The Waterfall

Watteau never went to Italy, yet this is the great waterfall at Tivoli, outside Rome, a view painters had been recording since the 16th century. Scholars link it to a red-chalk drawing of the falls now in Montpellier, attributed to a member of the Silvestre family of French draughtsmen, several of whom had worked in Italy. Watteau kept the torrent and the distant town on the left, then widened the ledge in front to fit two couples resting in the shade and a shepherd with his goats and sheep. Most specialists date it to 1712, while others place it two or three years later. The collector Jean de Jullienne owned it when it was engraved in 1729. In the 19th century it ended up with the dukes of Osuna near Madrid, where it passed as Flemish, and it resurfaced under Watteau's name in Paris around 1930. Since 2015 it has hung in Valenciennes, the town where Watteau was born, on deposit from the Louvre.