Antoine Watteau, (French, 1684–1721), The French Comedians, 1715–17, oil on canvas, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Kat. 468.

Audio Description

This painting, titled The French Comedians, was made between 1715 and 1717 by French artist Antoine Watteau, who lived from 1684 to 1721. It is an oil painting on canvas and is part of the collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, where its catalogue number is 468.

This horizontal painting, about 15 by 19 inches, shows a festive gathering in a heavily wooded garden. The group of seven musicians (at left) and seven revelers (at the right) is arranged in a semicircle around a man and a woman dancing in the center. The woman is framed a by a section of stone wall behind her, from which a bust sculpture looks down upon the scene. She wears a long dark skirt, a dark lilac bodice decorated with blue bows at the wrist and bust, and a lace ruff around her neck. She spreads her skirts as if to curtsey to her dancing partner, who is dressed all in red and a straw hat. He faces her, his back to the viewer, hands clasped behind his back and his right foot is extended mid-dance step. Behind the dancing figures a man lounges on a bench at the base of the stone wall. He wears a wreath of grapes on his head and an animal pelt over his shoulder. He leans forward to clink glasses of wine with a standing man wearing a plumed hat and carrying a quiver of arrows.

Label Copy

This painting, titled The French Comedians, was made between 1715 and 1717 by French artist Antoine Watteau, who lived from 1684 to 1721. It is an oil painting on canvas and is part of the collection of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, where its catalogue number is 468.

In an imaginary garden, two actors dance a pas de deux in the company of revelers who form a semicircle around them. The costumes of the figures reveal that they are characters drawn from eighteenth-century Parisian theater. Antoine Watteau may have been inspired by a comic opera about the Roman gods Cupid and Bacchus, depicted here clinking glasses at the center of the painting.

There were relatively few works by French artists included among the “202,” but key works by Nicholas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and Antoine Watteau represented French painting of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The French Comedians and its pendant The Italian Comedians are among Watteau’s most famous paintings. Both were exhibited at every venue of the American tour, along with a third painting by Watteau, Company Outdoors (or Outdoor Festival).

Back to The Berlin Masterpieces in America     Back to the Audio Exhibition