Oil painting -> List of Painters ->Antoine Watteau

Early Days:

       Watteau was born in the town of Valenciennes, which had recently passed from the Spanish Netherlands to France. His father was a master tiler. Showing an early interest in painting, he was apprenticed to Jacques-Albert Gerin, a local painter. Having little to learn from Gerin, Watteau left for Paris in about 1702. There he found employment in a workshop at Pont Notre-Dame, making copies of popular genre paintings in the Flemish and Dutch tradition; it was in that period that he developed his characteristic sketchlike technique.

Personal Details Name Jean-Antoine Watteau Place of birth Valenciennes Date of Birth October 10, 1684 Date of Death July 18, 1721 Field Painting Nationality French

Career:

       In 1709 Watteau tried to obtain the Prix de Rome and was rejected by the Academy. In 1712 he tried again and was considered so good that, rather than receiving the one-year stay in Rome for which he had applied, he was accepted as a full member of the Academy. He took five years to deliver the required "reception piece," but it was one of his masterpieces: the Pilgrimage to Cythera, also called the Embarkation for Cythera.

       Interestingly, while Watteau's paintings seem to epitomize the aristocratic elegance of the Régence (though he actually lived most of his short life under the oppressive climate of Louis XIV's later reign), he never had aristocratic patrons. His buyers were bourgeois such as bankers and dealers.

   Works Of Antoine Watteau: