Fêtes vénitiennes

Watteau all but invented a genre of painting, the fete galante, elegant company idling in parkland somewhere between a real garden and a stage set. He made this one around 1719, in the easy years of the French Regency, and slipped real faces into it. The swaggering dancer in exotic costume is his friend and landlord, the painter Nicolas Vleughels. The seated musician squeezing a small bagpipe, called a musette, is Watteau himself. Between them a graceful dancer holds the centre, thought to be the actress Charlotte Desmares. Some have wondered whether the two men eyeing the same woman carried a private meaning for the painter. Watteau was already ill with the tuberculosis that would kill him two years later, at 36.