The Embarkation for Cythera

The Embarkation for Cythera, painted in 1717 as Watteau's reception piece for the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, is the founding work of the fête galante — the genre of elegant outdoor figures in park settings that he invented. The Academy invented the new category specifically to accommodate a work that fit none of the existing genres. Couples move toward a boat that will take them to Cythera, Venus's island of love — or perhaps they are departing from it, as some scholars maintain, the dream of perfect love already in the past. The painting's melancholy elegance — the sense of beauty already beginning to dissolve — is Watteau's most characteristic emotional register.

Couples descend toward a golden-sailed boat amid a misty landscape, their spiraling procession creating a rhythmic flow across the canvas. Watteau's feathery brushwork and luminous palette create an atmosphere hovering between reality and dream.