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The Love Lesson (Antoine Watteau) - Nationalmuseum - 22065
Summary
In Antoine Watteau’s painting The Love Lesson, a group of young people are sitting by a marble statue of a huddled nymph in a parkland setting. They are being entertained by a man with a Spanish guitar. One of the girls is breaking off roses and appears to strew petals over the group. The girl in the yellow dress has a notebook on her knee.
The Love Lesson is an example of a fête galante, a genre painting depicting a park landscape of sultry light and leafy greenery with people socialising together, a typical theme for the artist.
X-ray images show that Watteau painted The Love Lesson on a coach door bearing a coat of arms with two unicorns and the crown of a marquis.
Nationalmuseum acquired the work in 1953 by means of fundraising, donations from the Friends of Nationalmuseum and money from the museum’s funds. Svenska: I Antoine Watteaus målning Kärlekslektionen sitter en grupp unga människor intill en staty —en uppkrupen nymf i marmor— i ett parklandskap. De låter sig underhållas av mannen med den spanska gitarren. En av flickorna bryter en ros och liksom strör den över sällskapet. Flickan i den gula klänningen har ett nothäfte i knäet.
Kärlekslektionen är en så kallad fête galante, en genremålning föreställande ett parklandskap med dovt ljus och lummig grönska med människor som umgås – ett motiv typisk för konstnären. Röntgenbilder visar att Watteau målat Kärlekslektionen på en karossdörr, med en vapensköld, två enhörningar och krönt av en markiskrona. Nationalmuseum köpte målningen 1953 dels genom en insamling, dels genom bidrag från Nationalmuseums vänner och med medel från museets fonder.
Antoine Watteau (1684—1721) was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement (in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens), and revitalized the waning Baroque idiom, which eventually became known as Rococo. He is credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes: scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with an air of theatricality. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet. Watteau was born in the Flemish town of Valenciennes, which had just been annexed by the French king Louis XIV. His father was a master tiler of Flemish descent. Showing an early interest in painting, he was apprenticed to Jacques-Albert Gérin, a local painter. Having little to learn from Gérin, Watteau left for Paris in about 1702. There he found employment in a workshop at Pont Notre-Dame, making copies of popular genre paintings in the Flemish and Dutch tradition; it was in that period that he developed his characteristic sketchlike technique.
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