraits (1887)
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Man reclining & woman seated on the ground ca. 1716 drawing National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Studies of a woman ca. 1717 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Three studies of a woman's head ca. 1717-18 National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Standing Friar (after a 17th-century Italian painting) early 18th century British Museum |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Landscape with cottages early 18th century British Museum |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Savoyard woman with marmot box ca. 1710 British Museum |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau An engraver at work ca. 1719 British Museum |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Standing woman early 18th century Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau The Bower ca. 1716 drawing National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Fête galante with falcons 1711-12 drawing National Gallery of Art (U.S.) |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau The Scale of Love ca. 1715-18 National Gallery, London |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Wedding with dancing ca. 1711 Prado |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Fête in a park 1712-13 Prado |