Antoine Watteau
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few artists captured the ineffable beauty of leisure and longing quite like Jean-Antoine Watteau, the French Rococo master whose shimmering canvases defined an era of aristocratic reverie. Donald Posner's authoritative monograph presents a comprehensive account of Watteau's life and artistic output, tracing his remarkable ascent from a modest background in Valenciennes to the glittering heights of Parisian society, where he single-handedly invented the genre of the *fête galante* — dreamlike scenes of elegantly dressed figures at play in idyllic, sylvan settings. Posner argues with scholarly precision that Watteau's genius lay not merely in his technical mastery of drawing and color, but in his capacity to infuse scenes of pleasure with an undertow of melancholy — a tension that makes his work as psychologically resonant today as it was in the early eighteenth century. Richly illustrated and meticulously researched, this volume chronicles the full arc of Watteau's brief but blazing career, situating him within the broader currents of European painting while illuminating his singular, irreducible vision. For anyone seeking to understand how beauty and sorrow can coexist on a single canvas, Watteau's story offers no easy answers — only the spell of his art.
Author: Donald Posner
Format: Hardback
Published: 1984, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London
Genre: History of arts
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few artists captured the ineffable beauty of leisure and longing quite like Jean-Antoine Watteau, the French Rococo master whose shimmering canvases defined an era of aristocratic reverie. Donald Posner's authoritative monograph presents a comprehensive account of Watteau's life and artistic output, tracing his remarkable ascent from a modest background in Valenciennes to the glittering heights of Parisian society, where he single-handedly invented the genre of the *fête galante* — dreamlike scenes of elegantly dressed figures at play in idyllic, sylvan settings. Posner argues with scholarly precision that Watteau's genius lay not merely in his technical mastery of drawing and color, but in his capacity to infuse scenes of pleasure with an undertow of melancholy — a tension that makes his work as psychologically resonant today as it was in the early eighteenth century. Richly illustrated and meticulously researched, this volume chronicles the full arc of Watteau's brief but blazing career, situating him within the broader currents of European painting while illuminating his singular, irreducible vision. For anyone seeking to understand how beauty and sorrow can coexist on a single canvas, Watteau's story offers no easy answers — only the spell of his art.