Watteau, ANTOINE, was born at Valenciennes, in October 1684, and in 1702 he betook himself to Paris, where for some time he earned a livelihood by the sorriest hack-work for a picture-dealer. He subsequently received instruction from Gillot, and got employment with Andran, the decorator of the Luxembourg, and in 1711 became a student at the Academy. In 1717 he was made a member of the Academy, and became famous as the creator of a new type of art. There is a strange contrast between the gaiety of his art and the melancholy of his life constantly overshadowed by ill-health. In 1718 he visited England to consult Dr Richard Mead, then famous, for whom, during his stay, he painted one or two pictures. After his return home his health gradually declined; and on 18th July 1721 he died of consumption at Nogent, near Paris. In virtue of their charming colour and graceful design, the pictures of this master of the Rococo age still enjoy a high vogue, though his reputation as an artist is now but an echo of that which, in his lifetime, he enjoyed. He employed himself chiefly in painting small landscapes, with something of the nature of the Fête Galante going on in them—mock-pastoral idylls in court-dress. The largest collection of Watteaus—that made by Frederick the Great—belongs to the German emperor; and many are in the hands of English collectors.
See the Catalogue raisonnée of his works by De Goncourt (1875), and the monographs by Cellier (1867), J. W. Mollett (1883), Vollbelir (Hamb. 1885), Hannover (Copen. 1888), Dargenty (Paris, 1891), Nantz (Paris, 1891), and Claude Phillips (Portfolio, 1895).