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Lot Essay
The arrangement of the figures on this sheet of studies clearly shows Watteau's method of developing the staffage for his paintings. The studies, which stand independently, are drawn from a studio model dressed from the artist's extensive collection of costumes. The figures, who may have been drawn over a considerable period, would then become part of Watteau's library of poses to be used as appropriate. Although Cailleux dates the sheet to circa 1710, Meg Morgan Graselli suggests the period 1711-1713, on the evidence of the paintings in which they were eventually used.
The second figure on the left is found in Le contrat de marriage, in the Prado, Madrid, generally dated to circa 1712, M. Morgan Grasselli and P. Rosenberg, Watteau 1684-1721, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1984, p. 289, no. 21. The single study of the hand was used for the male pilgrim in the foreground of Bon Voyage, now lost and known through an engraving by Benoit Audran, Grasselli and Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 407, fig. 2. The standing cloaked figure at the far left is seen in reverse in the composition L'enchanteur in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Troyes. The two right hand figures, of Pierrot and Scarpin, do not seem to have found a place in any of Watteau's surviving compositions.
The second figure on the left is found in Le contrat de marriage, in the Prado, Madrid, generally dated to circa 1712, M. Morgan Grasselli and P. Rosenberg, Watteau 1684-1721, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1984, p. 289, no. 21. The single study of the hand was used for the male pilgrim in the foreground of Bon Voyage, now lost and known through an engraving by Benoit Audran, Grasselli and Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 407, fig. 2. The standing cloaked figure at the far left is seen in reverse in the composition L'enchanteur in the Musée des Beaux Arts, Troyes. The two right hand figures, of Pierrot and Scarpin, do not seem to have found a place in any of Watteau's surviving compositions.