Antoine Watteau: The Melancholia of Pleasure

The beginning of the eighteenth century was a time of curious indecision. Men were losing faith in the old beliefs, yet were wary of placing themselves in the hands of politics and science. Most artists reflect in their work the insecurity of these times, but a few painters deliberately ignored it and invented pleasing fantasies which bore little relation to the world outside the studio. The French painter Antoine Watteau was fascinated by the world of the sophisticated Italian theater, the commedia dell'arte, and portrayed its characters in some of his major paintings. Harlequin and Columbine, the Doctor and Mezzetino, and all the other figures of the wistful theater of unrequited love, were good symbols for a time in which no men, and few women, seemed to be faithful.

Watteau, in many canvases now scattered throughout the world, pinpointed the glitter and heartlessness of his times - one reaction to an age of uncertainty. Ironically, in view of the artist's own poverty, he unwittingly created a fashion in high society for dressing 'à la Watteau' - after the style of characters in his paintings.