Jean-Antoine Watteau (Valenciennes 1684-1721 Nogent-sur-Marne, near Paris)
PROPERTY FROM A FRENCH AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Jean-Antoine Watteau (Valenciennes 1684-1721 Nogent-sur-Marne, near Paris)

The Union of Comedy and Music

Details
Jean-Antoine Watteau (Valenciennes 1684-1721 Nogent-sur-Marne, near Paris)
The Union of Comedy and Music
oil on canvas
25½ x 21¼ in. (64.7 x 54 cm.)
Provenance
Daniel Saint (1778-1847), Paris; his sale, Hôtel des Ventes, Paris, 4-7 May 1846, lot 66 (500 francs).
Paul Barroilhet (1810-1871), Paris; his sale, Hôtel des Ventes Mobilières, Paris, 10 March 1856, lot 68 (4000 francs).
2nd Barroilhet sale, Hôtel des Ventes Mobilières, Paris, 2-3 April 1860, lot 130 (withdrawn).
3rd Barroilhet sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 15-16 March, 1872, lot 20 (2140 francs).
Eugène Féral, by 1875.
Henri Michel-Lévy, Paris; his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 12-13 May 1919, lot 29 (to Hoven).
Hoven Collection; (+), Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 21 April 1921, lot 25.
with Wildenstein, New York, until 2005.
Private collection, France.
Literature
P. Hédouin, 'Watteau: catalogue de son oeuvre', L'Artiste, 30 November 1845, p. 80, no. 136.
W. Bürger, 'Exposition de tableaux de l'école française ancienne, tirés de collections d'amateurs', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 15 November 1860, VIII, pp. 232-233.
E. de Goncourt, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre d'Antoine Watteau, Paris, 1875, p. 63, no. 63.
E. and J. de Goncourt, L'Art du dix-huitième siècle , 3rd ed., Paris, 1880, I, p. 56.
P. Mantz, Antoine Watteau, Paris, 1892, p. 28.
V. Josz, Antoine Watteau, Paris, n.d., p. 86, note 2.
L. de Fourcaud, 'Antoine Watteau: peintre d'arabesques', Revue de l'Art Ancien et Moderne, 1909, XXV, pp. 57, 133-35.
E. Pilon, Watteau et son école, Paris, 1912, pp. 130-31.
L. Réau, 'Watteau', in les Peintres français du XVIIIe siècle, ed. L. Dimier, Paris and Brussels, 1928, I, P. 31, no. 24.
E. Dacier and A. Vuaflart, Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1929, I, pp. 61-63, 260, no. 39; 1922, II, p. 33; 1922, III, p. 24, no. 39, illus. IV, 1921, pl. 39 (Moyreau engraving).
G. Barker, Antoine Watteau, London, 1939, p. 184.
G. Wildenstein, French XVIIIth Century Paintings, New York, 1948, n.p., no. 55.
H. Adhémar and R. Huyghe, Watteau: sa vie, son oeuvre, Paris, 1950, pp. 194, 211-212, no. 91, pl. 43.
K.T. Parker and J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau, catalogue complet de son oeuvre dessiné, Paris, 1957, I, p. 20, cited under no. 136.
J. Mathey, Antoine Watteau: peintures réapparues identification par les dessins, Paris, 1959, p. 66.
A.-P. de Mirimonde, 'Statues et emblèmes dans l'oeuvre d'Antoine Watteau', La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France (La Revue des Arts), 1962, XII, no. 1, p. 20.
G. Macchia and E.C. Montagni, L'Opera completa di Watteau, Milan, 1968, p. 107, no. 123.
P. Rosenberg and E. Camesasca, Tout l'oeuvre peint de Watteau, Paris, 1970, p. 107, no. 123.
J. Ferré et al., Watteau, Madrid, 1972, I, p. 114; IV, pp. 1007, 1119, 1130; III, p. 1058, fig. 1018 (detail of Moyreau engraving).
Y. Boerlin-Brodbeck, Antoine Watteau und das Theater, Basel, 1973, pp. 167-8.
M. Eidelberg, Watteau's Drawings: Their Use and Significance, New York and London, 1977, p. 259, note 59.
A.-P. de Mirimonde, L'Iconographie musicale sous les rois Bourbons: la musique dans les arts plastiques (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles), Paris, 1977, II, p. 24, note 31, pl. VIII, fig. 12 (Moyreau engraving).
Frankfurt am Main, Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Jean-Anoine Watteau: Einschiffung nach Cythera, 1982, p. 96.
M. Roland Michel, Watteau, un artiste au XVIIIe siècle, London and Paris, 1984, p. 155.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, and elsewhere, Watteau, 1684-1721, 1984-1985, p. 450, cited under no. P73 (entry by P. Rosenberg), also cited in essay by F. Moureau, 'Watteau in His Time', p. 489, fig. 18 (Moyreau engraving).
R. Tomlinson, 'Fête galante et/ou foraine? Watteau et le théâtre', in F. Moureau and M.M. Grasseli, eds., Antoine Watteau (1684-1721): le peintre, son temps et sa légende, Paris and Geneva, 1987, p. 210.
P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721: catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan 1996, I, p. 142, cited under no. 90.
M. Eidelberg, 'Letter: Watteau at Chicago', Burlington Magazine, April 1998, CXL, p. 269.
R. Temperini, Watteau (trans. From the French by M. Martini), Milan, 2002, p. 143, no. 47.
G. Glorieux, À l'Enseigne de Gersaint: Edme-François Gersaint, marchand d'art sur le Pont Notre-Dame (1694-1750), Mayenne, 2002, p. 195, 200, fig. 50 (Moyreau engraving).
Exhibited
Paris, Galerie Martinet, Tableaux et dessins de l'école française, principalement du XVIIIe siècle, tires de collections d'amateurs, 1860, no. 429.
Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Le Théâtre à Paris (XVII-XVIIIe siècles), 19 March-4 May 1929, no. 81.
New York, The New School for Social Research, Loan Exhibition of Paintings, 3-17 March 1946, no. 19.
New York, Wildenstein, French Paintings of the Eighteenth Century, 21 January-21 February 1948, no. 47.
Kansas City, Missouri, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The Century of Mozart, 15 January-4 March 1956, no. 104.
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Unbekannte Schönheit: Bedeutende Werke aus fünf Jahrhunderten, 9 June-31 July 1956, no. 275.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, France in the Eighteenth Century, 6 January-3 March 1968, no. 729, fig. 57.
Tokyo, Wildenstein, Masterpieces of European Paintings, 18 May-19 June 1992, no. 2.
New York, Wildenstein, The Arts of France, from François Ier to Napoléon Ier, 26 October 2005-6 January 2006, no. 44 (entry by J. Baillio).
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watteau, Music, and Theater, 2009, no. 4 (entry by K. Baetjer).
Engraved
Jean Moyreau

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Lot Essay

Even for Watteau, that most ambiguous of artists, The Union of Comedy and Music is an unusually elliptical work, one that is unique in his oeuvre. It was engraved in reverse by Jean Moyreau for the Recueil Jullienne and its publication was announced in the Mercure de France in March 1730. The print provides the painting's title and a brief caption explaining that Comedy and Music are represented in the guise of their Muses, accompanied by their arms and attributes. The owner of the painting is not given.

At the center of the composition, a convex oval escutcheon is magically suspended against the sky, above a grassy landscape that curves to suggest the contour of the earth itself. Surrounded by an elaborate gilded frame, the black background of the shield is ornamented with a mask of comedy and old-fashioned musical notations rendered in gold. Surmounting the escutcheon is the head of either Crispin or Scapin, the scheming valets in black hats and white ruffs who were stock characters in the Comédie Française, and suspended above the whole is a crown composed or two intertwined laurel wreaths, a crown being a traditional reward of the conqueror and laurel signifying artistic glory. Behind the shield is a diagonal cross composed of a Harlequin's slapstick and a transverse flute, and around it floats an elaborate garland of musical scores, fool's heads, and various musical instruments -- including a violin, a guitar, a lute, a viola, a French horn, tambourines and pan pipes. From a pink ribbon tied to the bottom of the escutcheon hangs a silver medallion bearing the image of two standing figures; according to Joseph Baillio, they might be Apollo and a muse.

On either side of this remarkable floating apparition stands a beautiful, semi-clad female figure. On the left is Thalia, Muse of Comedy and Pastoral Poetry, who intently examines a rather grotesque actor's mask, the traditional attribute that she holds before her. Crowned with ivy and breasts exposed, Thalia wears a pink, vaguely antique costume with buskins decorated with lions' heads. On the right, Music is embodied either by Euterpe, Muse of Music and Lyric Poetry, or possibly Terpsichore, Muse of Dance and Song; both carry musical instruments and have their hair garlanded with flowers. Watteau's palette of slate blues, pearl gray and pale rose is exceptionally lovely and refined, and throughout the composition are rough traces of underdrawing evident to the naked eye. (Infrared reflectography, which has proven very useful in revealing the changes in design made by the artist in other paintings, has not yet been performed on the present work.)

Although every element of this unusual composition is rendered with naturalistic, three-dimensional exactitude -- the softly fleshed women, their shimmering, silken drapery, the string instruments and darkened sky just beginning to glow with the break of dawn -- its subject matter exists in the realm of symbolism, and can only be understood, to the degree that viewers today can understand it, by interpreting it allegorically. Over the years, various readings of the painting's possible meanings have been offered, some of them excessively ornate and obscure. François Moureau has offered the most convincing explication of Watteau's subject matter, made all the more satisfactory by its comparative simplicity. He sees The Union of Comedy and Music as an allegory of the alliance of the two separate and competing theatrical establishments, the Comédie Française and the Opéra -- a dream that these official stages in Paris could work together harmoniously -- in which Watteau aims "a certain derisive wit at the 'serious' genres." Contemporary viewers of the painting, aware of the increasing "lack of interest on the part of the fashionable public for tragedies and the tragic theatre," would have interpreted its allegorical allusions in the light of this popular shift in taste. Moureau acknowledges, however, that layers of meaning in a complex painting such as this are most likely permanently lost to us. "Any analysis of the finer perceptions in the 'comic subjects' of Watteau presupposes a profound acquaintance with the contemporary theatrical world in which he and his contemporaries lived naturally. What appears to us today as 'constructions' with hidden meanings were as easily interpreted by the fashionable world of his time as was a fable by a historical painter."

Theories abound that Watteau's painting was designed as a signboard for a theatre or a dealer in musical instruments, or as a model for a stage curtain. It is sufficiently anomalous to suggest that it may have been the result of a specific, now untraced, commission. The artist's connections to the theatre were deep and of long standing, and so the painting might well have been made at the request of one of the numerous actors, musicians, or other men (and women) of the theatre with whom Watteau was acquainted. In style and handling it appears to somewhat predate the Crozat Seasons which are documented as having been executed in 1717, and it might be placed around 1715, if not slightly earlier.

Whatever the allusions Watteau was making in The Union of Comedy and Music to the politics of the official theatres in Régence Paris, his painting still fascinates and moves us as an affectionate tribute to the triumph of the noble theatrical arts, which seem in Watteau's painting to stand alone atop the breaking dawn of a new world. At a time when actors were regarded with suspicion and traveling theatrical troupes often operated one step ahead of the law, Watteau's respect for their art and their commitment to it is both admirable and bracing.

To be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Watteau's paintings by Alan Wintermute.

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