Painting performance: art and theatricality in the work of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the artistic oeuvre of Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), reassessing the artist’s practice in light of eighteenth-century French theatrical culture. Watteau’s singular aesthetic has been the subject of much scholarly debate. The characteristic ambiguities of his paintings, which have occupied scholars from the beginnings of modern interest in the artist, remain only partially understood. This thesis builds upon existing scholarship, locating Watteau's theatrical subjects historically, in terms of both early eighteenth-century theatrical practice (including set design, play illustrations and accounts of spectatorship and performance) and contemporary aesthetic theories that compare and align the visual and performing arts. Watteau developed a visual language of theatricality that reached beyond depicting characters, costumes and scenarios; based in the paradoxical aesthetics of performance and spectatorship. This thesis explores such issues by examining both overlooked artworks (such as the decorative cycle for the Hôtel de Nointel and a painting known as La Rêve de l’artiste) as well as familiar works that invite a fresh reading (Les Comédiens italiens, Les Plaisirs du bal, La Perspective and L’Enseigne de Gersaint)— in light of new sources and points of reference. In these works, Watteau suggested that the mimetic arts of performance and painting originate in the artistic imagination, and they also invite the viewer to participate with an imaginative response. Ultimately, Watteau’s paintings are concerned with the paradoxical pleasures of viewing that arose from the heady atmosphere of the early eighteenth-century theatre.