Claude Gillot

Before the fete galante became the signature of French painting, there was a slightly strange man from Langres who loved the theatre. Claude Gillot designed sets and costumes for the Paris opera and painted the clowns and stock characters of the commedia dell'arte, the improvised Italian street comedy with its Harlequins and Pierrots.

Around 1703 a young provincial named Antoine Watteau came into his workshop. Gillot took him to the Paris theatres and the fairground stages and taught him to draw actors in motion. Watteau soaked up the taste for costumed players and quickly outgrew his teacher, and the two parted, apparently on bad terms.

Gillot was elected to the Royal Academy in 1715 on the strength of mythological scenes with titles like the Feast of Pan. He seems to have painted less as he aged, turning to etching and design, and his pictures are rare today. In 2023 the Morgan Library in New York gave him a show of his own, one of the first to look past his famous pupil.