El saboyano con la marmota

Watteau is remembered for silk-clad lovers drifting through parkland, so this ragged boy is a surprise from the same hand. In 1716 he made a small group of studies of Savoyards, poor seasonal migrants from the Alpine Savoie who wandered France through the winter scraping a living, here a showman with a trained marmot he would make dance for coins. The animal rides in its box on his back, and he stands square to us in worn clothes against a cold, low sky, grinning without any of the courtly polish Watteau usually handed his figures. He drew people like this from life in the streets of Paris. Catherine the Great later bought the picture, which is how it came to the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.