The French painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) ranks among the great masters of drawing. His sensitive studies in red, black, and white chalk record female and male models, observations of detail, and spontaneous ideas, developing the world of those serene communities of attentive togetherness to which the name "Fêtes galantes" (Gallant Feasts) should be given.
For autumn 2016, the Städel Museum is planning an exhibition on the draughtsmanship of Antoine Watteau in collaboration with the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Both institutions have significant holdings of works by the artist, who can be considered one of the most outstanding draughtsmen in French art history. His innovative style, characterized by a combination of close observation with spontaneity, lightness and intimacy, contrasts markedly with the formal tradition of the academically oriented artists of his time. The new, virtuoso art reflects in its psychological empathy the spirit of the dawning Enlightenment.
Watteau is relatively little known in Germany, although he was one of Frederick the Great's favourite artists in the 18th century. There was last an exhibition devoted to Watteau in 1984. The Städel Museum owns in its collection of paintings the earliest version of the composition Embarkation to Kythera, which is probably the artist's most famous creation, also because of the two other versions in the Louvre and in Charlottenburg Palace. Around the Städel Museum's Embarkation to Kythera, which is complemented by a small selection of other paintings, the exhibition groups together approximately 50 selected drawings from the holdings of the participating institutions as well as from important German, Dutch and French collections. To show the artist's after-effects, the show additionally presents about 20 drawings by successors such as François Boucher, Nicolas Lancret or Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
(Source: Städel Museum Frankfurt)
