He would fain begin
where that famous master Gerard Dow left off, and snatch, as it were
with a single stroke, what in him was the result of infinite
patience. It is the sign of this sort of promptitude that he values
solely in work of another. To my thinking there is a [36] kind of
greed or grasping in that humour; as if things were not to last very
long, and one must snatch opportunity. And often he succeeds. The
old Dutch painter cherished with a kind of piety his colours and
pencils. Antony Watteau, on the contrary, will hardly make any
preparations for his work at all, or even clean his palette, in the
dead-set he makes at improvisation. 'Tis the contrast perhaps
between the staid Dutch genius and the petulant, sparkling French
temper of this new era, into which he has thrown himself. Alas! it
is already apparent that the result also loses something of
longevity, of durability--the colours fading or changing, from the
first, somewhat rapidly, as Jean-Baptiste notes. 'Tis true, a mere
trifle alters or produces the expression. But then, on the other
hand, in pictures the whole effect of which lies in a kind of
harmony, the treachery of a single colour must needs involve the
failure of the whole to outlast the fleeting grace of those social
conjunctions it is meant to perpetuate. This is what has happened,
in part, to that portrait on the easel. Meantime, he has commanded
Jean-Baptiste to finish it; and so it must be.
October 1717.
Anthony Watteau is an excellent judge of literature, and I have been
reading (with infinite [37] surprise!) in my afternoon walks in the
little wood here, a new book he left behind him--a great favourite of
his; as it has been a favourite with large numbers in Paris.
Pages:
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