The French Comedy

In 1734 the French Comedy and the Italian Comedy were reproduced as copper engravings by C. N. Cochin. He named them respectively 'L'Amour au théâtre français' and 'L'Amour au théâtre italien', thus making the artist's intentions clear.

A shepherd and shepherdess in a park, surrounded by a company of people, form the focal point of the French Comedy. Bacchus is reclining on a stone bench, drinking to a huntsman, while musicians provide music for the dance. One must not assume that Watteau had any particular play in mind; he was probably aiming to portray the various characters of the Comedy. This does not mean that he never depicted real people or happenings; at all events he will have taken for granted that the observer or his patron would be able to recognize such details. The gentleman in black on the right is in all probability the well-known actor Paul Poisson.

The theatre plays an important part in Watteau's art. His teacher Gillot, with whom the twenty-year-old Flemish-born painter began his work in Paris, appears to have encouraged this interest in the theatre. Watteau's most famous portrait, the Gilles in the Louvre, is the portrayal of a stage character. Stage-play and reality are strangely interwoven, as they are also in his pictures of social occasions, the fêtes galantes, which Watteau originated and executed with such artistry. These gained for him recognition by the French Academy.

There is documentary evidence to show that, from 1769 onwards, this painting and its counterpart, the Italian Comedy, were in the picture gallery at Sanssouci, having previously formed part of the Henri de Rosnel Collection. The founders of the Berlin Museum, however, steeped as they were in the tradition of Goethe and Winckelmann, had no time for Watteau's art, despising its frivolity. The outstanding collection of the works of French painters that Frederick the Great had built up in Potsdam remained almost untouched when pictures were selected for the Berlin Gallery in 1830. Only two paintings by Watteau, which happened to be the smallest, met with the Commission's approval and were accepted for the Museum: The French Comedy and The Italian Comedy. The Enseigne de Gersaint, at that time only a few steps away in the Berlin Palace, was completely ignored.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 8 minutes): Marin Marais: La sonnerie de Sainte Genevieve du Mont