Word: watteau
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Beloved of capitalists and kings are the works of Antoine Watteau. Few others can afford them. Of about 200 Watteau paintings in the world, three U. S. museums have been able to acquire one apiece.* Last week the fourth and one of the finest was a Christmas present to the Cleveland Museum of Art from rich Commodore Louis D. Beaumont, vice president of the May Department Stores...
...Danse dans un Pavilion de Jardin (see cut), painted about 1718, is one of the famous Fêtes Galantes of Watteau's maturity. Watteau ran away from home, did hack work, was rescued by rich friends, resented their kindnesses, died young (37) of tuberculosis. But he lived in Paris in a graceful period and reflected its graces...
...Cleveland's painting, Watteau's favorite blonde model and a boy are mincing a lazy minuet while a company of softly shining young ladies and gents look on. This unselfconscious little idyll pleased Frederick the Great, Francophile King of Prussia, and he had his ambassador buy it. Until 1918 it hung in the collection of the royal family at Potsdam. Clevelander Beaumont got it through Dealer Joseph Duveen...
...John Mortimer had shipped the collection to London, not only hoping for a readier market there but also tempted by Christie's low commission (7½%). Over the block passed Flemish, early German and French paintings, English mezzotints, sketches and water colors by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard; Gothic, Gobelin and Beauvais tapestries; Louis XIV carpets, Louis XV gueridons, Louis XVI marquetry and console tables; della Robbia terra cottas, Sevres porcelain, Limoges enamels, Ispahan rugs, Italian crystal and marbles, bronzes, Oriental rugs, precious saltcellars, marriage coffers, inkstands, candlesticks...
...five are represented here. The accomplishment of the sixteenth can be seen in aportrait by Francois Clouet, of the seventeenth in a wash drawing of landscape by Claude. The special character of the eighteenth, in attitude as in drawing is revealed in a series of red crayon studies by Watteau and Fragonard, Boucher and Greuze...