Figure 2.13 JeanAntoine Watteau: Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera, oil on canvas, 129 × 194 cm,
- Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Source: akgimages/Erich Lessing.Julie Anne Plax has argued (2000, 1, 33, 75, 81–82) that Watteau often subtly subverted the conventions
of history painting in a way that would have been meaningful, but not overtly political, to his aristocratic
clientele. Thomas Crow has shown (1985, 54–60) how Watteau’s combination of classical references
with those to popular street theatre and fairground culture, made his paintings fall outside any existing
generic categories. Watteau’s use of decorative grotesque and arabesque motifs included witty fairground
elements (such as “monkey business” or singeries) that enhanced the popular appeal of his works (Crow,
1985, 58–59). As discussed earlier the aristocratic or quasiaristocratic social groups represented by
Watteau were adapting, during the Regency, to a style of life that excluded them from older military roles
and required that they redefine their distinctiveness through their social and cultural comportment (Crow,
1985, 66). In terms of the growing trend for “naturalness,” Watteau’s works drew on contemporary
developments in women’s fashion, reflecting the vogue for looser, more private styles such as the
manteau (a loosefitting gown): a proliferation of seamstresses and fashion prints popularized this style
of dress, appropriate for a modern and evolving courtly lifestyle (Dejean, 2007, 32–47).
In Crozat’s social circle, which welcomed Watteau, prints of subjects by the artist and his imitators,
including Pater and de Troy, were very popular. An interest in “lower” genres existed, for this class of
buyers, alongside an everweakening interest in courtly, classical art. The costumes, gestures, actions
and narratives of “play” captured in Watteau’s paintings showed an elite social group indulging in self