Provenance

Charles Lenglart (1740-1816), Lille

Félix Dehau, Lille (his sale: Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 23-24 April 1909, lot 161)

Sale: Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 22-23 February 1929, lot 114

Matthiesen Gallery, London, 1950

Private collection, Germany

Le Claire Kunst, Hamburg, 2018

Private collection, New York

Exhibitions

London, The Matthiesen Gallery, Catalogue of an Exhibition of French Master Drawings of the 18th Century, 1950, cat. no. 111 (as Louis-Joseph Watteau de Lille)

Literature

G. Maës, Les Watteau de Lille, Louis Watteau (1731-1798), François Watteau (1758-1823), Paris, 1998, p. 444, cat. no. FD 147, illustrated

Drawn circa 1785-90

Contemporary fashion was a favored subject for François Watteau. Unlike the group of 118 small-scale graphite drawings of elegantly dressed men and women which the artist made between 1783 and 1786 in preparation for the plates in the first-ever fashion periodical, the Gallerie des modes et costumes français, the present sheet is one of a handful of similarly sized large format drawings in black and white chalk on blue or beige paper of seated women in fashionable dress which Watteau drew c. 1780-90.¹ It can be compared most closely to Femme assise vue de trois quarts face, tournée vers la gauche, c. 1785-90 (fix. X; Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Inv. Pl. 1711).² 

While large in scale, measuring approximately 21 by 15 inches, and executed with great vigor and confidence, drawings from this group are not grand, formal portraits, but rather highly finished genre depictions of contemporary women, all from the same comfortable socio-economic strata, shown in the stylish attire of their day.  The sitter in our sheet, like that in the drawing in Lille, wears a “robe à la Polonaise,” a kind of dress much in vogue in the last decades of the eighteenth century.  These drawings appear to have been made not for the art or fashion market, but as independent works for the artist’s own pleasure, and are characterized by a corresponding informality, by a sense of familiarity between the artist and his models.  The sitter in our sheet, looking directly at the viewer, raises her left hand to shield her eyes from the light – a perfectly natural and commonplace gesture.  The sitter in the drawing in Lille holds her left hand to her face, as if caught in a moment of quiet contemplation.  There is nothing extraneous here, just close-up observation by Watteau of his sitters, possibly family members given the sense of intimacy (in addition to his wife, the artist had six sisters and several nieces),³ and their à la mode attire.  Fashionable contemporary dress is the real subject of these sheets, captured to great effect by the artist in his virtuoso handling of black and white chalk.  These are personal fashion plates, on a scale and to a degree of finish not seen in the rest of Watteau’s oeuvre.

François Watteau and his father, Louis Watteau (1731-1798), were two of the leading artists in Lille and the Lillois region in northeastern France, near the Belgian border, in the second half of the eighteenth century.  François studied initially with his father, who was a nephew of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and a professor at the Ecole de Dessin de Lille, before continuing his studies in Paris at the Académie Royale, under the tutelage of Louis-Jacques Durameau (1733-1796), between 1775 and 1782.  He remained in Paris from 1783 to 1786, during which time he supported himself by making small-scale graphite drawings preparatory for the Gallerie des modes et costumes français, the Parisian fashion periodical founded in 1778 by Esnault and Rapilly, and in publication until 1787.  Other artists involved in the project included Claude-Louis Desrais (1746-1816), Pierre-Thomas Leclerc (1740-1799), J. B. Martin (active mid to late 18th century), and Augustin de Saint-Aubin (1736-1807).⁴ Of the 445 finished plates for the Gallerie, François Watteau produced 118 preparatory drawings.⁵  He returned to Lille in 1786, where he took his father’s position as a teacher at the Ecole de Dessin de Lille, and painted fêtes galantes, military subjects, and portraits.  He is better known today, however, for his drawn oeuvre, the vast majority of which concerns French contemporary fashion.  Our drawing, and the comparable sheet in Lille, were originally owned by Charles Lenglart, a Lillois amateur artist, collector, and patron of both François Watteau and his father.