A Fte Champtre

Like his master Antoine Watteau, Pater often made several variant versions of favorite fte galante compositions by combining and recombining figures within them to ever different effect. The present painting is a graceful example of Pater's work at its most refined. The composition was repeated, with significant differences, in a similarly sized Fte Champtre, now in the Muse du Petit Palais, Paris (Ingersoll-Smouse, no. 41, fig. 33). The right third of the Petit Palais composition reproduces the present painting almost exactly, with the figure group transposed intact; however, the left third of the picture displays numerous differences in the figure groupings -- in particular, the delightful conceit of the embracing couple in a swoon is replaced in the Petit Palais painting with a more sedate seated couple reading a musical score.

A trois crayons drawing of four figures that includes a study for the seated woman in the pink silk gown was in the collection of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt; it appeared as lot 230 in their sale, February 16, 1897 (see E. Launey, Les frres Goncourt collectionneurs de dessins, 1991, no.248, fig.253).