Feature: The Big Picture - Exhibition - Esprit et Vérité: Watteau and His Circle is at The Wallace Collection until June 5
Published: 5 May, 2011
Esprit et Vérité: Watteau and His Circle is two exhibitions: a redisplay of the great Watteau canvasses in the Wallace Collection, one of the most important groups of Watteau paintings in the world, in the intimate setting of the West Gallery at Hertford House; and downstairs, in the Collection’s Exhibition Galleries, significant masterworks of the 17th and 18th centuries by artists, including Rembrandt, Rubens, Greuze and Vernet, drawn from the collection of Watteau’s publisher and most important dealer, Jean de Jullienne.
The relationship between Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean de Julienne represents a key moment in the development of French 18th-century painting and patronage.
Within his short career, Watteau (1684-1721) changed the course of painting. He revitalised the Baroque style, and invented the fête galante, a novel category of genre painting depicting pastoral and idyllic compositions where stage characters of the French and Italian comedies mingle with fashionable contemporaries.
Jean de Jullienne (1686-1766), supported 18th-century contemporary artists. His strong interest in French art and Netherlandish painting, in sketches, pastels and drawings, led the way for a new generation of rich Parisian collectors who had only loose connections with the French court. As a result, the 18th century saw the establishment of a new cultural avant-garde. Watteau’s first collectors were bourgeois bankers, artists and dealers rather than aristocrats.
• Esprit et Vérité: Watteau and His Circle is at The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, W1, until June 5. Free admission, open daily 10am-5pm 020 7563 9500, www.wallacecollection.org
Free drop-in talks by curator Christoph Vogtherr
May 7: Watteau à la Wallace Collection: Exhibition talk in French. 2.30-3.30pm
May 9: Portraits of Jullienne and his Wife by De Troy, 1pm
May 10: Watteau and Jullienne: a Productive Friendship, 1pm
May 13: Watteau: A Critical Journey Through Publications from Edmond de Goncourt to the Modern Day*. Lecture by Christoph Vogtherr, Curator of Paintings pre-1800, 6-8pm, free but booking essential. Email: giovanna.hendel@ wallacecollection.org or call 020 7563 9536
* This is not a drop-in event