At a Glance
- Exhibition
- Watteau’s Soldiers: Scenes of Military Life in Eighteenth-Century France
- Dates
- July 12, 2016 to October 2, 2016
- Museum
- The Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021
- Listing type
- Past Exhibitions
- Description
It would be difficult to think of an artist further removed from the muck and misery of war than Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), who is known as a painter of amorous aristocrats and melancholy actors. And yet, early in his career, Watteau painted a number of scenes of military life. They were produced during one of the darkest chapters of France’s history, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), but the martial glory on which most military painters trained their gaze held no interest for Watteau.
