The Dance

Three children have sat down in the open under a tree to make music. A small girl stands in front of them and seems to pause in the act of dancing. In the distance a village church can be seen. The age of the young dancer seems strangely indeterminate; not yet full grown, she nevertheless gives the impression of being remote from the world of children. As in almost all Watteau's pictures, there is a touch of sadness in this scene. A copper engraving of the painting by C. N. Cochin carries a marginal annotation, which begins with the words: 'Iris c'est de bonne heure avoir l'air à la danse . . .'.

The strangely statuesque quality of the girl, gazing towards the onlooker, recalls the painter's major work Gilles in the Louvre in Paris. Both pictures must have been painted in the closing years of the artist's life. Three preliminary sketches by Watteau of the group of seated children have survived (Musée Cognacq-Jay and A. Strölin Collection, Paris; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.). At one time the picture was mounted in a circular frame, traces of this being still visible on the canvas.

Until 1766 this picture formed part of the famous collection of the Amsterdam merchant Gerrit Braamkamp (1699-1771), from whom it may have been purchased on behalf of Frederick II. On the other hand, it is impossible to identify it with certainty among the Watteau paintings known to be in the Prussian palaces in the eighteenth century. In 1876 it was in the Berlin Palace, later in the New Palace in Potsdam. Even after the collapse of the German Empire, the picture remained in the possession of the Hohenzollerns but was later put in the hands of an art-dealer and was purchased in 1942 for the museum which Adolf Hitler had planned for Linz. It returned to Berlin in 1952 on loan from the German Federal Republic.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes): Gioacchino Rossini: La Danza