The Italian Comedians

probably 1720

Antoine Watteau

Artist, French, 1684 - 1721

A man wearing loose, ivory-white clothing stands flanked by two groups of people in this horizontal painting. All the people have pale or peachy skin except for one person, who may have a brown mask. The man in the center, representing the character Pierrot, stands facing us with his hands by his sides. He has slightly bulging eyes, a bulbous nose, ruddy cheeks, and his full pink lips slightly smile. He wears a straw hat pushed back on his high forehead and a narrow ruffled collar around his neck. His shirt has long, voluminous sleeves and a row of small white buttons down the front. The pants are baggy and end abruptly above his white-stockinged ankles over white slippers. The fabric seems to have a sheen. In the shallow space behind him, a stone wall curves toward us to either side of a doorway that leads to a park-like setting. A crimson-red curtain is pulled to our right. Pierrot stands on the top of two steps, and the people to either side are arranged along the stage or the step that runs close to the bottom edge of the canvas. A spray of white flowers drapes down the front of the steps to our right of center. The group to our left has eight men, women, and children. Closest to us and in the lower left corner, a young man wearing a tomato-red jester’s costume trimmed with bells sits on the steps as he twists and looks back at the scene behind him. He holds a scepter or puppet in the shape of a doll-like jester. Two children gather at his feet. One weaves stems of white flowers together, and the other looks at us, smiling. Just above them another cleanshaven young man sits holding a lute in his lap. He wears a brick-red coat, brown breeches, and slate-blue stockings over crossed legs. He leans back and looks up and to our left, his round cheeks flushed. At the back of this group, two people wear tan-colored costumes covered in muted green and pink diamond shapes, and one might wear a brown mask. That person’s pink lips, black mustache and eyebrows, and black dots for eyes appear painted onto a hard, molded surface. The group of six people to our right stand on the same level as Pierrot. At the front of that group, a heavyset young man wears a gold-colored costume trimmed with black and a waist-length, Wedgewood-blue cape. He faces us but looks to our right as he leans back with one arm extended toward Pierrot. Beyond him are two woman and another person shown only from the neck up. The woman closest to Pierrot wears a pewter-gray gown with a scooped neckline. To the right of the man in gold is an old man with a long beard, wearing a black skullcap and cloak. He leans on a short staff and turns his head to look at the group. The last person on the far right is shown from the neck up and stands before the red curtain hanging from the upper right.

Media Options

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A troupe of actors gathers on stage to take a bow. They are dressed as stock characters from the commedia dell’arte, a form of slapstick theater popular in 18th-century France. All of the performers continue to play their parts, interacting and gesturing expressively — except Pierrot, the lovesick clown at the center. Dressed in shining white, he stands still, smiling slightly, his eyes unfocused. We can’t read his expression. An actor refusing to act, he is a mystery. Watteau was fascinated by the fuzzy boundary between life and theater, reality and performance. Pierrot invites us to consider who we become when we step outside our assigned roles.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 54

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 63.8 × 76.2 cm (25 1/8 × 30 in.)
    framed: 94.62 × 107 × 13.65 cm (37 1/4 × 42 1/8 × 5 3/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1946.7.9

More About this Artwork

A young woman draws on an oval surface with white chalk while three winged, baby-like putti gather nearby, all on a bank of pale pink clouds in this horizontal painting. The woman and putti have pale, rosy skin, flushed cheeks, and hazel-brown eyes. To our left, the woman reclines with her upper body propped up on her far elbow, which rests on a steel-blue cushion as her legs stretch out to our right. Her light brown hair is braided and wrapped across the top of her head. She wears a loose, seafoam-green robe over a billowing ivory-white garment that has slipped off the shoulder closer to us. A round paint palette with brushes sticking out of its thumb hole and a roll of blue and white paper sit in the lower left corner, behind the woman. The woman and the objects are on a red cloth. In front of the woman is a rounded surface, perhaps a canvas, on which she draws. She holds up a gold-colored stylus with her right hand, closer to us, with a pointed piece of white chalk in one end and black chalk in the other. The canvas is taller than her head, so the child-like putto she draws on it is life-sized. The three nude putti on the far side of the canvas have copper or golden-blond, curly hair, flushed, rounded cheeks, short wings in white or peacock blue, pudgy torsos, and dimpled limbs. One putto, presumably the one the woman draws, sits back on the bank of clouds with a carnation-pink sash across his chest. He pulls his chin back and looks at her from under his eyebrows. He holds a gold-colored torch with a pink flame in one hand, and the other hand rests near a cylindrical quiver of arrows. Another putto peeks around the side of the canvas, and the third stands and props the canvas up. That third putto holds up a wreath of laurel leaves up over the canvas, above the woman’s drawing hand. The bank of clouds is parchment-brown with muted pink and blue highlights against a vivid blue sky. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “F Boucher – 1765.”

Scholarly Series:  French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries

Scholarly Article:  French Paintings of the Fifteenth through Eighteenth Centuries: The Italian Comedians, probably 1720

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Possibly commissioned by Dr. Richard Mead [1673-1754], London; (his estate sale, Langford, London, 20-22 March 1754, 3rd day, no. 43, paired with no. 42, A Pastoral Conversation); Alderman William Beckford [1709-1770], London and Fonthill, Wiltshire, or his brother, Richard Beckford [d. 1756], London.[1] Roger Harenc [d. 1763], London;[2] (his estate sale, Langford, London, 1-3 March 1764, 3rd day, no. 52, a pair with A Musical Conversation [each day's lots begin with no. 1]); Augustus Henry, 3rd duke of Grafton [1735-1811], Euston Hall and London. acquired between 1851 and 1856 by Thomas Baring [1799-1873];[3] by inheritance to his nephew, Thomas George Baring, 1st earl of Northbrook [1826-1904], London; (Asher Wertheimer, London); purchased June 1888 by (Thos. Agnew and Sons, Ltd., London); sold the same month to Sir Edward Cecil Guinness [later 1st earl of Iveagh, 1847-1927], Dublin, London, Cowes, and Elveden Hall, Suffolk;[4] by inheritance to his third son, Walter Edward Guinness, 1st baron Moyne [1880-1944], London; purchased 18 February 1930 by (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London).[5] Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza [1875-1947], Schloss Rohoncz, Rechnitz, Hungary, and Amsterdam, by July 1930.[6] (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London), by December 1936; purchased 23 November 1942 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1946 to NGA.
[1] See Robert Raines, "Watteau and 'Watteaus' in England before 1760," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 51 (February 1977): 62, for a discussion of which Beckford might have purchased the painting. William was his brother Richard's heir, and although William always resided in England, Richard lived mostly on the family's plantations in Jamaica. He only lived in London from late 1754 until late the next year, and he died in France early in 1756. If Richard owned the painting, it might possibly have been part of the "useful and ornamental furnishings" of his London house that were sold by his executors in April 1756 to Sir James Colebrooke, whose name is sometimes included in the provenance. See F.H.W. Sheppard, Survey of London, vol. 33, The Parish of St. Anne Soho, London, 1966: 89, for details about ownership of the house by Beckford and subsequent purchasers.
[2] Sometimes spelled "Harene." The title page of the 1764 sale catalogue clearly spells the name with a final "c." If this is the same Roger Harenc whose daughter, Susanna Mary Harenc, married Sir Archibald Edmonstone, 1st baronet Edmonstone, Harenc appears to have been born in Paris, came to England in the early 1720s, married an Englishwoman, and prospered in business. He is recorded as the buyer of Watteau paintings in sales in England in the 1740s and 1750s.
[3] Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of More than Forty Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Mss., etc. etc. visited in 1854 and 1956, and now for the first time described, London, 1957: 96-97, records additions to the Baring collection since his visit in 1851.
[4] See Richard Kingzett of Agnew, letter to Colin Eisler, 21 November 1968, NGA curatorial files: "[W]e bought the picture from the famous dealer, Wertheimer, in 1888 and sold it to Lord Iveagh in the same year. No provenance is given in our entry for the picture." Later references identify the Wertheimer as Asher, rather than his brother Charles, who was also an art dealer. The date of the Agnew sale to Lord Iveagh is in Julius Bryant, Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest, New Haven and London, 2003: 416. The Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd. Archive was acquired in 2014 by the National Gallery Archive, London, and the picture stock books have since been digitized and made available on-line. The Watteau is recorded on page 90 of the stock book for 1885-1891 (reference number NGA27/1/1/7); copy in NGA curatorial files.
[5] This information is in Wildenstein records, and was kindly shared with the NGA by Ay-Whang Hsia of Wildenstein via a copy of her 5 November 2008 e-mail to Katharine Baetjer (copy in NGA curatorial files).
Colin Eisler (_Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian_, Oxford, 1977: 304 and n. 48), on the basis of a remark in René Gimpel, _Journal d'un collectionneur, marchand de tableaux_, Paris, 1963: 275, assumed the painting was with Wildenstein in 1924. However, this was discounted by Joseph Baillio of Wildenstein, who instead interpreted the remark to indicate that Nathan Wildenstein was simply asking Gimpel for his help in acquiring the painting (see _A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Samuel H. Kress Collection_, Exh. cat. North Carolina Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Seattle Art Museum; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; New York, 1994: 210 n. 3). The provenance supplied by Wildenstein to the Kress Foundation in 1942 (NGA curatorial files) incorrectly lists Walter Guinness and Lord Moyne as separate individuals and places the Thyssen-Bornemisza ownership between them, but it does not indicate the company had the painting more than once.

[6] The painting was in an exhibition of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection that opened in July 1930. However, Wildenstein has no record of exactly when between February and July 1930 ownership of the painting changed hands (see Ay-Whang Hsia's e-mail of 5 November 2008; copy in NGA curatorial files).
[7] Wildenstein records provide the date by which the painting was with their New York office, and the sale date to the Kress Foundation (see Ay-Whang Hsia's e-mail of 5 November 2008; copy in NGA curatorial files). See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1130.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1871

  • Exhibition of Works by the Old Masters. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1871, no. 176, as Pierrot: a group.

1902

  • Selection of Works by French and English Painters of the Eighteenth Century, Art Gallery of the Corporation of London, 1902, no. 40.

1930

  • Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz, Neue Pinakothek, Munich, 1930, no. 348.

  • Loan for display with permanent collection, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1930-1931.

1932

  • Exhibition of French Art 1200-1900, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1932, no. 177, repro.

1946

  • Recent Additions to the Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1946, no. 774.

1980

  • Picasso: The Saltimbanques, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980, no. 1, fig. 1.

1984

  • Watteau 1684-1721, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, West Germany, 1984-1985, no. 71.

1992

  • From El Greco to Cézanne: Masterpieces of European Painting from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, National Gallery of Greece, Athens, 1992-1993, no. 26, repro.

1994

  • A Gift to America: Masterpieces of European Painting from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Seattle Art Museum; Calif. Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1994-1995, no. 36.

2004

  • The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown, Musée du Grand Palais, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2004, no. 1, repro.

2018

  • Rococo Rivals and Revivals, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, 2018-2019, no catalogue.

Bibliography

1733

  • Mercure de France (March 1733): 554.

1857

  • Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of more than Forty Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Mss., &c.&c., visited in 1854 and 1856, ..., forming a supplemental volume to the "Treasures of Art in Great Britain." London, 1857: 4: 96-97.

1875

  • Goncourt, Edmond de. Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau. Paris, 1875: 66, 67, no. 68.

1876

  • Walpole, Horace. Anecdotes of Painting in England... [1762-1771]. 4 vols. Rev. ed. London, 1876: 2:295.

1902

  • Staley, John Edgcumbe. Watteau and His School. London, 1902: 68, 147.

1929

  • Vertue, Goerge. "The Note Books of George Vertue Relating to Artists and Collections in England." Walpole Society 22 (1933-1934): 23.

1932

  • Wildenstein, Georges. "L'Exposition de l'art français a Londres: Le XVIIIe siècle." Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th ser., 7 (1932): repro.

1944

  • "Kress Makes Important Donation of French Painting to the Nation." Art Digest 18, no. 19 (1 August 1944): 5, repro.

  • "The Almanac: French Paintings Given to the National Gallery." The Magazine Antiques 46, no. 5 (November 1944): 288.

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 110, color repro. and cover.

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 78, no. 73, color repro.

  • Frankfurter, Alfred. "French Masterpieces for the National Gallery." Art News 42, no. 10 (August 1944): 10, 24, repro.

  • "One of the Greatest Donations of XVIIIth Century French Painting Ever Received by a Museum - The Kress Collection." Illustrated London News 115, no. 2992 (26 August 1944): 249, repro.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 158, repro.

1946

  • Favorite Paintings from the National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C.. New York, 1946: 51-54, color repro.

1948

  • Wildenstein and Company. French XVIII Century Paintings. New York, 1948: 4.

1950

  • Adhémar, Hélène and René Huyghe. Watteau, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1950:231, no. 211, repro. pl. 146.

1952

  • Panofsky, Dora. "Gilles or Pierrot? Iconographic Notes on Watteau." Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 39 (May 1952): 333-340, repro. fig. 9.

1956

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1956: 46, repro.

  • Einstein, Lewis. "Looking at French Eighteenth Century Pictures in Washington." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th ser., 47, no. 1048-1049 (May-June 1956): 217, repro.. fig. 3, 218, 220-221.

1959

  • Cooke, Hereward Lester. French Paintings of the 16th-18th Centuries in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number Four in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 26, color repro.

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 350, repro.

1961

  • Mirimonde, Albert Pomme de. "Les sujets musicaux chez Antoine Watteau." Gazette des Beaux-Arts ser. 6, 58 (November 1961): 272-276, 283, fig. 27.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 208, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 139.

1966

  • Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 2:302, color repro.

1967

  • Brookner, Anita. Watteau. Feltham, 1967: 8, 17, 18, 23, 40, repro. pl. 46.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 126, repro.

  • Gandolfo, Giampaolo et al. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Great Museums of the World. New York, 1968: 68-69, color repro.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 374, repro.

1977

  • Eisler, Colin. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools Excluding Italian. Oxford, 1977: 300-306, figs. 267-269.

  • Pope-Hennessy, John. "Completing the Account." Review of Colin Eisler, Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, London 1977. Times Literary Supplement no. 3927 (17 June 1977).

  • Raines, Robert. "Watteau and 'Watteaus' in England before 1760." _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ser. 6, no 51 (February 1977): 57, 62, no. 53.

1978

  • King, Marian. Adventures in Art: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1978: 66, pl. 38.

  • Chan, Victor. "Watteau's 'Les Comédians Italiens' Once More." Revue d'art canadien/Canadian Art Review 5, no. 2 (1978-1979): 107-112.

1981

  • Tomlinson, Robert. La fête gallante: Watteau et Marivaux. Geneva, 1981: 12 n. 18, repro. fig. 3b.

  • Sutton, Denys. "Aspects of British Collecting Part 1:IV : The Age of Robert Walpole." Apollo 114, no. 237 (November 1981): 329-330, 338 n. 9, repro. fig. 6.

  • Bryson, Norman. Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Regime. Cambridge, 1981: 77-79, repro. fig. 28.

1982

  • Eighteenth-Century Drawings from the Collection of Mrs. Gertrude Laughlin Chanler. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1982: 60-61, repro. fig. 20.

  • Rosenberg, Pierre and Ettore Camesasca Tout l'oeuvre peint de Watteau. Paris, 1982: 121, no. 203, repro.

1983

  • Posner, Donald. Another Look at Watteau's Gilles. Apollo 117 (February 1983): 97-99, repro. fig. 2, as After Watteau.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 330, no. 438, color repro.

  • Roland Michel, Marianne. Watteau. Un artiste au XVIIIe siècle. Paris and London, 1984: 64, 109, 177, repro. pl. 11.

  • Posner, Donald. Antoine Watteau. Ithaca, 1984: 120, 263-269, 291 n 62-64, repro. fig. 192, as After Watteau.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 434, repro.

1987

  • Grasselli, Margaret Morgan. "The Drawings of Antoine Watteau: stylistic development and problems of chronology." 3 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1987: 2:390-395; 542-545, no. 289-293; 3:repro. fig. 468.

  • Roland Michel, Marianne. "Watteau et les 'Figures de différents caractères'" in Antoine Watteau (1684 - 1721) The Painter, His Age, and His Legend. Paris, 1987: 40, 273, repro. 67

1992

  • National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 166, repro.

  • Vidal, Mary. Watteau's Painted Conversations: Art, Literature, and Talk in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France. New Haven and London, 1992: 41, 134, 146-147, repro. pl. 144.

1997

  • Banu, Georges. Le Rideau ou la fêlure du monde, Paris, 1997, p. 137, repro.

1998

  • Shefer, Elaine. "Masks/Personae." In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art, edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:581.

1999

  • Heck, Thomas F. Picturing Performance: The Iconography of the Performing Arts in Concept and Practice. Rochester, 1999: 2-5, repro. fig I.

  • Jarrassé, Dominique. 18th-Century French Painting. Paris, 1999: 60, repro.

2000

  • Börsch-Supan, Helmut. Antoine Watteau 1684-1721. Trans. Anthea Bell. Cologne, 2000: 53-54, 62, 52, repro., as by Unknown Copyist after Watteau.

2003

  • Bryant, Julius. Kenwood: Paintings in the Iveagh Bequest. New Haven and London, 2003: 15, 16 fig. 21, 416.

  • Hanson, Craig. "Dr. Richard Mead and Watteau's 'Comédiens italiens'." Apollo CXLV, no. 1201 (April 2003): 265+, repro.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 232-233, 262-263, no. 214, color repro.

2005

  • Baillio, Joseph, et al. The Arts of France from François Ier to Napoléon Ier. A Centennial Celebration of Wildenstein's Presence in New York. Exh. cat. Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York, 2005: 78 (not in the exhibition).

2009

  • Conisbee, Philip, et al. French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 2009: no. 99, 472-479, color repro.

  • Grasselli, Margaret Morgan. Renaissance to Revolution: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500-1800. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2009: 102, repro. fig. 1.

2014

  • Eidelberg, Martin. "Les Comédiens italiens." A Watteau Abecedario. June 2019; last modified August 2022. Online catalogue raisonné. URL: http://watteau-abecedario.org. Accessed 12 November 2024.

2016

  • Sund, Judy. “Why So Sad? Watteau’s Pierrots.” Art Bulletin 98, no. 3 (September 2016): 322-323, 325, color fig. 4, 341 n. 16.

Wikidata ID

Q20177791

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