Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) French, Oil on Copper. A gloriously bucolic scene of drunken feasting and reveling in the streets, the aristocrats mingling with the poor thanks to the great unifier: alcohol. Ornately gilt frame, with a plaque bottom middle that attributes it to Watteau and gives a title: "Fete Champetre" ("Country Festival"). 

Overall Size: 22 x 25 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 15 1/4 x 18 in. 

Jean-Antoine Watteau was born on October 10th, 1684 in Valenciennes, France, and became an influential painter and draftsman who revitalized the waning Baroque style into the less severe, more naturalistic Rococo movement. He is historically credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, which depicted idyllic, bucolic scenes heavily suffused with a theatrical atmosphere, and many of his works had a looser, more sketchlike quality than his more polished contemporaries. His unique, influential artistic style was deeply inspired by the Flemish traditions of Peter Paul Rubens and the vibrant characters of Italian commedia dell’arte, but despite his immense impact Watteau suffered from fragile health his entire life and died of a chronic illness at the young age of 36 on July 18th, 1721. His final masterpiece, The Shop-sign of Gersaint, is celebrated as a brilliant urban meditation on art and illusion, and Watteau’s enduring legacy extended far beyond painting into the decorative arts and fashion, even inspiring the creation of the pleated “Watteau dress” as well as the beginnings of Impressionism. 

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