Pastoral feast with young man pouring wine

Pastoral Feast with Young Man Pouring Wine, dated 1715 and now at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, is potentially among the earliest dateable works by Pater, produced at a time when he was in Watteau's orbit and the two men had a complex relationship of instruction and competition. A date of 1715 would predate Watteau's formal instruction of Pater, which is documented as having occurred near the end of Watteau's life, and may represent independent early work in Pater's native Valenciennes or in Paris. The act of pouring wine as a social gesture carried obvious festive and erotic connotations within Rococo culture, and its presence at the centre of the scene underlines the tradition of outdoor feasting as both material pleasure and social ritual. The Boijmans collection's holding places it within one of the most comprehensive Dutch-context collections of European painting.

The earliest possible Pater composition in the present batch, this 1715 work would show a more tentative compositional approach and a still-developing figure style. The central gesture of wine-pouring requires careful attention to the foreshortening of the vessel and arm, and Pater's handling of this specific action would reveal his level of technical training at this early date.