Fête champêtre

Elegant couples recline and promenade through a sunlit park, the women in shimmering satins and the men in cloaks and plumed hats, their courtship grouped into three phases of love — childhood innocence at the left, romantic enchantment in the centre, amorous attainment at the right — beneath autumn leaves and a waning afternoon light. Jean Antoine Watteau developed the genre of the fête champêtre, and painted this example between 1718 and 1721, at the very end of his short life, possibly completing it with the help of his pupil Jean-Baptiste Pater, whose hand has been seen in parts of the finish. The picture long hung in the collection of the marquesses of Hertford at the Wallace Collection before entering the Max and Leola Epstein Collection in Chicago. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.