DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68073#0308
282
OLD WORLD MASTERS
single out any special object for that facile and versatile brush? Did
not an eminent critic of the Nineteenth Century proclaim that Wat-
teau was “the most brilliant and vivid painter the world has ever
seen”?
Watteau created an Arcadia of his own—a Watteau world; and it
is not without reason that another critic called him “the Shakespeare
and the Aristophanes of Art.”
The world has long recognized that Watteau was a poet. Elie
Faure asks why it is that the ensemble always produces the sensa-
tion so near to sadness, and then he gives the reason:
“The spirit of the poet is present. Watteau had brought back from
his Flemish country and from a visit he had made to England the love
of moist landscape, where the colors in the multiplied prism of the
tiny suspended drops take on their real depth and splendor. Music
and trees, the whole of Watteau is in them. The sound does not
interrupt the silence, but rather increases it. Barely, if at all, a whis-
pered echo reaches us from it. We do indeed see the fingers wandering
from the strings: the laughter and the phrases exchanged are to be
guessed from bodies bending forward or turning backward and from
fans that tap on hands. The actors in the charming dramas are at a
distance from their painter and are dispersed in the depths of the
open spaces. Watteau fears to come near them, to penetrate their
mystery; for to see them too close would destroy the aerial veil that
trembles between them and himself. He caresses them only with
his delicate tones that hover here and there as would some bee from
the north flying about in the damp forests or under the lights of the
fete, among the powdered gold of the hair, the rose of the costumes,
the bluish, milky haze, the flower-sprinkled moss, the grass on which
rest skirts and mantles of silk and satin, and the nocturnal phosphores-
cence given to jewels and velvets by the gleam of moonlight and the
flare of waving torches. It is the irised air which makes the marble
statues seem to quiver, which gives agitation to the sprightly and
piquant faces, movement to the fingers plucking guitars, and to
delicate fine legs in stockings of transparent silk. Watteau never
comes near the scene: the vision is as distant as an old dream. Ob-
OLD WORLD MASTERS
single out any special object for that facile and versatile brush? Did
not an eminent critic of the Nineteenth Century proclaim that Wat-
teau was “the most brilliant and vivid painter the world has ever
seen”?
Watteau created an Arcadia of his own—a Watteau world; and it
is not without reason that another critic called him “the Shakespeare
and the Aristophanes of Art.”
The world has long recognized that Watteau was a poet. Elie
Faure asks why it is that the ensemble always produces the sensa-
tion so near to sadness, and then he gives the reason:
“The spirit of the poet is present. Watteau had brought back from
his Flemish country and from a visit he had made to England the love
of moist landscape, where the colors in the multiplied prism of the
tiny suspended drops take on their real depth and splendor. Music
and trees, the whole of Watteau is in them. The sound does not
interrupt the silence, but rather increases it. Barely, if at all, a whis-
pered echo reaches us from it. We do indeed see the fingers wandering
from the strings: the laughter and the phrases exchanged are to be
guessed from bodies bending forward or turning backward and from
fans that tap on hands. The actors in the charming dramas are at a
distance from their painter and are dispersed in the depths of the
open spaces. Watteau fears to come near them, to penetrate their
mystery; for to see them too close would destroy the aerial veil that
trembles between them and himself. He caresses them only with
his delicate tones that hover here and there as would some bee from
the north flying about in the damp forests or under the lights of the
fete, among the powdered gold of the hair, the rose of the costumes,
the bluish, milky haze, the flower-sprinkled moss, the grass on which
rest skirts and mantles of silk and satin, and the nocturnal phosphores-
cence given to jewels and velvets by the gleam of moonlight and the
flare of waving torches. It is the irised air which makes the marble
statues seem to quiver, which gives agitation to the sprightly and
piquant faces, movement to the fingers plucking guitars, and to
delicate fine legs in stockings of transparent silk. Watteau never
comes near the scene: the vision is as distant as an old dream. Ob-