Portrait of a Gentleman

For a long time this man was taken for Jean de Jullienne, Watteau's friend and patron, the dye-works owner who after the painter's death had nearly all his work engraved. The Louvre now calls that identification a mistake, so he is simply a gentleman again, his name lost. The portrait dates from about 1719 to 1720, near the end of Watteau's short life, and it is large for him, 130 centimetres high. The man leans on a stone ledge in a coat thick with embroidery, lace at his cuffs, one hand on his hip, glancing sideways out of a dark wooded setting. In 1879 it was offered to the Louvre, which did not buy it. The museum finally acquired it almost a century later, in 1973, shortly before it was due to go to auction.