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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Study of a woman's head ca. 1710-20 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Three male figures ca. 1710-1720 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Before discussing quickly (too quckly) this important issue, I would like to devote several lines to Watteau's very particular working method, that (if it has not been sufficiently emphasized) of an autodidact. To return to Caylus:
His habit was to sketch his studies in a bound book, so that he would always have many of them at hand. He had some elegant clothes, some of them comical, which he would put on persons of either sex, depending on whom he could find willing to hold still and whom he would record in poses presented to him by nature, deliberately choosing the simplest over the others. When he had the inclination to make a painting, he had recourse to his collection of sketches. From it, he selected the figures that best suited him at that moment. He arranged them in groups, most often with a landscape background that he had imagined or prepared. It was rare for him to proceed otherwise.
Following a practice of which we know no other examples and which must always be kept in mind when examining one of his works, Watteau owned a large collection of costumes, which he used to dress his models. He sketched them, then composed his paintings with the assistance of his drawings, some of them several years old. Watteau seldom made drawings with the idea of a painting in mind."
– Pierre Rosenberg, from the introduction to Watteau, Music, and Theater edited by Katharine Baetjer (Yale, 2009)
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Design for decorative panel ca. 1710-15 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Nicolas Lancret Male figure ca. 1715-25 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Oudry Fountain in a Park 1730 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Oudry Boar hunt ca. 1735-40 wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Gilles-Marie Oppenordt Fountain with River God under arch before 1742 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Gilles-Marie Oppenordt Statue of St Peter in niche before 1742 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Charles-Louis Clérisseau Grotto of Nymph Egeria 1760s wash drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Greuze Study of Faun before 1755 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (born 1725) –
"Here we have your painter and mine; the first who has set out to give art some morals, and to organize events into series that could easily be turned into novels. He's a bit vain, our painter, but his vanity is that of a child, it's the intoxication of talent. Deprive him of the naiveté that enables him to say of his own work: Look at that, how beautiful it is! . . . and you'll deprive him of verve, you'll extinguish his fire, and his genius will be eclipsed. I suspect that if he were to become modest he'd have no further reason for being. Our best qualities are closely related to our faults. Most respectable women are moody. Great artists are capable of hatchet blows in their heads; almost all female flirts are generous; even good, pious folk sometimes speak ill of others; it's difficult for a master who think he's doing good not to be a bit of a despot. I hate all the mean, petty gestures that indicate merely a base soul, but I don't hate great crimes, first because they make for beautiful paintings and fine tragedies; and also because grand, sublime actions and great crimes have the same characteristic energy. If a man weren't capable of setting fire to a city, another man wouldn't be able to throw himself into the pit to save it. . . . We have three painters who are skillful, prolific, and studious observers of nature, who begin nothing, finish nothing without having consulted the model several times, and they are Lagrenée, Greuze, and Vernet. The second carries his talent everywhere, into popular crowds, into churches, to market, to the fashionable promenades, into private homes, into the streets; endlessly he gathers actions, characters, passions, expressions. Chardin and he both speak quite well about their art, Chardin with discretion and objectivity, Greuze with warmth and enthusiasm."
– from The Salon of 1765 by Denis Diderot, translated by John Goodman (Yale University Press, 1995)
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| Jean-Baptiste Greuze Study of figure with arm swung back before 1761 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Baptiste Greuze Study of forearm and hand 1765 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Michel-Barthélémy Ollivier Two women reading before 1784 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jean-Guillaume Moitte Study for bas-relief Judgment of Paris set into frieze with supporting figures ca. 1785-89 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |