Around 1712 -1721 · Gardens, theater, music and melancholy of desire

Watteau brings together couples, musicians and actors in imaginary parks where pleasure remains fragile: a light touch makes each conversation a moment already threatened by departure.

Antoine Watteau renews French painting with scenes that are neither simple landscapes, nor collective portraits, nor true mythologies. In parks inspired by aristocratic domains and theater sets, elegant couples, musicians, dancers and actors come together, hesitate or move away. When he presented his Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera as a reception piece in 1717, the Royal Academy welcomed him under a new category: the gallant party. The genre showcases romantic sociability, but Watteau constantly disrupts the evidence. A figure remains isolated, one gaze does not meet the other, a statue of Venus recalls the fiction of desire and boarding suggests that the party is already coming to an end. The Venetian Festivals combine dance, music and possible portraiture, while the country festivals dissolve the characters in an undergrowth light. The three pencil technique nourishes a vast repertoire of poses then recomposed in the paintings. The touch, quick and transparent, gives the fabrics and foliage a vibration which unites visual pleasure and the feeling of time passing. The "Fêtes galantes d’Antoine Watteau" selection notably compares Country Festival and Venetian Festivals. Its reading favors figures.

At Watteau, the party is beautiful because it does not last: the suspended gesture already contains distance, silence and departure.