Visit to the Roayal Academy to see the Drawings of Jean-Antoine Watteau

Study of a woman from behind Jean-Antoine Watteau ( Bridgeman education Library)

20/4/11 I went to the Royal Academy to see the Drawingsof Jean-Antoine Watteau. Knowing very little about Watteau I was totally fasinated by his free style of drawing. The fact that most sketches were done with chalk chiselled to the finest point for the delicate work he did was amazing. The usuage of red, black and in his later work white chalk is so pelasing to the eye. The tonal values are subtle around facial features but showing all the expression and emotion.
His work is lively and unposed and even a sitting or lying subject is not inert.
The freedom of his strokes and confidence in his sketches is due to the practise in the amount of studies
Jean-Antoine Watteau 1684-1721 (Watteau The Drawings byPierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat with a contribution by Martin Eidelberg Copyright 2011 Royal Academy of Arts)
He was born In Valenciennes on 10th October and his parents came from a modest background of roofers and carpenters. Very little is known about his earliest apprenticeship but he worked through the studio of Guerin. He was 18yrs old when he came to Paris 1702 and by 1703 he was working for a picture dealer named Etienne Desrais in his shop situated on the Pont Notre-Dame. In 1712 he was accetped in the Academie Royale dePeinture et de Sculpture where he presented several paintings. In 1719 he left for London to see Dr Richard Meade as he had tuberculosis and in 1721 he died in Nogent-sur-Marne, near Paris.