Love in the French Theatre

Watteau painted this around 1716, just after the death of Louis XIV, when Paris exhaled into the lighter, more pleasure-minded years of the Regency. The old king's stiff court was giving way to private gardens, music and theatre, and Watteau made that mood his whole subject. Here a company gathers outdoors around a singer and musicians, costumed as if for the stage yet set among trees, so it is hard to say where the play stops and the party begins. It has a companion piece, Love in the Italian Theatre, showing the rival troupe by torchlight. Watteau was already ill with the tuberculosis that would kill him in 1721, five years after he set down this warm afternoon.