Pierrot (Watteau)

Pierrot, also retrospectively known as Gilles, is an oil on canvas painting of c. 1718-1719 by the French Rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Completed in the later phase of Watteau's career, Pierrot measures 184.5 by 149.5 cm, which makes up somewhat unusual case in the artist's body of work. The painting depicts a number of actors portraying commedia dell'arte character types, with one as the titular character set in the foreground.

Pierrot
Gilles
Artist	Jean-Antoine Watteau
Year	c. 1718-1719
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	184.5 cm × 149.5 cm (72.6 in × 58.9 in)
Location	Louvre, Paris
Accession	M.I. 1121

By the early 19th century, Pierrot belonged to Dominique Vivant, Baron Denon, the first director of the Louvre Museum; it later passed to the Parisian physician Louis La Caze, who bequeathed his sprawling art collection to the Louvre in 1869.

Further reading

• Brookner, Anita (1985) [1967]. Watteau. Colour Library of Art. Feltham: Hamlyn. pp. 8, 16–17, 35; colorpl. 47. ISBN 0-600-50156-6. OCLC 922565837 – via the Internet Archive.
• Camesasca, Ettore [in Portuguese] (1971). The Complete Painting of Watteau (loan required). Classics of the World's Great Art. Introduction by John Sutherland. New York: Harry N. Abrams. p. 122; cat. no. 195. ISBN 0810955253. OCLC 143069 – via the Internet Archive.
• Grasselli, Margaret Morgan; Rosenberg, Pierre & Paramantier, Nicole (1984). Watteau, 1684-1721 (PDF) (exhibition catalogue). Washington: National Gallery of Art. ISBN 0-89468-074-9. OCLC 557740787 – via the National Gallery of Art archive.
• Goncourt, Edmond de (1875). Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'Antoine Watteau. Paris: Rapilly. p. 76. OCLC 1041772738 – via the Internet Archive.
• Heartz, Daniel (Winter 1988–1989). "Watteau's Italian Comedians". Eighteenth-Century Studies. 22 (2): 156–181. doi:10.2307/2738864. JSTOR 2738864.
• Lauterbach, Iris (2008). Antoine Watteau, 1684-1721. Back to Visual Basics. Köln: Taschen. pp. 12–13, 36, 45–46, 64. ISBN 978-3-8228-5318-4. OCLC 1164836547 – via the Internet Archive.
• Posner, Donald (February 1983). "Another Look at Watteau's Gilles". Apollo (117): 97–99.
• Roland Michel, Marianne (1984). Watteau: un artiste au XVIII-e siècle. Paris: Flammarion. pp. 7, 9, 175, 210, 221, 269, 270, 301, 311; ill. 124, 168, 283. ISBN 0862940494. OCLC 417153549.
• Schwartz, Sanford (1990) [first published in 1985]. "A Stranger in Paris". Artists and Writers. New York: Yarrow Press. pp. 128–142. ISBN 1-878274-01-5. OCLC 1028180706.
• Sund, Judy (September 2016). "Why So Sad? Watteau's Pierrots". The Art Bulletin. 98 (3): 321–347. doi:10.1080/00043079.2016.1143752. JSTOR 43947931. S2CID 193504216.
• Vidal, Mary (1992). Watteau's Painted Conversations: Art, Literature, and Talk in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05480-7. OCLC 260176725.
• Walther, Ingo F., ed. (1999). Masterpieces of Western Art: A History of Art in 900 Individual Studies from the Gothic to the Present Day. Cologne, London et al.: Taschen. p. 350. ISBN 3-8228-7031-5 – via the Internet Archive.

External links

• Pierrot, formerly known as Gilles at the Louvre's official web site
• Gilles at the Web Gallery of Art