The Wallace Collection

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Voulez-vous triompher des Belles?
  • Antoine Watteau (probably 1684 - 1721)
  • Voulez-vous triompher des Belles?
  • France
  • c. 1714 - 1717
  • Painting
  • Oil on oak panel
  • Size: 35.9 x 27 x 1.4 cm, oak panel
    Size: 35.9 x 25.9 x 0.4 cm, preserved parts of the original panel
  • P387
  • Small Drawing Room
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  • A masterful example of Watteau’s poetic meditations on manners, courtship and love conveyed via delicate draughtsmanship and exquisite shimmering brush strokes. Harlequin’s awkward lunging gesture towards Columbine demonstrates his inability to restrain his physical desire beneath the requisite social grace and is contrasted with the calm of the group in the background, where two lovers sit bathed in light listening to a guitarist, in harmony with the music and each other, their mutual feeling symbolized by the roses in their hair and those shown growing beside them. The presence of the commedia dell’arte characters, Crispin and Pierrot, reinforce the mood of theatrical ambiguity.