Watteau - Charmes de La Vie

Middleman: Antoine Watteau and "Les Charmes de la Vie" Author(s): Judy Sund Reviewed work(s): Source: The Art
Bulletin, Vol. 91, No. 1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 59-82 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20619657 . Accessed: 24/01/2013 23:53
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art Bulletin.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded on Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:53:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Middleman:
Judy Sund
Antoine Watteau
and Les Charmes de la Vie
Les charmesde la vie, the portrayal of an intimate music party set on a majestic terrace, painted about 1717 (Fig. 1), is the sort of picture forwhich Antoine Watteau isbest known: a fete
galante, or
his attempts to address his subjects and patrons

preferred mode.6 nonnarrative for their time, Watteau's Remarkably
in their
fetes
ionable Parisians. While

tes?may appear
depiction
of an
Les charmes?like many fetes galan

an "elegant, inconsequential sub
open-air
social
gathering
of fash
quest for fleas. Similar discordant notes pepper other of Watteau's fetes galantes, prompting the suspicion that such indelicacies might be calculated and consequential. Even as Les charmesconforms to itsgenre by treating social may also be read aspiration of a possibly romantic nature, it
as a commentary on the ways that nature (in its human,
ject,"1 its genteel tenor is strikingly disrupted by certain departures from elegance. The painting's central figure is awkward and straining in his attempt to tune his instrument, and the nearby springer spaniel is caught in an uncouth
to take up
galantes are neither illustrational in themanner of traditional history painting nor anecdotal and moralizing in themode of lied to both, communicating, as history and genre paintings do, by way of their figures' attitudes, gestures, and clothing and evocative props and settings, as well as by references to literary types and characters, nods to traditional emblems
and allegories, scholars and allusions of Watteau to contemporary have social noted Modern routinely love practice. the em seventeenth-century genre scenes. Nonetheless, they are al
blematic dimensions of thefetes galantes, which often involve

the vexed niments. instance, pursuit Previous of romantic and its carnal accompa of Les charmes de la vie, for interpretations characterize it as a in which rituals picture courtship
animal, and vegetal forms) was sophisticated and aestheti cized by and forwealthy Parisians. Ultimately, Les charmesde la
vie constitutes of such ventures. an outsider's reflection on the relative success
are symbolically elucidated by the actions of concertizing (and, more precisely, their failure to proceed as planned).7 Music making as a metaphor for both the satisfactions and
The product of long deliberation, Les charmesde la viewas

also reworked on Watteau's easel.2 Its central
pictorial
Watteau's
life months
Pour nous
(even years) earlier, as a lutenist in

prouvons que cette belle (Fig. 2), and sub
figure
began
his
sequently appeared in full length as the centralized theorbo tuner in Le prelude au concert(Fig. 3).3 Les charmesde la vie not but also only incorporates figures from Le prelude au concert
missteps of courtship is a prominent thematic subset of the fetes galantes, one that derived from the rich iconography of Dutch and Flemish paintings in this vein, which were familiar to and admired byWatteau and his Parisian contemporaries (Fig. 4).8 Taking a cue from the sorts of pictures the Dutch call ated romantic pursuits on the edges of civilized life (in gar
dens culture and parks and on terraces), venues places where nature Watteau's and intermingle. Such complement buitenpartijen ("outdoor parties"),9 Watteau consistently situ
recapitulates that picture's general layout. Although equiva lent in size and similar in subject to Le prelude, Les charmes is stronger (more tightlypainted, more rigorously composed) and more complex (embellished by architectural enhance
an additional
ments,
later picture's formal lucidity and enrichment would seem to

betoken
dog,
servant,
and
a wine
tub).
The
equally consistent presentation of courtship itself as such a juncture: a practice in which nature (passion and instinct) and culture (politesse and ritual) are counterpoised. Clearly intrigued by themurky center of the nature/culture contin uum (where society's elites not only dallied but also staged
and/or an attempt to push a familiar theme in a different

direction.4 These full speculations, awareness of the and opacity those that follow, are artistic proffered aims. Even in
greater
conceptual
clarity
on
the
artist's
part,
of made Watteau intersections of the man displays power10), made and organic, the cultivated and wild, finesse and awk wardness his particular Nowhere is this more province. ap
of Watteau's
in his own time, his pictures apparently did not convey mean and equivocal?particularly in the 1710s, when the fetes ga lanteswere made?might be linked to the glorification of obfuscation among Parisian elites, in whose company the painter
and ing in obvious ways.5 Watteau's penchant for the enigmatic
parent than in Les charmes de la vie, the embellishments of which arguably were devised with such junctures inmind.
The their relation of nature a and topic oppositions?was Paris. The art?complementary, of long-standing of la belle nature?an despite interest idealized in
Watteau's
increasingly found himself. Dedicated

self-representation, habitues of
to stylized
monde
amalgam
"brute"
incorporating only the most pleasing

academic art as well as
concept
aspects of
inflecting on a
nature?informed
selective
the
haut
the fetes galantes allude favored masks, disguises, contrived personas, and complexly coded behaviors that
thwarted and plete peers' The apprehension evasiveness figures of below-the-surface of Watteau's and mature emotions work gestures (re and motives. with
to which
variety of social practices, as aesthetes rejected nature in the

raw as uncouth and
expressions) probably reflects behaviors he observed and may imply his own assimilation of a societal ideal, as well as
turned-away
inconclusive
forming their natural selves into works of art, at the same time recognized the importance of tempering artifice with "natural" touches (prompting Jean de La Bruyere's mordant
observation, urban "So much rerouted art just to return planted to nature!"11). and Sub coaxed gardeners streams, allees,
vulgar.
French
aristocrats,
bent
trans
and cut plants into conformity;12 pet fanciers (themselves a
50
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
London
1 Jean-Antoine
Wallace Collection) (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by The Trustees of the
Watteau,
Les
charmes de la vie, ca.
1717,
oil on
canvas,
26!/2 X
36%
in.
(67.3
X 92.5
cm).
The Wallace
Collection,
fairlynew breed) trained parrots to talk and dogs tomove or be still on command;13 and those who possessed (or imag ined the possession of14) petits negresdressed them in finery (Figs. 5, 6) and gave them classical names.15 The freethinking
libertine, railed meantime, priests' decried and society's legislators' denatured attempts mores to thwart and "nat against
ural" desires and behaviors by promoting artificial notions of

virtue.16 Watteau's interest in this discourse is perhaps first evident
in his forays into singerie,a widespread

exploited
European
genre that
and
satirical ends.17 These

Claude
monkeys'
quasi-human
aspects Watteau
to humorous
forays may have been

and
instigated by
Audran ap
ornamentalist
III Audran; at
parently collaborated
Louis XIV's chateau
in 1709 and 1710 on a set of panels for

Marly, drawings for which show mon
2 Watteau, ca. 1716, Wallace Collection)
Wallace photograph provided by The Trustees of the
Lesson), que cette belle (The Music prouvons X 7Vh in. (16.1 X 19.9 cm). The 6% panel, London in the public Collection, domain; (artwork Powr oil on
wows
key feasters attended by a lively simian staff (Fig. 7).18 Some years later?here following the lead of David Teniers (Fig.
8)19?Watteau the classical emblematized the
sculpture in paired pictures of monkey artists that reference

maxim "ars simiae naturae" "art apes art?as ("art nature"). is the ape of for nature," or, more colloquially, Known
practices
of
painting
and
mimicry, monkeys often were used to symbolize unthinking,

slavish imitation?hence, insipid in Teniers's portray
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES CHARMES
DE LA VIE
?\
3 Watteau, ca. 1717,
Schl?sser und Stiftung Preussische G?rten Berlin Berlin-Brandenburg, in the public domain; (artwork photo Art Resource, NY)
(66 X 91 cm). Schloss Charlottenburg,
Le prelude oil on canvas,
au
concert, 26 X 35%
in.
graph by Erich Lessing, provided by
the by
^^^^^HI^^^^^^^^^^^^^B^^^^^^kI^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H
als of glib simian artists and the connoisseurs who admire

their work. Unlike Teniers's self-satisfied
costume and the framed picture within La peinture, which Italienne (the sort of picture Watteau produced in Claude Gillot's studio21). This displayed work, which might be described as an artifice inspired by artifice, implies, in Comedie
combination with the that to find ited demeanor, painter's mannequin even an artist so unadulterated nature milieu. model inclined to and dispir would be in this represents a stage production featuring characters from the
the protagonist
drained, enslavement not
of Watteau's
by his
La
monkey,
however,
peinture (Fig. 9)
seems
because
his fabled proclivity for copying nature has been thwarted by

to culture.
delighted,
endeavors20?perhaps
Alone
pings monkey costumed
in his shadowy studio, hemmed

painter, upholstered his own of chair, nature for framed under
in by cultural trap
picture), wraps, Watteau's looks but to a
(easel,
hard-pressed monkey
imitate
inert before
turned-away
mock-up
a model
it. Clues
to his aims
exist in both
(and the contents of his

his lay figure's theatrical
inspiration
remains
That themilieu evoked is Watteau's

a variant d'une on one belle.22 La
painter's
circumscribed
own is indicated by the

own is works, as peinture self-portrait
canvas)
hanging picture, Pour garder Vhonneur
of Watteau's
52
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
5 Francois Palatine, (150 X 178
Duchess
de Troy,
Elisabeth
Charlotte 1680, oil on de Versailles Nationaux
Versailles (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided

by the Reunion des Musees / Art Resource, NY)
of Orleans, cm). Chateaux
Princess of the of Bavaria, 59 X 70 V6 in. canvas, et de Trianon,
well under
as
allegory, thumb, as
and
its
portrayal before
of
natural
creature meant to
Art's
inspire, surely harks back to the painter's beginnings, when

Watteau Gillot, worked and aped a Parisian painted copyist, academics well itmay theatrical works to earn with their artist's art, as Odanj Jôji
stymied
the simulacrum
approbation.24 recognition
well as the difficultyof reconciling their competing demands

in his work. For while Watteau's unique contribution, such scenes' the fete galante,
that, Beyond of the complicated
enough the mature reflect of nature
{air.' nobit de cettt Jipoiir*eUe 60amcf n/aitde bonnes quaiittZ^ \ StJhutJen
0amei
de
la Cowr.
nn Jeirfiammt gaiaj{b . aj-abcaute prenBre de
interplay
and
6 Nicolas
Museum
was grounded
nature, he
in art (painterly and theatrical) rather than

tempered one inherent artifice
with actuality in the form of people, places, and incidents he

had observed. At least of his
routinely
edged his efforts in that vein, deeming

adroit ment: de fusion some of art and fifteen years nature after him Watteau's the
contemporaries
acknowl
the fetes galantes'

achieve
with funds provided of Art, Los Angeles, purchased Mr. and Mrs. H. L. Broad and Edythe Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Reed Oppenheimer, Hal Tony Oppenheimer, Mr. and Mrs. Gerald and Nahum Alice Lainer, Oppenheimer, Mrs. David Ricki and Marvin Ring, Mr. and Oppenheimer, of the and Members Council The Costume Fund, Sydorick, in the public Council Costume domain; (artwork photograph by the Eli
paper, 14% X 9% in. (36.5 X 23.8 cm). Los Angeles County
Dame de la Cour, from Recueil des modes Bonnart, on ca. 1678-93, hand-colored la cour de France, engraving
crowning
? Museum Associates / LACMA)
La Marre
memorialized
the abbe death, painter's et la Nature reunis in "L'Art
par Watteau"
the artist ter outlining Art
(1736), a poem that fancifully recalls the truce

between principals' long-estranged objections antagonists. to one another? Af
negotiated these
society enrich a meditation on exclusion he already had set in play in the paintings thatmost clearly anticipate it: in both
Pour nous
Nature
sleek
reproached Art for its finery and affectation, while

turned that coaxed the its nose up two were at Nature's about rusticity?La to blows to come inviting them Marre when
traysexclusivity as experienced by the insiders who enjoy its

insular tence comforts, is its as well as by the outsiders whose very exis prerequisite.27
prouvons
and
Le
prelude
au
concert
the painter
por
suggests Watteau over
their and
reconciliation, make peace."25
to "come
The
charmes
insiders' realm that dominates

de la vie has roots
the left side of Les
to my
place
Although
became more
the poet concludes

beautiful and
Watteau, Art that, thanks to

more perfect,26 de their
Nature
alliance
Marre instance, cultural tures
in the fetes galantes is not always so seamless as La

have us believe. joins rather refinement civilized In Les between than charmes the la vie, and for the particularized are disclosed and of natural
would
scale figures against a ground of pastel clouds (Fig. 2). Cou pled by their physical proximity and consonant gazes, the
young tude man and woman on
in the of that anchors pair figures nous cette belle, a of Pour left corner the lower que prouvons five large and less complex antecedent that shows smaller
smoothed lend tension
of rawness vision
away, to an otherwise
as admix
stable pyramidal configuration. While
the painting's
the restrained recti

chin which on and her the erect com same with
left side merge
as a
anodyne
contentment.
Watteau's
subtle
acknowledgments
there of small pulls in the fabric of polite
by the woman's signaled contrasts with the easy posture the leans her, against panion
tucked-down intimacy two are
clearly
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES CHARMES
DE LA VIE
7 Claude
Berceau black
Marly (destroyed), 1709-10, red chalk, Stockholm (artwork in the public

domain, Museum (73.4 28% X 21 lead, and wash, X 53.3 cm). Nationalmuseum, in.
des singes at
III Audran, Singeriefor the

the Chateau de
? National photograph of Fine Arts, Picture Library)
in her songbook and one another, they page. Absorbed to the lutenist, who is in many ways their oblivious appear
antithesis: and sion and his his solitariness underscores stance, their and togetherness, expres postures he, and grap their attuned, effortful limbs, jutting set off the composure?and are gazes. Whereas they his off-kilter flustered
The
social
fate
of Pour
nous
much by his flushed face and tensed fingers as by his techni

cal deficiencies, aristocratic Thus, tended "complex breathing."31 specifically as for cultivated self-presentation Mary Vidal observes, nor nonchalance as calculated aristocratic was as essential naturalness.30 music makers to
prouvons's
tuner
is sealed
as
closure?of emphatically a
toward
pling with his instrument, is literally and figuratively out of

tune,
easy-to-play One
instruments the physical manifestations
crossfingering warned
neither that required effort of strenuous arbiter of of manners zeal or enter
laughable (as indicated by themirth of the child beside him). The lute he brandishes as a tool of entree is large and
none-too-subtly mentalist
attempt
to become
player
even
seventeenth-century against
to subjugate
and
it speaks to both his lack of skill as an instru

a broader ineptitude that presumably extends
phallic,28
and
the clumsiness
of his
endeavor
prise: "People who attempt difficult things should go about it in such an easy way thatwe are leftwith the feeling that it
doesn't effort, cost as them as any effort. long it is not visible . . . Although it can do we may sense no harm."32 the To
to the social and romantic realms inwhich the pair at leftare

so cozily ensconced.29
publicly strive, let alone strain in themanner of this lutenist,

betrayed one's inferiority and invited the sophisticate's
54
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
8 Teniers 14r/8 in.
Art Resource,
the public domain; photograph by Erich Lessing, provided by

NY)
the Younger, (24 X 37 cm).
Museo
9Vi X The Monkey Painter, oil on wood, in del Prado, Madrid (artwork
despite his looming closeness, he is unacknowledged

picture's other adults.
scorn?though
Watteau's
musician
fails
to attract
even
that;
by the
This
struggling musician
his seems lute becomes more
fares no better in Le prelude au

a theorbo (Fig. 3).33 Indeed, in the second prouvons painting, in both phys
concert, where his isolation is an
9 Louis Nationale
Desplaces, Superieure
which
ical dimensions
recalls many
enlargement
pronounced nous of Pour
after Watteau, engraving Paris des Beaux-Arts,
La
(artwork
peinture. Ecole in the
public domain)
and perspectival space. Its expanded

terrace scenes;34
setting
at the
same time, Le prelude au concert probably reflected life in the Parisian suburbs. By the time he painted it,Watteau was
familiar with at least one
seventeenth-century
smaller child focuses on the dog she feeds?in

tion In suggestive European a of compliance art and emblem and its rewards. trained books,
a configura
dogs often are
Paris: Montmorency,
owned who by financier was Watteau's
the property north of the city thatwas

Pierre patron Crozat, in the the connoisseur-collector Watteau made 1710s.35
country
estate
in
the
environs
of
identified as such by postures of supplication. The begging

dog was
Montmorency's gardens, designed by Andre Le Notre,36 the subject of several drawings and a painting, The Perspective (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Like its setting, the population of Le prelude au concertis an been added at left, and they, along with a girl seen from behind, bracket a closed circle that includes a second child,
a dog, As and a seventh nous human prouvons, instrument gaze of them visage the in the form of a of this stone left bust. ward in Pour cohesiveness tuner's together awkward at a music expansion upon that of Pour nous prouvons: two adults have
in Flemish and Dutch children's portraits. The pairing of child and dog reflects a long-standing view thatboth children
dogs are "natural" spaces creatures that need training for entry Aristote into the civilized of well-reared adults39?an
symbol
of education,38
and many
such
pets
appear
and
lian notion elaborated in Plutarch's De liberiseducandis,which was widely read in the early modern era.40 By way of illustra
tion, Plutarch cites an
king of Sparta, who used

differently reared,
experiment
conducted
two dogs from the same litter,

the benefits of education,
by Lycurgus,
to demonstrate
which only one of the pups received. In Renaissance

Baroque became "nature tion the and visual culture,
and
group
offsets several
the
a repository of prescribed practice and accepted form to which the theorboist apparently is not privy.The seated man
in their midst holds a violin that renders the tuner's success
ity.Moreover,
singular book?
referenced as a metaphor
what Jan Baptist by corrected
Lycurgus's Bedaux
for child rearing, and begging dogs

calls or, "standard words, au attributes" by of in other instruc trope, concert al
experiment
was
widely
training Tapping
education."41
this well-established of Le prelude
or lack thereof moot, since the violinist and book-holding own. singer are equipped tomake music on their Abandoned by the violoncello player with whom he would play continuo,37 the theorbo player is disregarded; only the
disused propped, and The instrument like him, on leans his way. The violoncello and bow rests a tabouret, its neck echoing? thrusts. and the
ludes to learned propriety that both contrasts with and un derscores the theorboist's imperfect mastery of the sorts of
performances and expected upper society's their from even echelons lowliest inculcated members. early on
child-and-dog
configuration
musician's subtly mocking?the perhaps stone bust, meantime, literally overlooks
angular him,
Despite his compositional centrality, the tuner of Le prelude is consigned to social Siberia?stymied in his effort to join the group at left and at some distance from the spheres of
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES CHARMES
DE
LA VIE
55
sociability represented by a couple on the grass behind the violoncello and the convivial group in the rightmidground. Watteau 's oeuvre to enjoy He is not the only protagonist in and one suspects the artist appreciated this irony; his lity,42 decision to light Le prelude's theorboist from both front and back would seem to highlight the figure's isolation.While the majority of Le prelude's figures occupy shadowy pockets con ducive to intimacy and stealth, the brash burst of lightbehind
the central one lends compositional centrality even as he experiences social nul
children
who,
like
the
in the process of being educated). Then comes the aspiring but imperfectlypolished (and possibly ill-bred) mu and
sician, and finally a servile
lapdog,
are well-bred,
well-groomed,
(The figures' postures

tions.)
affirm their respective social posi
youth
of
non-European
origin.
This human array, interspersed with dogs of appropriately

distinct vegetation between demeanors, that imposing is set is as much terrace against about and a art parkscape?a as nature. town, swath Sandwiched Les charmes's of
apparently was both pleased and dissatisfied Le prelude au concertto rework the scene in the with enough now as Les charmesde la vie, a painting inwhich known picture Watteau
the
flamboyance
to his
ham-handedness.
distant
midground greenery looks to have been inspired by both Italian landscape paintings and by gardens designed with such pictures in mind.47 Venetian pastorals were especially
the postures and placement of children and lapdog remain the same, each of the adult figures isnew to the composition. The reserved singer transferred from Pour nous prouvons to Le prelude is replaced, in Les charmes, by a female guitarist, who
group at left. That group, strongly reminiscent of the one developed in Le prelude,was nonetheless rethought: although
still-tuning
musician
remains
estranged
from
a close-knit
fashionable in Watteau's Paris, lauded by theorist Roger de Piles, collected by the regent, Philippe d'Orleans, and by his
sometime-arts-adviser academician Charles Crozat, de La and Fosse.48 championed La Fosse by venerable took Watteau
apparently will accompany herself and perform without a text (the books of Les charmes being stacked near the violoncello).
her stands a stout
under his wing about 1712 and probably was responsible for introducing him to Crozat; Watteau's own interest in the Venetian school spiked after Crozat returned from an Italian sojourn with a vast trove of landscape drawings in 1715.49
Watteau's
Behind
costume, and stolidity?as well as his backing by a weighty

column?denote
middle-aged
man
whose
demeanor, a of
Watteau's painter friend Nicholas Vleughels, this figure rests a proprietary hand on the guitarist's chair, but unlike the doting lover of Pour nous prouvons, looks beyond his seated
companion Le prelude's eyes?was to gaze directly at the instrument a to Les success charmes.44 tuner.43 in Watteau's Yet without theorboist?clearly verbatim
power
and
authority.
Based
on
holdings. Some bear topography and buildings drawn from specificworks;50 others are generally Venetian in their lack of
distinct narrative,51 scholars idealized" their Arcadian have variously world" and aspect, described "ideal and their evoca tion of what ocally as an land of "unequiv lovers."52
subsequent
landscapes
reflect
his
study
of Crozat's
drawing
"dream
The park of Les charmesde la vie is such a place, its vaporous precincts and cloud-hung sky phantasmic. Like its human
and animal
transferred
moving a muscle of the figure's face or body, or changing his placement within the composition, Watteau repositioned him in a social sense: the tuner's presence here is registered by the painting's most prepossessing aristocrat, and his status is boosted byWatteau's addition, to Les charmes,of a black servant and a flea-bitten dog. These last, by virtue of being beyond the pale, establish the theorboist's proximity to it, the pale, in this case, being the line demarcating polite society. This expanded figural hierarchy renders the central figure of Les charmesits thematic as well as formalmiddleman: perched
lack, the theorboist embodies?with apt awkwardness?a tip
an instance of nature subjugated by culture, and, as a sum of these parts, the painting can be seen to address the range of society's civilizing designs.
Watteau situates Les charmes'$ compendium of variously
components,
Les
charmes's
landscape
constitutes
cultivated living thingswithin a man-made frame: a Baroque portico, the clearly delineated architecture of which gives Les
charmes more formality pavement and structure and than deepens Le prelude the au con cert. Its ornate orders foreground
colonnade
powering
space with geometric patterns that contrast the vagaries of the gauzy lawn beyond, and the asymmetry of the depicted furtherweights the composition's
scene's organic components
left side. Over

scale
at the juncture of high and low life, of refinement and its
the
in both
and
substantiality, this architectural

stress on human craft and
surround
lays additional
in a scene already
ping point.
Although the themes of courtship and exclusivity devel oped in Pour nous prouvons and Le prelude are replayed in Les
charmes, they are there portrayal adjoined, of a continuum even overshadowed, in contem by of cultivation
dominated by them.
Les group, of his charmes's was a portico, departure
accomplishment
like Watteau's from Le prelude
Watteau's
porary society. In a period marked by widespread

the categorization of creation, this sort of continuum,
interest in
known
sioned early on.53 Itwas only as he worked toward completion

retooled composition, however, that the painter chose
to its leftward changes that the painter envi
from antiquity as theGreat Chain of was discussed by Being,45 men of letters as well as natural scientists. As Europeans
became
to eliminate midground figures he had transferred from Le prelude and add the dog and servant of Les charmes's right
foreground.54 comers to the and introduction Donald status of a of Posner Staffage: and seems "The a servant to relegate a wine these late architectural with elements cooler . . .
manor
tinctions were discerned not only among Caucasians, Asians, and Africans but also among classes.46 Watteau does not categorize with that sort of specificity, but the panorama of human types presented in Les charmes de la vie nonetheless reads as a hierarchy that begins at far left with the lord of the
and proceeds to his
increasingly
aware
of human
diversity,
"racial"
dis
heeled entourage
(including apprentice elites in the form of
accomplished
consort
and
well
give the setting [ofLes charmes] a greater verisimilitude than its model [Leprelude],,"55 He isnot altogether wrong; the dog, a artistic despite sterling pedigree (Watteau lifted it from Peter Paul Rubens's Coronation of Marie de Medicis, Fig. 1056), strikes a note of earthy reality, and the serving boy, while descended from a long line of exotic pages (painted by artists
dog
56
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
10 Peter Paul Rubens, The Coronation at Saint-Denis, de Medicis 1621? ofMarie in. X 12 ft. HVs 25, oil on canvas, du Louvre, Paris (artwork in the
23 ft. \0Va in. (3.94 X 7.27 m). Musee

/ Herve Lewandowski, des Musees by the Reunion / Art Resource, NY)
Christian
public domain; photograph by

Jean
provided Nationaux
11 Watteau, black chalk du Louvre,
Three and Paris
Studies
wash,
of 95/s X
Nationaux
byMichele Bellot, provided by the Reunion des Musees

/ Art Resource, NY)
(artwork
Youth, ca. 1717, red and 105/s in. (24.4 X 27.1 cm). Musee in the public domain; photograph
a Black
was?as
from Titian and Anthony Van Dyck to Francois de Troy) ,57

Watteau's
tual person (Fig. 11). It is often suggested

appear Veronese's in Watteau's feast scenes
drawings
make
clear?modeled
by
an
ac
at Cana The Marriage 12 Paolo Veronese, oil 1562-63, (detail), on canvas, 21 ft. WA in. X 32 ft. 5% in. (6.66 X 9.9 m). Musee du Louvre, Paris in the domain; (artwork public photograph des Musees Nationaux / Art provided by the Reunion Resource, NY)
that those few black

were (Fig. inspired 12).58 by Indeed,
servants who
in Paolo made Northern vants' precedents in some inclusion also may have ser black inspired Rubens drew Africans
work
servers Watteau
dozens of drawings after Italian works in the 1710s, one of which includes a black figure drawn from Veronese's Christ
and the Centurion (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
and
included a black attendant

F?rst von
fetes galantes.
in his Venus with a Mirror

Vaduz, Liechten
Mo.). Notably, though, the attendant figure Watteau lifted from that picture for transfer into his own Plaisirs du hol (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London)?the only servant he is
known to have borrowed
City,
black,59 and the black boy who appears as a small detail in the
upper Veronese's right corner of Plaisirs servants du bal wears are a turban, whereas black typically bareheaded.
directly
from
Veronese?is
not
Watteau in Les charmes stein).60 Less famously (butmore like de la vie), David Vinckboons placed a black wine steward in the foreground of La fete seigneuriale,a now-lost painting that is known through a copy (Fig. 13). Vinckboons's work was
popular
(Sammlung
Liechtenstein,
through engravings, so it ispossible Watteau

in some form.61
among
Parisian
collectors
and
more
had seen his Fete
widely
known
seigneuriale
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES CHARMES
DE LA VIE
57
Although
the servant itously?)
the pairing, placement, and outdoor situation of

and wine tub of Les charmes Fete de la vie recall (fortu of Vinckboons's seigneuriale, Watteau's
those
black youth is much more

painting's Veronese's physiognomy, features, exotic
convincingly actual
than that
charmesis convincingly individualized?quite

attitude, and costume from
servants whereas of the black type. Similarly, oeuvre are very much in of a piece (redundant in Les their counterpart actions, demeanor),
different in age,
attendant
the
black
Watteau
charmes serving
included in his Conversation (Fig. 14), an earlier depiction of outdoor socializing. The black youth of Les
in fact more boy than closely its servant resembles of color. La conversations white
It seems likely that the idea of the black attendant as an

chic?a of familiar cosmopolitan northern art62 and an increasingly Ital trope of both common addition
emblem ian and
to French fashion prints (Fig. 6), portraits (Figs. 5, 15), and decorative pieces (Figs. 16, 1763)?led Watteau to invent the
exotic suave servant serving included men, in La conversation. Like Veronese's ex 13 After oil on Beaux-Arts, David Vinckboons's the boy, and obliging in late-seventeenth-century copper, La Vinckboons, 19% X 261/s in. France (49.7 1612-13, seigneuriale, detail, X 66.5 cm). Musee des in the public domain)
seen servants travagantly garbed servant is of La conversation French art, the turban-wearing more in the five or so years that individual. But sign than on Les his work Conversation and stand between Watteau's
Tourcoing,
(artwork
charmes, reality clearly intervened in the form of a black model, whose physical actualities tempered a preexisting
mental ascribes In a Watteau's friend than most construct to the similar and enhanced the "verisimilitude" Posner later work. vein, Helmut in Les "makes B?rsch-Supan of his has argued that
on drawings of actual people,65 and it is unclear which of

them?if fying the any?is scene's playing "reality," heror himself. Rather than Vleughels's appearance ampli there as a
world-weary seigneur?a belief fact undermines tion that his impersonation
of sorts, masquerade surely66?in in its actuality, since viewer recogni of an aristocrat is an artful fiction
inclusion, Vleughels its immediate
charmes,
the whole Le
readily recognizable more scene concrete"
antecedent, characters
of
the foreground
au concert!04 Yet prelude based of Les charmes were
raises the possibility that other figures of Les charmes are likewise enacted, including the black servant. Still, whether his young model served a household Watteau frequented or was merely role-playing for the artist, the silk-liveried youth
^
14 La conversation, Watteau,
Vyt^
9BBBBB1
^^^^^^^^^^^Bi^tm^$^^^^^^K^^^^m? ifl^^^^^^^^^^^HHHH^HH^HHfl 19% on ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|^^^^^^^^^^^^^y^fl^^^^^^^^^^^^H^^^^^^^B Toledo Museum ^^^^^^^^^H^H^^^^^^|^^^Hk|^ funds from the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Î^^^^^^^Îb^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Î
Bbh^
the
58
ART
BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
15 Claude-Francois Marie de Bourbon ca. Bourbon,
X 36V4 in. (129 X 92 cm). Chateau de Versailles (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by the
Reunion des Musees NY) Nationaux / Art Resource,
Francoise Vignon, and Louise-Frangoise de 50% 1690, oil on canvas,
undeniably
very more
embodied
was
a contemporary reality. Though

in France, negres were of aristocratic becoming life inWatteau's
sla
European
courts
and
technically common
banned
accoutrements
them, doubtless fueled the vogue of black servants in eigh

teenth-century drawn Paris.78 Even ifmany of the black attendants
capitals?and
his own
reputed
taste
for
Paris, and changes to governmental policy in the very years

that have separate materially La conversation altered Watteau's from Les access charmes to black de la vie may models.
who appear in prints and paintings made

were from their extant counters, ownership. nial inclusion rather images there indicates
inLouis XIV's reign

than the in-person of cachet en slave
The official line, as framed in 1571, was that "France, the mother of liberty,can admit of no slaves."67Those who toiled
on faraway Caribbean colonial burgeoning plantations, were economy, in the service of France's unaffected conveniently
Originally prized as rare commodities

riches burgeoning less rare in France and
that bespoke
colo
somewhat
by antislavery rhetoric and policies within the motherland (and subject instead to the provisions of the colonial Code Noir68), but prior to the issuance of the regent's Edict of 1716 (which allowed
slaves to
Though
France and
modern
scholars are quick
negres became cosmopolitanism, in the century. early eighteenth
to note a paucity of
documentation
the controlled
found for in France
importation of black servi

on French won soil were often the sixteenth it.70 Seen
tors),69 entitled but
who
themselves
petition
freedom?and from more
occasionally century
to mid-seven and Bor
teenth
(and
then
often
in Nantes
deaux
there ample black
than in Paris71), people of African descent had arrived

more cheap regularly labor?hence as the country's its commerce colonial reliance Africa? on with West
without fear of losing them; the Edict of 1716 permitted

Frenchmen with colonial connections (Caribbean landhold
ernment (1715-23) was pressed, in its firstyear, to clarify the status of colonial slaves in France. It responded by affirming the rightsof their masters tomake use of them on French soil
when of Africans in the number assessing in the eighteenth black slaves' numbers? century,79 for freedom?were that the Regency such gov petitions
took off in the later 1600s.72 During

slaves visited the French court accompanied their
the reign of Louis XIV,

as members masters of African on visits to
ings, governmental posts, and/or military commissions) to maintain ownership of slaves they brought into France (or
sent to France to serve relatives and
France; and occasionally were presented outright as gifts to people of rank (the king's wife, Marie Therese, was given a black boy in 166374). Although Louis XIV was credited, in 1710, with the desire "thatNegroes and Negresses should enjoy inFrance the same liberty as his other subjects"75 and proved amenable to peti tions from individual colonial slaves who sought freedom
arrived there,76 his intimates'
entourages;73
colonial
slaves were registered with the Admiralty Office and trained inCatholicism and/or a tradewhile resident in the kingdom. In effect, the edict annulled colonial slaves' onetime right to seek freedom while traveling or living in France. Although there may have been some expectation that blacks admitted to France under the terms of the Edict of 1716 would return to the colonies once indoctrinated and/or trained, many never did.80 (This was especially true of those
who had ventured from
friends)
so
long
as
such
once
skinned minions
(Fig. 15)77?a
preference matched
penchant
for
dark
at other
the Parisian parlement [high court] refused to register the Edict of 1716.81) Thus, without truly regulating slaves' com
the port
cities
to Paris?even
though
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
EES CHARMES
DE
LA VIE
?O,
Black Youth, 16 Hyacinthe Rigaud, 16% in. (56.5 X 43 cm). Musee by the Reunion
oil on des
canvas,
ca.
1710,
22V4
17 Antoine 11 X 8]/2 in.
(artwork in the public domain; photograph by Daniel

des Musees
Beaux-Arts,
Dunkerque /
Arnaudet, provided Art Resource, NY)
Nationaux
des Musees
in the public domain; photograph provided by the Reunion

Nationaux / Art Resource, NY)
Coypel, (28 X
Black 21.5
Boy with Fruit, du cm). Musee
ca.
1682,
oil on wood, Paris (artwork
Louvre,
ings and goings, the edict legitimized an entitled elite's desire

to, as Sue in France ensured?if ulation, Peabody puts it, "retain as a symbol enslaved of wealth domestic and servants and pop some indefinitely, status,"82
and monkey in Antoine Coypel's Black Boy with Fruit (Fig. he and Watteau 17)?and possibly by Audran in the singeries
concocted for the Chateau cook and serve, key servants in which de Marly, as well as chilling cheerful and mon decanting
months
whom Over
inadvertently?the was on which surely
of France's black growth the rise when Watteau, of Les charmes century, de la vie.83
wine
after the edict's

used for the of
issuance, found the black model

black servants'
he
servant
the course
popularity would increase in seemingly direct proportion to the negres French philosophical commitment to egalitfr,84
manifest justification "one group otherness, for his once servitude.85 came to exotic, provide merely As Yi-Fu Tuan when observes, . . . emerge myths to both parties," right, to make and wide
the eighteenth
Although Coypel's black boy seems most closely allied to the monkeys who adjoin him in a dark, sprawling fore ground, he might also be compared to the lapdog at left,a creature whose friskynaturalness (suggested by its bright, distracted gaze and lolling tongue) seems contained by its fairmistress's civilizing touch. Certainly, the slave in Philippe Vignon's portrait of Louis XIV's daughters (Fig. 15) is point edly likened to that painting's dog; Vignon's unctuous twin
ning
(Fig. 7).
dominates acceptable,
another even
inequality childishness" long black been
spread European
compared
"association of dark skin with animality or

that Servants, purpose.86 servants to animals, but black young boys like domesticated as a class, in had eigh over than
his pairing of the picture's smaller and considerably darker

entities, residual women's meanors whose wildness. bug-eyed Much animation as their and bared teeth disclose the de inkiness underscores the unsettled
of the pretty
sisters
finds
not-so-pretty
counterpoint
in
served
teenth-century girls)?were
Paris?especially treated more
(favored pets
beasts (of burden or of the barnyard). Since, as Henry Louis

Gates
whiteness, powdered stress the sisters' and the dog poise. and French of servants A dogs long-standing equation to which in the sort of mutual rambunctiousness resided fashionable, the of servant alludes. minions Cissie were Fairchilds asserts, more however, that young canine
Chain of Being tended to position the African "just above? "

or to?that parallel place is not surprising that people reserved for the were of color 'orang-outang,' most often equated
Jr.
notes,
eighteenth-century
debate
on
the
Great
Vignon black it
considered
with monkeys,87 as suggested by the configuration of slave
ful,winsome, and easily brought to heel) than other domestic servants and "indulged" like pedigreed pets.88 Often obliged to wear collars of the sort sported by rich men's dogs (Figs.
endearingly
(play
70
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
18 David Bailly, Vanitas StillLife with

Portrait, Johnson University, V. Keeler, Keeler, ca.
45% in. (95 X 116 cm). Herbert F.

Museum of Art, Cornell Ithaca, N.Y., gift of Louis Class of 1911, and Mrs. (artwork
1650,
oil on
canvas,
37%
public domain; photograph provided Cornell University)

by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum,
by exchange
in the
15, their
16)
,89 black
servants,
Fairchilds
writes,
also
were
consid
ered "doglike" in their "unswerving devotion and loyalty to

owners."90
surviving registries show that the average age of blacks arriv ing in France in the early tomid-eighteenth century was ten
to fourteen.91 malleable less Child than slaves were both more more their adult counterparts, and portable their exoticism children
Among black domestics, petits negresor negrillons?boys of the age portrayed by de Troy, Vignon, Coypel, Hyacinthe
Rigaud, and Watteau?were the most prized and numerous;
of a cuter,
lacked the strength and/or skills that qualified domestic help
threatening
sort. Moreover,
because
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
EES CHARMES
DE LA VIE
71
for
real
labor, than
mental,
rather
their lack of use value marking them as objetsde luxe

practical necessities. This attitude toward black
young
attendants
were
conspicuously
orna
tesque blanc de chine figurine he holds.93 Hogarth's boy also is comparable to the foreground mon key in Taste in High Life?an exotic pet of similar scale who,
though a creature of nature, is clothed, commentator in amusingly imper
tations,92 and William Hogarth's Taste inHigh Life (Fig. 19) satirizes the elite Briton's notion that a child of color was just another piece of exotic bric-a-brac by pointedly comparing its turbaned black boy to the diminutive and amusingly gro
children was not particularly French; David Bailly's Vanitas StillLife withPortrait (Fig. 18), a display of worldly possessions that includes a black youth, is one of several Dutch manifes
fect imitation of his owners.94 By the end of the eighteenth Mercier reported in Tableau de Paris (1782-83), petits negres would supersede monkeys, parrots, and pedigreed dogs and
cats in the hearts that part of of fashionable the Parisiennes.95 was the Mercier "ebony" con atten and time," nonetheless place particular as true to life. "Rather his tableaux reality," ations."102 Plax maintains, viewer's warns than against reading of reproductions are re-cre "artful as an "artful jectured attraction century, as novelist and social Louis-Sebastien Nationale
mid-18th century.Bibliotheque 20 A Lady atHer Toilette,

de France, Paris (artwork in the public domain)
dant's ability to point up a beauty's

repeating served, "a a well-established dark foyle trope sets . . . best
"dazzling whiteness,"
as Ben Jonson forth."96 ob In
that,
a diamond
addition to accentuating fairness by embodying its opposite (as in Fig. 15), the black boy's color (which marked him as a species apart) and youth (thus, his assumed lack of full fledged sexuality) sanctioned a remarkable degree of inti macy between him and his white mistress, the physical nature of which Mercier recounted in titillating detail.97 Gallant prints of the later eighteenth century demonstrate that
French rilous ladies' speculation fond on attachments the erotic to their slaves of fueled the easy scur affec dimensions
The
the fetes galantes sense of Les charmes
re-creation" isheightened by the stagelike foreground formed by its paving and columns,103 as well as the flatness of the landscape beyond, which has the look of a backdrop. This effect (perhaps a deliberate allusion to stagecraft) "pro
motes," stage and in Plax's view, an the costumed of "understanding as actors."104 figures the terrace as a
tionMercier describes; one such image shows a semiclad but bewigged woman in the midst of a most personal toilette attended by a negrillonwhose dropped trousers reveal his enthusiasm for his work (Fig. 20) ,98 Custom dictated that black minions be extravagantly
Tuan writes that "by the eighteenth century, ornate
This "understanding" (supported by knowledge ofWatteau's earlier involvement with the theater) suggests the painting was thoughtfullycast and choreographed, as does evidence of
the artist's sustained process than of
composition.
and than servant its elite
Surely, then, the prominently positioned

do more set the scene. Fewer
rethinking
its characters
and
dog
in number
dressed;
liveryhad come to be an insignia of black, as distinct from

white, servitude."99 monikers Like the common practice Socrates, high-flown like Pompey, of giving or Scipio, slaves dress
sic party ing
ing them in finerymight be seen as an act of irony,which amused by playfully pitting the trappings of gentility against
the innate The and insuperable servant of Les savageness charmes de of la vie the non-Euro attired is thus
commeil faut, though his understated garb (satiny,but simply cut, unembellished, and unpatterned) and lack of turban make his ensemble less exuberantly and stereotypically exotic than that ofmost black servants portrayed in thisperiod?by
Watteau himself in La conversation, in fashion
pean.100
they reinforce itspower balance. Outsiders both, spaniel and whose clubby solidarity boy act as foils to the insider set at left, is underscored not only by the isolation of the theorbo tuner but also by the conspicuous singularity of untoward animal and black youth. The dog, as noted, was borrowed from Rubens; it is one of a pair included in the large coronation scene that figures in that artist'sMarie de Medicis cycle of 1621-25. In a series that
features several
to Watteau's mu these latecomers participants, and command shift attention, space equal thereby the of Les charmes de la vie even as balance compositional
las Bonnart and others, and in paintings by de Troy, Coypel, and Rigaud?a possible indication that the clothing worn by
the servant in Les charmes is more veristic than formulaic.
plates
by Nico
tion (Fig. 10) strike an odd note amid the pomp of the ceremony, its elegant participants, and thewinged genii that establish the painting's allegorical tenor. Perhaps designed as a subtle corrective to the bombast Rubens feltobliged to offer
queen,105 favored, make the the a dogs, homely particularly the flea-bitten to the one Watteau grandiloquent counterbalance
dogs,
those
in the foreground
of The
Corona
All that being said, Posner's assertion that the slave and large dog lend "verisimilitude" to Les charmes de la vie is a limited and limiting explanation of their presence there. As
Posner did not himself rest, notes, on the Watteau's actual galantes of appearance Plax, who "rooted in and fetes "touched, contemporary ratifies responding the no to a but
Julie recently, tion of a "historical" Watteau,
life";101 more
spectacle. They might also be seen as contrast to the lapdogs that appear in scenes highlighting Marie's more submissive side: Marriage byProxy and An Offer of Negotiation (in which Marie makes peace with her son Louis XIII). Similarly, the
Rubensian spaniel of Les charmes de
Anne
counterpoint
to the smaller dog of that picture, where
la vie may
be
read
as
(in
72
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
21 Watteau, GersainVsShop Sign, 1720, oil on canvas, 641/sX 121 lA in. (163 X
308 cm). Schloss tung Preussische Charlottenburg, Schl?sser und Berlin Stif G?rten
in the public domain; photograph by J?rg P. Anders, provided by the Bildar

chiv Preussischer NY) Kulturbesitz / Art Resource,
Berlin-Brandenburg,
(artwork
them, shod
ral hair dressed and/or concealed, bodies elegantly clad and

and
exemplify
nature
aestheticized
(skin
powdered, the
natu
men at left (who straddle shop and street) present progres from Rubens?low-down
reminds the viewer sively coarser variations on human nature, and the
self-consciously
positioned),
whereas
working
and marginal
persistence
in the Shop Sign?

at the edges of
dog
drawn
of nature's
urbanity. In that respect, the Shop Signs dog reprises the role of its twin inLes charmes de la vie as well as that of the black boy
stationed in Les charmes s
centralized and frankly decorative Fairchilds compares to a pampered

charmes is situated on the margin,
right
corner.
For
unlike
servant (Fig. 17), whom pet,107 the servant of Les

far closer to the "outdoor
Coypel's
dog"108 than to the lapdog and itswhite mistress.

Watteau's servant of color seems a more
22 Nicolas canvas,
Lancret, 297/a X 40
Art Museum,
in the public domain)
ca. 1725, oil on champetm La collation, Indiana (75.9 X 101.6 cm). University 65.79 (artwork Bloomington, gift of K. T. Keller, Fete in.
like the wide-ranging sign than Coypel's, but like him?and in still life?the black of Les charmes consti boy Bailly's youth
tutes a show of wealth, more
complex
and
colonial origins.109 He is also, like the black boy satirized in Hogarth's Taste in High Life, a marker of cosmopolitan taste, more one though closely linked to the exotic servitors of older European art than to the drolleries of Chinese knick knacks. Finally, like the children in the works of both Bailly and Hogarth, the negrillonof Les charmesde la vie is an image
nonindigenous nature aestheticized. While Watteau does
particularly,
newfound
riches
of
tentionally
tion of a good dog-bad

embodiment of nature
or not) Watteau curbed
echoes
dog dialectic. Les charmes's lapdog, an

and "corrected" by education,
Lycurgus
in his
presenta
of
sets a standard of which the untutored spaniel seems happily unaware. Closed in on itselfas it attends to bodily demands, the larger dog, self-absorbed and isolated, bespeaks the social ramifications of improper upbringing as well as the potential theorboist (whom the animal literally "shadows") emphasizes the unappealing doggedness of themusician's own quest and hints at mutual lack of breeding.
unsightliness of nature untamed. Its placement behind the
not blatantly satirize the practice of collecting a boy as ifhe were a nautilus shell and displaying him in the equivalent of
a
may have sought to probe beneath

human Les posture antecedent charmes's catlike in being-cwr/z-collectible. servant is or, more that of captured
fancy
mount,
Les
charmes
carries
indications
that
its artist
the surface sheen of the

in midaction, simian, monkey since servers his agile an
probably, one of the
it finds
Audran
Though drawn from the domain of highest art, the spaniel of Les charmes is the antithesis of artfulness, a reading ratified byWatteau's deployment of the same dog in GersainVs Shop Sign (Fig. 21), which presents the salesroom of a friend's objets,and an artfullygot-up and posturing clientele.106 That painting's central figures, like many of the images behind
gallery as an idealized realm of art?in the form of paintings,
devised for theMarly singerie (Fig. 7). Like the simian steward
at the lower left of Audran's
hunkers beside a low, footless tub inwhich wine bottles chill

and dran's extends his arms and diagonally Watteau's seems leftward negre across it. Both by the Au their latter monkey necks?but the grasp on bottles task,
drawing,110
Les
charmes's
servant
former
distracted. Like many a black
blithely
servitor in European
party
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES CHARMES
DE LA VIE
73
Schl?sser und Stiftung Preussische G?rten Berlin Berlin-Brandenburg, in the public domain; (artwork
Les bergers, ca. 1716-17, 23 Watteau, in. (56 X oil on canvas, 22 X 31% 81 cm). Schloss Charlottenburg,
Preussischer Resource,
photograph by J?rg P. Anders, provided by the Bildarchiv

Kulturbesitz / Art NY)
scenes, love's
Watteau's elixir. Wine,
apparently courtship, that
will and
oversee sexual
distribution intimacy have
of been
seems,
on
second
look,
considered
Moxey chilled has wine,
complementary
shown
Netherlandish
gneuriale shows (Fig. 13), this iconography endured. Oliver

Banks labels the tury party scenes ubiquitous an "erotic wine cooler of and seventeenth-cen Teniers's Family device,"113
more wine," "drinking particularly, was a common in for lovemaking metaphor As Vinckboons's Fete sei culture.112 popular
since antiquity,111 and Keith
even unwittingly?the boy, lost in his phatically?perhaps looking, tips his hand to the viewer by touching the bottle as he might touch himself. Its dark-glassed neck, lipped and
corked,
revelatory
of
sexual
longing.
Unem
his body, especially when compared to the bottle grasped by the saucy protagonist of the previously mentioned gallant print (Fig. 20), who simultaneously appraises her servant's
erection,
is phallic
in its contours,
orientation,
and
relation
to
Concert (Fig. 4), in which two bottles chill side by side, sug
gests ment.114 The ages Nicolas common from pairing Fete of black servants and wine?in im as that wine connoted, by extension, conjugal content
much
may mindless perfectly
less baldly stated by Watteau, metaphoric masturbation

in this forwardmost of touching that gesture to of Les charmes?a desire im dog's were act bespeaks then, erotic "natural"
spreads
her
legs,
and
proffers
her
sponge.
Though
be deduced
contained
(comparable, to
the nearby and acts
the Renaissance
Lancret's
have to do with the libidinous associations of both. Wine fueled the sort of lust people of color were said to possess in
"natural" overabundance, like and it loosened the social restraints
the Rococo (such through collation, Fig. 22115)?may champetre: La
chewing).
"savages" did not feel in the firstplace.116 Itmight also be said

that wine, the well-dressed slave, charmes is a result of nature
plucked, processed,
mans?though
and packaged
of Les
by and for cultivated hu

de la vie is somewhat less
own theatricals of Watteau's The bottle grasp popular day.118 as an instance in Les charmes de la vie may be characterized ing a common of what Philip labels Stewart tactic "displacement,"
routinely deployed in libertine literature and gallant imagery of the later eighteenth century117and publicly performed in
Euphemistic
references
desires
"bottled up" than the intoxicating spirits he is charged with

expression gaze clearly is muted, is directed even at vague, but his over
the boy
of eighteenth-century erotic code that relies on ambiguity to "maximize pleasure while minimizing responsibility and guilt." A provocative tidbit thus coded may be enjoyed or
ignored as the consumer chooses, Countless and its
dispensing. The boy's the-shoulder
innocence with the (winking) disclaimer

nuendo is inadvertent.
provider
that any risque in

texts
may
claim
ing sly appreciation

sponds to the
of her beauty. His

notion that
interest in her corre

opposites attract, and
the guitarist,
indicat
and images address sexual matters obliquely, via playful hints

and metaphors,
eighteenth-century
more particularly alludes to the awe inwhich the dusky and nature-bound supposedly held the fair and cultivated (Fig. 5). The boy's body language indicates, at first glance, his
ready dence order, in response and no to a one call for wine, are his of his yet no looks his way. Absent presumably surreptitious gaze, his are glasses any indication inner-directed, demeanor hand-to-bottle and in evi of an and, the
Stereotypie
whereby
tending Watteau, duced
(in Stewart's words)

no stranger of works to
adhering
to
"the veil reveals what it is pre

double as entendre, prurient. pro Some
disingenuous
decorum
to hide."119 winking
a number
update
the bawdy symbology of Dutch

toilette have been
today
recognized
and Flemish genre

recognized that, according as dis
the boy's combination
actions with
languorous
quality
gesture
others?including pictures,120 to Pierre "must Rosenberg, erotica by Watteau's guised
scenes
contemporaries"121?apparently
74
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
corollaries inWatteau's
to the seduction fetes galantes.
scenes
that figure
so
prominently
Besides being in keeping with informed assessments of the

artist's
the right corner of Les charmes de la vie finds a parallel in Watteau's Les bergers (Fig. 23), the depiction of a rustic fete
where aristocrats cavort amid
proclivities,
the discreet
reference
to masturbation
in
nounced physicality. Self-absorbed arousal is forthrightly ref

erenced in that
peasants
who
court
with
pro
abashedly
appropriate, acts on
licks its genitals. Describing

if rather vulgar, symbolic that
picture's
forwardmost
entity:
this creature as "an

Posner im
dog
that un
plies that the dog of Les bergers,like that picture's peasants,

instinctual, or hide. animal He desire "civilized" a beings particular strive con to repress discerns, action and the moreover,
adjunct,"
nection between Les bergers'sdog and

man, "The dog's noting, state of arousal the boy's be surmised for is possibly longing."125 servant of
the adjacent
meant A Les similar charmes,
young
to suggest function whose
might
suggestive gesture may be read as a marginal gloss on the flushed theorboist's intent fingering of his unwieldy and
instrument.
uncooperative
That the serving boy of Les charmesde la vie should play the role Watteau assigned to the dog of Les bergersis consistent
contemporary and dogs, of children equations as well as with then-current The boy's and dogs notions and ser of black "na
with vants
people's
ture"?hinted from the startby his physical proximity to Les charmess uncouth spaniel and by his pose, which echoes that
monkey breach servant?is the veneer confirmed of decorum which and by his gaze his costume
animality.126
underlying
animal
of Audran's 24 Watteau, Voulez-vous ca. triompher des belles? in the public 1715, oil on gesture,
panel, \blAX 107/sin. (38.6 X 27.6 cm). The Wallace

Collection, London
Wallace photograph provided by The Trustees of the Collection) were inspired by private sessions with living models that Watteau enjoyed in the company of Caylus and the art lover
Nicolas Henin. In such situations,
(artwork
domain;
as the dog's bodily impulse (a bit less rude provides,127much than that of its country cousin, but rude nonetheless) trumps
its domestication.128
nal impulse were routinely ascribed to people of color, held to stem from their uncivilized state and lack of Christian of those who hailed from tropical climes.130 The stereotypical black man of libertine literature is a slave who, unencumbered by notions of gallantry, beds his white mistress with a straightforward ardor she finds unique and thrilling, deploying talents to which his seventeenth-century
the libidinous "Moor" of antecedent, courtly Les ballets and morality129 as well as from the inherently abundant lustiness
Similarly
unmediated
expressions
of car
Watteau
let his hair down and became "a bit uncouth [un peu berger]."122Caylus knew whereof he spoke; this reputable
and art lover was known to his
Caylus
later
reported,
antiquarian Duclos, liked est."123 A ego
a libertine who, according

was a "plebeianly "among to venture
to the academician
robust" the aficionado populace
contemporaries of low it was
as
Charles Pinot
life and filthi
masques,
imbued
frequently alluded.131 The black man ostensibly was

with sexual swagger from birth; that jeunes maures
where
amoureux (ca. 1628) features a troupe of cheeky negrillons who

assure female audience members small sacks can hold
renowned in his
1730), the ribald memoir of a coachman whose longtime service to highbrow clients makes him privy to quirks and foibles they usually mask. In much the same spirit?if stiffer in form?Caylus's biographical discourse on Watteau (1748) touches on the private predilections of a public persona,
intimating, for instance, that Watteau produced much
a assumed alter Caylus storyteller, proletarian de Guillaume best-known Cocher work, Histoire (ca.
fine spices.132 Sophie Chalaye observes that not only was the black lothario the most sexually candid of the seventeenth century's stock types, but that daring white suitors of that
period's Moorish erotic costume farces when "blacked routinely to put wished they up" Eros and on donned the table,
their lewdest propositions under the cover of dark delivering l

ness.
naughtier works than those in his oeuvre today deemed risque. At the end of his life, according to Caylus, the artist insisted on the destruction of works he himself considered
lewd, cate been and such reminiscences, the painter's "depictions more numerous than allusions to sexual Rosenberg's opinion, have salacious may subjects one would at first suspect."124 desires and acts are predictable of in indi
The
Watteau's
Comedie
oeuvre
Italienne?the
most frequently
theatrical form to which

alludes?features its own
blackface rogue in the figure of Harlequin,

referenced in several fetes galantes. Watteau's
whose persona
Voulez-vous
is
triom
Certainly,
pher des belles? (Fig. 24) centers, for instance, on a leering (or Harlequin impersonator) whose mask is figu Harlequin not if askew. As impatient desire overrides any literally ratively
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES CHARMES
DE LA VIE
75
after Jean-Antoine 25 Louis Jacob Watteau, of the engraving, Departure Italian Comedians in 1697, 1729.
zu Berlin (artwork in the public domain; photograph by J?rg P. Anders, provided by the Bildarchiv
Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY)
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche
Museen
pretense toward an
of
dismayed by his boldness. Identifiable by his diamond-pat wore a black mask as well, terned garb,134Harlequin typically
although Watteau and others sometimes showed him mask
this louche propriety, female upright companion
swain who
leans seems
and
gestures and
children, in turn, were widely viewed as savage beings of

unchecked
startled
moralists and educators140 and of mirthful titillation among

jaded
appetite,
their
sexuality
subject that
of
concern
to
less and African, as inDeparture of the Italian Comedians in 1697 in which the and color features of Harlequin's (Fig. 25135),
face make his ethnicity clear. Such representations
turysocial convention rendered children's genitals "officially

inoffensive, harmless, or even even amusing" gesture and of a child asserts can that only be the a obscene
grownups.141
Stewart
points
out
eighteenth-cen
"seductive
revealed
acknowledge the longtime belief that, as fabulist and play wright Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian asserted in 1786, "The most realistic opinion is that [Harlequin] was originally an
African Marmontel In his which, slave," a view echoed by encyclopedist often "connections even Jean-Francois wore a in 1787.136 first incarnations, Harlequin makes phallus, him between stronger."137
joke
scious
to adults."142 In light of this attitude, the unself-con

reactive and looking race de la vie?which gesture explains of and the servant in Les youth excuses?
charmes
might be seen to comprise the sort of off-color jest many of

Watteau's On contemporaries a more serious note, enjoyed. and within the context of a
meditation
nature.
That early costuming detail fuels Pierre Louis Ducharte's from the phallo descended speculation that Harlequin of Roman who donned outsize phores antiquity, penises and
darkened their faces with soot or wine
to Gates, according and Western representations
of the African
on sophisticated humans' civilizing designs, the unchecked boy's expressions of desire speak to the power of
In Les charmes de la vie?if des more Voulez-vous triompher belles??Watteau surreptitiously seems to than wryly in ac
ing Bacchus
Ducharte mask
and also when playing African slaves onstage.

that cat, the a eighteenth-century the sort satyr, and and Harlequin's of negro that the Harle
dregs
when
celebrat
knowledge the futilityof some attempts to rein instinctual behaviors. Much as the staid music party in the background of Voulez-vous triompher des belles? (with itsmetaphoric refer
ences to love charmes's Les play) trained contrasts lapdog with its foreground's an is countered by raw display, urge-driven
asserts
a "suggested Renaissance painters
mannerly white girls offset by a subtly insou spaniel, and its

ciant
quin Marmontel
ness: "The
described
Harlequin,"
portrayed,"138
in 1787 tapped cliches of African

Marmontel opined, "has the
certainly
ideal
coarseness
suppleness, agility and grace of a cat, along with a superficial

that renders his actions faithful, into scrapes as more amusing; his role always consol is that of a in love, A lackey?patient, getting credulous, greedy, . . . and distressing
in the mode of Lycurgus's dogs, the chil Counterpoised dren of Les charmesde la vie embody the well-reared and the
unschooled. Watteau, as to as however, would seem to ascribe the
boy
of color.
differences between propriety and

nature gender young ized sumed as as well as well girls.
its lack to inequities of

since from the Les servant's charmes character as s
ing himself with the readiness of a child."139

slave to his nature as well to his master,
always
in nurture, inequalities set him his race apart as now,
the black
man
of European
imagination was childishly immoderate. And
Then, young boys and naturally unruly, humanity's to be more driven than sexually
often male their
were
members female counter
76
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
ety
and
tioned Watteau's
his cranky, friends and identification
often
petulant One
treatment
of well-inten presumes charmes's
patrons."146 with the
therefore of Les
central figure. Indeed, on the bases of the theorboist's shaky

social ties, stance, it seems difficul his performative role, and his technical as tuner was conceived that the instrument likely stand-in.
predicament
This supposition is supported by comparison of Les charmes de la viewith twopictures it resembles, each of which includes
a
the painter's
Family Concert on a Terrace (Fig. 4); Watteau's familiaritywith (and emulation of) this group portrait is signaled by echoes of its pictorial components and their disposition in Les
charmes de la vie.147 A renowned musician, Teniers
self-portrait
of
its artist
as a musician.
The
first
is Teniers's
himself at his cello rather than his easel in Family Concert,148 where he occupies roughly the same position and promi
nence in his Another milieu respective seems that picture venitiennes as Watteau's to shed theorboist. light on Watteau's
portrays
identification with the tuning musician

own Les
of Les charmes is his

work in
which Watteau
right.149 Les fetes
fetes
cast himself as the musette

venitiennes is most clearly
(Fig.
26),
contemporaneous
player at far
to Les
connected
l8Vs in. (56 X 46 cm). National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (artwork in the public domain)
26 Watteau,
Les fetes venitiennes,
ca.
1717,
oil on
canvas,
22 X
charmes de la vie by its inclusion of a fanciful portrait of Watteau's friend Vleughels, whose distinctive profile graces the turbaned figure at left.The Vleughels look-alikes in both pictures occupy the left side, gazing over and beyond beau tiful blondes (which each seems to claim as his own) to aminations have shown that the musette player of Les fetes
venitiennes was not regard an awkward instrumentalist from afar. Technical ex
portrait;Watteau began by depicting him (like the theorboist

of Les parts.143 The servant of Les charmes?not charmes de la vie) as an anonymous though, type. As Les fetes just a child, but a venitiennes neared completion, Watteau overpainted
originally
conceived
as
so obvious
self
black child and boy child?therefore

indomitable form. In
embodies nature in an
way, Watteau's asserts: even a
especially
its understated
depiction
and black
implies what Vignon's

de Bourbon cultivation
portrait of Francoise-Marie
(Fig. cannot society. 15) be brashly guaranteed, the slave's Thus, be
Louise-Francoise
boy's complete in the hothouse of aristocratic at Les charmes's the nether far end
tion
charted in its foreground figures. It is the extremity of the black youth's outsiderness
makes a thematic middleman of the theorboist, who,
represent
he may right, where of the nature-culture
posi seen to
ing backward, Iwould suggest that the self-identification that Watteau confirmed by putting his face on the marginalized
was nascent he when of Les fetes venitiennes already performer instrumentalist of Pour nous prouvons devised the beleaguered au concert, and Les charmes de la vie. que cette belle, Le prelude in That straining tuner?thrice-depicted, progressively
the figure's head,150 giving his own features to the wistful looking musician who fingers a phallic pipe. At the same time, the artist repainted the portly pasha with Vleughels's profile (perhaps in the service of some privatejoke151). Read
continuum
that
with
one foot firmlyplanted on the side of nature, the other lifted

toward the realm of culture, ary increasingly of betwixt-and-between was well that was precariously inWatteau's blurred was one straddles Paris. which a bound That sort
more ambitious compositions?might be said to embody the artist's own ongoing struggle to find perfect pitch within the
rarefied and
posture
with
Watteau A
habit, a world inwhich a man of middling means and birth a might achieve social standing by allying his "natural gift" to
measure of cultivation?and considerable work.152 The cen striving?in trality of the tuner's Les charmes de la vie?indicates Le prelude au that effortful concert as well artistry was as not
complexly
coded
environment
he
came
to
in
experience acquainted?by more son from northern he remained France, workingman's in manner and Flemish than French accent.144 Provincially what his "natural termed Caylus connections?Watteau the right and academic recognition in one of the Parisian
as well
as observation.
trained, he struck peers as technically challenged, yet aided

a knack for gift"145?and to not only managed a success found but also most erudite circles.
by
making achieve place his
just an underlying component ofWatteau's picture making but an issue he sought to thematize. Working outside the confines of established allegory, the artist here touched on issues he also raised in Lapeinture (Fig. 9); like that picture's
emblematic
art world's
Despite
resultant remained who knew
alliances with the likes of Crozat and Caylus, and

entree socially him to certain ill at ease; "agree fashionable as David Watteau gatherings, those Wakefield notes, behavior in soci
pitifully out of his element and psychically taxed by the

acculturation The his theorboist's surroundings obvious imply. travails temper Watteau's por
monkey,
Les
charmes's
aspiring
musician
looks
on Watteau's
gauche
trayal of elite pleasures with a reminder of the painstaking
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES
CHARMES
DE LA VIE
>jj
processes by which pleasure-giving production

though evoke enacted the same on a sunlit terrace, the specter of artistic incapacity
is fine-tuned;
asm, ral
as do
depicted struggles the that haunts
midground In some
recollections159?and contemporaries' of Les charmes de la vie. respects charmes so different s parkscape Well from the
the pasto architecture that ter pre
gloomy studio of La peinture.With an indirectness that is Watteau seems to use the figure of typical of his fetesgalantes, the tuningmusician to vent his own performance anxiety: his fears of an inability tomeet the expectations of the increas ingly erudite and sophisticated company he kept.
Watteau's tendencies toward self-doubt and self-depreca
frames race,
it, Les a human
is, like ordered,
its colonnaded hospitable, and
construct.
ternaturally aglow, it seems hypothetical rather than actual,

wishfulness
tionwere noted by his intimates. Edme Gersaint recalled that rather than being buoyed by the academic recognition and wider repute that came his way in the later 1710s,Watteau, far
from self-confident
ofWatteau's fetes galantes (for instance, La perspective, which records an actual place) feature landscapes that, by virtue of being artful renderings of artistically designed outdoor state (and even further removed if the landscape gardener had based his designs on paintings, as was often the case160).
The spaces, are at least twice removed from nature in its "natural"
given
organic
form.
Even
the most
"naturalistic"
evermore dissatisfied with his work; both Gersaint and fellow

connoisseur and dealer
("loin
de
se croire
de merke"),
became
habitual
Watteau's
"disgust" with his own production

unnecessary and at times destructive
Pierre-Jean
Mariette
lamented
the
that prompted
reworkings.153
In a society that so highly valued nonchalance, Watteau's discontent with his work and the zeal made manifest by his
worked-over
contrived to a degree that suggests intentional unreality on Watteau's part; in addition to resembling a theatrical back different in paint handling drop, its landscape?distinctly
scenery
in Les
charmes
de
la vie's
midground,
however,
is
his supporters as his pictures' minor missteps. As noted, artful imperfection was consciously sought out bymany eighteenth presentation of perceived flaws as the products of calculated
offhandedness. The visible reworkings of Watteau's fetes, moreover, betray century aesthetes, and "gentlemen" were practiced in the
paint
surfaces
probably
were
as
disconcerting
to
from the columns and terrace that frame it?has the look of a picture within the picture, an artful representation rather than a slice of the great outdoors. More particularly, itsgentle contours, hazy light, and squat buildings recall theVenetian landscapes Watteau admired, drew, and drew on in this pe
riod. Perhaps, as Posner speculates, Watteau meant the park
a drudgery that is conceptually at odds with their evocations of aristocratic leisure and lissome ease. Botched passages in Les charmesde la vie,which put John Ingamells inmind of the long-acknowledged
Watteau's if Watteau of that oeuvre, himself picture?that also were
scape to connote "the bright joy of harmony found," and thus to act as "a foil for the action in the foreground"?by which Posner seems tomean that the social consonance implied by themiddle ground's clustered figures and the luminous pros pect beyond predict a happy end to the theorboist's "weari
some" tuning.161 Alternatively or additionally?and dream: less anec
"gap between
inspired is, someone his
idea and execution"

that it is "almost
in
remark
as
dotally?the
the
the unsuccessful who
enframed and chimerical parkland conjures up

nature's perfection re
instrumentalist"154 overreaches, and does
so in full view, artful indifference be damned. Plax has written of the theorboist's swollen red hands as signs of his almost crippling desire.155 The erotic edge she imputes to his avid fingers is indeed plausible (especially in light of the erotic implications of the musette manipulation in Les fetes venitiennes). If, however, one reads the tuning musician as a surrogate for the painter, the keen longing he enacts not only bespeaks the fictive theorboist's social and/or
amorous
flects a contemporary realityof sorts: the kind of manipulated "nature" with which Parisian elites (following the lead of Louis XIV and the due d'Orleans) surrounded themselves, in both the living form of parks and gardens and in two-dimen sional renderings produced
printmakers.162 Caylus's
aesthete's eighteenth-century art's intervention. by as it is, the Fantastic picture
within
Watteau's
picture
by pastoral painters, draftsmen,

characterization of the Luxem
and
yearnings.156 Remarking the "ardor" with which his friend Watteau wanted nothing toiled, Jean de Juilenne mused that somuch as to himself desirait rien tant que de ("ne improve
se
aspirations
but
also
reflects
Watteau's
professional
bourg Gardens as "untamed [brut\"by eighteenth-century standards reminds us of the degree towhich nature in elite cates the degree of stylization to which Watteau's
accustomed. spaces was, as he remarked, "groomed [peigne]"163 and indi
audience
was
pushed himself hard, working toward an ideal he sometimes feared beyond his grasp; Caylus describes Watteau's fixation on "grandes idees" beside which his actual production Although the exalted notions against which he measured his own oeuvre went unrecorded, it seems likely that the ideal that teased Watteau in these conceptual years was, as the abbe de La Marre later assumed, the calibrated equipoise of naturalism and artfulness. It seems likely, too, that the broad outlines of any such endeavor were informed byWatteau's profound engagement with Venetian pictures in which nat ideal beauty. The more
after Venetian masters places and entities have been paled.158
perfectionner").157
Even
in
his
maturity,
the
painter
of Les
Thus connoting an enshrined ideal, the idyllic midground

charmes might be seen to suggest the conceptual abso
lute toward which the bumbling artist strains,much as the framed picture within La peinture suggests its protagonist's aspiration. On the other hand, Les charmes'shazy vista, like the framed picture in La peinture, is, arguably, an artifice based on an artifice, and as such might be viewed as a vaporous sham thatmakes a monkey of the artistwho chases after it.Les charmes (and its immediate antecedents) focuses, after all, on the protracted discomfiture of he who would attempt perfection. It may be that Les charmesde la vie was conceived as?or
turned into?a
ural
than one hundred

he made attest
groomed
with
an
to Watteau's
extant drawings
enthusi
eye
to
gratiate himself with profoundly unappreciative elites, that painting's struggling artist turns his back on both the un
cautionary
tale
of
sorts.
In his
efforts
to
in
78
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
tamed nature that servant and chewing dog embody and the bei ideal evoked by the gauzy landscape. Like the monkey artist of La peinture, the theorboist of Les charmes de la vie Watteau
his perches at a crossroads of Nature and Culture. Like the
described by contemporaries, the central figure of each picture appears stymied by the competing demands of
nature, his concept, and his audience.
Pets: Exotic Animals in Eighteenth-Century Paris kins University Press, 2002), 125-30. 14. It is unclear whether the black servants that late seventeenth century (for example, Figs. actual people or constitute fanciful additions white sitters and add chic of the sort evoked
(Baltimore: Johns Hop appear in portraits of the 5, 15) make reference to intended to aggrandize in fashion plates (Fig. 6).
New York, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, City University of N Y. 11367, judysund@mac. com].
Judy Sund teachesand writes about European and American art of theeighteenth, and twentieth centuries. This essay reflects nineteenth, her longtimeinterest in exoticism[Departmentof Art, Queens College,
15. Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 146. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the word negre?which connoted servitude as well as skin color?was the catchall term for servants of color, including those of Arabic and Indian extraction. The more particular term for a young black servant was negrillon, though many writers call such boys petits negres. In the later eighteenth century, noir?which denoted skin color rather than slave status?came into more common usage. See Sylvie Chalaye, Du noir au negre: L 'image du Noir au theatre (1550-1960) "ThereAre No (Paris: Harmattan, 1998), 69-70; and Sue Peabody, Slaves inFrance": The Political Culture ofRace and Slavery in the Ancien Regime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 12. 16. See Michel Feher, "Libertinisms," in The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment inEighteenth-CenturyFrance (New York: Zone Books, 1997), 10-47; and Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers ofPre-Rev olutionaryFrance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 90.
Notes
I am deeply indebted to Colin Bailey and Marjorie Munsterberg for their comments on an early draft of this essay, and to Scott Gilbert for his generous support of all my work. I am also grateful to have had the opportunity to of Art, present a short version as a lecture at Duke University's Department Art History, and Visual Studies. Two anonymous readers for The Art Bulletin also made suggestions that helped reshape thismaterial. I wish to dedicate this foray into the eighteenth century to thememories of Donald Posner and Robert Rosenblum. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine. 1. John Ingamells, in Ingamells and Herbert Lank, "The Cleaning of " Watteau's 'Les Charmes de la Vie,' 125, no. 969 Burlington Magazine at 733. (1983): 733-39, 2. Ibid., 733. 3. Watteau did not date his paintings. Most scholars agree that Le prelude au concertpredates Les charmes de la vie; the chronological position of Pour nous prouvons que cettebelle is debated. I believe itwas made first, and I operate under that assumption here. 4. Donald Posner makes a similar argument forWatteau's fetes galantes as a group, noting that as "the implications of themes and motifs be . . .whole came clearer toWatteau compositions were repeated, or in content by the intro rather, recast and reorchestrated, deepened duction of ancillary motifs and by variations on themes"; Posner, An toine Watteau (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984), 153. 5. The intent was such that his friend and biog ambiguity ofWatteau's rapher the comte de Caylus declared that his paintings had no point ("ses compositions n'ont aucun objet"); Caylus, "La vie d'Antoine Watteau," 1748, reprinted in Pierre Rosenberg, ed., Vies anciennes de Watteau (Paris: Hermann, 1984), 80.
17. See H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renais sance (London: "Le Institute, 1952); Anne-Marie Lecoq, Warburg singe de la nature," in La peinture dans la peinture, exh. cat. (Dijon: Musee des Beaux-Arts, 1983); Ptolemy Tompkins, The Monkey in Art (New York: Scala, 1994); and Bernard Marret, Portraits de Vartiste en singe: Les singeries dans la peinture (Paris: Somogy, 2001). 18. The decorations forMarly were commissioned by Louis XIV about 1709, and likely defaced or destroyed in the Revolution. The stripped chateau was demolished in 1806; Katie Scott, The Rococo Interior:Deco ration and Social Spaces inEarly Eighteenth-CenturyParis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 140; and Marret, Portraits de Vartiste en singe, 48. A less finished but more elaborate variant on Audran's draw ing is attributed toWatteau, who apparently collaborated on the project; see Marianne Roland Michel, Watteau: An Artist of the Eigh teenth Century (London: Trefoil Books, 1984), 26.
19. Teniers's Monkey Painter (Fig. 8) and Monkey Sculptor (Museo del are among his many paintings in which Prado, Madrid) monkeys in human dress parody aspects of contemporary life. Of Watteau's extant comes closest to works, La sculpture (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Orleans) Teniers's monkey paintings; see Mary Vidal, Watteau's Painted Conversa tions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 152-53. 20. While Vidal (ibid.) sees La peinture's protagonist as merely "leisured, meditative," Mary Sheriff finds him "consumptive" ("Reflecting on Chardin," The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 29, no. 1 the [1988]: 19-45, at 37), seconding Dora Panofsky, who?noting ape's "emaciated body" and "feverishly brilliant eye"?is reminded of "the consumptive, solitary, self-tormenting Watteau himself (Panof sky, "Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 39 [1952]: 318-40, at 333-34).
C. Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art (New York: Columbia Univer sityPress, 1980). 7. A. P. Mirimonde's reading of Les charmes de la vie iswidely reiterated "Les sujets musicaux in the literature; Mirimonde, chez Antoine Watteau," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 58 (1961): 249-88, esp. 263-66. 6. Domna ibid., 260, 264; Posner, Antoine Watteau, 148-51; and Oliver T. North: Studies inDutch and Flemish Baroque Influ Banks, Watteau and the ence on French Rococo Painting (New York: Garland, 1977), chap. 5. traces the history of the buitenpartij in "Remarks on Love, 9. Sara Wages in Netherlandish Art: A Study on the Iconol and the Garden Woman 8. See Art of Their Time: Re inRembrandt, Rubens and the ogy of the Garden," centPerspectives, ed. Roland Fleischer and Susan C. Scott (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 177-222.
Itali 21. Claude Gillot specialized in scenes drawn from the Comedie enne. Watteau worked and lived with him from 1706 to 1708 and seems to have produced his first theatrical paintings under Gillot's tutelage. 22. Panofsky, "Gilles or Pierrot?" 334. toMatias Dias Padron and Mercedes Royo-Villanova, Te 23. According niers's Monkey Painter is likewise self-referential; Dias Padron and Royo-Villanova, entry to El mono pintor, in David Teniers, Jan Breughel y los Gabinetes de Pinturas, exh. cat. (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1992), 108. Teniers draws on the monkey-painter analogy in Family Concert on a Terrace (Fig. 4), in which the monkey on the balustrade constitutes a winking reference to Teniers's painterly capacity for imitation; Mar gret Klinge, entry to Familieconcert op net terras, in David Teniers de Jonge: Schilderijen, Tekeningen, exh. cat. (Antwerp: Koninklijk voor Schonekunsten, 1991), 128. 24. For Watteau's work as a copyist, see Banks, Watteau and the North, chap. 4. After working in Gillot's studio, Watteau moved to Audran's; enroll Audran's uncle and/or brother probably arranged Watteau's ment in the school of the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Watteau a full member in 1717. joined the academy in 1712 and became 25. Abbe de La Marre, "L'Art et la Nature reunis par Watteau," reprinted in Rosenberg, Vies anciennes de Watteau, 24-25: "Que votre interet vous rassemble, / Vous etes faits pour etre ensemble. / Je veux vous unir ? jamais, / Venez chez moi faire la paix." 26. Ibid.: "L'Art gagna des beautes / La Nature en fut plus parfaite." 27. My sense of these pictures' overarching theme was confirmed by read ing Julie-Anne Plax, "The Fete Galante and the Cult of Honnetete," in Watteau and theCultural Politics ofEighteenth-CenturyFrance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 108-53.
10. For a panhistorical examination of human subjugations of plants, ani mals, and fellow humans as potent displays of power, see Yi-Fu Tuan, Dominance and Affection: The Making ofPets (New Haven: Yale Univer sityPress, 1984). Keith Thomas undertakes similar analyses inMan and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes inEngland 1500-1800 (Lon don: Allen Lane, 1983). 11. Jean de La Bruyere, quoted in Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art, 178: "Combien d'art pour rentrer dans la nature!" 12. See Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 43-44, 55; and Pierre-Andre La in The Gardens of Ver blaude, "The Taming of the Natural World," sailles (Paris: Scala, 1995), 35-80. Natural World, 110-17; Tuan, Dominance and 13. See Thomas, Man and the Slaves & Pampered Affection, 107-8; and Louise E. Robbins, Elephant
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES
CHARMES
DE LA VIE
79
28. Banks, Watteau and the North, 182, notes the "erotic significance" of instrument tuning in Dutch pictures and the prevalence of musical instruments in vanitas still lifes,where they represent "the sin of lust" and "a lazy or sinful life" (179-80). 29. Indeed, Posner, Antoine Watteau, 160, bluntly asserts that the lutenist's as a lover." "inadequacy as a musician spells his failure
logically determined; French aristocrats claimed Germanic origins thatmade them "naturally" superior to those of Gallo-Roman descent; Cohen, The French Encounter, 96-97. 47. Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 30, noting the influence of landscape painting on landscape gardeners, points out that Le Notre, who once aspired to paint, "composed his gardens as a painter might compose a picture." 48. De Piles and La Fosse were Rubenists who vaunted the paint handling and colorism that Rubens admired in the work of his Venetian ante cedents. De Piles was the leading intellectual light of Crozat's coterie until his death in 1709; his ideas continued to hold sway there when Watteau was introduced to Crozat and his circle by La Fosse. See Mar garet Stuffmann, "Les tableaux de la collection de Pierre Crozat," Ga zettedes Beaux-Arts 72 (July-September 1968): 11-144, at 42-43; and Robert C. Cafritz, "Rococo Restoration of the Venetian Landscape and Watteau's Creation of the Fete Galante," in Places ofDelight: The Pastoral Landscape, by Cafritz et al., exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Phil lips Collection / NGA, 1988), 149-81, at 150, 176 n. 14. 49. Pierre-Jean Mariette later recalled that he, Watteau, and Caylus soon set about copying Crozat's new holdings, their efforts doubtless en couraged by de Piles's assertion that imitation of the Venetians eluci dated the pastoral's expressive potential; Cafritz, "Rococo Restora tion," 155, 177 n. 31; and Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), 202-5, 240-41. 50. Grasselli and Rosenberg, Watteau, 150. Watteau, 1684-1721, 'Les Charmes,' 323; and Pos " 734. 1684-1721, 221. 51. Cafritz, "Rococo Restoration," 52.
30. See, for example, Melchior de Marmot, Maximes pour vivre heureuse ment dans lemonde etpour former I'honnete homme (Paris: Charles de emo Scery, 1662), who advises only limited and calculated displays of tion (166). 31. Vidal, Watteau's Painted Conversations, 218 n. 8. The lute was not only difficult to play (Florence Getreau, "Watteau and Music," in Watteau, 1684-1721, by Margaret Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, exh. cat. [Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1984], 527-45, at 542) but also hard to tune (Mirimonde, "Les sujets musicaux," 264). Oeuvres computes, 3 vols. 32. Le Chavalier de Mere [Antoine Gombaud], (Paris: Fernand Roche, 1930), vol. 2, 32, 34. ("Watteau and Music," 542) writes that by 1720 the lute was in favor of the theorbo, a virtually abandoned by Parisian musicians larger, longer-necked stringed instrument that was almost equally dif ficult to play. 34. Banks, Watteau and the North; Posner, Antoine Watteau; and Martin Ei delberg (Watteau et lafete galante, exh. cat. [Valenciennes: Musee des Beaux-Arts, 2004]) all illustrate such scenes. Posner, 248, specifically compares Le prelude au concertand Les charmes de la vie to Teniers's Family Concert on a Terrace. 33. Getreau 35. Pierre Crozat, the younger son of a Toulouse banker, was appointed tr'esorier de France in 1704 and went on to become the greatest private collector in eighteenth-century France. He hosted weekly gatherings of artists and connoisseurs at his opulent Parisian town house, which Watteau began to frequent about 1712-13. Watteau also lived in Crozat's home at some point(s). 36. Andre Le Notre, the landscape architect of Vaux-le-Vicomte (1656 61) and Versailles (1662-90), designed the gardens at Montmorency for its first owner, Charles Le Brun, a guiding force of the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts and premier peintre to Louis XIV. some scholars 37. Following Mirimonde, "Les sujets musicaux," 264-65, look for the violoncello player among the figures at left, though that instrument's owner perhaps stands outside the frame. Like the ivory handled knives of many Dutch still lifes, the violoncello may be of fered to the viewer in a spirit of invitation; Banks, Watteau and the North, 180, characterizes the foreground instruments of several seven teenth-century Dutch pictures as constituting "an implicit suggestion" that the viewer "join the musicale." 38. Jan Baptist Bedaux, "Discipline for Innocence: Metaphors for Educa tion in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting," in The Reality of Symbols: Studies in theIconology of Netherlandish Art 1400-1800 (Rotterdam: Gary Schwartz Publishers, 1990), 109-69, at 119. 39. Katlijne Van der Stighelen, entry no. 45, in Pride and foy: Children's Portraits in the Netherlands, 1500-1700, ed. Jan Baptist Bedaux and Rudi Ekkart, exh. cat. (Haarlem: Frans Halsmuseum, 2000), 190. See also Vidal, Watteau's Painted Conversations, 113. 40. Bedaux, 41. "Discipline for Innocence," 112. Ibid., 113, 119.
Ibid., 163; Grasselli and Rosenberg, ner, Antoine Watteau, 154. "The Cleaning
53. See Ingamells, 54.
ofWatteau's
Ibid., 734. A diagram of Les charmes in its early stages lacks both the large dog and the boy with wine tub. 157. reversal of Rubens's dog reflects its print source?almost certainly Audran's engraving of Marie's coronation; Philip Hendy, "Watteau and Rubens," Burlington Magazine 49, no. 282 (September 1926): 137-38.
55. Posner, Antoine Watteau, 56. Watteau's
57. See Paul H. D. Kaplan, "Titian's 'Laura Dianti' and the Origins of the Black Page in Portraiture," pts. 1 and 2, Antichita Viva 21, no. 1 (1982): 11-18; 21, no. 4 (1982): 10-18. 58. Helmut B?rsch-Supan, Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721 (Cologne: Kone mann, 2000), 104; Grasselli and Rosenberg, Watteau, 1684-1721, 154; Alan Wintermute, entry to Pleasures of the Dance, in The Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard: Masterpieces ofFrench Genre Painting, by Colin Bailey et al., exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 128. linksWatteau's Three Studies of a Black Youth Elsewhere, Wintermute that was in Crozat's collection; (Fig. 11) to a similar work by Veronese Wintermute, Watteau and His World: French Drawings from 1700 to 1750 1999), 33. Watteau probably knew (London: Merrell Holberton, Veronese's Marriage at Cana from the copy that hung in Crozat's town house (Stuffmann, "Les tableaux de Crozat," cat. no. 180); the origi nal, now in the Musee du Louvre, did not arrive in France until 1798.
59. This figure is reversed in Plaisirs du bal, and the helmet he holds re placed by a serving tray. 60. Precedents in Rubens's work, and the similarity of that artist's oil sketch of black heads to studies byWatteau (Fig. 11), are noted by Grasselli and Rosenberg, Watteau, 1684-1721, 154; and Wintermute, Watteau and His World, 33, though Wintermute thinksWatteau was "more certainly" thinking of Veronese when he made his drawings. 61. Martin Eidelberg, Watteau et lafete galante, 204-5, discusses La fete sei gneuriale as an antecedent toWatteau's fetes galantes. See also Banks, Watteau and the North, 69, 171. 62. In his painters' guide, Inleyding totdeHooge Schoole der Schilderkonst recommends the addi (Rotterdam, 1678), Samuel van Hoogstraten tion of an exotic animal or Moor to lend "lustre" to a scene; see Julie Dutch Golden Age (New Berger Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade in the " Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 210; and Marysa Otte, 'Somtijts een Moor': De neger als portretten in de bijfiguur op Nederlandse zeventiende en achttiende eeuw," Kunstlicht 8, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 6-10.
42. See, for instance, L'enchanteur, ca. 1712-14 (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Troyes), whose guitarist "wishes to impose himself on a partner who seems neither to see nor hear him"; Grasselli and Rosenberg, Watteau, 1684-1721, 283; and La lecon d'amour, ca. 1716-17 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm). 43. Mirimonde, "Les sujets musicaux," 265, identifies thisman loncello player, and the theorboist's rival. as the vio
44. Stephen Duffy and Jo Hedley (The Wallace Collection's Pictures: A Com plete Catalogue [London: Unicorn Press / Lindsay Fine Art, 2004], in Les 471) assert that the theorbo of Le prelude au concert becomes, charmes, a chitarrone, but the terms "theorbo" and "chitarrone" appar see A. Banchieri, Conclusioni nel suono ently were interchangeable; dell'organo (Bologna, 1609), 69. 45. From its inception, the Great Chain of Being ran the gamut from in animate objects to animals, humans, and gods; see William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Responses toBlacks, 1530-1880 the (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 86-99. Though Great Chain traditionally had been characterized as an unbroken con tinuum, Thomas DiPiero notes that the difference between white and nonwhite peoples was considered substantive enough to constitute a rupture; DiPiero, "Missing Links: Whiteness and the Color of Reason in the Eighteenth Century," Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 40, no. 2 (1999): 155-74. 46. The phrase "noblesse de race" referenced a belief that class was bio
63. Despite its portraitlike specificity, I characterize Rigaud's Black Youth (Fig. 16) as "decorative" on the basis of its description by Ariane James, Visages du Grand Siecle, exh. cat. (Toulouse: Somogy, 1997), 244. (Decorative pieces, being animated but not anecdotal, may be seen to hover between genre and still life.) Rigaud's painting is thought to have been owned by Antoine Coypel, whose own Black Boy with Fruit (Fig. 17) makes Rigaud's look soberly veristic. Rigaud's pic du Barry, came to be considered a ture, later acquired by Madame portrait of her famed slave Zamor; Jean Cailleux, "The Adventures of a Black Boy in Search of a Master," L 'artdu dix-huitieme siecle, supple
80
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
ment i-v.
to Burlington Magazine
103, no. 700, suppl. no. 8 (July 1961): 1684-1721, 87. Lund,
64. B?rsch-Supan,
Antoine Watteau,
65. Denys Sutton, Antoine Watteau: 1946), 9-10. Humphries,
"Les Charmes de la Vie" (London:
66. Caylus recalled thatWatteau dressed models in costumes from his own collection to create characters deployed infetes galantes ("La vie d'Antoine Watteau," in Les fetes 78-79). Citing Vleughels's appearance venitiennes (Fig. 26), where he seems "comically miscast," Plax, "The Fete Galante," 127-28, speculates thatWatteau enjoyed working against type. 67. The parlement (high court) of Bordeaux offered that observation in ordering the release of Africans put on sale there; quoted in Emeka P. Abanime, "The Anti-Negro French Law of 1777," fournal of Negro History 64, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 21-29, at 21. 68. The Code Noir, issued by Louis XLV in 1665 and registered at Santo in 1687, mandated the Catholic baptism of colonial slaves Domingo and governed their marriage, sale, discipline, and punishment. 69. The "King's Edict Concerning Negro Slaves from the Colonies," drafted by the comte de Toulouse, minister of the Navy, was issued jointly by France's regent, Philippe d'Orleans, and its six-year-old 1, 1716. king, Louis XV, on October 70. Robert Harms details the case of one such slave who successfully peti tioned for freedom; Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of theSlave Trade (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 6-11. 71. Nantes and Bordeaux were France's largest and second-largest slave trading ports, followed by La Rochelle and Le Havre; Robert Louis Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1979), 10.
wife) and, later, by Louis XV's wife, Marie Leczinska. This "scandal" is rehearsed by several modern authors, who detail the story in various ways; most seem to rely on Jules Mathorez, Les etrangers en France sous lancien regime: Histoire de laformation de la population francaise, 2 vols. (Paris: E. Champion, 1919-21). Such was the court's affection for people of color that, as Srinivas Aravadmudan reports, "An African imposter called Aniaba, who ap peared in Paris in 1688, was adopted by Louis XIV as a godson"; Ara vadmudan, Tropocopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 38. McCloy, The Negro inFrance, 15-16, observes that black converts in France often had dis tinguished godparents and describes Aniaba as simply the most prom inent of several putative African princes who presented themselves to Parisian society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 79. Most scholars are skeptical about those eighteenth-century accounts that put the number at four to five thousand (Peabody, "No Slaves in France," 4); McCloy, The Negro inFrance, 5, cites the sole eighteenth century census of blacks in France, which recorded about one thou sand in the late 1770s. The vast majority had entered via port cities, but many moved on to Paris, where?as fashion prints (Fig. 6) and servants had been chic and de portraits (figs. 5, 15) indicate?black sirable since the late seventeenth century. While the early-eighteenth century presence of Africans in Paris cannot be archivally docu life drawings of three different black models, made between mented, 1715 and 1720 byWatteau, Charles de La Fosse, and Nicolas Lancret, (see n. 83 below). suggest some influx in the century's first decades Some writers cite anecdotal evidence of a rising black presence; Scobie, "The Black inWestern Europe," 199, claims that over the course of the eighteenth century, "fifteen hundred abandoned mu latto foundlings became a grave problem in Paris" and notes the con temporaneous establishment of a College des Africaines on Orleans's rue Negres. By 1777, France's black population was high enough to "The Anti-Negro French Law," 21, calls "the prompt what Abanime, most drastic of all the anti-Negro edicts of the period," a law that pro hibited "any black or mulatto, free or slave, to enter the French king dom thereafter." Nonetheless, Pierre Boulle estimates that some 765 blacks lived in Paris in the 1780s ("Les gens de couleur ? Paris ? la in L'image de la Revolution francaise, ed. Michel veille de la Revolution," Vovelle [Paris: Pergamon, 1989], 159); and Cissie Fairchilds asserts that there were "so many blacks in the households of the Parisian haut monde that during the Revolution they provided a whole com pany of soldiers" (Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants & TheirMasters in Old Regime France [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984], 158). 80. Abanime, "The Anti-Negro French Law," 22. A second edict, issued in 1737, sought to slow the growth of France's slave population by limit ing to three years the sojourns of black servants brought or sent to France by colonials. "No Slaves inFrance," 22. Though Peabody suggests that the 81. Peabody, comte de Toulouse, who drafted the Edict of 1716, did not press for its registration in the capital because "he did not think that the pres ence of slaves in the landlocked region around Paris would ever amount tomuch," Harms, The Diligent, 24-28, argues that the edict was actively blocked by a Jansenist faction within the Parisian parle ment. " "No Slaves inFrance, 17. 82. Peabody, 83. Even before the regent's edict was issued, black models clearly were available in Paris; Watteau's mentor, Charles de La Fosse, made life drawings of one he cast as the black magus of his Adoration of the Magi, 1715 (Louvre). La Fosse's drawings (British Museum, Lon were familiar to the attributed toWatteau?probably don)?long younger artist and may have inspired his own drawings after a differ ent African (Fig. 11); see Jean-Pierre Cuzin, "Deux dessins du British Museum: Watteau, ou plutot La Fosse," Revue du Louvre 31, no. 1 Charles de la Fosse, (1981): 19-21; and Clementine Gustin-Gomez, 1636-1716: Le maitre des modernes (Dijon: Editions Faton, 2006), vol. 2, 198-99. Nicolas Lancret, in turn, surely had Watteau's studies in mind when he produced his own life drawings of yet another black see Mary Tavener model about 1720 (Art Institute of Chicago); exh. cat. (New York: Harry N. Holmes, Nicolas Lancret, 1690-1743, Abrams / Frick Collection, 1999), 134, no. 33; and Wintermute, Watteau and His World, 210-11, no. 60. 84. Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 158. 85. Cohen, The French Encounter, 88, quotes Voltaire's assertion that Afri cans had "only a fewmore ideas than animals" and that philosopher joking claim that "it is a serious question among them whether they are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them." 86. Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 132-33. 87. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the "Racial" Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 11. See also Fairchilds,
72. While France's colonization of theWest Indies was originally under taken as a political and military strategy, Louis XLV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, redirected it to commercial growth. Agriculture emerged as the best route to profits, and sugarcane was the biggest cash crop. Because the process of refining sugar was so labor-inten sive, France threw itself into the slave trade, which, by the end of the seventeenth century, was the foundation of the islands' economies; ibid., 3-4. 73. Hans Werner Debrunner (Presence and Prestige: Africans in Europe [Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 1979], 69) writes that the entou rage of Don Matheo Lopez of Arda, received by Louis XLV in 1670, included four personal slaves; Shelby T. McCloy (The Negro inFrance [Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1961], 13) notes that ten black slaves accompanied the horses and elephants sent to Louis XLV by the king of Ethiopia. 74. McCloy, The Negro in France, 15, reports thatMarie Therese's negrillon was a gift from a French aristocrat who had traveled to Africa, and an comte a de Pontchartrain received that the black boy from African prince. 75. This sentiment is attributed to Louis XLV in a letter his minister of the Navy, the comte de Pontchartrain, wrote to a slave from Marti nique who complained about her treatment in France (Abanime, "The Anti-Negro French Law," 22). On another occasion, Pontchar train wrote that the liberty of two black stowaways from the Caribbean was "acquired by the laws of the kingdom as soon as they touched the soil" of France (quoted in Harms, The Diligent, 9). " 76. Peabody, "No Slaves inFrance, 6. 77. Francoise-Marie de Bourbon and Louise-Francoise de Bourbon (Fig. In de Montespan. 15) were Louis XLV's natural daughters by Madame 1692 Francoise-Marie (at left) would marry her cousin Philippe inclusion the future regent of France. Although Vignon's d'Orleans, of a caricatured negre?whom Debrunner, Presence and Prestige, 93, bluntly labels "an ugly African lad between two all-too-white ladies"? does not prove that either woman owned a slave, that figure's lack of verisimilitude does not disprove his existence, since the women who flank him look no more "real" than he does. 78. Throughout Louis XLV's reign, gossip circulated about what Roi Ot (No Green Pastures [New tley calls "royal philandering with negroes" West York: Scribner's, 1951], quoted in Edward Scobie, "The Black in ern Europe," in African Presence inEarly Europe, ed. Ivan van Sertima [New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1985], 200). The most persistent tale (later recorded by the comte de Saint-Simon and by Jules Michelet in his Histoire de France au dix-septieme siecle [Paris, I860]) re volved around a biracial woman purported to be the offspring of Louis XLV and a woman of color. Born in 1656, Louise Marie Theresa as McCloy notes, "sometimes (popularly known as the "Mooress") was, referred to as a Negress," although her ethnicity is unclear (The Negro inFrance, 14). From 1695 until her death in 1732, she resided in a convent inMoret and received a substantial royal pension. She was visited by Madame de Maintenon (Louis XLV's second, morganatic
ANTOINE
WATTEAU
AND
LES CHARMES
DE
LA VIE
gl
Domestic Enemies, 158. This popular attitude may be linked to those of eighteenth-century naturalists and philosophes who considered the link age of blacks and monkeys "self-evident," given their similarities of color and origin (Cohen, The French Encounter, 87). 88. Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 146, 148, 159. Thomas, Man and the Natu ral World, 112, draws a distinction between "working dogs" and those allowed inside, remarking that "officers who excluded dogs from the court of Henry VIII made an exception for the ladies' spaniels." 89. Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 142, cites an advertisement for "silver padlocks for Blacks or Dogs, collars, etc." in the London Advertiser of 1756. Such hardware often bore the slave owner's name, monogram, or coat of arms. 90. Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 159. In the same vein, Gaston Martin de scribes how slaverymetamorphosed into a sort of "doglike loyalty to the master's household ? lafidelity animate]"; Martin, Nantes [domesticity au Xllle siecle: L'ere des negriers (1714-1774), d'apres documents inedits (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1931), 162. 91. Peabody, "No Slaves inFrance," 158 n. 3. 92. The "portrait" of Bailly's title refers to the miniature the boy holds, not to the boy himself; Sarah D. Benson et al., eds., A Handbook of the Collection (Ithaca, N.Y.: Herbert F.Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1998), 118. For broader discussion of subjugated Africans' appearances in Dutch portraits and in the subgenre he calls "pronkstilleven with black slave," see Charles Ford, "People as Property," Oxford Art fournal25 (2002): 3-16; see also Hat: The Seventeenth Century Timothy Brook, "Journeys," in Vermeer's and the Dawn of theGlobal World (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008), 185-216. Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade, 210, notes that the people of color who appear in such works rarely were owned by those por trayed; often theywere "recycled" from one picture to another. 93. For further discussion of this print, see David Dabydeen, Hogarth's Blacks: Images ofBlacks inEighteenth CenturyEnglish Art (Kingston-upon Thames: Dangaroo Press, 1985), 128-29; and Lars Tharp, Hogarth's China: Hogarth's Paintings and Eighteenth-CenturyCeramics (London: Merrell Holberton, 1997), 93. 94. Touching on this aspect of the parallels drawn between black boys and monkeys, Mary L. Bellhouse notes the ape's association with mi mesis and concludes, "Through reiteration, the conflated terms mon dark skin, and mimic gradually gained ontological key, non-European, status in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century stereotype of the colo nial subject as failed mimic"; Bellhouse, "Candide Shoots the Monkey Lovers: Representing Black Men in Eighteenth-Century Visual Cul ture," Political Theory 34 (2006): 741-84, at 746. 95. Louis-Sebastien "Petits Negres," in Tableau de Paris, 8 vols. (Amsterdam, 1782-83), vol. 6, 175-76. Mercier reported that pets that formerly enjoyed access to their mistresses' private quarters had been banished to antechambers in favor of the negrillonswhom Parisi ennes allowed to sit in their laps and sip from their cups. Hogarth's Taste inHigh Life may suggest itsmonkey's displacement by the boy of color, who is elevated, chin-chucked, and marked (by his costume) as showier and more exotic. Mercier,
in Eighteenth Ian, "Gersaint's Shopsign and theWorld of Art Dealing Century Paris," Art Bulletin 78 (September 1996): 439-53. 107. In discussing Coypel's picture, Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 146, com pares "the pampered lapdog and the equally pampered blackamoor." 108. See Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 112; and n. 88 above. 109. See Hall, Things of Still Life and Darkness, 211-53; and Hochstrasser, Trade, 204-27. Many of the black servants discussed by Hochstrasser are shown in proximity to heaped fruits that connote abundance, and, if exotic, colonial abundance. Antoine Crozat, the older brother ofWatteau's benefactor Pierre and the head of his family in the early eighteenth century, owed much of his vast wealth to colonial com merce. "A prime mover in the Indies Company," Antoine Crozat was "granted a personal monopoly over trade with the Louisiana colony" in 1712; Thomas Crow, Painters and Public Life inEighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 39. Nicholas Mirzoeff notes the colonial connections of Claude Glucq the first owner of Les charmes de la vie, whose wealth de (1674-1742), rived from textiles. Erroneously characterizing the Edict of 1716 as liberating black slaves in France, Mirzoeff suggests the servant of Les charmes is a "recently freed African" who might "stand as a rebuke to the slave economy" and may have "given pause to Glucq and his fam ily."Although I find these suppositions doubtful, I agree with Mir zoeff smore plausible interpretation of Les charmes 'snegrillon as "an unashamed evocation of colonial wealth." Mirzoeff, "The Flickers of Seduction: The Ambivalent and Surprising Painting ofWatteau," in Antoine Watteau: Perspective on the Artist and theCulture of His Time, ed. Mary Sheriff (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2006), 130. 110. Watteau's familiarity with Audran's drawing ismade clear by his own variant (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), which takes up the same vi like Audran, presents gnettes. In his version's lowest register,Watteau, a monkey before a flat-bottomed wine cooler, though Watteau's mon key assumes a more complex posture, with head in profile and back and hips seen from the rear. 111. Keith Moxey, "Master E.S. and the Folly of Love," Simiolus 11 (1980): "Remarks on Love," 179, suggests the Song of 125-48, at 138. Wages, Solomon inspired the euphemistic equation of wine drinking with sexual intercourse, and surely the two were linked in Roman baccha nalia that celebrated the god of wine. 112. Moxey, "Master E.S.," 139, cites lyrics from several sixteenth-century songs; in each instance, "cool" wine is specified: "Give me the red roses dear / I will give you the cool wine"; "Oh welcome, sweet love . . .Now let us enjoy ourselves and go and drink the cool wine." 113. Banks, Watteau and the North, 181. 114. Though Teniers was a renowned cellist (ibid., 132), his self-depiction as one?with draws on musical metaphor singing wife and son?also to present the couple as attuned, their family life as harmonious (Klinge, David Teniers deJonge, 126). The references to wine that bracket the couple probably suggest the sensual delights of conjugal love, while the boy between them connotes its product. 115. Lancret, a Watteau imitator, perhaps had Les charmes de la vie inmind when he included a young black servant with bottles in his Fete cham petre (Fig. 22); the servant of that picture, down on one knee, holds a glass in the direction of a party of white adults who do not acknowl Park (1735, Mu edge his presence. In Lancret's Luncheon Party in the seum of Fine Arts, Boston), white servants hold trays of fruit as their black colleague uncorks a bottle of champagne; this black steward is reprised in Lancret's Ham Luncheon (1735, Musee Conde, Chantilly). In Jean-Francois de Troy's Hunt Luncheon (1737, Louvre), wine is poured by a turbaned black man, while the other servants, all white, unpack a hamper. While black wine stewards may not be the rule, they often people Rococo feast scenes. 116. See Cohen, The French Encounter, 20. 117. See Guillerm, "Le Systeme de l'iconographie"; and Philip Stewart, "Representations of Love in the French Eighteenth Century," Studies in Iconology 4 (1978): 125-48.
96. Ben Jonson, quoted in Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender inEarly Modern England (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer sityPress, 1995), 248. 97. Note the easy familiarity with which Louise-Francoise de Bourbon drapes her hand over the slave's shoulder (Fig. 15). See Mercier, "Pe titsNegres," 175. See also Roger Little, Between Totem and Taboo: Black Man, White Woman inFrancographic Literature (Exeter: University of Ex eter Press, 2001), 32; and Hall, Things ofDarkness, 241 n. 18, who stresses the negrillons' "role in status competition" and reminds: "Given that these were some of the fewmales over which women had absolute control, they provided these women with an avenue for the exercise of power." In addition to the print illustrated here, Alain Guillerm discusses (but does not illustrate) Bernard Picard's early-eighteenth-century treat ment of an "almost identical scene," in "Le Systeme de l'iconographie galante," Dix-Huitieme Siecle 12 (1980): 177-94, at 189-90. and Affection, 142. 151. 1, 127.
98.
99. Tuan, Dominance 100. Ibid., 146.
101. Posner, Antoine Watteau, 102. Plax, "The Fete Galante" 104. Plax, "The Fete Galante" 105. See Ronald
103. Sutton, Antoine Watteau, 6. 137.
118. Robert Isherwood observes that obscene gesticulation and sexual in nuendo figured prominently in almost every production of the Opera that (the popular alternative theatrical form to the Opera Comique emerged in Paris in 1715) and notes that equivocal language and double entendre, the stock-in-trade of such productions, were readily understood by their broad-ranging audiences; Isherwood, Farce and Paris (New York: Ox Fantasy: Popular Entertainment inEighteenth-Century ford University Press, 1986), 67-68. 119. Stewart, "Representations of Love," 139, 125, 126. 120. See, for example, La marmote, 1714-15 (Hermitage Museum, St. Pe tersburg), and L'indiscret (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotter dam). 121. Grasselli and Rosenberg, Watteau, 1684-1721, 163; see, for instance,
Forsyth Millen and Robert Erich Wolf, Heroic Deeds and Maria de'Medici" Mystic Figures: A New Reading ofRubens' "Life of (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 107-20. and Andrew McClel
106. See Vidal, Watteau's Painted Conversations, 188-91;
g2
ART BULLETIN
MARCH
2009 VOLUME
XCI
NUMBER
The Toilette (Wallace Collection, collection, France). 122. Caylus, 123. Charles
London) 72.
and Morning
Toilette (private
"La vie d'Antoine Watteau,"
Pinot Duclos, quoted in Karl Toth, Woman and Rococo in France, Seen through the Life and Works of a Contemporary, Charles-Pinot Duclos, trans. Roger Abingdon (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1931), 88. and Rosenberg, Watteau, 1684-1721, 163. and Fragonard,"
143. Bedaux, "Discipline for Innocence," 141, notes that the prevalence of bridled goats (symbols of reined lust) in Dutch boys' portraits "may bear directly on the notion that women are by nature more moderate than men. Boys were consequently thought to need more discipline than girls, whom nature endowed with an innate sense of shame." was ceded to France just six years 144. Watteau's birthplace, Valenciennes, before the artist's birth. Watteau's nationality was therefore "ambigu ous," "half French, half Flemish"; Banks, Watteau and the North, 107. 145. Caylus, "La vie d'Antoine Watteau," 58: "Le don que la nature a fait." 146. David Wakefield, French Eighteenth-CenturyPainting (London: Gordon Fraser, 1984), 23; see Jean de Julienne, Figures de differentescaracteres, 1726, reprinted in Rosenberg, Vies anciennes de Watteau, 16. 147. Posner, Antoine Watteau, 248. 148. Teniers's profession is symbolically referenced by the preening mon key above him; Klinge, David Teniers deJonge, 128 (see n. 23 above). 149. For discussion of the musette player as a self-portrait, see Posner, An toine Watteau, 240, 243; Crow, Painters and Public Life, 63; and Winter mute's catalog entry to Venetian Pleasures, in Bailey et al., The Age of Watteau, 138. 150. Colin Thompson Shorter Catalogue no. 439. 151. Wintermute Watteau, and Hugh Brigstocke, National Gallery of Scotland (Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 1978), 114,
124. Grasselli
ofWatteau 125. Donald Posner, "The Swinging Women Art Bulletin 64 (March 1982): 75-88, at 77.
"Candide Shoots the Monkey Lovers," 745-46, remarks 126. Bellhouse, that blacks' eighteenth-century linkage tomonkeys marked them as lustful, since monkeys long symbolized luxury and licentiousness. 127. Compare Vignon's black boy (Fig. 15), whose wild-eyed expression? startlingly at odds with the propriety of his clothing and gesture? suggests irrepressible animality. 128. Banks, in fact, suggests (Watteau and the North, 222) that the "frantic pursuit" of Les charmes's larger dog may allude to "erotic pursuits which are taking place in various guises throughout the picture." 129. People of color were seen by many Jews and Christians as actively ac cursed, based on an interpretative reading of Genesis 9:22-25, in which Noah berates his son Ham and curses Ham's son, condemning him to slavery. In the Middle Ages, serfdom was associated with the "Hamite curse," and by the sixteenth century, blackness as well as ser vitude were seen as itsmarks. Adam Lively writes that "the myth of the Hamite curse" illustrates "the importance of transgression for the association of blackness with sexuality"; Lively, Masks: Blackness, Race & theImagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 20-23. 130. Cohen, The French Encounter, 19. 131. Dahis, the black slave described by Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon fils in La Sopha (1742), is "ignorant of gallantry," and his mistress is said to "compensate herself with Dahis "for the reserve she was forced into by her husband." Later in the century, the fictional negre of Andrea de Nerciat's Le diable au corps (1789) is described as "half monkey" and possessed of a phallus the color and hardness of iron. the African paramour emerged as a literary type some years Though afterWatteau's death, he was the descendant of the amorous "Moor" of seventeenth-century farce. Chalaye, Du noir au negre, 53, cites sev
(entry to Venetian Pleasures, in Bailey et al., The Age of Watteau played Vleughels's likeness 138) speculates that against his own to create some "sophisticated private joke, whose ex act meaning is now lost, to be shared by the men and their circle." A similar sort of joke probably informed Vleughels's casting as the com manding seigneur of Les charmes de la vie.
152. As Caylus later remarked, Watteau defied his background by adjoin to the gift with which na ing excessive zeal ("exces d'application") ture endowed him ("don que la nature a fait") ("La vie d'Antoine, Watteau," 56, 58). 153. E.-F. Gersaint, Catalogue raisonne des diverses curiosites du Cabinet de Feu Quentin de Lorangere, 1744, reprinted in Rosenberg, Vies anciennes de Watteau, 36; and Pierre-Jean Mariette, annotations to his copy of Pelle grino Orlandi, Abecedario pittorico, reprinted in ibid. " 'Les Charmes,' 154. Ingamells, "The Cleaning ofWatteau's 733. 155. Plax, "The Fete Galante," 135, believes many ofWatteau's male figures" may and suggest that their owners' "desire them to pursue the sort of controlled playing of a stringed instrument." the "engorged, red hands of "signify displaced erotic desire" has made it impossible for amorous ritual implied by the
that cele eral speeches from seventeenth-century courtly productions brate the Moor's capacity and proclivity for lovemaking (45-54). See also Paul Lacroix, Ballets etmascarades de cour deHenri TV ? Louis XIII, 6 vols. (Paris: J. Gay et Fils, 1868-70). se trouvent les bonnes epices"; "Aux petits sacs quelquefois full text, see Lacroix, Ballets etmascarades, vol. 4, 95. noir au negre, 53. Ducharte writes that while the earliest Harlequins wore costume became diamond color patches of Harlequin's contiguous in the seventeenth century; Ducharte, The Ital trans. Randolph T. Weaver (New York: Dover, 1966), 134. for the
132.
133. Chalaye, Du 134. Pierre Louis motley, the shaped and ian Comedy,
156. Having previously noted the onanistic aspect of the theorboist's rela tion to his instrument, I would here speculate thatWatteau hints that the tuner's allied efforts to make art and to connect with the paint ing's elite group are as solitary and fruitless as masturbation. 157. Jean de Julienne, Figures de differentescaracteres, 12. 158. See Caylus, "La vie d'Antoine Watteau," 67, 72. "La vie d'Antoine 159. See Gersaint, Catalogue raisonne, 35; and Caylus, 74-75. Watteau,"
135. The print of 1729, by Louis Jacob (Fig. 25), was based on a painting, now lost, thatWatteau made about 1705; its point of reference was Itali Louis XLV's 1697 attempt to ban performances of the Comedie enne. 136. Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, quoted in Gates, Figures in Black, 51. " de Gates draws attention to the 'negroid' profile" of the Harlequin picted in the frontispiece of Le bon manage in Florian's 1786 publica tion Theatre (see Gates, 52, ill. 1). Jean-Francois Marmontel, Elements de litterature (Paris, 1787). 137. Gates, Figures in Black, 51. 138. Ducharte, 139. Marmontel, 140. See Bedaux, The Italian Comedy, 124, 135. quoted in Lively, Masks, 16-17. 141. for Innocence,"
160. See, for instance, Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 30, on Le Notre, the La per landscape architect of Montmorency, which inspired Watteau's spective. 161. Posner, Antoine Watteau, 160. 162. Louis XIV enjoyed his own brand of nature in the park at Versailles? and "wild"?as forestlike in its dimensions and alternately manicured well as in the elaborate outdoor spaces of his country retreat at Marly. "The Taming of the Natural World," 118, writes that at Ver Lablaude, sailles's Trianon, "some 96,000 plants and twomillion pots buried in flowerbeds made it possible during certain seasons to change the composition of the view on a daily basis"; according to Tuan, Domi nance and Affection, 20, Marly's "bosquets, or green chambers, were re amuse the aging Louis XIV. ..." peatedly taken down and put up to (and regent from 1715 to 1723), an aficio Philippe, due d'Orleans nado of pastoral scenes, collected art with Crozat's help, building an impressive collection that resembled his adviser's in scope. 163. Caylus, "La vie d'Antoine Watteau," 61.
"Discipline
141. Tuan, Dominance and Affection, 118, cites the diary of Henry IV's physi cian for details of Louis XIII's being sexually teased and fondled by his mother, his nanny, and others at court; foumal defean Heroard sur Venfance et la jeunesse de Louis XIII, 1601-1610, ed. E. Soulie and E. de Barthelemy (Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1868), vol. 1, 34, 35, 45. 142. Stewart, "Representations of Love," 144.

Watteau - Charmes de La Vie

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Watteau - Charmes de La Vie

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Watteau - Charmes de La Vie

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Middleman: Antoine Watteau and "Les Charmes de la Vie" Author(s): Judy Sund Reviewed work(s): Source: The Art

and Les Charmes de la Vie

his attempts to address his subjects and patrons

ionable Parisians. While

Les charmes?like many fetes galan

blematic dimensions of thefetes galantes, which often involve

The product of long deliberation, Les charmesde la viewas

(even years) earlier, as a lutenist in

later picture's formal lucidity and enrichment would seem to

and/or an attempt to push a familiar theme in a different

increasingly found himself. Dedicated

incorporating only the most pleasing

variety of social practices, as aesthetes rejected nature in the

and cut plants into conformity;12 pet fanciers (themselves a

charmes de la vie, ca.

ural" desires and behaviors by promoting artificial notions of

in his forays into singerie,a widespread

satirical ends.17 These

forays may have been

in 1709 and 1710 on a set of panels for

2 Watteau, ca. 1716, Wallace Collection)

Wallace photograph provided by The Trustees of the

sculpture in paired pictures of monkey artists that reference

mimicry, monkeys often were used to symbolize unthinking,

3 Watteau, ca. 1717,

(66 X 91 cm). Schloss Charlottenburg,

Le prelude oil on canvas,

graph by Erich Lessing, provided by

als of glib simian artists and the connoisseurs who admire

his fabled proclivity for copying nature has been thwarted by

in his shadowy studio, hemmed

(and the contents of his

That themilieu evoked is Watteau's

own is indicated by the

hanging picture, Pour garder Vhonneur

5 Francois Palatine, (150 X 178

Charlotte 1680, oil on de Versailles Nationaux

Versailles (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided

of Orleans, cm). Chateaux

Princess of the of Bavaria, 59 X 70 V6 in. canvas, et de Trianon,

inspire, surely harks back to the painter's beginnings, when

well as the difficultyof reconciling their competing demands

that, Beyond of the complicated

enough the mature reflect of nature

{air.' nobit de cettt Jipoiir*eUe 60amcf n/aitde bonnes quaiittZ^ \ StJhutJen

nn Jeirfiammt gaiaj{b . aj-abcaute prenBre de

in art (painterly and theatrical) rather than

with actuality in the form of people, places, and incidents he

edged his efforts in that vein, deeming

the fetes galantes'

paper, 14% X 9% in. (36.5 X 23.8 cm). Los Angeles County

? Museum Associates / LACMA)

the abbe death, painter's et la Nature reunis in "L'Art

(1736), a poem that fancifully recalls the truce

reproached Art for its finery and affectation, while

traysexclusivity as experienced by the insiders who enjoy its

suggests Watteau over

reconciliation, make peace."25