すねる女

Watteau painted this sulking young woman and her hopeful companion around 1718, when he had perhaps three years left to live, his lungs already failing. A year or so earlier the French Academy had invented a whole new category to admit him, the fete galante, a picture of elegant people idling in a park with little to do but feel. Here the drama is tiny. She turns her shoulder away, he leans in, and neither quite gives in. Watteau paints the silk and the autumn foliage with a quick, feathery touch that never fully settles, which is part of why these scenes carry a faint sadness under the charm. The whole canvas is barely larger than a sheet of writing paper, about 42 centimetres across.