The Feast of Love

This Feast of Love, around 1718, in the Dresden collections, is one of Watteau's supreme fêtes galantes. The garden setting, musical entertainment, and amorous couples compose an ideal vision of aristocratic pleasure that defined the French Rococo sensibility. Watteau painted in oil on panel and canvas using luminous brushstrokes laid over careful preparation, achieving a shimmering surface that captures the play of light on silk and the atmosphere of damp parkland. He died of tuberculosis in...

Figures in shimmering costumes populate a garden with a sculptural fountain, their groupings creating a serpentine composition through the parkland. The warm, golden palette and atmospheric depth create an effect of paradisal beauty.