Jean-Antoine Watteau made a career in art at a time when the terms of that career were still being set.
The record lists Jean-Antoine Watteau as French painter (1684-1721).
Jean-Antoine Watteau was born at Valenciennes in 1684. His recorded nationality is the Kingdom of France.
The seventeenth century built the machinery of public intellectual life - societies, journals, correspondence networks - and reputations could be made at a distance.
The record gives his occupations as painter, graphic artist and draftsperson.
The work that carried his reputation furthest concerned inventing the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. An artist's reputation moves with taste, but the work stays exactly where it was left.
The surviving body of work includes Nymph and Satyr and Pierrot.
His recorded fields of work are painting.
His work was formally recognised with the Prix de Rome.
Working from the Kingdom of France shaped what was possible - the audiences within reach, the institutions that would have him, the language the work first appeared in.
Jean-Antoine Watteau died in 1721 at the age of 37. The work outlived the arguments around it.
Achievements
- Notable work: Nymph and Satyr
- Notable work: Pierrot
- Worked as painter, graphic artist and draftsperson
