Heiratsvertrag und Tanz auf dem Lande

This is early Watteau, painted around 1711, before he had fully invented the dreamy garden parties that would define him. Here he is still close to the Flemish village scenes he grew up admiring, but already bending them his way. He folds a whole country wedding into one small canvas: off at the left the church tower where the couple were married, in the centre the signing of the marriage contract, and all around it the dancing of the village feast, one ring of joined hands and one couple turning face to face. It is realism sliding toward reverie, the start of what critics later named the fete galante. The picture drifted to Spain and into the collection of Queen Isabella Farnese, which is how a French wedding dance ended up in the Prado.