"Watteau" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sprinkling of fashion to town that day, and it was a fashion to astonish me. There were fine gentlemen with swords and silk waistcoats and silver shoe-buckles, and ladies in filmy summer gowns. Greuze ruled the mode in France then, but New Orleans had not got beyond Watteau. As for Nick and me, we knew nothing of Greuze and Watteau then, and we could only stare in astonishment. And for once we saw an officer of the Louisiana Regiment resplendent in a uniform that might have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Duran that was—now one of our most dashing—I should say, charitable, ladies. Plenty of men at Service's church now. She's dressed in Watteau-fashion to-night, so if you see any one skipping around, looking as though she had just stepped from the Embarkation for the Island of Venus, set her down for the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... (1684-1721) was the first to practise a new style of painting. The habit of the French court was to pass much time in elegant out-door amusements. Watteau represented the scenes of the fetes galantes and reunions then so much in fashion. His pictures are crowded with figures in beautiful costumes. There are groups of ladies and gentlemen promenading, dancing, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... court, and we find the instrument fully developed at the beginning of the 17th century when Mersenne[18] gives a full description of all its parts. The chief characteristic of the musette was a certain rustic Watteau-like grace. The face of the performer was no longer distorted by inflating the bag; for the long cumbersome drones was substituted a short barrel droner, containing the necessary lengths of tubing for four or five drones, reduced to the smallest and most compact form. The bores were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the sunshine as it falls; the purple heath, the luxuriant ferns. There is 'une recolte magnifique' this year, and the people have but one thought—'the gathering in;' the country presents to us a picture—not like Watteau's 'fetes galantes,' but rather that ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... months from that eventful date the gas-light of the Canadian Senate Chamber was falling upon my white brocaded Watteau train, as I advanced towards the throne where our courteous Governors stand every winter, with a patience and forbearance worthy of a better cause. An officer in glistening regimentals looked at my ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... vase, the exterior of which exactly resembled the Pompeian designs, elegant scrolls, delicate tracery of blue, red, green, &c. These colours strongly opposed as in the remains of paintings at Pompeii. Here are some other precious little pictures, a small Gerard Dow, a Watteau, a Moucheron, and a Polemberg. He merely noticed them, and then led us ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... thought it good taste to admire the rustic and naive. The idyls of Gessner and the pastorals of Florian were the favorite reading, and Watteau the popular painter. Gentlefolks, steeped in artifice, vice, and intrigue, masked their empty lives under the as sumption of Arcadian simplicity, and minced and ambled in the costumes of shepherds and shepherdesses. Marie Antoinette ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... marvelously, and neither made love to her in earnest nor flirted with her in jest. Indeed, Leam was too intense to be approached at any time with levity. As well dress the Tragic Muse in the costume of a Watteau shepherdess as ply Leam Dundas with the pretty follies found so useful with other women. She did not understand them, and it seemed useless to try to make her. If Edgar paid her any of the trivial compliments always on his lips for women, Leam used to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... those limited subjects and peculiar forms, they introduce more or less of the expression of those passions, as they appear in general and more enlarged nature. This principle may be applied to the battle pieces of Bourgognone, the French gallantries of Watteau, and even beyond the exhibition of animal life, to the landscapes of Claude Lorraine, and the sea-views of Vandervelde. All these painters have, in general, the same right, in different degrees, to the name of a painter, which a satirist, an epigrammatist, a sonnetteer, a writer ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... theatre and the opera. We can easily realise the excitement and joy Balzac felt in showing them all his treasures—the bust by David D'Angers, the precious Medici furniture of ebony encrusted with mother-of-pearl, the Cellini statuettes, and the pictures by Giorgione, Palma, Watteau, and Greuze. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... was lying, gazing up at what, surprisingly, seemed to be a ceiling festooned with garlands of roses and painted with ladies and cavaliers, idling about a stretch of greensward, decidedly in the Watteau style. Where was I? What had happened to make me feel so helpless? It reminded me of an episode of my childhood, a day when my pony had fallen and rolled upon me, and I had been carried home with two crushed ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... also written: "When the forehead alone contains the existence of a man, that man is enlightened only from above his head; then his jealous shadow, prostrate under him, draws him by the feet, that it may drag him down into the invisible." Like Watteau, Laforgue was "condemned" from the beginning to "a green thought in a green shade." The spirit in him, the "shadow," devoured his soul, pulverised his will, made of him a Hamlet without a propelling cause, a doubter in a world ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the floor on whose long unpolished surface sprawled two magnificent white bear skins. But with these furnishings the elegance ended, for nowhere in the cottage were to be found such curious, mocking contrasts. The walls, which should have displayed wanton Watteau cherubs, were bare, clean grey; instead of a satin coverlet a patchwork quilt covered the fluted bed; no scented glass and ivory and silver-stoppered armoury of beauty crowded the dressing-table, only ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... ornamented grounds, and with its white walls, its lofty cupola, and high, square portico, presents a properly imposing appearance. There are signs of social life about the mansion befitting its own style of conscious superiority. In the wide arched entrance hall stands a high-born dame attired in gay Watteau costume—red-heeled slippers, brocaded petticoat, and bodice and train of puce-colored satin. She is receiving the adieux of an elegant gentleman, hatted, booted, and spurred, who, with whip in hand and dog by his side, is ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... obtained an entrance when far under the age permitted by the rules; there he would sit for an hour before some chosen picture, and in later years he could recall the "wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob's vision," the Giorgione music-lesson, the "triumphant Murillo pictures," "such a Watteau," and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Greatson," he said abstractedly, "do not want the real thing—from you. Every man to his metier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds are for the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... place Murillo in the first class of painters, founding his claim upon these Virgin altar-pieces, I am your humble servant. Tom Moore painted altar-pieces as well as Milton, and warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of the Angels after his fashion. I wonder did Watteau ever try historical subjects? And as for Greuze, you know that his heads will fetch 1,000L., 1,500L., 2,000L.—as much as a Sevres "cabaret" of Rose du Barri. If cost price is to be your criterion of worth, what shall we say to that little receipt for 10L. for the copyright of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... betokening perhaps a storm not far distant. Children were in the wood of Dunderave—ruddy, shy children, gathering nuts and blackberries, with merriment haunting the landscape as it were in a picture by Watteau or a tale of the classics, where such figures happily move for ever and for ever in the right golden glamour. Little elves they seemed to Count Victor as he came upon them over an eminence, and saw them for the first time through the trees under tall oaks and pines, among whose pillars they moved ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Terrace. All its equipments were sumptuous and refined, and everything had been arranged under the personal supervision of Mr. Waldershare. They commenced very quietly; dinners little but constant, and graceful and finished as a banquet of Watteau. No formal invitations; men were brought in to dinner from the House of Lords "just up," or picked up, as it were carelessly, in the House of Commons by Mr. Waldershare, or were asked by Imogene, at a dozen hours' notice, in billets of irresistible ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... down on the bench in the third room, opposite the colonnade by Watteau, to which his thoughts frequently went, while telling her how, when cruising among the Greek Islands, he had often seen her, sometimes sitting in the music-room playing the virginal, sometimes walking in the ornamental park under a wet, grey ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... of their time, sharing and interpreting the ideals of those around them, and were recognized and patronized as such. Rembrandt's greatest contemporary, Rubens, was painter in ordinary to half the courts of Europe, and Velazquez was the friend and companion of his king. Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard painted for the frivolous nobility of the eighteenth century just what that nobility wanted, and even the precursors of the Revolution, sober and honest Chardin, Greuze the sentimental, had no difficulty in making themselves understood, until ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... there was a greater sense of personal and individual creation. One can never quite think of anyone in connection with her pictures other than the happy reminiscence of Watteau. With her work comes charm in the highest, finest sense; there is nothing trivial about her pictures, yet they abound in all the graces of the 18th Century. Her drawings and paintings with spread fans and now and then a greyhound ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... truth? Apocryphal is, no doubt, that which has evolved itself from the internal evidence supplied by the Baptism of Christ of Verrocchio and Leonardo da Vinci; but a stronger substructure of fact supports the unpleasing anecdotes as to Titian and Tintoretto, as to Watteau and Pater, as to our own Hudson and Reynolds, and, alas! as to very many others. How touching, on the other hand, is that simple entry in Francesco Francia's day-book, made when his chief journeyman, Timoteo Viti, ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... etching after a drawing by Watteau (plate 216 in Jean de Julienne's compilation of Watteau's work, Figures ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... disappeared and caprice took its place,' says Falke. Coquetry too. All the artistic output of the time bears this stamp, painting included. Watteau's scenery and people were unnatural and affected—mere inventions to suit the gallant fetes. But he knew and loved Nature, though he saw her with the intoxicated eye of a lover who forgets the individual but keeps a glorified impression of her beauty, whereas Boucher's rosy-blue ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... fat body, asleep in a chair in the Professor's room, that his spirit treasured such delicate, nymph-like, pastoral memories as now shone clear to Rodriguez. No words the blunt man had ever been able to utter had ever hinted that he sometimes thought like a dream of pictures by Watteau. And now in that awful space before the power of the terrible Sun, spirit communed with spirit, and Rodriguez saw the beauty of that far day, framed all about the beauty of one young girl, just as it had been for years in Morano's memory. How shall I tell with ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... But our fashion was not that of Belgravia or Mayfair, which, indeed, we scorned! It was the fashion of the movement which sprang from Morris and Burne-Jones. Liberty stuffs very plain in line, but elaborately "smocked," were greatly in vogue, and evening dresses, "cut square," or with "Watteau pleats," were generally worn, and often in conscious protest against the London "low dress," which Oxford—young married Oxford—thought both ugly and "fast." And when we had donned our Liberty gowns we went out to dinner, the husband walking, the wife in a bath chair, drawn by ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it; the tumbling masses of her dark hair as contrasted with her general lightness and slenderness; the red of the lips, the whiteness of the hands and brow, the dainty irregularity of feature: these things made a Watteau sketch of her, all pure colour and lissomeness, with dots and scratches of intense black. Daphne was much handsomer than she had been as a girl, but also a trifle less refined. All her points were intensified—her eyes had more flame; the damask of her cheek was deeper; her grace was wilder, her ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... down at her and realised once more the dainty Watteau—like grace of her oval face and slim, supple figure. He thought of the days when they had stolen out together on to the hillside, oftenest in the falling twilight, sometimes even in the grey dawn, and his heart beat regretfully. How was it that in those days he had never more fully ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... chevalier tore off the bandage. He was alone in the most marvelous boudoir possible to imagine. It was small and octagonal, hung with lilac and silver, with furniture and portieres of tapestry. Buhl tables, covered with splendid china; a Persian carpet, and the ceiling painted by Watteau, who was then coming into fashion. At this sight, the chevalier found it difficult to believe that he had been summoned on grave matters, and almost ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to give anything else. But the boy contrived to support his mother and sister. That fellow, who is now as arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy shops, and imitate Watteau on fans. I have two hand-screens that he painted for a shop in Rathbone Place. I suppose he may have got ten shillings for them, and now any admirer of Frank's would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... buried in the cemetery attached in 1727, his tomb, it is pretended, had certain convulsions in 1730, and was the origin of the sect called convulsionists, and the scenes which occurred caused the cemetery to be closed in 1732. A picture of St. Genenieve, by Watteau, in the chapel of that saint, must be admired, having much merit. In the Rue de l'Oursine, No. 95, is an hospital which is a refuge for sinning and afflicted females (something in the nature of the Magdalen, in London), containing 300 beds. To the fountain of ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... their leaves, and things. Have you ever seen such sumptuous foliage? And the greensward, and the shadows, and the sunlight, and the atmosphere, and the mistiness—isn't it like pearl-dust and gold-dust floating in the air? It's all got up to imitate the background of a Watteau. We must do our best to be frivolous and ribald, and supply a proper foreground. How big and fleecy and white the clouds are. Do you think they're made of cotton-wood? And what do you suppose they paint the sky with? There ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... in the famous old Philipse house,—Washington's headquarters,—in the town of Yonkers. The fireplaces, worthy of the wide-throated central chimney, were bordered by pictured tiles, some of them with Scripture stories, some with Watteau-like figures,—tall damsels in slim waists and with spread enough of skirt for a modern ballroom, with bowing, reclining, or musical swains of what everybody calls the "conventional" sort,—that is, the swain adapted to genteel society rather than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... raw credulity prevail, Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things, That serve at once for jackets and for wings. Age, that enfeebles other men's designs, But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines. In several ways distinct you make us feel— Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel. Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise; And warmly wish ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the whole was given to the celebrated artist Philibert Delorme. In 1630 the Gobelins was fully established as a larger plant, and has never made another move. The work has increased ever since those days, on much the same general lines. Celebrated French artists have designed tapestries: Watteau, Boucher, and others were interpreted by the brilliant manager whose signature appears on the works, Cozette, who was manager from 1736 until 1792. With this technical perfection came the death of the art of tapestry: the pictures might as well have been painted on canvas, and all ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... brocades from a chest in the garret, the dowager Marquise of the proverb just played. And a little further, in the shadow of the doorway, stood Angelot in powdered wig, silk coat, and sword, looking like a handsome courtier from a group by Watteau, and his eyes showed plainly enough what woman, if not what cause, attracted him at the moment. As to causes, Monsieur Joseph and the Vicomte des Barres were deep in talk close by; two Chouans consulting in the very presence ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... his friend. "Well, then, what do you say to fauns and dryads?" "Who in Paris cares for fauns and dryads?" "What shall I do, then?" said Millet in despair. "What does the public like?" "It likes Boucher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. He would not appeal to his family, life was as difficult for them as for him. But before yielding he would make one more trial, painting something from his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... red brick is very pleasing." Here the Emperor's father, Frederick III, was born, lived as Crown Prince, reigned for ninety-nine days, and died. Here, too, are more "apartments of Frederick the Great," with pictures by Rubens, including an "Adoration of the Magi," a good example of Watteau and a portrait of Voltaire drawn by Frederick's own hand. In the north wing are situated the present Emperor's suite of chambers, where distinguished men of all countries have discussed almost every conceivable topic, political, social, religious, martial, artistic, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... couple of Sevres candlesticks; a painted Chinese screen, all pagodas and parrots; two portraits of patched and powdered beauties in the Watteau style; and a queer old clock surmounted by a gilt Cupid in a chariot drawn by doves. If these failed to make him happy, thought I, he must indeed be ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... throws its joyous light on the carefully polished floor; nothing can be more cheerful than the old fashioned chintz hangings and curtains with red Chinese figures upon a white ground, and the panels over the door painted with pastoral scenes in the style of Watteau. A clock of Sevres china, and rosewood furniture inlaid with green—quaint and portly furniture, twisted into all sorts of grotesque shapes—complete the decorations ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... elegant, well clad, and for the most part languorously calm, was in a state of excitement quite without her customary aplomb. She sank into a seat, fanning herself with a vigor which threatened ruin to the precious slats of a fan which bore the handiwork of Watteau. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... a genius of the highest rank, although he had the distinction that great genius nearly always achieves, of creating a school that produced many imitators and established a place apart for itself in the world's estimation. In ballad writing he did for the United States what Watteau did for painting in France. As Watteau found a Flemish school in France and left a French school stamped forever, so Foster found the United States a home for imitations of English, Irish, German and Italian songs, and left a native ballad form and melodic strain forever impressed ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Diderot into rapture.[27] Every one knows all that can be said against the French paintings of Diderot's time. They are executed hastily and at random; they abound in technical defects of colour, of drawing, of composition; their feeling is light and shallow. Watteau died in 1721—at the same premature age as Raphael,—but he remained as the dominating spirit of French art through the eighteenth century. Of course the artists went to Rome, but they changed sky and not spirit. The pupils of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... of faction fights. Pallas is in the midst of the Golden Vale, a deliciously pastoral country, admirably fitted on such a glorious spring-like morning as that of yesterday for the sports of shepherds and shepherdesses as Watteau and Lancret loved to limn. But the first object which catches the eye in Pallas is not a bower of ribbons and roses, but a stiff-looking police barrack. Close at hand is the railway station, another unlovely edifice, and lounging about ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... was she who had pleaded most for the preservation of the empire grand piano. The one in the gold case with all the Watteau figures and garlands painted on it, that had been saved as one of the "white hyacinths" from the old home. After the day's work was over, it was always Helen who stole into the dim front room to listen while her mother ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... portrait-painter. He presents his portraits in bal masqu['e], not always suggestive either of the rank or character of the person represented. There is about the same analogy between Watteau and Reynolds as between Claude ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... selecting the costumes that she wishes a few particular friends to don, sufficient in number to form one or more quadrilles to open the ball. Each set must be carefully arranged as for instance, a court party, costumed after the time of Louis XIV. A group of Watteau Shepherds and shepherdesses, or a hunting party garbed after any chosen ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... pink corded silk swished disdainfully about, its Watteau pleat flashed out of sight through the door-day, and that portal was slammed in the speaker's face. The mover of multitudes found himself alone in the darkened hall, snubbed and wrathful. Cary's room was just above, and the tutor smiled ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... surplice? and what on earth shall I do with my hands? they're so black they will cast a gloom over the stage. Perhaps I can wrap my handkerchief carelessly round one, and I'll keep the other round your waist, considerable, tucked under your Watteau ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with 125,000 volumes and 3600 MSS., in a large hall, with windows composed of curiously-painted panelled panes. Among the illuminated books are a Bible of St. Bernard and St. Paul's Epistles, 12th century. In the same building are the Museum, or picture gallery, with paintings by Watteau, Coypel, Mignard, etc.; [Headnote: SALLE SIMARD.] and the Salle Simard, containing a valuable collection of the Models made by Simard for his statues and works in relief. Also some statuary by Girardon, and other French sculptors. The museum is open to the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... arbour-walks of this enchanting wilderness, that its beauty had been enhanced even by this very neglect. It seemed like a forest in a beautiful romance; a green and bowery wilderness where Boccaccio would have loved to woo, and Watteau to paint. So artfully had the walks been planned, that they seemed interminable, nor was there a single point in the whole pleasaunce where the keenest eye could have detected a limit. Sometimes you wandered in those arched and winding walks dear to pensive spirits; ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli |
